Day 043 Монтана - Бов

Uh, what a day. I had an abundant breakfast with my German couchsurfing host Dirk who works as an agronomist near Montana. As usual I got started later than I had planned to and when I finally started I immediately had some up and down road, just as predicted by Dirk. But this was just the precursor of what was yet to come. Soon the Balkan mountains drew nearer and finally I was going up a serpentine road - not before being hunted by some village dogs - the saying that barking dogs don't bite proved true: one dog was running after me barking madly while another very big one approached quietly and bit in one of my back panniers slowing me down a lot. Nevertheless I managed to escape somehow and started the climb. I am not sure if I am just really well trained now or if the road was designed to be used by low horse power eastern block cars - anyway the ascend to nearly 900m went better than expected. Maybe frequent stops for plucking delicious wild plums and blackberries helped a lot. After crossing the mountain pass the landscape was really amazing - I had a hard time trying to keep my eyes on the street. I went down another serpentine road into the dramatic canyon of river Iskar. The river will lead me straight to Sofia - but inbetween I wanted to stop for the night. I came across a bulgarian 'guesthouse' sign which I fortunately could decipher thanks to my Russian lessons in school. The way to the guest house was rather adventurous: from the village road along a small footpath, along the shoulders of a railway bridge over the Iskar, crossing the railtracks, down some steep stairs until I ended up at a gate where I was greeted by a huge but very very cudly dog. That was the place where 74 years old, fluently German speaking Kyrill has built a small paradise for his wife and himself - including two houses, a vineyard, orchard,... - all built by themself after bringing all the materials needed along the way described above! I had a perfect vegetarian dinner including fruits from the orchard and a characterfull white wine and rakia (grape brandy) from the vineyard. This is truely a perfect place for retirement - Kyrill seems to be a wise man.