Thursday    31.7.2025
488km 6h 42m  340km

Finally, it's time!
A trip that I had actually planned to undertake in 2019, but then Covid threw as spanner in the works and completely ruined it.

This year's destination is the Caucasus, Turkey and Cyprus.

I've been preparing for this trip by working like a madman for 110 hours over the last two weeks, so quite unsurprisingly, I haven't been able to adjust to being a daywalker in just a couple of days.
This is despite the fact that the three full days from when I went on holiday until I leave the country is a personal best (or worst, I guess, depending on how you look at it).
So, since I can't sleep anyway, I set off at half past eight.
It starts raining the absolute moment I get on my bike.

I leave the rain behind after about 150 kilometres.
I take the eastern side of Lake Vättern downwards, which is a welcome change from most other trips where I can only choose between the western or eastern side of Lake Vänern to either Malmö or Göteborg.

Even though I have all the time in the world, I push on for just over 200 kilometres before turning into a petrol station in Boxholm to stretch my legs.
There, an elderly gentleman in a Triumph T-shirt approaches, curious about my overloaded Tiger.
It turns out that he is a die-hard Triumph fan and one of the first in Sweden and the world to own a Triumph Thunderbird.
He and a few friends had each booked one at the Motorcycle Fair in Sweden and flown to the factory in Hinckley to more or less pick up the first bikes off the production line.

Hunger strikes as I approach Kosta, and a quick check on the GPS reveals a restaurant with glowing reviews on Tripadvisor.
I roll into the village and feel compelled to at least check the menu before parking and going inside.
It turns out that what they ‘offer’ is a fixed six-course meal for the modest price of 1895 Swedish kronor (~€170).
That excludes the wine package.
I get a pizza for 150 kronor (~€14) instead 300 metres further down the street which felt like a real bargain in comparison.

I arrive at the ferry terminal in Karlskrona ridiculously early, almost three hours before check-in as it turns out.
Stena is very good at telling you when check-in closes, but not quite as good at telling you when it opens.
The last time I went to Poland, I thought I was well ahead of time, but for various reasons, I only made the last check-in with ten minutes to spare.
Better this than rushing on board breathlessly, even if this margin was clearly on the high side.

Motorcycles are usually the exception on this type of ferry, but on this crossing there were quite a few of us; I haven't seen so many motorcycles on a boat since the ferry to the Isle of Man.
There is a Danish club called No Name MC that travels over with 30-40 motorcycles.
The name reminds me of a hilariously funny Icelandic comedian called Ari Eldjarn, who pokes fun at the fact that the Danes anglicise everything to make it sound a bit cooler.
Intet navn MC doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

As I don't know what tomorrow will bring in terms of my form, I'm keeping my options open as to where my next stop will be.
I'll decide sometime tomorrow afternoon how long that days stage will be and then book some accommodation.

Friday    1.8.2025
677km Total: 1135km  8h 26m Total: 15h 08m
  3.84km Total: 6.8km

I roll off the ferry around half past seven and head straight for the motorway.
Unlike the last time I was here, when I actively avoided the motorway (which led to average speeds of 50 km/h), this time I go all in.
I need to get as far through Poland as possible today, and I make good progress during the morning.

After driving on a toll road and not rolling into a toll station until after more than 200 kilometres, I was really impressed; the equivalent of 80 Swedish kronor (~€7) was definitely worth it.
Compared to Spain, which had insanely high tolls about every 20 kilometres, it felt like the Poles where actually clued in as to how it's supposed to be done.

After covering 300 kilometres by lunchtime, I book accommodation in a village southwest of Krakow, which gives me a daily total of just under 700 kilometres.

It's hard to see the logic when the next 200 kilometres are on an equally nice motorway but without tolls, but I'm not complaining.
Not about that, anyway, because I found something else to complain about when I rolled into the first traffic jam.

As the traffic crawled along at a speed just below where the clutch engages on the bike, the heavens opened up.
I had all the vents on my gear wide open so the rain poured straight in, and I had no way of stopping to seal them.
I'm also starting to get cramps in my left hand from all the damn clutch work.
If someone had mic:ed up my helmet at that moment, the profanity I was screaming probably could have caused generational trauma for the listener.

Unfortunately, the rest of the afternoon proceeds in much the same way in terms of traffic, with two tolls causing total gridlock at each payment point.
The second half of the day takes twice as long as the first, and when I roll into the hotel, I stumble into reception like a ninety-year-old man with two stiff knees.

While I hang my clothes up to dry and wash myself, an air-raid siren goes off, followed by an emergency signal.
As no bombs were obviously being dropped, I didn't think much more about it although I found it a bit weird.

I sit down in the hotel restaurant and order bacon-wrapped prunes for starters and ‘Polish boiled meat’ with horseradish sauce for the main course.
This hearty meal naturally calls for the nectar of the gods, so I order a Kropla Beskidu 0.5L, believing it to be delicious Polish beer.
Thank goodness the waitress asked if I wanted sparkling or still, because if I had thought I was going to get a mug of beer and had gotten a glass of water instead, I probably would have cried.
Now I know how the participants in the programme “Seconds Before the Disaster” feel.

To digest my food, I go for a short walk and, having googled and found that there is a deserted mansion within walking distance, I head towards it.
However, I never find any mansion, as it would have meant walking through someone's garden first.
What I do find, however, is the local fire brigade's barbecue party, which explains the earlier spectacle.

Apparently, they think it's fun to sound the sirens while they drink beer (which to be honest it quite objectively is).
At first, I think it's a bit immature to sound an air-raid siren purely for the entertainment value, but while I'm within earshot, they play a Boney M medley.
I have to admit that after hearing that a strong warning was after all warranted.

It was a rather picturesque hotel.

Saturday    2.8.2025
677km Total: 1812km  8h 26m Total: 22h 41m
  2km Total: 8.8km

It rained during the night and the temperature is a modest 16°C (61ºF) when I get on my bike and set off for the Tatra Mountains.
Unlike yesterday's navigation, where I rode pretty much north in straight line for 500 kilometres, today should offer a little more active riding, and it does.
Road 49 over the Tatras is a pleasure to ride and the view is breathtaking.

After the temperature on the mountain temporarily dropped to 15°C (59ºF), it quickly rose to 28°C (82ºF) when I entered Slovakia, and considering yesterday's exploits, I was prepared for rain.
I can say that I got really wet today as well, but that wetness came from inside and not from above.
Well, it was possible to at least alleviate it by opening all the vents and drinking water like a camel.

Not that I have any great hopes that road users will become more considerate as I go, but I don't mind leaving Poland.
Apparently, the average Pole thinks that all injustices can be remedied with a couple of flashes of the hazard lights.

Cut some off? Flash-flash.

Drive straight out in front of traffic? Flash-flash.

However, overtaking on the inside at 140+ km/h clearly does not warrant any flashing at all, so that seem to be considered perfectly normal.

The road through Slovakia and Hungary is not particularly inspiring, but I did opt for the fastest route, so I have, so to speak, gotten what I paid for.

Crossing the border into Romania was a rather bizarre experience.
They joined Schengen on January 1st this year, so there are no border controls, but everything still remains completely untouched at the border.
There were even illuminated signs telling you which lane to use based on your vehicle type and nationality.

I was completely alone there, so I drove up to a lane and a booth and must have looked quite confused as I didn't see a single soul.
After a while, I rode on, and at the exit there was a border guard in a car flashing a yellow light on the roof, but he didn't pay any attention to me at all.

Inside Romania for the third time, it is just as I remember it, an infrastructural nightmare.
I follow the signs for European route E60 and for most of the evening I naively hope that it will eventually turn into something resembling a motorway by Nordic standards, but no, it never gets any better than a Swedish country road.
The fact that the speed limit between villages is 100 km/h is of little significance, as the traffic density never really allows for it.

On my previous visits here, I had a bunch of my preconceptions confirmed (and some proved wrong), and not much seems to have changed since my last visit (in 2018).
An hour into the country, I have already seen an old man loading scrap metal onto a rickety cart pulled by a horse, and not long after that, another old man sitting on an equally rickety cart pulled by a tiller-like auxiliary motor so weak that he had to walk alongside it on an uphill slope that was anything but steep.

At the same time, Mercedes, Audis and BMWs whizz by on the road (admittedly mixed with Dacias, fake Chevrolets/Daewoos and models I've never seen anywhere else), but the income gaps in this society still seem to be abysmal, admittedly based on an extremely generalised 'analysis'.
And yes, unfortunately, they still drive like complete maniacs.

The miles tick by and the clock (with an hour lost due to the time zone change) is just after eight in the evening when I roll into the hotel in a small village called Floreşti just outside Cluj-Napoja.

There are three middle-aged ladies at the reception desk, all of whom look completely petrified when I start speaking English.
I then have to fill out a form with such Soviet-style bureaucracy that it's like doing genealogy even though they already had all my details from booking.com.
(I actually hate that booking service passionately, but there was no other choice.)
Any Stasi agent would have cried with joy at having access to all the information required to stay at a shabby hotel in a small Romanian village with less than ten thousand inhabitants.

Then came a real card debacle when my bank, Nordea refused to release the equivalent of 419SEK (€38) that the room cost, no matter what I did.
I had already spoken to them about going on a trip because they also refused to release payment for the ferry across the Black Sea, and they assured me that there would be no further problems.
So if you want a bank where you have to call and ask for permission every other week to spend your own money, switch to Nordea!

This is probably the first time I've paid a tip for a hotel room, as I was graciously allowed to pay in cash with euros but they didn't have any change.

The reason I started the trip with a couple of pretty long days distance-wise was that I had my mind set on spending a couple of nights in Bucharest (where I've never been before) before I needed to be in Varna for the journey across the Black Sea.
And it actually seems to have worked out as planned, even though it had indeed been a long couple of days.

I'll probably sleep on my stomach tonight, but my next accommodation will be on a feather pillow, because I couldn't find  any other places with decent parking, so the next stop is Mercur City at a slightly higher cost than 419 Swedish kronor (+ tip).

Bologa, Romania

You'll have to admire the craftmanship and dedication that went into this at the hotel.