In my room the bathtub is also the shower. A glass pane prevents the water from splashing all over the place when having a shower. Sadly the plumber who fitted the bathtub put it in the wrong way round, i. e. the sloping side that you are resting your back against when having a bath is on the shower side. This makes it impossible to stay close to the glass because of the slope of the tub. Never mind that moron, did I think last night when having a shower, there is a drain in the floor. Unfortunately the guy who laid the floor in this bathroom made the drain the highest elevation in the floor.
Watch me jumping out of the shower, quickly grabbing a towel and trying to prevent the water from leaving the bathroom with the room carpet as its next destination. Two moron craftsmen plus a non-existing quality control when inspecting this (fairly new) hotel building after completion. I think I'm getting the hang of what's wrong out here in the Wild East.
Never mind, by 0900 this morning I am back on the road. Serbian traffic police is quite numerous and my impression is that they are seriously trying to make traffic safer by ignoring minor offences and instead go for the really dangerous drivers - like this poor old Renault R4 converted into a heavy goods truck seen this morning near Prokuplje:
In other countries I could name their main task appears to have relatively nothing to do with road safety like in Serbia, but rather with filling the coffers of the local council...
I continue my westward ride on the main E80 trunk road until I reach Beloljin. The E80 continues on to Pristina and the Kosovo. Their application of participation in the "Green Card" insurance scheme was rejected in 2011, so I would have to buy a separate insurance - and I'm not even sure if it is possible to enter it as a foreigner from Serbia (they don't like each other very much), so I give that a miss and head north towards Kruševac instead. I then follow the Morava river westwards to Kraljevo. Then comes the fun bit; I head south-west into the mountains towards Ivanjica with lots of scenery and always above 3000 feet where the temperature is ideal for biking. Here are a few impressions:
After a total of 800 km over the last two days I am now approaching the original route again near Nova Varoš, where I find a comfortable hotel for the night.
In my room the desk lamp has burned out - how housekeeping can miss that is beyond me. I take out the dead bulb with its E27 socket and head to the reception for a replacement. It takes the receptionist over 10 minutes to find one - I am handed a new LED bulb with an E14 socket. This country may be great for a vacation, but living and working here would drive me nuts. I refrain from asking for the correct bulb. All the unoccupied rooms on my floor are wide open, so I nick the bulb from an empty room instead - let the next guest with more patience with the locals deal with this problem.
I leave Nova Varoš at 0900 hours. Three days in the same country, this is getting boring, so I head westwards to the border of Montenegro. Montenegro - the country that wants to join the EU, yet its president and (then) Prime Minister has been awarded the 2014 Person of the Year award, recognizing "the person who does the most to enable and promote organized criminal activity."
Just a few miles inside Montenegro the Pljevlja Power Station proves impressively why it is a bad idea to build an open-pit coal mine and a coal-fired power plant into a narrow valley surrounded by mountains and prone to low inversions:
But after that kleptocratic President and that far from ideally positioned power plant things start to look up tremendously; the road is mainly good and I am riding on a high plateau always above 3000 feet - with the odd unexpected interlude:
In parts this road is absolutely deserted and the countryside looks rather barren:
But all good things must come to an end; from Nikšić onwards the road goes downhill through a narrow valley towards Podgorica - and the temperature there hits 34 degrees. My route heads further west towards the coast at Petrovac. I am hoping for some cooler air at the sea. Unfortunately it doesn't cool down, it gets more oppressive and humid instead.
The Montenegrins are busy covering the entire coastline in concrete. New buildings everywhere - it looks like everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. Unfortunately the road infrastructure is not up to the new amount of traffic - it's utter mayhem.
On the western shore of Kotor Bay I find a hotel for the night - the price includes diner and breakfast. It's one of these packet tourist places where all food and drink is included. What one can do in this sleepy town of Herceg Novi all day eludes me - the action is clearly going on on the eastern shore of the bay.
Diner is from 1830 to 2200 hours - it's a buffet-style restaurant and the scenes in there I have last seen at the Kfar Hitim campsite on the Sea of Galilee in 1998 - you can read all about that here. Who in his right mind would enjoy such a silly beach holiday with animators and kitsch? But then I have to admit; who would voluntarily spend his hard-earned vacation sitting on his motorbike in a traffic jam in Podgorica? Touché...
It is already 25 degrees and the humidity is murder at 0845 when I set out for those few hundred metres towards the border to Croatia. There are two customs officers manning this sleepy post and there is only one single car in front of me. Nonetheless these two pinnacles of bureaucratic efficiency need 30 minutes before I am allowed to continue.
My route leads north-westwards along the Adriatic coastline and towards Dubrovnik - which I expertly circumnavigate. Dubrovnik supposedly is a very nice city, but with its narrow alleyways for me and the Marsipulami that place is about as useful as a snooze button on a smoke alarm.
Two hours later I am again at an international border; I have to pass for 10 km through Bosnia and Herzegovina at a village called Neum - yet another one of these bizarre European border lines. After those 10 km I reach the third international border in three hours - that's a novelty even for me.
With the exception of the coastline around Dubrovnik and Split this coast is surprisingly empty and therefore in many parts good fun to bike. There are plenty of small harbour towns where the Rich and Famous park their toys:
The road is also rather fast in most parts and I make good progress, though the high humidity at 30 degrees is rather unpleasant.
Usually a 1.5 litre water bottle is all I need for a biking day. But today I can drink such a bottle in one go every two hours without ever heaving to go for the little boys - that water just evaporates. Here is a picture I made during one of these "re-watering" stops:
Tonight there is a chance of rain along the coast, so I am at the lookout for a hotel where I can park the bike under cover. The best I can come up with is a hotel in downtown Biograd that allows me to park it under the concrete awning of their main entrance:
If the rain arrives as predicted, then it should also cool down nicely from tomorrow onwards. I end the evening watching people swimming in the sea from my balcony. Parking the Marsupilami 200 metres from the seaside is about as close to going for a swim as I will ever come.
For reasons science has yet to discover all motorbikers believe that their motorbikes are made of sugar and will melt if left out in the rain. So all motorbikers try to keep their pride and joy in the dry if at all possible. I am no exception to this rule, and like all motorbikers I tremendously like it if my weather precautions work out. Today they do, as it is raining this morning:
Seeing that the Marsupilami is completely in the dry is even more pleasing when I see two Austrian bikers on a Buell and a BMW 1200 who are packing their (wet) bikes in the pouring rain. Obviously these two are unaware that this rain will vanish towards the East by about noon. The checkout time of my hotel is 1000 hours, but of course I have already arranged that I can leave my bike fully packed under the hotel roof until the rain abates, while I surf the web inside the hotel lobby.
It's those little things in life that make all the difference...
However, the rain was "scheduled" to stop at noon, and as it was supposed to be rather windy in the aftermath of that cold front having passed through, I expected the road to be dry by 1300 hours. But unfortunately mother nature never sticks to any schedule - the rain lasts until 1500 hours and though the roads are dry 30 minutes later it is not worth to hit the road this late in the day. It gets dark by 1830 this far east, so I usually start looking for a place for the night after 1700 hours. I won't set out for hardly 90 minutes of riding time. So instead I check out the hotels in town, as the one I am in (the Hotel Ilirija) is not very good.
A quick search on the internet reveals that the best rated one is one of these bunker-like tourist complexes outside town and that the best real hotel in town is called the hotel "In".
So at 1530 hours I set out for the shortest ride of my life during any of my journeys ever - all 872 metres to the other end of the town. The "In" is much nicer, costs hardly any more, the internet connection speed is about 20 times faster and the view from my room is also much improved:
This unplanned rest day will do me good and that infernal humid heatwave is also finally gone - it is just 16 degrees this afternoon. And the weather forecast is looking excellent for the entire rest of the week.
Yesterdays cold front originates from an autumn storm that did quite some damage in central Europe. Even down here the wind has been howling all night and it is still blowing a gale by the time I set out this morning just before 0900 hours. Note the choppy water in the background of this picture:
The ride continues northwards along the coastline. The weather is perfect for motorbiking with temperatures up to 19 degrees and finally unlimited visibility. What a difference to those 34 degrees from two days ago.
Those 200 km from Biograd to just south of Rijeka are a bikers wet dream; the road is good, empty and the scenery is fantastic. Here is another impression:
Near Rijeka it starts getting a bit busy, but at that place I leave the coastline anyway and head back into the mountains instead towards the Slovenian border. Another 20 minutes delay - I can't remember any more how many borders I have crossed in these past few days. Slovenia is a great biker country, though the roads are not as good as they are in Austria. Here is a nice view from near Logatec:
While the day started with comfortable 19 degrees at the Adriatic, climbing up the Slovenian mountains however shows me how cold the air up here really is; the thermometer in above picture has dropped to 10 degrees, though the altitude is less than 3000 feet.
I end the day after more than 450 km in the Austrian town of Ferlach.
Below is the usual map with my GPS tracklog.