Part II of my adventures riding to the Black Sea and back on my motorbike.
30/6/2013 Day 4 Dry
We’ve done Germany a fair bit before, and it’s not the focus of this trip, so today is all about going east until we get to Prague, 400 miles away. The wooded hills that we start from are peaceful. Dry, sunny and cool conditions make the riding relaxing. Maybe a bit too relaxing as I scare myself with a poorly judged overtake, resulting in one of those eyes-up-against-the-inside-of-the-visor moments, when a coach rounds the bend in front of me mid manoeuvre. Needless to say, I manage to avoid smearing myself up the front of it like a bug, but I’m good and awake now!
On the motorway the landscape gradually flattens out to make a suitable place to put Frankfurt airport. A landing jumbo, flaps fully extended and hanging like oversize venetian blinds from the backs of the wings, seems to hang impossibly in the air just a few hundred feet above me as I pass.
We stop a few times for food and drink and to stretch our legs, but mostly we just put our heads down and make progress. One of the odder moments of the day is when a bus load of Oriental tourists stops at the same service station as us and start looking at everything. “Not that strange” you may be thinking, but I mean everything. They stop and look at the bikes, ok that’s pretty normal. They silently watch us stuffing our faces with bratwurst and chips, okaaay that’s a little odd. But then they form an orderly queue, to take it in turns to stand on the little step and look in the open stable door of the camper van parked next to us, where the lunching residents studiously and uncomfortably ignore them until they go away.
It’s all motorway to Prague but southern Germany is a very green and pleasant land. It reminds me of very English countryside except on a much larger scale. We are surrounded by miles and miles of unspoiled, rolling hills. At the next stop, dad proves that you can’t pull the geopolitical wool over his eyes by observing that Hitler’s liebensraum (living space) justification for annexing everywhere was “A load of bollocks”. We get a really good view of one part of the scenery when we miss our exit from a cloverleaf and have to do it all again, for the only 1890 degree left turn of the trip. When we stop just inside the Czech border we have a chat with some US Air Force guys who are based in the UK. They are in very American muscle cars and have driven from Cambridge today and want to make it to Budapest by nightfall. That’s a hell of a daytrip!
The scenery becomes even prettier and we drop into Prague in the sunny late afternoon, where we easily find a nice little campsite on an island in the river, just a short tram ride from the centre. We grab a cold couple of pints of refreshment, pitch the tents, shower then jump on the tram into town before it gets dark. I realise this is not news, but Prague is a very pretty place, populated almost entirely by very pretty girls so far as I can tell. Charles Bridge is full of artists and jewellery vendors, hawking their wares to the throngs of relaxed, happy tourists. Romantic couples take pictures of themselves in front of the view down the river in the blushing evening light. We consider this to be inappropriate for father and son. There are also beggars. They take their craft very seriously here, kneeling with their forehead pressed to the floor and an upturned cap in outstretched hands, seemingly in the hope that unnecessary voluntary discomfort might milk a few extra pennies from the passing affluence. I don’t see any of them take a single coin.
We just relax with dinner and a few beers this evening, recovering from a long day in the saddle. We have another night planned here so we can take a proper look round tomorrow. I laugh the short, but loud, involuntary laugh of a man surprised by heavy irony when an extremely pissed off looking girl rounds a corner in front of me in a T-shirt that says “SMILE”. She doesn’t join in. On the way back to the tram we are propositioned by two prostitutes. “You want sex? Blow job?” – I reply with a very polite “No thank you” and then chuckle to myself all the way back about how terribly English I am.
1/7/2013 Day 5 Dry and sunny
No miles on the bike today as Prague is one of the cities we deemed worth a full day to look round. Dad is already chatting amiably to a French family, who are in the process of leaving the campsite when I wake up. After breakfast we take a tiny ferry across the river and I am a little bit jealous of the ferryman, who seems to have the most relaxed job in the world: puttering about in the sunshine in one of the world’s most beautiful cities. We walk up to the Minor Basilica on top of the hill overlooking the river to take in the views, then walk and tram back to Wenceslas square and the old town.
We explore the town, climb the tower over the astronomical clock and while away a couple of hours, just sitting in one of the open air bars in the old town square and watching the world go by. We get to see a seeming endless supply of street entertainers do their bit. A young lad with superhuman hacky-sack skills, a guy making huge bubbles that have the kids following him round like rats following the pied piper, living statues, a full on jazz band and a guy dressed as a gnome who, come to think of it, didn’t actually do anything apart from watch everybody else. Maybe he just likes dressing as a gnome. Add to that some good old fashioned people watching and cold beers to wash it all down with and it’s a pretty relaxing day.
2/7/2013 Day 6 Dry and sunny
We make an early start and head out of Prague. After an hour or so we stop at a little service station and end up with a hearty breakfast of ham and eggs after a conversation reminiscent of the old Two Ronnies sketch “Swedish made simple” – V.F.M.N.X. (google it if you don’t know it, it’s a classic). From there we head down towards Brno and turn right to Vienna for a beverage and another capital city visited, then on to Bratislava for the same.
We park up on the pavement in Bratislava at the bottom of a line of motorbikes (they’ll be ok here then) and grab a beer and giant pizza slice each. Halfway through lunch the police arrive and start clamping bikes starting at the other end of the line, so we quickly pack up and bug out before they get to ours! Later on, we realise the blood alcohol limit to drive in Slovakia is zero. Whoops!
The police don’t seem overly concerned about our daring escape but we make a dash for the Hungarian border anyway. It’s getting hot now and we are keen to make progress across the flattening landscape and get to Budapest, where we have another two night stop planned. The GPS finds us another cracking campsite in the city where we meet again the French family who were on the campsite in Prague two nights ago. They are friendly and chatty so we accept their offer of a lift into the city centre, to appreciate the splendour of Budapest by night, where we eat with them in a restaurant run by a man I would swear is a Hungarian Frank Muir.
2/7/2013 Day 7 Dry and hot
Another city day today, and what a city! Budapest is big, beautiful and very impressive. Because there is so much to see, we decide to be proper tourists and do the hop-on-hop-off bus and boat thing. There is an awful lot to explore here and a single day can’t really do it justice. But we take in Heroes Square filled with imposing bronze statues and bright marble columns dazzling in the bright sun. The castle district with its almost Disneyesque white citadel overlooking the rest of the city. The mighty cathedrals and grand synagogue paid for by Tony Curtis. And the magnificent parliament building on the bank of the Danube, which dominates the riverside. Our pretty tour guide on one of the open topped buses is wonderfully and endearingly honest about Hungary’s history – “Hungary used to be much bigger, but we aren’t very good at war.”
We fill the day thoroughly with Budapest and head back to the homely traditional Hungarian restaurant next to the campsite, where we dine al fresco in the warm evening with our new French friends. This campsite seems to be something of a stopping off point for the adventurous. We chat to another French couple who are going round the world by pushbike, and I talk to a Polish guy who has already done 10000km on his motorbike and hasn’t remotely finished yet. He got tucked up by corrupt police in the Ukraine where they fined him 400 euros for some trumped up infraction. He had tried to explain that despite riding a BMW he wasn’t German, but apparently the Ukranian police aren’t racist like that. Everyone gets tucked up equally and there isn’t a discount for being Polish rather than German. He’s already ridden the Transfagarasan and we’d heard some horror stories about corrupt cops before we left, so I asked him about Romania and Bulgaria. He told me that there was nothing to worry about there.
Tomorrow, we head for Romania and Dracula country.
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