A Well-Earned Rest Day
The Saturday night pub crawl had turned out to be considerably longer than planned. What started as a casual Couchsurfing meetup through Bucharest’s Old Town eventually wound its way from bar to bar all the way to a karaoke session that ran deep into the night. It was exactly the kind of unplanned marathon evening that long-distance travel occasionally rewards you with, and by the time I made it back to the apartment, sunrise wasn’t far off.
Unsurprisingly, Sunday started late. There was no alarm, no itinerary, and for once, absolutely nowhere I needed to be. With Tudor spending the day with his family and the bike still waiting patiently in the underground garage for Monday’s workshop visit, the day naturally turned into one of pure, unhurried recovery.
Laundry, Footage, and Doing Nothing in Particular
After ten days of hard riding, laundry had climbed to the top of the priority list, so a good chunk of the late morning went into finally getting through the pile that had been building up in the panniers. In between loads, I sat down with the laptop and started sorting through the footage collected so far on the trip — clips from the Apuseni mountains, the tire change, the engine warning on the motorway, and the previous night’s pub crawl, all needing at least a rough first pass of organizing before they’d be usable for anything later on.
In the afternoon, I wandered over to a nearby shopping mall to grab some food, more for a change of scenery than anything else. Sometimes a completely ordinary errand like a mall food court is exactly the reset a trip needs — no navigation, no border crossings, no warning lights, just picking a place to eat and taking the time to actually enjoy it.
The evening was just as low-key: back at the apartment, no plans, no new city to explore, just some quiet downtime before whatever Monday would bring. It wasn’t an exciting day, but it was exactly the kind of rest day the trip needed — a chance to recharge before getting back to the road, and to the still-unresolved question of what exactly was wrong with the bike.