Romania: Bucharest – Rest Day
The rest day started with a short and successful journey in the morning to a little bike repair shop to source a few replacement crank-set bolts which were needed to replace those that were transplanted from one of the staff members bikes to replace mine which had the allen key fitting stripped while re-greasing the bottom bracket to stop it from creaking.
About 100m down a little side street the bike repair shop was barely 2m wide and 6m deep with a glass frontage completely caged in to guard against break-in. The sign said open from 10am, so the fact that it was closed at 10.10am was a little odd but not altogether unexpected...it is Romania after all...at 10.25am the owner turned up and proceeded with the opening shop routine which involved removing 5 bicycles from the only floor space in the shop and hanging and locking them on hooks on display out the front of the shop.
Inside was a wall covered with and glass display cabinet full of a multitude of cut-off empty soft drink bottles filled with all manner of nuts, blots and other miscellaneous bike parts...exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for and after pointing at what I wanted and paying out the equivalent of $2.50 for 4 crank-set bolts my mission was successful.
My only other venture outside was to take an afternoon walk around the peoples palace, the parliamentary building, which our hotel was located near to. Problem being that half way around the circular route the sky opened up and in a manner of seconds I was soaked through!
After returning to the hotel to dry off and change, a group of us headed off by taxi to meet Manon and her friend who lived in Bucharest (as Manon used to 7 years ago) for dinner at a swanky looking restaurant on the riverfront. The restaurant had all the appearance of a quality establishment but in true Romanian form our meals took about 2 hours to arrive and in the end were disappointing for the price we paid. Manon's friend Juan was full of entertaining stories and was a bit of a local celebrity, having appeared on a local Romanian 'Bachelor' reality TV show and as a Briton and the only non-Romanian contestant, won it. Overall it was a nice night, but ending at 11.30pm on the night before a riding day, it won't be happening again in a hurry!
10-Jul-08: Traditionally Bulgarian
Romania/Bulgaria: Bucharest to Ruse
107km, 4h 54min ride time
Our friendly police escort returned to lead us out of Bucharest for a day made up of fairly flat and straight roads on which we made good time despite a lingering headwind.
But as per usual, just when you think you are one step ahead, something goes wrong. The staff had traveled forward in the morning to locate a new campsite en-route to our next destination as the campsite from the previous year was more en-route to last years route, which has been changed and so would mean an 8km ride in the wrong direction. At the lunch stop we were given direction to the new campsite. However, on arrival at the new 'campsite' on the grounds of a hotel we were told that plan had fallen through and that we would need to keep moving to another location, which was 14km in the wrong direction, so worse than the original campsite from last year! The hotel manager had overridden the agreement of his staff saying that a group of construction workers were booked in for a function that night and that they typically got very drunk and looked to pick fights with other guests and so would not let us stay...afterwards our staff clarified that they got the impression that the hotel was really a brothel so decided that it better to move us elsewhere! So, we were re-directed to a campsite with no showers or toilets to speak of, but by that stage we were all over it and just happy to have somewhere to stop.
A short walk from the campsite was a little family run restaurant on the lake where we had some food and met the daughter, Biliana, who having studied languages at University spoke English very well. She and her father were very friendly towards us and very typical of the overwhelmingly friendly nature of the Bulgarian people in general. Biliana's father gave me a tablecloth decorated in a traditional Bulgarian pattern, which is pictured below.
11-Jul-08: Not Happy Jan!
Bulgaria: Ruse to Sumen
136km, 6h 54min ride time
Today was one of the few days that comes along to make me question what on earth I am doing here! We awoke at camp, comparatively a little tired which seems to be a general and now accepted consequence of camping, to the daily route instruction board which read...”130km, Hilly ALL Day Long”...there was not one happy face at camp, nor one person raring to get on the road!
The route had been determined the day before by Randy the tour leader in an attempt to keep us off the busy highway 2. In hindsight the effort put in to creating a scenic and safe route was far more deserving of thanks than he got, but hopefully he has accepted that being our tour leader is a thankless job...damned if you do, damned if you don't!
Granted the route was scenic and safe but the consequential climbing involved, at least for my part, rendered me blind to all else but the pain in my legs and desire for the day to just come to an end! It was by far my toughest physical and mental day (resulting in a couple of teary moments) and second only by about 100m to our greatest day of climbing...made even tougher by incongruent expectations owing to a throw-away comment by one of the leaders that we would not see any hills until after Varna...yeah right!
The riding day did finally come to an end with a 5km descent (after a whole day of climbing, for which it did not come even close to making up for!) in to the town of Shumen where thankfully we had hotel accommodation, because I think putting up a tent and camping may have tipped me over the edge! Although, the lack of hot water in the showers on arrival very nearly did!
Okay, so I think you probably get the picture that today was not my best, but it is all part of the journey and it would be boring if it were all the same...a sentiment much more easily appreciated in hindsight I can tell you!
12-Jul-08: Are we There Yet?
Bulgaria: Shumen to Varnan
105km, ride time n/a
Logic would dictate that a ride towards the coast would have a general trend, being downwards, but there seems to be an upwards trend hanging about which once again left me with very little appreciation for much of the route today. But I do remember being blown away by the fields of sunflowers so large they extended for as far as I could see.
Varna is the Bulgarian coastal tourist hot spot...like the gold coast with an eastern European influence. And the hotel we are staying in is for once right in the centre of the action.
My first priority for the afternoon leading up to a rest day was to find a decent massage and thanks to direction of the hotel reception I had success in finding a masseuse that did sports massage. So, after dropping off laundry to a you pay we do all the hard work service, which we love, I headed off for my massage, an experience which is almost worthy of a blog entry all of its own!
The massage 'room' was on the second floor of an office building just across from the hotel, which on entry looked abandoned as it was under renovation, so the lifts were out of service and I had to take the stairs which led to this little seemingly in use room at the end of a little dark corridor. The door to the room was obscured by magazine cutouts pasted to the glass and a little sign above which simply said 'massages'.
As I walked up the stairs the first time in search of the place I was fortunate to bump into a man and a lady about to enter the room...so I said in hand gestures that I was looking for a massage, to which the man gestured that he was the masseuse, to which I thought 'oh boy'...but I was desperate, so I said 'okay'. Part of my surprise was that I had just passed the notice board in the foyer of the building which had an English translation of the massage advertisement and the name of the masseuse was Nicola, to which I though 'oh good at least it is a woman'...hmmm of course hindsight and not being in a completely 'I am English, therefore I think mindset' makes the fact that Nicola in Bulgaria is not a female name obvious! So Nicola got out his appointment book and told me to come back at 5.30pm, which I did...
I was a bit nervous having booked myself in to be massaged by a foreign slightly strange looking middle aged man in a magazine clad room so had one of the guys walk me over to the place in a non-verbal attempt to make Nicola aware that there was going to be someone to notice my absence if I disappeared!
So, I enter the massage 'room' which is more of a broom cupboard and only big enough to fit a massage table with about 30-40cm to clear around it. The table is positioned diagonally in the room with the head jammed into one corner and surrounded on all sides by a clutter of newspapers, magazines, lotions, potions and all manner of things. The floor is covered with an array of mismatching and overlapping scraps of carpet and the ceiling is decorated with a selection magazine cutouts of bikini clad and naked women, paintings of country houses, seed packets, post card, envelopes and pictures of dogs all barely keeping hold to their backdrop.
Nicola follows me in to the room so that we are standing with barely room enough for one other person and closes the door and motions for me to hang my clothes on one of the many hangers tangled on the back of the door and to place my bag on top of a pile of magazines and newspapers and my shoes in a small free patch of space on the floor. An awkward few moments of silence passed in which I was waiting for him to leave the room so I could undress and position myself on the table covered in a towel...it became obvious that he was not going anywhere so I resigned myself to the fact that this is Europe in which modesty has no place...so I undressed to my underwear an lay on the table face down.
Through a combination of hand gestures and words I managed to explain that I was a cyclist on a trip from Paris to Beijing...to which he replied 'cuckoo, cuckoo' in conjunction with the finger rotating around the ear 'crazy' gesture...I laughed and nodded...and relaxed a little. I was then shown a whole host of massage oils, lotions and deep heat rubs and made to smell quite a few to nominate my choice of poison before he started.
The man clearly knew what he was doing and every time he located a problem area he would say 'pain' and then prod somewhere else and say 'problema' to indicate the source of the problem. He kept tsk, tsk-ing at all my problem areas and kept saying 'champion', I guess in some kind of reference to my resilience. There were quite a few areas of 'pain' in my arms from the past few weeks of bumpy roads and I obviously endured enough pain to be deserving of a kiss on the back of each hand after he had kneaded and stretched each arm...I had to laugh on the inside at the seemingly innocent action and how it made my western senses stand on guard. He repeated the 'kiss it better' routine on each foot after doing my legs and then again on and in appreciation of my 'tiny little ears' whilst massaging my neck...the latter of which did make me a little uncomfortable.
Throughout the whole massage I did note a clear lack of delineation between the western lines of distinction between public and private body parts! The first thing he did when massaging my leg muscles out was to pull my underwear in to a wedgie so that he could get to my bum muscles, which in itself was not wholly unexpected but the fact that no care was taken in subsequently covering me up was a little unnerving! Also wholly expected, he unclipped my bra so that he could massage my back and then had me remove the straps so that he could get to my shoulders, which while lying on my stomach was completely fine...but while being pushed and stretched in all manner of 'yoga' positions as he called it, was somewhat uncomfortable. All in all I didn't feel threatened at any point...a tad uncomfortable at times but not threatened.
He went on to employ an array of techniques including suction cups, rough textured massage mits, vibrating 'infra-red' tools, 'reike', 'manual therapy' and some more 'yoga' moves. While massaging my stomach he concluded that I had a 'spasm' in the muscle at the base of my esophagus and said something about 'reflux' and my 'immune system', after which he rummaged through his stash of lotions and potions beside my head while saying 'aromatherapy' and placed some oil in the palm of each of my hands and told me to rub them together and 'respiratorae' ie. breath. I was also accused of drinking too much water and not enough salt...which in the context of cycling is probably not such a far fetched accusation, so I was pretty impressed at what he could tell from my stomach!
When all was done and I was allowed to dress again I was offered up a concoction of something from a bottle which he had just taken a swig from and in the spirit of not letting fear get in the way of experience I gratefully accepted the brew, which I gather was a self brewed mix of 'vino' ie. wine and 'schnapps' which nearly blew my head off! I was then offered a cup of pineapple juice to wash it down. After being told I had a beautiful face and smile a few more times I said my goodbyes and left the little cluttered magazine clad room chuckling at the whole experience! I am told by the others that I was giggling and smiling for at least an hour afterwards and even as I write this I am smiling and chuckling at the experience that was my Bulgarian massage...and am all in anticipation of my upcoming Turkish massage!
13-Jul-08: Sun, Sand and Surf
Bulgaria: Varna – Rest Day
Today has been a restful day and probably the most successful rest day to date. Very little to report other than a quick visit to the beach to have a swim in the Black sea just to be able to say I have done so. The day is bright and sunny and the atmosphere nice to just generally wander about and see the going's on. Most of the afternoon has been spent updating you all, which I have now sworn to try and at least type up my entries daily to save on time!
Neil Update
Poor old Neil has had a few more troubles during his stay in hospital but is still with us! All the pain medication he had been on up until recently had masked another injury which was found as he was weened off the pain killers...a broken bone in his lower left leg! The break was repaired under surgery and plate inserted. He is certainly having a rough trot but is still fighting on.
Chinese Visa Update
Latest and dwindling feasible means of obtaining a visa are:
1.Apply to an embassy in your country of residence, ie. send my passport home...and hope they don't decide they need me to apply in person;
2.Wing it and see what the post-Olympic mood does for our chances of getting a visa issued en-route at some point between Turkey and China...
A group visa was squashed as an option and the cost and time invested in flying home on the off chance it would make a difference does not make for a practical course of action. At least our choices are being narrowed down!
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