Welcome to the Serbian Danube

From Mohacs, Hungary we took a ferry to the other side of the Danube, and after a few, very flat kilometers, we crossed the border into Serbia. I have to say I was a little nervous when we wheeled our bikes up to the Serbian border crossing. It was around 11:30am, and hot. In his little office, the border patrol guard looked up from his crossword puzzle. His face was ruddy from heat, and he looked at us, expressionless. Then he took our passports, ran them through the computer, stamped them. That was it.
We stopped to exchange money in the dusty exchange bureau next door. A female border patrol guard was on her break there in the shade. Her hair was dyed platinum, and she read from a novel whose pages were written in fairytale script. A pack of Marlboro cigarettes was at her side. Cicadas screeched, the air was still. The bathroom had Turkish toilets, the bad ones-the ones that hadn't been cleaned ever.

What followed was some of the flattest terrain I have ever ridden on. After the rolling hills of Hungary, it was a surprise, as was the unforgiving heat. The villages we rolled through all had shutters pulled tight against the sun. The houses were smaller, more gray, more square than what we had seen in Hungary. And at noon, there was no one to be seen.

Following a trekking map from a German website, we cycled into a weekend village along the Danube. The houses were built up on cement stilts, or wooden slats, and you could see the flood marks from the river. They were built incredibly close together, some defying gravity, some reduced to a small pile of bricks. A group of men were sitting outside, and we asked them about the flooding. "You never know when. It could be May, it could be December," shrugged the man who spoke English. "It's the Danube, if you don't like it, stay in your village."

At the charda, or fish restaurant, I found that I could understand basic Serbian language, after studying Czech for two years. At the toilet, a few women were fussing. "It doesn't have a light," complained one woman. "Tell the waitress," said the other, and called up to the kitchen. "Hey, the bathroom doesn't have a light." The waitress only shrugged. "I don't know about it," she said. End of story. No bathroom light, pee in the dark.

Well, the fish was good, the beer was good, and staying out of the heat was even better. Welcome to the Serbian Danube.