Leonidasz naplója: 2015. október 12. (204. nap)

Well, we had a plan to do some cycling in the mountains around Pirot on Saturday after the hard week. I prepared everything while my collegue-friend prepared even more since he had also bought a second bicycle partly for this occasion. However things turned out differently. I rarely see 100% probability of rain on my mobile phone weather forecast screen but during the past week I could see it for whole Saturday and the drop pictograms (falling out from a cloud pictogram) stayed stunningly stable on my display as time passed. The last piece of the hope died on Friday afternoon when we had to say something, there were no way to futher extend our hesitations. Finally we decided not to ride my friend's two bicycle but to drive a car (and to invite two more people to fill it up). We wanted to go deeply in the country and walk up to a waterfall because rain and waterfall are good friends, both mean downward vertical movement of one the most elementary liquid substance on Earth.

Actually at eight o'clock in the morning when we started it was not raining yet. We went first to the bridge with the round point where we turned uphill. When I got the first sight of the upward road ahead of us I begun to think that perhaps it had not been such a big mistake to choose the car instead of the biycle. The first 12 km led us to the ski resort of Pirot at about the height of the highest point of Hungary and at some sessions the uphill was really brutal. After a short stop we continued downhill to a small village which was practically my first contact with rural Serbia. I would not say that these villages are rich and you can also feel that life is not always easy there, but in the meantime you could also understand that people here are not made of some sort of soft stuff and a few houses on the bank of the river with pictoresque terraces gave me the impression that for these people it was not impossible to make something nice even if their material resources are not limitless. Here we visited a small orthodox church carved in the rock and containing a fresco icon which shows Jesus with no hair at all. This is quite unique, nowhere else you can find a simillar presentation of our redeemer. There were among us two who are almost fully bold and I have not much hair either so we definitely had the sensation that this place is somewhat calling us. After that village we continued towards the heart of the mountain and the landscape bacame more and more beautiful. We went through some other villages and finally turned on a side road leading into the forest. We drove by car as long as we managed to and after that we started our walk. It was still not raining though heavy clouds hanged above us. I was said that summer had passed here without a drop of rain, but it was not so easy to imagine. Not just because of the severe rainclouds everywhere but also because of the fresh green nature around us. The waterfall was not very far, and it was so splendid, that my poor English cannot describe it at all, instead look at the photos below! On our way back we passed a small house which was more than cosy especially because at that moment it finally started to rain and in rain it is always easier to feel the difference between outside and inside. The famous and popular Pirot lawyer, the owner of the house came out anyway to greet us, a sign of friendship and openness which was not either the first or the last one during the day. I begun to feel more and more that this mountain is so nice and the people here are so friendly that I shoud come here on some private purpose too, just it is a bit far from Hungary to imagine a trip like that easily.

The friendliness continued in the village where we returned immadiately after the walk, an already retired manager of our factory opened a coffee in his village house mainly to sell his excellent home made beer for very cheap. It was in a nice stone walled and wooden ceiling room of the basement beside a chimney fire where we tasted his drink made of original Belgian ingredients too. I enjoyed the talk between my collegues and the owner-bartender a lot though I didn't unterstand too much of their words. Beer was only prelude for the dinner which we had in the next village in an also cosy and well-kept, nice restaurant. In Serbia my favourite dishes are the starters, the unbeleivable fresh cheese with the different salads and vegetables but here the main dish also left a strong touch on the mental state of my stomach :-)!

The plan was to continue uphill after the lunch and to make a circle, but certain news about the quality of the asphalt in that direction discouraged us a bit and finally we returned to Pirot on the same way as we came. The good lunch and the rakia which accomanied it made us a little sleepy, only our driver was fully awake, the rest of us were somewhere at the midway between alpha and beta.

We arrived back to the hotel well in time and I was really very thankful to my Serbian friends that they gave me so much time and so much of themselves. The excursion was a B plan but finally I didn't mind that change at all. It was less sportive than the cycling would have been, but in the meantime I think - it was much more social, and it was fun for more than only two people. Quantity sometimes counts, at least yesterday it counted. Thanks for all the three of you!