In the morning, we left our quarters in the monastery shortly after 7 a.m., getting under way towards Calarasi. We aim to take the ferry to Silistra and Ostrow. This is another day of our bikes rolling comfortably through a dream scenery and little traffic. After about 65 kikometres, we see industrial ruins at the horizon.
Calarasi comes into view, a town of the new socialist world that has been planned on the drawing board for the beautiful world of industrialization. It does not look very inviting. In Romania – as well as Bulgaria – many sacrifices were made for the sake of “socialist progress”.
We avoid the tristess by taking a lavishly designed circuit route around town that leads us to a small ferry after a dam idyll. Then everything happens really fast: along with a few cars, we are ferried across the river Danube on a small vessel.
There is also a really big ferry carrying trucks and coaches, but the departure time is 5 p.m. – There is simply too little demand, just like at the other transfer places we saw on our trip.
On the ferry, the heat is really up again. We can see Silistra in Bulgaria, the view of which again suggests the brand “socialist progress”.
We stay in Romania and point our bikes towards Ostrow. It will be another 130 kilometres to Constanza, so we call it a day after another 20 kilometres at the monastery of Dervent. Dinner is tasty, but there is no wine. And again we see that much of what is written in our guidebook is wrong.
You are asked to pay for the quarters as much as you think appropriate. We were three in a room tonight: Werner, a solo biker, is assigned a bed in our room. And two more bikers, also from Germany, spend the night in the monastery.
Again, there is no internet access! That means: we sleep early and start very early tomorrow morning! We have another 110 kilometres to cover before we will arrive in Constanta. The first 60 allegedly have many inclines – and afternoons get extremely hot these days.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
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