Serbia

From Budapest, I sped along the Danube again, making many detours from the route (some even deliberate!), but ready to enter a new country. Wild camping was no problem and the weather was not too wet, although starting to cool noticeably. Passing via Baja I stopped outside a hotel to use their Wi-Fi to make a VoIP call to my family, then finally reached the Serbian border.

Looking at maps, I somehow had arrived at the understanding that I'd cross Serbia in 3 days, and arrive at Belgrade on the 1st or 2nd day. It turns out that the Serbian leg of the Danube cycle route (kindly sponsored by Germany) is 665 km long, a fair bit of it unsealed and pot-holed! Crossing that in 3 days on an overloaded bike, would be in a word impossible. However, each of the route's several thousand signs is adorned with a quote or piece of wisdom. The first quote I noticed read:

"A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving" - Lao Tzu

I laughed and decided to try to keep that in mind over the coming days.

Oh, and Belgrade was closer to 500 km into the Serbian leg of the EuroVelo 6 cycle route - not so viable for reaching in 24-48 hours on my juggernaut!