hello, at last a chance to do some email in peace and quiet, and in the comfort of this email cafe, the one and only in the whole of croatia, and its very nice.
we have arrived in zagreb, which was no easy task, as the roads here are terrible and cobbled and narrow and full of potholes, so we have taken to riding on the pavements, which noone seems to mind. we are camping actually at a motorway service station, which is a bit of a novelty seeing as we cant ride our bikes on the motorway, but we found a dirt track to sneak in the back way. its a bit far out from zagreb centre, but accomodation is very expensive in croatia so were saving lots of dosh by camping. at least we get a 24 hour cafe and bar on the service station. after slovenia, croatia feels a bit run down and weird, its not nearly so modern, but it had a good cinema, and we saw some great american teenage film.
i got a massive rusty nail in my wheel today, but other than that no major bike mishaps except toms gear changer broke, but it was expertly changed in slovenia in no time. tomorrow we head for budapest which could take us 6 days or so, and then its a massive stretch to bucharest. we heard on the radio about the earthquake in turkey, so it seems our final destination may have collapsed. today is day 80 of the trip, which means in theory we are two thirds of the way to istanbul. the statistics master says that we have come 2907 miles and that we have slept in the tent 49 nights, hotels 4 nights, hostels 18 nights, and friends 7 nights, with one night on the boat from newcastle to bergen. tom has spent approx 150 quid on fixing his bicycle so far, so not quite the price of a new one.
im waiting for mine to start breaking very soon, so far ive just put a new back tyre on. we voted best country so far as czech republic and awarded worst to slovakia and sweden jointly. these awards were worked out using a very complicated system of arbitration. weve had a lot of cities very close together, so quite a lot of rests, but thats all over now, as we have only budapest, bucharest, sofia and istanbul left with massive gaps between them, so this may be the last cycle update for a little while.....
still boling hot, and hopefully should get another month or so before it gets colder. hopefully we will still be able to go to istanbul despite the earthquake, were not sure of the details yet, and its still 6 weeks away. well, time to go, so its goodbye from me and goodbye from zagreb. paul