Bicycle Routing and Navigating Via Smartphone GPS

We had originally plotted our route today to be on small roads in the Bulgarian countryside. However, chastened by our experience over the past two days cycling on similar roads in Romania, when we had to deal with horrible road surfaces and numerous stray dogs, we decided to revise our route today to take E70, the main north-south road in this part of Bulgaria. Better to fend with trucks than potholes, dirt roads, and dogs.

It was a good choice, especially since the traffic was fairly light and the trucks gave us quite a lot of breathing room when passing. Our decision was further justified when we departed from E70 two miles before the end of our ride in order to get to our hotel, and we immediately came upon not only a dog but a few cows wandering on the road.

We do all of our routing and hotel reservations months in advance of the start of the trip, though we often modify the routes based on information we learn once the trip starts (such as the poor quality of secondary roads in Romania and Bulgaria). For this year’s trip, Peter switched to routing and navigating using a smartphone instead of a dedicated Garmin GPS unit. The main reason for the change was the limited nature of Garmin maps outside of major Western countries, with poor coverage of roads in Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey. In all of these places, the Garmin maps included only a few of the roads. A secondary reason for changing to smartphone navigation was the small, poorly illuminated screen on our Garmin units.

Routing and navigating via a smartphone on an international bicycle trip is quite a bit more complicated than doing the same on a car ride in the United States, where you can put the phone on a dashboard holder, plug it in, and pull up Google maps (or one of its competitors). The problems, which we solved by extensive research as well as trial and error in the months prior to our trip, are the following:

1. Online routing does not work internationally, both because internet data access is often unavailable in the countryside and is expensive when available. We solved this via:

(a) Open Street Maps (OSM) and OSMand: OSM is a collection of free, open-access maps of almost all countries in the world (analogous to Wikipedia for mapping) and OSMand is an Android program that navigates along OSM maps. The maps can be downloaded to the phone, so are available and routable even when offline. [Sorry, iPhone users. Steve Jobs was a control freak, so the iPhone doesn't allow open-source apps like OSMand.]

(b) RideWithGPS.com: This is an online website that allows you to create routes on your computer and then download them to the phone, permitting offline navigation.

2. Battery life: We keep our displays on constantly while cycling so as not to miss turns. The display on any phone is a heavy user of the battery, and we found that the standard Samsung S4 battery died after about 35 miles of cycling. Solution: Replace the original phone battery with a double-capacity battery, and also carry an external battery that can recharge the phone en route when needed.

3. Attaching the phone to bicycle handlebars in a way that is reliable, leaves the phone visible, and provides protection from rain: We purchased a phone handlebar holder in the US, but it cracked a few days into the trip, so we replaced it with a better one in Germany. It’s important to avoid holders that put the phone in a see-through plastic bag, since that limits visibility. Instead, a separate bag meant for protecting a phone from rain can be purchased, to be used only on rainy days.

Phone in its handlebar holder, running OSMand. We added the hair elastic to provide extra security to prevent the phone from falling out on bumpy roads.

View of the handlebar holder from the side. Also visible is the bulging blue back of the phone, which is designed to hold the double size battery for extra power.

The phone in its "rain jacket". Fortunately, we've only had two rainy days on our trip so far, so the rain cover has almost always been packed away.

External battery pack, with micro-USB connector for phone

The external battery sits in the small black case just below the phone, in case it is needed on a long ride

It was the first day of school in Ruse as we were heading out on our ride this morning, and all of the students had flowers for their teachers

Cows wandering along the road, about 1.5 miles from our destination hotel in Razgrad, Bulgaria

The street in front of our hotel in Razgrad

A Challenging Ride From Romania into Bulgaria

Our 60-mile ride today (Sunday, September 14) began in Bucharest, Romania. The ride ended just across the Bulgarian border in the town of Ruse (written as Pyce in Bulgarian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet, similar to that used for the Russian language).

As we cycled through southeastern Romania today, we encountered a large number of Roma ("Gypsies"), often traveling in horse-drawn carts. There are an estimated 12 million Roma worldwide, with the largest concentrations in Central and Eastern Europe. Romania and Bulgaria are at or near the top of all countries in terms of Roma as a percent of the population, with an estimated 8-10% of the people in these two countries being Roma. There are also significant numbers in Spain, southern France, and other European countries, and approximately 1 million in the United States.

Based on linguistic and genetic evidence, the Roma emigrated to Europe from India about 1000 years ago. In general, they live on the fringes of society, with high rates of poverty and poor education. In several European cities, Roma pickpocketers are abundant. There is widespread discrimination against the Roma, and during WWII a large number (by some estimates, about 1 million) were exterminated by the Nazis.

The main challenge on our ride today was the horrible state of many of the roads we encountered. We not only found ourselves on a number of dirt roads, but some of the paved roads were so full of potholes that weaving around them was worse than riding on dirt.

Our destination town of Ruse turned out to be a very pleasant ending to the day. It is a city of 150,000 (fifth largest in Bulgaria), with several walking streets full of restaurants and cafes. There are beautiful fountains and gardens in and near the town center. Ruse lies on the Danube and is the largest river port of Bulgaria. It was most the most populous city in Bulgaria in 1880, and intensive building around that time changed the city's architectural appearance to a typical Central European one. It is known for its 19th- and 20th-century Neo-Baroque and Neo-Rococo architecture, for which it has been called “Little Vienna”, and results in its attracting a large number of tourists.

Scenes from our ride today:

Leaving Bucharest

A horribly rutted road

"Republic of Bulgaria"


Pictures in Ruse, Bulgaria, today's destination town:

A Day Touring Bucharest

Today (Saturday 9/13) was the last rest day on our trip, spent in Bucharest, a city of 1.9 million that is the capital of Romania. We spent several hours walking around the city, both to see the sights as well as to restock on items such as cookies and candies that we carry along with us while cycling. These items come in handy when we’re ready for a snack break but are miles from the nearest eating establishment or food market.

Our walking was mainly in two areas: the old historic district and the region around the massive Parliament. The historic district is a mixture of well-preserved older buildings, crumbling older buildings, and trendy street cafes. The streets and cafes were full of tourists speaking multiple languages. Nightlife was hopping, including free street concerts.

At one time, the extravagant architecture and cosmopolitan culture of Bucharest led to its being nicknamed "Little Paris" or “Paris of the East”. Much of this heritage was lost during the despotic rule, from 1965-1989, of the Communist dictator Nicholae Ceausescu. His regime was brutal and repressive, even by Soviet-bloc standards, and his megalomania led to the razing of one-seventh of Bucharest to build the Parliament and adjacent grand boulevard. The Parliament is the world’s largest and, in fact, the largest administrative building and the heaviest building of any kind in the world.

Scenes from Bucharest:

The massive Parliament building. It is a square structure, and this is one of the four equal sides

Templul Coral (Choral Synagogue)

Plaque in front of the synagogue

Outdoor concert

Outdoor dinner at the Micul Paris ("Little Paris") restaurant

Carpathian Bear for dinner

Stray Dogs and Other Wildlife on the Roads in the Primitive Romanian Countryside

Our first three days cycling in Romania were spent mainly on fairly large roads, one step below major highways. The buildings and towns on these roads are generally in poor condition. Today’s ride (Friday 9/12) was mainly on smaller roads through the countryside, and we were struck by the primitive conditions around us. The conditions were far worse than what we saw two years ago biking through a number of other ex-Communist countries – Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

Stray dogs were everywhere. While most of them were quite small and ignored us, the few that showed interest in us caused a problem for dog-fearing (and–hating) Peter. At one point, when a dog of questionable intent stepped onto the road, Peter braked and, unable to get his bike shoes out of their clips, fell to the ground and scraped his left knee (matching a scraped right knee from a few days ago). After that, Carol “rode shotgun”, riding in front watching for dogs, making sure to place herself between dogs and Peter at all times.

Besides dogs, there were horses, chickens, turkeys, geese, and ducks on or right beside the road. We also saw quite a few horse-drawn vehicles and a couple of human-pulled carts. Workers in the fields used old-fashioned hand-held tools such as scythes and picked corn by hand. The houses beside the road were in dreadful shape, and the roads themselves were very rutted and full of potholes. We hit one 2.5 mile stretch of unexpected dirt road, something that our skinny tires don’t deal with very well.

All in all, it was a challenging and eye-opening day.

Scenes from our ride today:

A Brief Detour into Serbia For Lunch

One of the enjoyable and educational aspects of all of our bike trips is that we read about the places we’re about to see, often a day or so before getting there. Occasionally, we alter our plans somewhat based on what we read, though our ability to do so is quite limited because all of our accommodations are booked months in advance. A day or so ago, we read about a huge dam – the Iron Gate Dam – that spans the Danube, connecting Romania with Serbia. The dam, which can be driven or cycled across, is located about 10 miles from Orsova, Romania, where we spent Wednesday evening. Based on that information, we decided to modify our Thursday ride to cycle across the dam to Serbia, have lunch there, and then return to Romania. To accommodate this detour and make it to our destination town of Craiova, Romania, we had to take a train at the end of our ride today.

The Iron Gate Dam was built in 1973 to tame a portion of the Danube River that runs through a narrow gorge called the Iron Gates, with cliffs as tall as 500 meters flanking it. The currents in the Danube were so strong through the gorge that it was extremely difficult for ships to travel upstream through it. Until the Iron Gate Dam was completed, ships had to be dragged upstream by locomotive. The dam is also a huge source of hydroelectric power.

Our lunch town of Kladovo, Serbia, was delightful, and the food was excellent. It was a big change from most of the towns we’ve seen in Romania over the past few days, which have been notable for crumbling buildings (even the fairly new buildings have cracked concrete and rusting metal) and poor food.

On the way to the dam

Continuing towards the dam

Walking our bikes through a tunnel on the road

Cycling to Serbia across the Iron Gate Dam

Entering Serbia

The Iron Gate Dam, viewed from the Serbian side with Romania in the background

Kladovo, Serbia

Lunch in Kladovo

A crumbling, rusting apartment building in Romania

Craiova City Hall