Zagreb

I arrived at 10 at the BMW garage to have my breakfast and to hear what was finally wrong with the bike. It’s even another part of the driveshaft that had a 0,5mm play and thus mad the noise. I’m happy they fixed it now, so I finally left the BMW dealership of Ljubljana around noon the next day and I was so happy that my bike was working again… I’m just keeping good hold of the invoices for the repairs that did cost me 500€ as I “will” get refunded by BMW Antwerp!  Anyways, on the road again!

So from Ljubljana I went straight for Zagreb using all the small country roads. In the end I did not do a single mile on a Slovenian highway, so I don’t even know what they look like… Arriving at the border with Croatia I forgot that I had to show them my passport so needed to try and find it somewhere in the panniers of the bike. In the end I found it as the borderguys came out to check the bike. They just put a stamp in my passport and off I was… took like 5 seconds. Eat this Transnistria. Eat this Russia. Ha! Well, as I needed to put everything back and in the meantime some cars were waiting behind me I moved out of the way. 2 seconds later the borderguy comes again with a sticker of Croatia and puts it on my pannier. Saves me the trouble and the money to find one later! thank you! I arrive in Zagreb and I still have 2 hours time so I walk around a bit, start talking to people that are intersted to know where I come from with the bike and where I am going to etc.

Later I meet with Nicolas, a french motorcycle dude who invited me to have a ride together and I can stay at his place for the night also. So   off we go all the way up the mountains to have this great view! Only thing, I did not take the camera with me so no pictures, sorry! I was happy to talk to another young guy with the same passion for a whole evening (and night).

Next day I leave rather early again to visit Plitvicka Jezera a really well known tourist attraction. Thanks to Nic I can see the stuff for free:

Also there is a open air museum telling the Croatian War, as it was only finished in 1995! You can still see here and there the damage if you go a bit off the beaten track:

At a certain point I stop to take a picture, that I won’t even display here as it was not worth it in the end. But shit happens (again and again): I get off the bike, put it on the side stand as usual, it is good so I open the pannier and take out my camera, walk away to take the picture, still have my music on and I hear a loud “bang”. I’m scared as hell as I think somebody is shooting at me or so… I turn around and I see this:

O, why o why do this always has to happen to me?! Why does the bike decide to just go by itself when I am 10 meters away? This bike has a ghost or so… everything is just going wrong all the time! And if you think that this is the end of it, you are wrong! I manage to get the bike up without pulling all the stuff from it, so who’s the king? 300+kg just by myself! Anyways, the bike is up, the camera that was fitted on the pannier is still on the ground and the pannier is looking at me in a strange distorted way… and I can’t close the lid anymore…pfffff….

There’s only one thing to do is to try to get the pannier more or less in it’s original shape so I can close the lid again. But I don’t have a hammer to kick the damn thing into place… so , let’s see how we can fix this. Oh, I know; I still have some glass bottle with the honey in it… idea… it works, but all the honey is going through the lid after a few smashes and my hands are all yellow and sticky of the sugar. But after a while the pannier looks a bit better, ie I can almost close the lid now without distorting the whole thing. the bad news is that the pannier is a bit loose now and that I can’t fix the camera anymore on it. But the camera still works, so yes it is solid!

After an hour I am good to go again so off we go…

What follows is a great road to the coast with some really good views and then all along the cost direction south east.

So, if all goes according to plan I will visit Mostar and Sarajevo tomorrow. If my ghostly bike permits is of course…