she was with a group of four French women, all just graduated from college, touring eastern Europe in bicycles--from Greece to St. Petersburg, via Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Czech, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia! Astrid was excited to meet other bicycle tourists. She and her buddies had been riding since December and had met only one other cycle tourist, an Israeli man.Astrid showed me their bikes, which were at the French Institute next door. All the bikes were identical mountain bikes with huge, huge panniers. One had an extremely high seat. It turned out to be Valerie's, who is quite tall. Astrid introduced us to Delphine and they quickly invited us to have dinner with them.
They had done a lot of preparation and planning for their tour. They had contacted lots of French Insitutes in eastern Europe months earlier, to tell them what they were doing and ask for a chance to meet some local French students in order to "create bonds between youngs (11-18 years old) of France and Europe." This was a great idea. They had invitations all over the place and got to meet people in each country that spoke at least some French.
That would be nice. In France and Spain we spoke enough of the language to have
simple conversations with people. But in Hungary and Slovakia, we didn't have a chance unless they spoke English. Several did speak English in Budapest but outside the city we couldn't communicate much. We were always reminded of what an English speaking Chinese engineer told us on the train in China: if you don't speak Chinese, "how do you exchange ideas with the Chinese people?"So the Four French had a good thing going. In addition to contacting the French Institutes along their route they also dug up a lot of sponsors. It sounded like they got almost all their equipment free or at reduced prices (except their bikes). In exchange for the discounts they send postcards to the sponsors.
In Kosice they had good and bad luck. The bad luck was that one of them, Fatiha, was sick. She's Muslim so she couldn't eat pork. But in Romania pork is just about the only meat they eat. Chicken isn't even considered meat and guests are always served pork. Anything else would be downright rud
e. So Fatiha couldn't get enough protein. They had been in Kosice for 10 days waiting for her to get her energy back.The good luck was that somehow someone at the French Institute arranged an apartment for them to stay in. The regular occupants were out of the country for a year so they had no rush to leave. The apartment had a great location just at the end of the long pedestrian mall. It was also very close to a wonderful grocery store.
The Four French cooked us a magnifique dinner topped with a desert of banana flambee! I worried that Joan wasn't going to be able to go back to our regular diet of Tibetan Tuna Casserole (the casserole I learned how to prepare on our camp stove in Tibet).
Over dinner we they told us how they find accommodation in small towns (between French Institutes). They simply ask people in the streets saying, "We are four French. We are traveling around Europe by bicycle. Do you have a place we could put our sleeping bags for the night?" This works amazingly well. They said they've only used their tent once or twice.
They didn't think the same approach would work in western Europe or America where people are more wary. I think it would work, at least in the midwest of America.This approach is a last resort technique for us. I think it's great for students, but we're not students anymore and I feel like we should do our best to take care of ourselves and reserve asking for help only for emergencies.
We had a wonderful time talking to them. They seemed mature well beyond their years. They also have a web site: http://www.fuaj.org/aj/lyon/roulez.htm
They invited us out to a bar where Fatiha was meeting her doctor. The doctor was a Slovakian medical student, named Marcela, who had lived in France for over a year so she was fluent in French. She also spoke English pretty well. We discussed China with her.
Ironically, we were big fans of China and Marcela was much more skeptical. This was right after the U.S. bombed the Chinese embassy in Kosovo. We said that China has come a long long way since the cultural revolution and that women seemed to have more opportunity in China than in any other country we saw in Asia. Marcela, on the other hand, had a student friend from China who apparently didn't have much good to say about it.
From Kosice we headed northwest into the mountains heading toward a town called Levoca. The climbs were thankfully not as steep as those on the way into Kosice. In fact the road wound nicely through the forests and we actually enjoyed the climbs.
At one little town we discovered one of the best looking churches in Europe. It was built in 1929 (or at least the crucifix in front was built then, it had a date on it) so it won't show up in any tour guides for another few centuries. But the doors and the interior decorations had a lot of nice inlaid wood designs. The windows weren't stained glass but nicely done deco style scratched glass. There was a woman inside praying so we didn't linger. Outside the church was not much to look at just the usual gray stucco coating on a typical
barn-with-steeple sort of building.Then we passed through an area that we had been warned contained a lot of gypsies. Astrid said someone told her that they lock their car doors when they drive this area. She said the government built the gypsies a big building to live in and in a few years the building was uninhabitable. Gypsies are migrants so a permanent building probably didn't make much sense to them.
We passed through the area without incident. Actually without really noticing. It was just pretty green rolling country side. I only noticed that it seemed to be harder to get waves out of people as we rode by.
The weather got clearer and clearer and the evening ride turned out to be gorgeous. We rode on very small back roads without little or no traffic. All the hillsides oozed deep green from all the spring rains. Some fields were plowed and just showing some growth in long green parallel stripes. Other fields were covered with grass. The hills rolled in gentle rounded waves like a painting.
Fortunately I hadn't read the guidebook very closely or I would have read that the campground we were heading for was closed until June. The campground's little bar was opened and the bartender and a couple customers who knew a little English showed us where we could put up the tent and where the bathrooms were.After dinner we went back to the bar and had a couple beers. The two customers that had helped the bartender were still there, drinking fresh new half liter beers.
That night, for the first time I could remember during our eastern Europe tour, the sky was completely clear and cluttered with stars.
In the morning it was raining.
Next: Slovakia Chapter 3 - The Tatra Mountains
