Listen carefully, and (my previous post refers) God is laughing his (their?) head off now as we prepare to drive home after a fascinating fortnight in Transylvania (writing this in Alba Iulia as the Romanian presidential election results come in – at the moment, looking good for Europe.) Instead of tandeming from Hungary to Bucharest … Read more …
From one bloodthirsty dictator to another? Ever wondered what Bran Castle is like, supposed home of the Transylvanian ruler to beat them all, and even Nicolai C, Count Dracula? Also known charmingly as Vlad The Impaler? (Don’t ask, as what that means as a way of despatching your enemies is pretty gruesome). The bulk of … Read more …
Then and now pictures below (scroll down) of the Ceausescus’ palatial Bucharest residence, including the photo I took of their bed at Christmas 1989 literally still unmade from their last night in the building Dec 21-22. Three days later, both were dead. Recalling that first visit in the emotional heat of the immediate post-revolutionary days, … Read more …
Blog been very quiet for over a week as first I recovered from this year’s nasty cold-and-chest, and then we recalibrated our trip to drive round Romania rather than tandem, with a view on return to pedal round Lake Balaton instead. So this is from Bucharest, a return for me 36 years after covering the … Read more …
Yes, tell him your plans. The view on the left is not of some Great Caparthian Mountain, but of what I can see from my sick bed just a few hundred metres north of Hungary’s border with Serbia, hunkered down for a few days as I finally fight off the back end of a month’s … Read more …
Pausing en route to Hungary with some very old friends from student days in East Germany 1971 (old in every sense) here’s experimenting with a very brief pictorial post using Jetpack on my mobile (nerdy web builder reference there). With some captioned photos reflecting how very English German continues to become. The wonderful Gutsfelds, with … Read more …
Well, this is nearly it, and for the third year in a row (after 5500 km round Germany in 2023, and 4000 km round France last year) , Jutta and I are about to head off on our now-regular spring/summer cycling adventure, this time driving first to Hungary then on with Daisy2 round Romania and … Read more …
Greetings friends and colleagues with a short post to confirm that Jutta and I are looking forward to heading out to Hungary later this month with Daisy2 in the back of our VW together with the solo I used to call Raven – realising now she’s actually a Thorn Nomad. This post is by way … Read more …
What a trip. Ending rather hilariously when, for an entire day last Friday, we were following what I thought was the correct Ride-With-GPS routing, only to discover after 135km (!) that we were heading for Amsterdam instead of the ferry in Hoek of Holland. A rapid shift of planning ensued, with an unscheduled overnight in … Read more …
Another long gap between posts, and this will probably be the last one from the road, from the delightful little canal-river-and-hills town of Epinal in French Lorraine. Close by Alsace, home to Jutta’s paternal grandmother in those border regions that have so often switched ownership over the centuries in the wars between France and Germany. … Read more …