Cykel genom Kroatien 1

Hello everyone.

First of all, this post is in english because there are some (hopefully) international readers that will want to know about our trip. Second of all I (Malte) havent updated anything at all during the summer like Johan pointed out. This is of course not acceptable at all, but for now i will focus on this biking trip that we are on. A post describing other activities during the summer might pop up later if I feel like it =)

Anyhow, at the time of writing ( 18.28 hours 11/8 2009) we are in a small internet cafe with limited bandwith in the north italian town of Portoguaro. We have been biking for two days since we arrived at Treviso airport close to Venice. on our way we experienced sleeping on the curb, italian old ladies, disgustingly large tourism complexes along the ocean and much more, so read on!

We landed in Treviso at around 20.00 o clock in the evening on sunday. our bikes came out in broken boxes thrown on the conveyer belt, good times. it took us a good two hours to completely screw everything together and we got some help from two swedish old men who came on the same flight as us. they where self acclaimed biking experts. After this annoyance of putting together the bikes we both felt like dinner, but where to tired to go anywhere. luckily we found a place across the street from the airport where they would microwave us some tortellini bolognese. when we where fed time was around 23.00 and we where both exhausted. the plan was to sleep in the airport waiting hall so no hostel was booked. The problem was that Treviso airport dont see many flights at night so they close everything at 23.00. as exhausted as we where we just decided to sleep on the curb next to the staff parkinglot behind the airport. Excellent place by the way, I can recommend it to any broke traveller =)

In the morning, after removing insects from underneath the clothes and brushing the teeth in the airport bathroom we took off. Mission 1 was to find breakfast and mission 2 was to find either a roadsign pointing to some place on our map (which conveniently enough does not include Treviso but rather starts 20 km east of town) or find a map.

After a few twists and turns we managed both to get some food to fill our roaring bellies and to buy a map from the train station. So then we started following the map.

Not more than 3o minutes after we left Treviso train station some old ladies drove past us on their bikes, saw that we where checking a map and asked where we where going. I think... I dont speak italian at all. Anyway we tried to explain that we dont have any exact travel pland but are going to Croatia. Im not sure how much of that that actually got through the language barrier but anyway they told us to follow them. So after a quite winding tour through the north italian farmlands (corn, tomatoes and grapes, mostly) they led us onto the highway. Yep. And just pointed in one direction and said:
-Mare, siempre mare!
Which I translate to aproximately "Ocean, always ocean", meaning the road sign that leads towards the ocean. So we followed their advice, for a while but the highway gets boring real fast and we wanted to see more countryside. Roughly following the direction of the big road we managed to get by on smaller roads and tractor tracks. along the way was a trattoria where they where happy to serve up some pasta pomodore for lunch. After lunch we just kept going through roughly the same kind of landscapes until we reached the sea.

A dramatic change in landscape took place here. The hotels grow towards the sky much like the crops in the countryside, but huge and smelling of fat tourists. anyway, somewhere in this ghetto of charter tourists there was a camping site sign on our map, and after a while we actually found it. Good times.

In the evening came a huge thunderstorm, but it was over as fast as it came.

Today we have been following the coastline for quite some time, through golf courts, roller skating roads and beach access hotel complexes. Finally our map told us to turn north, away from the coast and on winding country roads towards the city of Portoguaro, where we currently are. The distance we have biked so far totals to 125 kilometers. This evening awaits a train to the city of Trieste, where we once again arrive late at night without any booked hostel or any chance at camping, but hey, travelling is all about adventure, right?