24th day: to Lom; 110km, 535 climbing metres

What a special day!

It started with cloud free and soon, dark clouds appeared. 

After buying some water and spending our last dinars for food we leaves direction Bulgaria. 

I was very happy of my modification to the side stand of the bike: now it is stable again,  even with higher load, just by adding a metal plate on the right place 😇😉👍🏻

The second modification started good: I changed the saddle to my preferred one I had before. Now I can say: it was a mistake, as my bottom started to hurt quite hardly during the day.

We hope to spend the very lastDinar at the border, but there was no coffee, no shop, no bar. But very friendly Serbian and then Bulgarian border officers. 

We expecting that getting back into the European Union would bring us to a higher standard country – which was definitively not correct. The streets were even worse. Buildings/houses were falling apart. But the people were really friendly. An old man wanted to donate us a pear, many showed us the way or were saluting. 

After a long climbing we were delighted by a very a nice view over the Danube plain. We arrived then to Vidin…what a desillusion! I was feeling like I would arrived into The UdSSR of the 80’s. But with a lot of dirt and poverty added to my “imaginary picture”.

We were heading to the castle, as it was recommended. Nice, small. And surrounded with more falling app buildings. 

While leaving the city, we by-passed rotten, left alone industry buildings. Very sad. 

The road was getting worse and my bottom hurting more and more. 

We finally get to Lom where it was not easy to find a hotel: nearly all signs are in Cyrillic. 

Cheers

Disappointing: football field covered by dirt/plastic bags

Last time…

The no-man’s-land between Serbia and Bulgaria:

Happy that the bike is standing again:

With a small modification: 
Vidi Castle:
Looks like the Berliner Wall: but the damm to protect against the Danube floods