Day 5 – Into Croatia, and things are starting to go wrong…

I had been pretty happy when I planned this section of my route – it was nice and flat and I thought I should manage an easy 400-450km a day. Serbia had been very hot and the road quality and traffic had both taken a toll, but I was hoping for better things in Croatia.

I got up reasonably early but I really wasn’t feeling great. My right knee had disappeared. It was swollen from where I had landed on it earlier, and it looked like my quad pretty much just went into my calf, with a bendy bit in the middle. And when I say bendy, it bent but it felt pretty stiff as it did so. On top of that, the other knee was complaining just so it didn’t feel left out and it seemed swollen and stiff too, my feet were still very sore, my butt hurt and my achillies was feeling a little tender.

The good news was that it wasn’t far to Croatia and indeed once I was there the roads improved and the traffic got a lot better. The character of the shops also changed, and I started seeing some german chains that I recognised. In the first large town I came to I saw a DM – basically what would be called a drug-store in America, and went in to see if I could get a compression bandage for my knee. Unfortunately I couldn’t get one there, but now I had the idea in my head I realised that I really wanted a compression bandage. I decided to keep riding, but keep my eyes out for a pharmacy or similar.

Eventually I found one complete with an ATM out the front, and managed to not only get some money out but also to learn that while they didn’t have any compression bandages there was someone else further down the road who probably would. In fact, they confirmed after a quick phone call, they definitely did. All I had to do was go down the road, then… …left at the church…there is a park…right before the church…over the road from the park…up the hill…opposite the park…

Basically I had no idea what these directions were telling me. I’m pretty sure they changed several times, and the two people giving me the directions seemed a bit like they were thinking of different places. It was definitely in the next town though, so I decided to just ride and look for it when I got there. Happily, I had by that time learnt to recognise the word for (approximately) pharmacy – Ljekarna. It helped that it usually had a big green cross with it!

On arriving in that next town I saw a big church, with a big park. I was pretty sure I was close, and then I saw a sign pointing up the hill, so up I went. After quite a way I stopped to ask a family who were sitting out the front which way to the pharmacy. They gestured to wait a moment, and soon their son pulled up in his car. He got out, saying in English as he did so “you are looking for the apoteke”. I figured it must be the big attraction around here, and happily agreed. He directed me back down the hill to a building over the park, that was possibly green. I rolled back down the hill, eyes peeled as I went.

Half way down a guy stopped mowing his lawn to come and meet me. “You are from Australia!” he said. Good guess, I figured, as I said hello. Then he pointed to the yellow building over the road and said “Here is the apoteke, I will take you”. This seemed odd, but mighty handy.

As we walked into what seemed to be a mid-sized medical centre I heard a few people explaining to each-other that I was the Australian who had sore knees and needed the Apotek. Obviously news travelled fast around here. That was great though, because as soon as I walked in they got out some compression bandages for me to try in different sizes! In the end I decided one for each knee was possibly a wise investment, so that’s what I got. I politely declined offers for food and drink from a lot of people – somehow the process had taken up a huge amount of time and I really wanted to get rolling again.

Shortly after my long search for a pharmacy I noticed that my achillies was feeling a bit ordinary. My left achillies. It was my achillies that had taken me out of TCRNo5 in the end, with help from my knees, so I had been babying it, but that had been my right achillies. I was less than pleased by this development. The good news was that my physio had given me a magic recipe to make it all better. The bad news was that I was pretty sure I needed another pharmacy.

I decided to just keep going and stop if I saw one, because I really wanted to cover some distance today. The roads were good – no, the roads were great. It have no idea how they got their roads so smooth, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to see polishing machines. Even the quiet little roads were so good it amazed me. Possibly the contrast with Serbia was making it seem more extreme, but I have never seen roads that smooth.

Still, progress was slow, and as I rode I could feel my achillies getting worse and worse. This really wasn’t good as it traditionally got better with movement, so as it got later and I realised everything was already closed I decided to take a detour from my planned route to head into Zagreb, to visit what google told me was the one and only 24-hour pharmacy for miles around.

By this time it was raining and I had to go right into the city and a long way out of my way to get to the pharmacy, so you can imagine my disappointment when I got there to find it closed and locked with all of the lights off. I decided I could go no further and was searching for a hotel when someone else drove up. He pushed on the door (despite all the lights being out) but it didn’t open. I could have told him that. Where he was way ahead of me though was that he then read the note stuck inside the door. Then he turned to the wall next to him, searching it, lifted a flap, and pushed the button hidden underneath. The lights came on inside, and suddenly a woman was standing at the door asking him through a very small window what he wanted.

I waited patiently, and as soon as he was done stepped up and waved to bring the woman back, and then I showed her google’s translation of the magic solution: “krema protiv hemoroida”. She walked away but it didn’t take her long to return and write down how much money she wanted for what I hoped would be my salvation.

Once the transaction was finalised I was pretty happy – I had already found a nearby hotel that was open, so I rode around there, and quickly set about treating my injuries. One of the challenges of TCR is to solve your problems with the materials that are available, even though they may not always be the ideal materials, so that is what I did.

On paper 353km sounded ok, but with only 822 vertical meters I really would have liked to go significantly further, and it was the nearly 5 hours of stopped time that meant I hadn’t. Given how bad I was feeling as I went to sleep I also didn’t have high hopes for the coming day, but I have concluded that the only way to take events like this is as they come, so that was what I intended to do, starting with some solid sleep.