Back in Costa Rica

So after my last post, I continued biking through rural Romania for another week or so, enjoying the scenic countryside, the intricately carved wooden gates and chruches, and the low traffic roads, including some very rough unpaved ones. On some of the roads, horse drawn carts were more common than cars.

I also encountered quite a few other touring cyclists, the most I´ve seen since I rode the Pacific Coast last fall. No other Americans though. Mostly european, and 1 French-Canadian.

My Romanian was getting a bit better after having been in areas where few people spoke English, but sadly I still wasn´t able to engage in any but the most basic of conversations. Amusingly though, my last night in Romania, the girl working the desk at the hotel claimed my Romania was very, very good, even though she only heard me utter about three basic sentences before we switched to English. She even asked if my parents or grandparents were Romanian, and when I replied no, then asked why I spoke Romania so well? I suppose what she really meant is that my accent and pronunciation were pretty good for a foreigner, something I´d been told before. And in general, even without speaking hardly any of the language, the people I met were all incredibly friendly and curious about my trip on the bike. Unfortunately, I wasn´t able to answer most of their questions. I could often understand what they were asking (Romanian is a Romance language, albeit with a lot of non-Latin vocabulary, so my bits of Spanish, French, and Italian were helpful for understanding), but I wasn´t able to give a meaningful reply.

Unfortunately, I needed leave Romania to start heading back to Paris to catch my flight. On the way, I spent a couple of nights in Vienna exploring the architectural wonders of the city and visiting a couple of museums, including one that supposedly has the largest nubmer of Klimt paintings in the world, although I was more impressed by some of the other works.

I also did some shopping, picking up some replacement gear, and browsing amazingly well-stocked bike shops (at least by latin american and Romanian standards). Vienna seemed to be a very bike friendly city, with tons of casual cyclists and a city-run bike rental program, with bike stations spread throughout the city. You check out a bike from a computerized kiosk using a credit card, and then can return to any other station around the city, for quite reasonable short term rates.

From Vienna, I headed to Zurich, spending a couple of nights there, and briefly visiting a friend who lives there, who I met in Florida during my 6 weeks of wandering by train and folding bike around the US and Canada in early 2006. Unfortunately, she was very busy wrapping things up before a trip to Mongolia, so I didn´t get to spend a whole lot of time with her, but it was still nice to see her again.

From Zurich, I hopped another train to Paris, and spent several days there before my flight. I visited a couple of museums I had missed on previous visits, did some more gear shopping, and explored some new areas by bike. Paris had just lauched a bike rental program similar to that in Vienna, and it seemed to be very popular. The bikes were very distinctive, and a large percentage of the bikes on the streets were the new rental ones. I learned to be careful around them though, since many of the riders seemed not to have a whole lot of experience, especially in traffic. The most memorable riders were a very drunk and loud, portly, middle-aged guy weaving through traffic late at night hauling a 2 meter tall transvestite, who was skimpily dressed and waving a wine bottle.

I also happened to be in town for the last day of the Tour de France. Even though I´ve never really followed racing or the Tour, I decided to go see it. It was raining off and on, so I found a spot under the arcades on Rue Rivoli near Place de la Concorde. I arrived rather early, watching the final preparations on the course and the crowd gather. Then eventually the advertising caravan sped by, and an hour or so later the riders passed on their first lap through Paris. They did another 7 or so laps, and we tracked their progress by the position of the helicopters, the crowd cheering wildly each time they zoomed past. At one point a rider tossed an empty water bottle, which skidded to a stop a meter or so from us on the other side of the barricade, and we asked the police woman to grab it for us. I wasn´t all that interested in it, but another British fellow I´d been talking to a bit, who was an avid follower of the tour, was quite excited by it.

On August 1, I flew to San Jose, Costa Rica, changing planes in Atlanta. I had a few hour layover, and it was the first time I´d been in the US since November of last year. Other than spending hours standing in various lines throughout the trip and an annoying time in Customs in Atlanta, where the airline incorrectly told me I would need to collect my checked bags and then recheck them (meaning I wasted a large amount of time fruitlessly waiting for my bags, which never appeared), the trip was fairly uneventful.

I´ve spent the last several days in and around San Jose, doing a couple of dayrides and exploring the area. Today I finally loaded up the bike and did a short day of riding (about 40 km). I was originally planning to start heading north through Costa Rica and continuing on to Nicaragua and maybe Honduras, but after looking at flight options back to Seattle in mid to late September and doing some thinking, I think that I will probably just spend the time exploring Costa Rica by bike, and leave the other countries for a future trip.

I´ve actually been considering an open-ended, multi-year wander around the globe after a brief return to the States this fall. We´ll see.