После появления у меня автомобиля в 2022 году подавляющее количество путешествий я совершил именно на нём. Значительно этому способствовала и война в Украине, из-за которой мы оказались без авиатранспорта.
Когда ранней весной 2023 года я гостил в Ивано-Франковске, после смерти близкого мне человека… Мне написала подруга. Они после начала войны бежали из Киева в Испанию и пригласили меня на неделю погостить теперь у них, отвлечься и погреться в тепле.
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A sedentary lifestyle is by no means the best thing in the life of a remote worker. That’s why it is important to warm up once in a while.
It so happened that I needed to go to Shkodër because I couldn’t find the medicines I needed in Montenegro. To avoid wasting time, I threw my bike in the car, hoping to ride somewhere interesting.
I initially wanted to ride to the point of geohashing. But, upon arrival, I found I could not pass. That’s why I opened the map and started flipping through my points of interest. One of them was the coastal village of Shiroka, on the border with Montenegro.
Rationalizing that it would be a good idea to ride there at sunset, I raced toward the right location.
I turned right towards the checkpoint at the fork where I usually went left when leaving Shkoder. After a minute of driving, I came to a slum with a lot of gypsies. I thought I’d have to turn around and leave. But, after another kilometer, the landscape began to normalize. Suddenly, a footpath appeared on the right. (In Montenegro, I had forgotten what a sidewalk was.) In the distance, there was a lake.
When I got to the village itself, I realized that I’d better park somewhere else. Everything here was full of cars, and parking starts at 2 euros. I turned around and headed for the cemetery I had noticed on the way here. There was enough free space to park for free (coordinates – 42.05565985700833, 19.467744460739038).
I retrieved my touring bike from the trunk and put a bottle of mineral water into my backpack. Locking up the car and on my way, I pedaled away!
Driving along the lake on a flat road is fabulous. No elevation changes… You can easily ride 100 km or more without any special physical preparation.
The first thing that caught my eye was an unfinished cafe building (42.05650772889564, 19.46719081389819). The place was supposed to be luxurious and offer a beautiful view of the lake. But something didn’t work out. Now it is a concrete box, part of which is used as a public toilet.
The view from the site is pretty amazing, so I had to take a few photos.
A little farther away, on my left side, there was a stone wall that looked like a castle wall. But I had never seen any mention of it before. I took a photo to find out more about it later. Google Maps calls it a residential complex. But, in the Balkans, to believe that is to lack respect for oneself.
UPD. At home, I found out that this place was not on the old topographical maps either. It turned out to be a very atmospheric, old-fashioned hotel called “RUSTICO.”
Next stop – another abandoned place on the lake. Developers planned to build a hotel here, based on the comments. But, as is common in these countries, they did not finish it. Now the place is a skeleton on an island. Earlier, it was free. But now, some citizens are charging for passage.
The island itself is not simple either. I’ll tell you about it next time. Now I want to draw your attention to this photo. Do you see the sunken boat? It is so typical here that I didn’t pay much attention to it and only thought about how to fit it into the frame. At home, I found out I was looking at a sunken Austro-Hungarian boat. It has been here for over a hundred years.
I’m going to Shiroka. It is very crowded for a small village on the outskirts of the country. People stroll along the promenade and spend time in cafés. Cats and dogs scurry underfoot. They look much less intimidating here than in Montenegro.
I didn’t have much time to look at the embankment; I left it for a leisurely walk with my girlfriend. I noticed a strange concrete structure. It seemed to cut into the lake near the pier where tourist boats leave.
After taking a break for about five minutes, I pedaled onward. I wanted to reach the former checkpoint on the border with Montenegro, which is now used as a cowshed.
There is no curb or bicycle lane here, so you have to move on a one-lane asphalt road. But there are practically no cars here, even on a weekday evening. The ride is pleasant, cool from the water.
To my right is Lake Skadar. To the left are gorgeous mountain peaks. Driving along, I can’t stop turning my head in all directions. I want to capture these moments not only in photos but also in my memories.
By that time, however, the sun had already set, and dusk was fast approaching. I decided not to drive the last kilometer. My past, wandering at night in the mountains of Ukraine and Montenegro, taught me to avoid risks. It would be an interesting location for next time.
А интересна она тем, что в ближайшие годы здесь планируют открыть ещё один пограничный пункт пропуска между Черногорией и Албанией Чкла — Зогай. Соглашение было подписано в 2018 году [1]. .
В 2021 году представители обеих сторон отчитались, что строительство идёт по плану [2]. .
A satellite view shows a good-quality road on the Montenegrin side. This is not the case in Albania, where it is still a dirt path with wild bushes.
I hope this border crossing will be completed as soon as possible. It will greatly ease tourist travel around and along Lake Skadar (both for motorists and cyclists).
I went for a very easy bike ride to stretch my bones. I rode about 11.6 km, gaining 22 meters of altitude. You can see the route below if you’re interested.
Makovytsia is one of the most popular peaks in the Ukrainian Carpathians. This is due to several factors at once: being right in the resort being visited and the ease of climbing. We traveled here for the first time as a group of three people, one of whom was pregnant and yet managed the trek with ease.
Mount Makovytsia is part of the Gorgany mountain range. The entrance is located in the village of Yaremche, which is visited by tens of thousands of people every year for tourism purposes (and even more so after the Ukrainian authorities stopped letting people out of the country). Its altitude is 984.5 meters above sea level.
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Uzhgorod is the smallest regional center of Ukraine. It is also one of the few centers, by which you can’t guess the name of the region itself, because it is Zakarpattia.
In Ukraine itself, people know about Transcarpathia that cherry blossoms bloom here. They confuse it with western Ukraine (read – Lviv region), which locals strongly disagree with. The region is complex and not simple. But I decided to look at it from the side of a simple traveler, and therefore during our Prague-Zakarpattya trip we stopped here for a few days.
You can read about your impressions in this article. Welcome to this article!
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Sinai Desert. This is the name of the part of the Sahara that is located on the Sinai Peninsula and belongs, for the most part, to Egypt.
My introduction to the area first took place in 2018, when I flew to Egypt to swim in the sea in winter on a regular package tour and decided to go to the famous St. Catherine’s Monastery.
Since the monastery is located in the central part of the peninsula, in the mountains, and Sharm el Sheikh on the southern coast, I had a long road through the desert on an old, traditional in the Middle East minibus toyota.
I must say that I did not regret it one bit. Even from the window of the bus, the surrounding scenery is breathtakingly beautiful.
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The Sachertorte cake is known to many. It has become one of the symbols of Austria, and that’s no small feat when the mere mention of an entire country brings to mind a small piece of chocolate cake.
After visiting Vienna, I couldn’t deny myself the pleasure of going to a famous café and trying the original Sachertorte. Read on to find out how it went, my impressions, and a little bit about the history of the cake itself!
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The city of Prague has so many different attractions. It is one of my favorite cities in Europe, where I would love to live. The reason for this is the abundance of architectural delights, incredible parks and artifacts. And while everyone knows about some of them, many people have never even heard of others. Such is the case with Cybulka Park.
In 2017, we arrived in the Prague 5 neighborhood to go down into the underground Motol River, but on this day there was construction work going on and it was impossible to get into the “portal” without being seen. There was a park nearby that I had planned to go to, so we set off to explore it. As a result, we spent half a day here and found a lot of interesting things.
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My report from inside the house of the former President of Ukraine Viktor Fyodorovich Yanukovych aroused genuine interest among readers and quickly went viral on the Internet. People enjoyed seeing the house of one of the most expensive presidents in the world (after Obama and Putin). In addition, photos of the house’s surroundings made an impression.
In 2015, returning from Albania to Ukraine via Greece, I arrived in Kiev on a Thessaloniki – Kiev flight with Muzendis airline, after which I had lunch and decided to visit another interesting building. The thing is that there are several of Khrushchev’s dachas in Kiev that have survived to this day, which you can see from the outside if you wish.
I will show you how one of the biggest party figures of the USSR and the Ukrainian SSR lived at his dacha, I will tell you the history of this building and what animals he kept, as well as the fate of these buildings. Let’s go!
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I first came to Odessa in 2012. At that time I was on my way from Truskavets, where I spent a month of relaxed and unhurried vacation, to Moldova, through Transnistria. The purpose was to “run-in” my recently obtained passport of a citizen of Ukraine.
It was my first time traveling abroad, with lots of excitement and a curio when I had to insure myself under the guise of a car. However, this is a completely different story. In this article, I will tell you about how I spent two days in the very colorful Ukrainian city of Odessa.
My train Lviv – Odessa arrived at the station in the pouring rain. Having unloaded my things and having hardly run to the stop, I tried to leave in the direction I needed. At that time I was still a young and green “tourist”, so I didn’t know about the necessity to have a PowerBank with me (they didn’t even exist then) and a worked out route on the map to the hotel. So I found myself with a dead cell phone in an unfamiliar city.
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The Zaporizhzhya-Kiev train leaves the main railway station, and I load into one of the parlor cars. I am going on another trip, this time to the Republic of Belarus, to a soccer match between Belarus and Ukraine as part of the selection for the 2016 World Cup.
I arrive in Kiev very early. I want to pass some time, so I go to Syrets station, where I find Syrets Arboretum and walk around it for a while. The weather is getting better, the sun is getting hotter.
I go to the center, where I eat in a pusataya hut, and then, to the bus to Chernihiv. However, I do something incredibly – amazingly stupid and get the wrong branch. I get off at Kharkovskaya. I can get to the station I need by bus and it takes about 40 minutes more. These 40 minutes will still play their role.
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