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Well, after after 47 days on the road, I arrived safely in Bucharest. That's one day ahead of my original schedule and I now have 8 days to slow down, stop waking up at 4 or 5 in the morning, explore the city and get packed up for the flight home.
The fact that I have done all what I set out to do, and I am still a day early, speaks for itself: apart from a few minor hiccups, all went rather smoothly. For that I am very grateful.
During such a trip, some things are within your control, like planning and preparation, and continuously paying attention to the often heavy traffic, to the road, avoiding drains without covers, deep potholes or 6" deep tracks left by lorries in the hot road. You have a problem without continuously scanning the road ahead. Also, adjusting to changing circumstances seems to be important, like staying in apartments for the second half of the trip or getting up really early.
However, a lot is completely out with your control: drivers of car and particularly lorries, the weather, mechanicals, your own health, discontinued ferry services, and so on. Any of these can add days to the trip or scupper it altogether. So, the fact that I got here safely, is to a small degree my own doing and to a large degree other people's and luck.
It has been interesting to compare my Transamerican trip with this one. In the States, I was aware that since 1976 hundreds of people have taken the very same route and you feel it and you would see their messages in hostels or in churches. News would be passed along from people coming the opposite direction or overtaking you. You felt very much part of a stream in time and the physical space and felt supported by that.
On this trip now, thinking back to the first part to Budapest, it very much felt like mass tourism, absolutely beautiful and stunning, but you felt you had, with the odd exception, little in common with everyone else.
For the second half, to Sulina and then back to Bucharest, the route was unmarked and it lead through very rural part with a high level of poverty. I got so used to it, that it only really struck me when I got to Bucharest, where people seemed a head taller, didn't continuously smoke, looked healthy and there were lots children in the playgrounds.
In the States, when you rode into a town, you would get a glance here and there, but as such you felt accepted, as people were very much used to itinerants. However, from Budapest onward, in the villages, and I seemed to passed through countless ones, people would stare and wave at you, but ultimately you felt an outsider, an alien. Clearly the fact that I didn't speak Romanian wasn't helping, but even so, the gap of understanding each other's past, present and future seemed impossible to bridge. The ruined and shuttered factories of the Communist era also played into all that.
Thinking of what I like best about the trip, I suppose for the first half it was the landscape, the river, the towns, the villages, the castles, all of it absolutely beautiful. For the second half, it was the fact that on many levels it was uncharted territory for me, and enjoying the challenge of adjusting to it, and dealing with it.
What was interesting was the heat. Like waiting at a traffic light for it to turn green in the midday heat, or climbing a steep hill with the sun both burning down and reflecting off the road. However, getting up at 4 in the morning helped to get most of cycling done before midday.
To finish, just to say that this trip would have been impossible without the active support of my family, be it general or through specific medical advice I got.
Objectively speaking, it does involve a lot of unnecessary risk taking and I appreciate the fact that they supported that. In addition, I also need to mention Bunter and Sorsha who had to manage without me for two months.
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