Day 59 - Belgrade

Total so far 3,260.70 km

We had our quiet day in Belgrade. First order of business was go to a bike shop to pick up some bicycle tubes, a few patches and light lubricating chain oil.

Why new tubes. When I had custom wheels built for our bicycles, I made sure to order wheels that accept both types of tube air valves. Before leaving I bought tubes with the fat air valves. When I tried to fit those fat valves to the wheel when we repaired the flats, they wouldn’t fit. Yes, I should have checked but I believed that I was purchasing a quality, Made in the USA, product built to specifications. The wheels were sold unable to accept a Schrader valve (same valve as found on motor vehicles). 

The owner of the bike shop gave me a free bottle of oil. He does bike touring as well and got all excited when we mentioned our itinerary.

We did a bit of walkabout. We saw very nice places, not so nice places and everything in between. We saw bike paths that just end when crossing the road might get you killed.

The path ends where the woman is walking

Lots of people live here in Belgrade. Google mentions close to 2 million many of whom were also walking around this morning.

We had a nice bagel lunch in a small cafe where the young daughter occupies herself while mom and dad are busy running the business.

We enjoy staying in an apartment versus going to a hotel as we get to see how people live and where they live. We see all kinds of people like us and others who are not as fortunate. We found that younger people are more interested in helping us. It might be because they are more familiar with technologies like Google translate. We walked by the Nikola Tesla Museum where a large group was getting back into their tour bus. Do they know that people are rummaging through the garbage here in Belgrade and had been for a couple of hours. They probably don’t know and that’s okay. We know because we ran into those people a few times.

Red arrow points to our balcony

Tonight we went to a local restaurant for supper. We seemed to have gotten accustomed to smokers everywhere.

Busy interior

Tomorrow we leave Belgrade and the Danube when we head southeast towards Smederevo. We hope it won’t rain first thing because it is not pleasant to be splashed in the face by buses driving quickly through big puddles. They might have done great things in Belgrade but water drainage does not appear to be one of them.