Jurnal de călătorie

The only way home is riding home.

Today was pretty bad. It was also a Sunday.

The ticket ladies at Kelety destroyed my dreams of taking the bike on the train. It depressed me somewhat, as the possibility of ending my tour at any moment was one of the deciding factors in starting in the first place. I like having options. However, in order to get home I am left without anything except being on the back of a bike.

Lucian, mailed me some good news in this regard and this made me search on the CFR website for more information on bikes on the train. Apparently you can take your bike if it doesn't inconvenience the other passengers. My bike is large with all the stuff on it, so the decision to ride for a few more hundred kilometres still stands. Tomorrow I'll leave Budapest on my bike and this would have been the last stop that took more than a night.

To be honest I have no idea where I will end up. The initial plan is to make it to Romania, Arad or maybe even Timișoara. This would take three-four days (five at most) and will conclude this trip in a more honourable manner. However this isn't fun any more.

Even though, overall I think I'm in good physical condition, my legs feel quite heavy at the moment and this is after a good night's sleep and good protein/carbs full meals. My ankle is fine but in the last days my knees started hurting slightly after about 50-60Km. Let's hope this rest period helped.

My state of mind, however, is a different matter. I want to be home. I never liked Bucharest while I lived there, but the last two years spent in Brussels and the last three weeks spent on the road (which feel also more like years) made me really appreciate the significance of home, even though Bucharest is as far from this concept as either Brussels or Budapest. Home is where your TV is. I heard at one point. For me home is near my computer, Murphy. Home is near my friends, of which most of them I haven't seen in more than a year. I was planning to make the road my home, but I don't enjoy it any more, the last two days saw me blitzing through the Hungarian landscape, barely raising my eyes from the layer of asphalt that stopped being my friend.

A quote from a toilet that I used yesterday right after riding into Budapest seems to apply quite well to my case:

Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast – you also miss the sense of where you are going and why. — Eddie Cantor.

I never heard of this guy until now, but apparently he said some sage words in his time.

But don't you worry, I will make it home, be it in two days or two weeks. I will get there somehow and I will rest.