I passed by the statue of king Decabal yesterday. That thing is huge, I’ve seen pictures of it before and imagined it to be much smaller (it’s 40 meters high)

I’ve been traveling through the most beautiful landscape for the last 2 days. But especially today it was also quite hard as it is very hot and hardly any shadow to be found. Also there’s no villages for long stretches of the way so you can’t just stock up on water every other hour. Well, that might be good training for the things ahead of me ;)

Had my first punctured tire today after 1979 km. I’m at 1997 km now so the next round number is just around the corner.

But let me tell all that in more detail with some pictures:

Or maybe I should have ordered the “Hals des Vlad der Pfähler” instead…

The translation of the menu in the Restaurant in Oravița was a little strange – but I sure was glad there was one at all! Turned out to be quite tasty.

And finally a place that sells the beer that sounds like it as invented just for me: Ursus ;)

On Tuesday I crossed the border from Hungary to Romania and got a very good feeling about that right from the start. Right away people I met started smiling at me and greeting me friendly when I passed by, something I haven’t encountered like that on this trip before. Also cycling the first 100km in Romania was quite fun. Sure, there’s no bike lanes like the ones that are there sometimes along major roads in Hungary – but that is not necessarily a bad thing: When you follow those it’s not unlikely that they end in the middle of nowhere. There’ll be a “end of bike lane” sign and no other alternatives than the main load which in turn has a “no bikes allowed here” sign. Makes you wonder what idiot dreamed that up. Luckily no one there will care about those signs and neither did I. Still, cycling here in Romania seems more relaxed so far.

Today was my second day in Budapest and I visited the local hackerspace. As usual on those occasions was given a nice tour and had interesting conversations – “endlich normale Leute” ;) Hope to keep in touch with you guys!

I’ll be leaving the city again tomorrow and ride to Timișoara (Romania) via Kecskemét and Szeged (both still in Hungary). But first here’s some pics I took while walking around town:

I realized i haven’t posted pictures in a while – so here you go:

I left Bratislava today after only one night. That’s kind of a pity but after spending so much time in Vienna I felt like being on the road again.

And I did, today was the first time that I cracked the 100km barrier for a single day (115km from Bratislava to Komárno). That was mostly caused by the first half of the trip along the barrier lake being extremely boring – just straight road without any variation for dozens of kilometers – and then the lack of accommodation options (did not want to camp outside because of thunderstorms in the evening). With that progress i can take it slow now and still be in Budapest on Thursday.

Although I heard only good news about the flooding status from other travelers going the other direction I’m still planning to skip Serbia and spent more time in Romania leaving the Danube route for some time.

I’ll be leaving Austria tomorrow, heading for Bratislava.

The highlight of staying in Vienna definitely was touring Metalab – that is one great hackerspace!

Here’s some random impressions from Vienna:

I reached Vienna yesterday, thereby crossing the first 1000km mark somewhere near Tulln. \o/

I’m going to stay here till Monday to relax a bit, get to know the city (never been here before) and figure out how to continue. Not sure if it is feasible to continue along the Danube which was my original plan with all the recent flooding.

That might sound icky but it’s actually quite comfortable. I’m even writing this post in my pipe…