Pero and his bike

srijeda, 12.01.2022.

The Una River - The first day again 2021

You can come back on the previous part of this travelogue here.

The first day again

If you don't want to read, skip the text and see the images of this day of journey here.

You can see the map of the this day of the journey here.

That morning, my beloved drove me a little further from the Novska town, all the way to the Hrvatska Kostajnica town. This is because I concluded that between these two towns there is not much worth seeing again, and my mileage will be reduced.

In addition, not only at the start but also at the finish, today's ride is shortened compared to two years ago, because my today's goal was the Bosanska Krupa town.
And so, somewhere after 9 in the morning, I slowly started to turn the pedals while driving through the Hrvatska Kostajnica town, unable to escape the impression that it seems to me that I was riding this way yesterday, although two years have passed.
Although I told myself that there was no point in re-shooting the scenes filmed in that ride from two years ago, impressed by the re-seen scenes I still couldn’t pass by them coldly. Therefore, please, dear reader, do not be angry with me cause I am a man with weak character, and therefore I decide one thing and do another.
So I filmed the Una river in the Hrvatska Kostajnica town, abundantly spread so that tall trees spread lavishly on its islands, because, in addition to the sun, there was an abundance of fine, clean water.

At the exit from Kostajnica, the railway joined me again on the right side, somewhere upstairs. As I meanwhile got a new cell phone which, unlike the old one has two lenses on it, I managed to put the railway viaduct in the frame this time. That was made possible by that other, ultra-wide-angle lens on my cell phone.

In the continuation of the ride, I filmed an old and seemingly abandoned house typical of this area.

The morning was quite fresh, and the proximity of the water made it even fresher. The freshness lasted after noon because of the clouds that the sun had only been able to disperse after 2 PM. Therefore, there is no shadow on the upper and lower shots.

Interestingly, there was not a bit of wind so with minimal traffic I had some supernatural feeling like I was riding in my sleep.
At one of the rest stops on the side road, it was only when I stopped, I was surprised to see a fenced area with sheep. According to the expressions on the muzzles of the sheep, it seems to me that the surprise was mutual.

Peace, silence, the aforementioned lack of traffic made my thoughts wander, and they were brought back to reality by a sudden board that read "Dvor". Already !?
Satisfied with the fact that I came to this place ahead of expectations, I climbed the path to the park in the centre, as I did two years ago.
There are still very few people, still sinister desolate, huge and abandoned, a high school building.

With some mixture of nostalgia and masochism, I filmed a spot in the park where I pitched a tent two years ago and spent the night.

After passing by the town hall, which, like everything else, has not changed in these two years, I went down to the centre of the town and continued towards the border crossing.
It was crowded in the Bosanski Novi town again, so after changing the money into Convertible Marks (currency of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina) in currency exchange, I quickly continued riding.
It was only on the way out of the town that I remembered that I had no image to remember, and I took at least a picture of its province

Again the railway was right next to the road, but after a while, the road decided to change sides. It did not make it by “road railway crossing” but a viaduct. As I moved a little above the environment with its help, it was a good opportunity for me to film the situation in front of me.

It’s been a long time since this morning’s breakfast, so I needed to find a place for lunch. It was a long way in from of me till the Bosanska Otoka town, and again I would like to find some kind of bench, not to eat right on the ground or standing.
I was patient and persistent enough so I found what I wanted.
The village of Rudice is located on a wider plain near the Una river. The plain was wide enough that, in addition to the road and the village itself, there was room for a railway station. Riding next to it on the right, I passed the station building, stopped and returned to it, walked around and found what I was looking for at the side of the track next to the building - a lunch bench.

After lunch I was full and satisfied, so I continued on. The sun was still obscured by clouds, and it was still relatively fresh.
The next thing I expected was the first bigger, more serious waterfalls on the Una river. Because of my last drive through this area, I learned that these waterfalls are right in front of entering in the Bosanska Otoka town. When I got to them, I just took a quick picture of them from the road, as they were covered in more detail while riding from two years ago.

Not far from those waterfalls, as I already said, I reached the Bosanska Otoka town and crossed the bridge to the other side of the Una river.


In the centre of this small town, I found a small park with benches. The consumed lunch did its thing so I wanted to get some sleep, and for that, I would need a bench. I found it here, but around a small park
were shops, a bank, a post office… obviously a kind of town centre. That's why there were a lot of people, so I was ashamed now, to stretch out on the bench like a bum. That's why I continued riding after a short break.
I didn't get far, just on the way out of the place, where the fruit shop caught my eye. I bought two large, juicy peaches and ate them. They were so delicious to me and I was so thrilled with them, that in the continuation of this journey I consumed the said fruit every day.
A few hundred meters behind the Bosanska Otoka town, a restaurant located in a former wooden watermill caught my attention. By the way, I often met water mills on my trip to Una, the purpose of which was to change the service of grinding cereals into a catering service. Next to this, there was a semi-improvised swimming place here, so the said catering service was expanded.


Many years of cycling experience have taught me that the expectation paradox happens quite often.
So on some journey, one of the interesting and impressive things will be this one which I am expecting. And when I get to that one the impression is lukewarm and pale, significantly below expectations. On the other hand, expecting little, or frequent and nothing, the impression will be big, huge, so much that I will be surprised by it.
So it was on this trip as well.
I cycled through the Bosanska Krupa town several times, including two years ago. It was just like that, passing. But this time I designated that town as the place where I would end the first day of the journey and where I would spend the night. This entailed the fact that I was turning off the main road and wanted-not-wanted, getting to know the town in a little more detail.
Upon arrival in the town, my first goal was to arrange for an overnight stay. It was about 3 PM when I found myself next to a large restaurant that should have rooms for people like me somewhere upstairs or behind (later it will turn out that this large terrace on the first floor is the terrace of my apartment).

And really, the young waitress/receptionist at the bar/reception didn't even listen to my story about the reservation until the end but gave me the key to the room. Surprised by the speed and ease of getting at that symbol of my stay tonight, though I do not know what I expected, I asked for the accommodation too of my faithful two-wheeled companion. Still, with a friendly smile on her face, she showed me a place in the hallway next to the stairs with the addition “Here you leave it! You can lock it if you want, but I tell you no one will touch it! ”
I left the bike (I locked it, though, just in case) picking up the saddlebags and other equipment, and headed up the stairs to the first floor in search of my accommodation.
I was looking for accommodation for this trip over the internet only a few days before the journey, because I wasn't quite sure I would go at all, either because of my internal dilemmas or because of the meteorological situation (too much heat). It was only when, according to the forecast, that I realized that there would be a "normal" temperature in front of me for a week, that I started looking for a place to stay. Sometimes I managed it without any major problems, and sometimes it wasn’t that easy.
With this first night, it wasn’t that easy. The offer via booking.com in the town itself was small, and the demand was high, so I could barely find a free room in this restaurant/motel/or whatever it is. I got not a room but an apartment, the largest in the building and it looked real presidential to me. Of course, the price was such that this first night was also the most expensive for me, a full 50 KM (25€).
I had two rooms in my apartment tonight. The first one, shot from two opposite angles, looked like this


To the left in the image above was an exit to a terrace that looked like this

The other room was the bedroom, and it looked like this

A completely unnecessary and superfluous luxury for me, which I would replace with a kitchen and dishes in it for cooking soup. However, this apartment tried to present itself as a luxury for the clientele who are under the honour of cooking soup for themselves. Although somehow it seemed to me that time had already overtaken it. I conclude this on TV, although the classic one was big, today we would say rustic, with a cathode ray tube, and also based on the lack of air conditioning. Due to the absence of the latter, when I entered the room I was blown by the stifling heat and I immediately opened the terrace door. After taking the essentials, wallet, camera, cell phone, I put the apartment to ventilate and cool down, and I went on a city tour.
The first thing that attracted me to this town was the fortress near and above the Una river.

According to Wikipedia, the first written traces of the parish in the area of Bosanska Krupa date back to 1072. The centre of the parish is a fortress, built in the XIII. century, which during the Middle Ages was alternately owned by the Croatian nobility (Babonići, Ivaniš Korvin, Ivan Karlović, Zrinjski) and the Hungarian king. Led by Pasha Mustafa Sokolović, June 23, 1565. The Ottomans conquered the town and the fortress when the defender Matija Bakić was also killed. After that, the Krupa town begins to spread to the left and right banks of the river Una.
Seeing some visitors on it, I immediately, without a doubt, set off in search of a path to it. The trail was right next to the Catholic church I had talked about earlier. Here I show it complete with the environment, with the help of the already mentioned ultra-wide lens of my cell phone.

After a few hundred meters of steep climbing, I entered the fortress.




I admit that the main reason for visiting the fortress was not its interior, although I am pleasantly surprised by the absence of today's devastation, and the entrance was free too. The main reason was the view from it of the surroundings.
And that was, in a word, fantastic!
First, the views of the town and its surroundings in general, which together make this town significantly larger than I expected.


The following is a view of the part of the town on the left side of the Una river and the bridge of the main road through the town.


The road that I will continue tomorrow morning towards the Bihać town is along the Una river, somewhere up left in the forest in the image above.
Near this fortress from which I observe the town were, in addition to the Catholic Church, a mosque and an Orthodox church.


Below me, as if in the palm of my hand, I had an old wooden bridge. It was renovated 5 years ago, and together with the old town forms the pedestrian zone of the town.


On the other side of the bridge was the restaurant/motel where my accommodation for the next night was. With the help of a zoom lens, I shot "my" terrace in front of "my" accommodation.

Later I filmed the fortress from that terrace of my accommodation, so this upper and this lower shot observe each other.

I have already mentioned that the offer of accommodation, which I managed to find on the Internet earlier, was scarce, and the first one I called ("Accommodation Una) told me that they were full, but they recommended me the ones where I would sleep tonight.
These "Accommodation Una" are a series of wooden dwellings built above the Una river. Searching through my archives, I found what the Una river looked like downstream in 1985, watching it from the main bridge.

Two years ago, the Una river looked like this, with a special zoom of the last building that was under construction


That now, in 2021, it would look like this

Let’s go into a little more detail below about these log cabins above the Una river. First, a view from a height, from the fortress.


Later, after descending from the fort into the town, I toured these wooden dwellings in more detail. They are nicely reached by a wooden promenade, and each house has its wooden yard and a separate entrance.



A lot of time ago there were watermills where flour was ground with the help of a water stream. From the krupljani.ba website I borrowed an image that shows how it used to be.

Over time, the mills gradually closed and fell into disrepair, until they remembered that I could come to life by changing their purpose. Restored, repurposed and refurbished in this way, it is impressive to just visit them, let alone spend the night in them.
I went down to the wooden bridge and filmed it in both directions. First, towards the restaurant/motel, which is also, as I mentioned earlier, the place of my sleeping next night.

I took a short walk along with it (somehow it was strangely pleasant to walk on the wooden boards) and then filmed the bridge towards the old town centre.

The first hundred meters, looking from the bridge to a wide street, where traffic is not allowed, was turned into terraces with umbrellas of nearby cafes.

I took the above shot early the next morning as I continued my journey. There are no guests on the terraces of cafes anywhere at dawn, not even here.
Let's go back to today. So, after walking along the planks of the wooden bridge, I headed towards the terraces of the cafes shown in the image above. Apart from people, there were also stray dogs there. Bosnia has been known for them for years.
It was always weird to watch an unusual symbiosis of humans and these four-legged wanderers. If they stand in each other's way, then both of them, gently, considerately, culturally, even take a step or two, and, in peace and silence, they bypass each other. Everything is bursting with consideration and mutual compassion.
Maybe it would be the case that sometime I don't find out how, somewhere, a dog attacked a man or even a child. Well, because of this previous sentence, every time, including this one, I pass by those sleepy four-legged animals with extreme caution, which might be beautiful if are not so unkempt.



After those terraces the street narrowed and went uphill.


There were a lot of old, but nicely decorated buildings in that street, it seems to me, from the Austro-Hungarian period.


At the end of this town tour, I returned across the wooden bridge in search of dinner. As I crossed the bridge, I filmed one of the many ducks happily enjoying the crystal clear water of the Una river or next to it (I will often use this epithet “crystal clear Una water” in the description of this journey).


I managed to capture a boat with the lens of my camera in which people who consider rafting something of attention and respect valuable and therefore necessary to experience.

But you don’t have to be a rafter to enjoy a boat ride. After all, a boat as a term is significantly older than rafting, also as a term.

From this wooden bridge I filmed another cafe on columns, also converted for this from the former watermill, which is inferred from the remains of a large water circuit on the left.

I mentioned earlier that there is no kitchen in my luxurious accommodation tonight, so I had to look for tonight's dinner somewhere outside. I didn’t have to wander around the town for long, just across from my apartment was a pizzeria, as were those "Apartments Una" exotically perched on logs above the river.
Here is the entrance to the pizzeria

Reaching the terrace of the restaurant, which can be seen in the picture above at the end of the wooden bridge, I turned around and filmed the entrance through which I had just passed

I waited a long, long time for that mixed pizza, almost an hour. I was already a little crazy inside myself, but the hard-working, although a bit confused waitress humbly begged me for a little more patience. I found it a little more patience, though it wasn’t easy for me and finally welcomed my dinner.


Delighted with the taste of the first bite, I had to admit to myself that this quest for a little more patience paid off in full. I haven't eaten such a good pizza in a long time! Even the edge parts were soft and tasty.
After a pleasant dinner, I sat for a while adding up the impressions of the first day of this ride. I was satisfied with those impressions, and especially with the unexpectedly lavish tour of this town. From now on, the Bosanska Krupa town has taken a special place in my memory. When an association, commentary or just a mention of the name of that town happens in the future, I will return to this afternoon and evening with a flash of memory, vividly feeling the sounds and smells, and not just the visual scenes around me.
At dusk, I returned to my accommodation and went to bed, while through the window I heard the roar of the youth and those others who had gone out for an evening out in the town. Obviously, this wooden bridge along with those cafe terraces in the pedestrian zone makes a kind of promenade. If I weren't alone, if I had a companion, maybe we took a walk a little on this promenade. This way, in the peace of the bedroom, strange things were going through my head.
I lay in bed in anticipation of sleep feeling some petty uncertainty, muffled fear, even mild anxiety about tomorrow and the other days of this journey. I tried to convince myself that today everything went well, even excellently, and that all these stated inconveniences were the result of irrational fear caused by the ubiquitous memory of the debacle of two years ago. I tried, I said, but not completely succeed. So I decided to lie down earlier and rest well, both mind and body. So I will, more or less, feel like this at the end of the next days of this journey when like today. Therefore I will go to bed earlier like I did this evening.
Today's total kilometres I rode are 68. It's not something to brag about, but they are unforgettable to me.

You can view the continuation of this travelogue here.

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