The HIVE Tour - Episode 20a - Rivers and other beauties @ Knittelfeld

After a good deep sleep I wake for my first time at Knittelfeld Austria. The weather is far from as good but my lovely hosts have a good breakfast waiting for me to make it up for it. Dear Markus hands me his rain coat and I am ready to take my Mediterranean self out walking into far from Mediterranean weather and environment in general.

It's all wait and about to rain again:

The HIVE Tour - Episode 19 - Goodbye Croatia, Hello Austria!

The last couple of days in Croatia were rather sweet and allowed me to enjoy small trips around as you saw in my previous posts. However, Croatia got really angry on my departure. I manage to load my bike in dry weather and drive the first km without drama but the more I get closer to the Slovenian border the darker the weather gets, making rain ready to begging at any chance given. I am prepared for that, dressed for that and keep my camera in my luggage as I knew from the start there were wouldn't be much to capture.

Especially as I am crossing that dense forest near Bela, there isn't much difference than what an open space looks like a couple of hours after the sun is down. To give you an idea about how dark the day is, it's the first time that I am experiencing my phone dimming while driving in daytime due to lack of light (and auto brightness of course).

The Slovenian border looks like a ghost town as there's no one there but the rain is here finally. Not a surprise but not welcomed either. It rains all the way through this narrow part of Slovenia and I make the miserable km up to Austria is kinda shitty weather. Otherwise this ride would be quite the opposite - Slovenia is a biker's heaven.

At the Austrian border there's just one guy watching the (rather low) traffic, I nod at him, he nods back and...hello Austria! Austria's hello is even heavier rain. The whole thing feels like trying to make it to the top of my "worst rides ever" list as the weather shows no signs of mercy in the foreseeable future. As I ride West parallel to the Slovenian border I start looking for a gas station in order to find a dry spot and text my next host about my arrival. Even though I ride on the 69 there is no fucking gas station for many km. Not the kind of 69 I would like to have at the moment by all means. Finally my luck shows mercy and I find this one:

The HIVE Tour - Episode 18 - One more ride to a WWII Croatian monument

Still struggling to find slots of good weather here in Croatia so that I can enjoy rides around and later you can enjoy what I harvest out of them. The forecast looks good for today but...look at how the day starts:

The HIVE Tour - Episode 17 - A (partially) mountainous ride up to a Croatian WWII monument

Weather might be better but it is still challenging and not quite early summerish yet. Therefore, every chance for a dry ride should be taken hence I am rolling my wheels over Croatian soil:

The HIVE Tour - Episode 16 - Cooking and house spotting @ East Croatia

My first sleep in this agricultural rural corner of East Croatia SE of Zagreb was hard to get any better. The studio I rent is brand new, and while it's tiny, it sets the bar really high when it comes to taking advantage of the available space. It's got a bathroom that can embarrass even medium houses and the owner even managed to fit an ironing board in it! Not that I use one but just saying...

Moody weather means less excursions and more indoor time which equals to more cooking time. More than happy to do so since this tiny thing even has an (almost) fully equipped kitchen. The stuff here is so brand new that I even have the honour and privilege to unbox this IKEA peeler 🙂

The HIVE Tour - Episode 15 - My first morning @ East Croatia

This is what I see as soon as I turn left from my AirBnB here in the least famous village on earth called Vidrenjak:

The HIVE Tour - Episode 14 - Hello Croatia

As I get close to the Serbo-Croatian border I see a queue of trucks as long as several kms. That doesn't make me that happy cause I don't want to imagine that anything similar might be the case for the rest of the vehicles, especially on a day that the weather can rain anytime and the forecast said it should be raining already. Fortunately the queue for us non truckers is much shorter but nothing to not worry about. Fortunately, soon the queue splits in two for EU residents and non EU and luckily the EU one is shorter and faster.

In both sides they just ask my ID and bike document so after a short while I am riding over Croatian soil. Looking for some Croatian fuel though cause I already run on my second reserve. No worries when you run an efficient bike and you know the fuel gauge is rather pessimistic. Many would question this choice to run so low in fuel but logic says that there's no way they won't have a gas station if not a full rest area near the border. And after a few km I realise they really do.

With a full tank I ride the rest of the km to my Croatian AirBnB and the surprising absence of rain puts a smile on my face but a regret that I believed the forecast and didn't put my camera on. It's a pity you miss this part of the ride cause it's nice green though flat. Finally it rains for a few km around the last quarter of the distance but seriously, I don't care at all. I'm dry by the time I arrive.

Ladies and Gents, welcome to Vidrenjak, Croatia:

The HIVE Tour - Episode 13 - Goodbye Serbia

My time in Serbia is getting close to an end. After nearly 3 weeks here I only have two days left before I leave the country to enter Croatia. I must say at this point that I would have left a week earlier but as soon as I arrived at my AirBnB outside Belgrade I knew I should add a plus week of relaxation at this place. It was just what I needed at this time with a very generous courtyard to work on my bike if needed and you can check it out here in case you're looking for accommodation around this area (you can also check out the location of this post at the end). Aleksandra, the host, is as good as it gets.

So, the bad weather plus the rich content I have harvested during my visit around the area of Novi Sad (check previous episodes) obliged me to focus on cooking and resting. Speaking about the former, by pure luck I bought me some of the best mushrooms I've ever tried which contributed to a delicious dish together with bits of eggplant, all done in the oven escorted by mustard.

Simple and yummy:

The HIVE Tour - Episode 12 - From Novi Sad to Fruska Gora

My short visit to Novi Sad is over though I wish I had more time to dedicate but I have Fruska Gora ahead to explore in this dry parenthesis of rainy weather so that's all I can do at the moment. Don't misunderstand me, I can't complain when I ride on roads like the 119 heading West parallel to Danube river:

The HIVE Tour - Episode 11 - Novi Sad, Serbia

I leave Petrovaradin behind (which I enjoyed so much as you can see in my previous episode) and walk down the cobblestone backstreets to make it to my bike.

It might look like Ireland but no, trust me, I'm still in Serbia: