European cycling 7: Romanian children
For our generation after 60, Romania is a strange and familiar country.
An old friend said that seeing the photos of me riding along the Danube reminded him of the old Romanian film “Waves of the Danube”.
At that time, there were not many foreign films that were publicly shown in China.
In addition to this film, Romanian film “Boiling Life” became our earliest enlightenment on modern European life.
About 100 kilometers east of Belgrade, the Danube River becomes the boundary river between Serbia and Romania.
Riding along the riverside road on the Serbian side, you can clearly see the cars driving on the Romanian road on the north bank and hear the sirens of ambulances and police cars coming from the opposite bank.
In the 1960s, Romania and then Yugoslavia jointly built water conservancy projects and built a dam on the Danube River, raising the water level in the area of Tiemen Gorge by tens of meters.
You can walk by car and bicycle on the dam.
From the Serbian side, you can ride across the middle line of the river to Romania.
The entry gate is located on the north bank.
As soon as you get out of the customs, there is Highway 70.
There is an endless stream of large trucks traveling at high speed, which is a huge contrast with the riverside highway with sparse traffic on the Serbian side.
Although I have gradually become accustomed to traveling with various vehicles on the road, there are still some formidable large cargo convoys running at high speed on the road 70.
About 15 kilometers from the gate, there is a town named Drauberta.
I decided to ride there quickly and live there.
The layout of the city is very similar to that of China.
The main street is wide, with a raised isolation belt in the middle and neat tall cement column street lamps on both sides.
The hotel that night was located in the downtown area, with old facilities.
The air conditioning seemed to be at least 20 years old, but the bed and floor were clean.
There are supermarkets, banks, restaurants and various shops downstairs.
Cars come and go in the street, but there is no special parking lot.
Cars are parked in the outside lane.
The second day after entering Romania is the Mid-Autumn Festival.
I set out early in the morning, avoiding the traffic flow to work, and continued to ride east along the north bank of the Danube River on the country road.
Every village passing by has a church.
There is a cemetery beside the church.
The bell tower of the church is the highest building in the village.
On the roadside of each village entrance, there are uniformly designed village name signs and EU signs, with the words “Welcome” in Romanian, and the Romanian flag and EU flag are hung at the entrance of the village office.
Almost every village has a well, and some wells have buckets and jars on them.
The kind of vat painted with blue and white paint is now rare, and it is put there for passers-by to drink water.
Seven serials of European cycling: one of European cycling: the kingdom of bicycles, two of European cycling: Cologne: the world’s largest pile of rubble, three of European cycling: safe cycling and unexpected food, four of European cycling: where is life not to meet Europe, five of European cycling: meet Europe again by the Rhine River, six of European cycling: the other half of Europe is not finished, click the lower left corner“
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