The cyclist who went out in the cold
Subtitle: adventures riding the Iron Curtain
By: Tim Moore
Edition: First Pegasus Books hardcover edition.
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 340
ISBN-13: 9781681772998
Subjects: Bicycle touring; Travel; Description and travel; Cyclists; Biography
Description: "Not content with tackling the Italian Alps or the route of the Tour de France, Tim Moore sets out to scale a new peak of rash over-ambition: 6,000 mile route of the old Iron Curtain on a tiny-wheeled, two-geared East German shopping bike. Asking for trouble-- and getting it-- Moore sets off from the northernmost Norwegian-Russian border at the Arctic winter's brutal height, bullying his plucky MIFA 900 through the endless sub-zero desolation of snowbound Finland. Sleeping in bank vaults, imperial palaces and unreconstructed Soviet youth hostels, battling vodka-breathed Russian hostility, Romanian landslides, and a diet of dumplings, Moore and his 'so-small bicycle' are sustained by the kindness of reindeer farmers and Serbian rock gods, plus a shameful addiction to Magic Man energy drink. Haunted throughout his journey by mechanical failure and the border detritus of watchtowers and rusted razor wire, Moore reflects on the curdling of the Communist dream and the memories of a Cold War generation reared on the fear of apocalypse at a time of renewed East-West tension. After three months, twenty countries, and steadily warming temperatures, man and bike finally wobble up to a Black Sea beach in Bulgaria, older and wiser, but mainly older"--
Notes: Originally published under title: The cyclist who went out in the cold : adventures along the Iron Curtain Trail. London : Yellow Jersey Press, 2016.
Table of contents: title: To the North; title: Finnish Lapland; title: The winter war; title: Northern Ostrobothnia; title: Central and southern Finland; title: Russia; title: Estonia and Latvia; title: Lithuania and Kaliningrad; title: Poland; title: The German Baltic; title: The inner German border; title: The Czech Republic, Germany and Austria; title: Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia; title: Serbia; title: Romania; title: Serbia II; title: Bulgaria and Macedonia; title: Bulgaria II; title: Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria.