On Saturday (03.06.) we were welcomed downstairs again with a wonderful French breakfast by Marie-Louise. Too bad our time on her little farm is already over! We really enjoyed her company and the village life. Even her cat - "Karamel" was very affectionate at our breakfast. But maybe that's because she loves to be petted more than anything else! Since Marie-Louise is expecting new guests in her apartment around noon, we set off again with Jordi in beautiful sunshine.
The first 35 km back to Slavonski Brod looked very familiar to us for some reason...
Jordi left our trio at some point, because he usually drives much faster than we do. Behind Slavonski Brod, honestly, not much happens anymore. I had the feeling that we were actually driving through a long village the whole time. The road was straight, flat and almost all the time there were residential houses and homesteads on the right and left. Somehow it reminded us of the roadside villages in Belgium. The only exciting thing that happened was when Tilman made a nap and then two somewhat confused gentlemen (Based on the articukation and the wine bottle in hand, we suspect that they were alcoholics) came over and chatted us in Croatian. But somehow very confused and without context.
This perfectly normal day ended in a garden of a very nice family, who gave us some more nuts - for the energy. Funny thing is that they asked us again if we were not cold. To be honest, we've been sleeping with open sleeping bags lately, which are more for snuggling in than for warmth.

The next morning(Sunday 04.06.) started as the day before had ended: flat. As promised, we left early at 6:00 and enjoyed the first flat kilometers. Better this way, because they should not last long.... As soon as we were on the Eurovelo 6 (Atlantic coast to the Black Sea) and actually only wanted to drive along the Danube, it became absurdly hilly. At first we didn't want to trust our navigation, which said that we should make another 200 meters of altitude. But we were taught better. Honestly: slowly we should know better with these Eurovelos.... The hard up and down strained our nerves rather than our muscles.

To cool off we looked down from the castle walls in Ilok to the Danube. How beautiful flat it was on the other side! So off we go: down to the river, over the border and we were already in Serbia, where we were greeted directly behind the border by an excessively large sign about the Danube Cycle Path.

So we had great expectations of Serbia. And on this day already the second time we were taught better. Just behind the city, the Eurovelo led onto an absurdly busy road. After a car with easily 120 km/h overtook a motorcyclist, while he overtook us and thereby only by hair's breadth did not push the moped from the oncoming lane, we decided to leave this road asap. So we drove along a muddy gravel road with the slightly disgusting smell of standing water next to it. Fortunately, this road was soon paved and also became the official Danube bike path. We looked for a shady place and took a break. There we met a trike driver together with his dog and we talked for a while. The last kilometers to Novi Sad we went along the Danube. Except for two tourers, with whom Tilman talked, it was not exciting. But at least there were no cars.
In Novi Sad we waited in the garden of our WS. Not half an hour later Ivana and Endere came back from picking cherries with their 3 children.
Of course we immediately helped to wash the cherries and to separate the good ones from the bad ones. The funny thing was that we talked with the two older children David and Blanca (circa elementary school age) in French. The family once lived for a short time in France and their bike tours with the trikes also often lead through France. Tilman also had his fun with the kiddies and it quickly developed into a little competition to see who could free the most cherries from the stem. With one or the other trick of course.

Ivana then helped me to make contact with planetariums via the university, since they had not yet answered. I got the positive answer only some hours later in the evening. Tilman had to play chess with David again. The boy did really well! But Tilman has been playing quite a bit longer.
After dinner we put up our tent and happily fell asleep in the garden of this super nice family.

Monday (05.06.) we had an appointment at the planetarium first thing in the morning at 10:00. We drove along the Danube to the planetarium and could not understand why Endere is not a fan of Novi Sad. The realization should come later. To get to the planetarium, we had to go up the hill to the castle. Punctually at 10:00 we arrived and were greeted by Nadia. Somehow it was an inverse planetarium, because instead of being built on top of something, it is in a vaulted cellar. Very pleasant climate in summer but very cold in winter! The system is a self-construction with the principle beamer-lenses-fish-eye. Nadia also explained to us later that it has one or two pitfalls. For example, she has to calibrate it by hand before every show. But first we listened to her show. With Stellarium she showed the most important constellations and the Milky Way, while the very mixed school class got louder and louder. Only when the teacher intervened and went out with some students, the show could continue. I know this from somewhere... The starry sky was followed by a colorful mix of all astronomy topics. Two of the students were fully engaged and seemed to find no end to their questions - a truly interactive hour! When the school class was gone, we chatted a bit more with Nadia. She is still a physics student herself and told us that the planetarium unfortunately gets zero support from the city or the country. For example, they don't have any toilets, because otherwise the premises would most likely go to a club or disco. It's a pity that education is probably not so highly valued. But you have to say that they really make the best of it! By the way, Nadia's favorite object in the sky is Saturn :)

Since we were already at the castle, we made a small tour following the planetarium. The view is really great from up there! You can look directly on the Danube and on Novi Sad.

So it's about time that we set out to explore the city center ourselves. Relatively quickly came the understanding to Endre's assessment of the city. And we share it! It is not really beautiful. So wide streets that you have to walk 200m and more as a pedestrian to somehow safely cross the streets. It was noisy and somehow quite loveless structured. No wonder the 3(!) people sitting in the tourist info were more than confused when I asked them for postcards. At least we found a super bike store. Super competent and cheap. ... his name. There we purchased a new set of pedals, as Tilmans have been clacking for quite a while now and we are not sure when they would finally block. Of course Tilman also found what he was looking for at the post office and returned with a pile of stamps!
After our stress level in town had risen, it was time to go back to the family's cozy garden. We set up our tent in the garage again today - the sky didn't look promising....
Inside, we made the family Chile enogadas (the European kind) and chatted about the bike paths and projects in the city and were even allowed to test ride the trikes! All in all, we felt very comfortable and could hardly believe that we had to leave again the next day :(

Our last day(Tuesday 06.06.) in Serbia was once again full of contrasts. To get out of Novi Sad, we had to take partly quite big roads and passed sometimes more, sometimes less intact gas stations. At some point, we were fortunately able to switch to smaller roads, which were more convincing with their freedom from cars than with their quality. For 10 km a dear street dog sweetened our time by happily walking beside and behind us. Somehow we became fond of him and named him "Camino". Our hopes that he would let us go on alone before the bigger road were not fulfilled. Therefore Tilman asked a farmer with hands and feet, if he could distract Camino for a short time, so that we could go on. However, Camino managed that quite well on his own, because when we looked back again he had already made friends with another dog. Too bad we couldn't take him with us....

Our original plan to drive the whole time along a canal unfortunately did not work out, because the border there is only open once a month. So we had to drive a somewhat larger detour and unfortunately much too early from the beautiful canal route away again. It went flat and straight ahead, not much to say about it. At some point we had to admit that we would not make it in time for the border closure at 19:00 and decided a few km before to try our luck in gardens. We asked an older woman who was working in her front yard. After she had coordinated with her husband, we were allowed to park our bikes in the garage. Once again we were unable to turn down the invitation to tea and we had the feeling that the man was having fun talking German again. Soon his buddy came over, who also spoke good German. Both used to work in Germany and now get part of their pension from there. His buddy said a super inspiring sentence: "I don't care where you come from! Whether from Syria, India, USA, China or Germany. We are all human beings and I help all people where I can".
It became a very long evening with many good conversations and despite our protest we had dinner again. Super tasty supper! And when we said that we would soon have to put up our tent, we were hardly let out but asked to sleep inside on the sofa "No Šator!

On Wednesday (07.06.) we said goodbye early in the morning to be there in time for the opening of the border at 07:00. The officials looked a bit puzzled that their first "customers" were two cyclists. Normally this crossing is probably not so actively used... The Romanian customs officer even ignored the car behind us for quite some time, just to look after us!

Our first destination in Romania was the canal we left in Serbia. This leads us exactly to Timisoara, where we had contacted Vasile from bewelcome. Super nice and very relaxed to drive! So we also took a breakfast/lunch/brunch break.
When we drove into Timisoara, we had the full contrast program again. From relaxed canal to stressful city.

After a small odyssey to find the entrance to the house and a place for the bikes, we were warmly welcomed by Vasile. It turned out that he was waiting for another cyclist - Jordi, the Dutchman we had already met at Marie-Louise in Croatia! While they were waiting I went to the nearby store, got the best chocolate ever and some ice cream for everyone. When I came back to the apartment Jordi had already arrived and was very happy about the ice cream. We talked with Vasile about hitchhiking and hiking until he had to leave for his night shift. The evening was very unspectacular, because we were all done from biking and went to bed early.

Thursday (08.06)
We woke up around 6:30 when Vasile came back from work. Since we were awake for once and hadn't seen much of the city yesterday, we headed out for a morning sightseeing tour. Early in the morning, the city was still nice and empty, so we had breakfast in the park. Once you entered the inner ring road, the traffic noise also became much less and we found a really nice city! In Timisoara there are many pretty old houses, alleys and squares and you can see that the city is powerfully in transition! An example is the street on the photo. On the right you can see already cleaned houses with new paint and new shutters, while on the left is already / still properly worked on it and you can still see the very old facades. We are curious how the city will look in 5 years!

One feature that immediately catches the eye in the city is the Orthodox church with its glittering exterior. Even inside it impressed us properly. I think especially because none of us has been in an Orthodox church and you can clearly feel the difference. We show you a photo of the interior from the Internet, so you get an impression. (Source: wikipedia)

On the way back we met with Jordi to say goodbye and take a farewell photo. Around 15:00 we also said goodbye to Vasile and drove out of the city. Fortunately, there was a bike path out of town, so we didn't have to ride on the big road. By the way, this is also a positive surprise: there are relatively many good bike paths in the city, which have probably all been built within the last few years. Slowly something is happening in the rethinking :)
We drove through many villages with U-shaped houses that had their courtyards out to the street - interesting architecture! In addition, it remained mostly flat and after several attempts to sleep in the garden had failed, we found around 21:00 still a nice place in the high grass. The swarm of mosquitoes around definitely sped up the tent pitching! At the end of the day, we had to realize that we had driven a whole 85 km after all!

Friday (09.06.) morning we woke up with good intentions at 06:00. Until the rain on our tent became louder and louder and we then still slept until about 08:30 and waited for the rain.

We drove and drove and drove, now and then interrupted by a dog that thinks the road also belongs to the property ... The landscape changed from flat to hilly and somehow our legs were little motivated. So we took a lot of breaks. During a break, a man came up to us and "talked" with us. Whereby the only common denominator was "Germany". At some point he came again and shouted very enthusiastically "Germanyyyyy!" to us. Gave us ice and water and was gone again. During another break we visited an interesting wooden church, which we unfortunately could not see inside.

Another break we spent on a still closed section of highway, the just newly built highway.

We were then more or less forced to take the last break of the day when the sky opened up above us, resulting in a violent and long thunderstorm. Fortunately we found shelter and did not get wet. During that time Tilman slept soundly while I wrote this entry.
After the thunderstorm we made it a few kilometers and found a good place for our tent in a field. Unfortunately the way there was quite muddy, but we had to wait until the next morning to see how much. But that is a story for the next entry. Our current destination is Brasov, where we can take a break for a few days at Ilinca's parents. We still know Ilinca from Sweden and will probably visit her there again!