Wow, it’s the first of February already!
Seems like January flew by, everything has happened so quickly.

Last Sunday was such a wonderful day; The sun was shining brilliantly for the first time in what seemed like forever and it just happened to be on my day off.
Even though it was minus 8 and the roads were covered in ice I couldn’t stay inside on such a glorious day, so I took out the trusty “pony”. To clarify things we aren’t talking about an actual equine but a miniscule little bicycle, which looks like it should have training wheels.

I looked so comical with my knees hitting my chin every time I pedaled, but such inconveniences are nothing compared to the feeling of getting out of your life for a day, and enjoying simple pleasures like watching the pigeons fly in the city square, eating icecream from a cafe and sitting on a fortress to watch the river churn by.
I biked for 3 hours and frightened the Serban people with my off-key renditions of whatever song happened to be on my play list. Then I came home and while I was in energy mode did my workout before cooking myself the greasiest meal imaginable! I had saved my two eggs for the weekend and made my self a massive hash brown with eggs, grilled sandwiches and for dessert Nutella! Which of course had to go with some good beer and a movie.

Over the weekend the temperatures have dropped even more and today it was torture to go out on the bikes. I had an accident on the bike I usually use on Friday last week, I hit a patch of ice and punctured the tire and it didn’t get fixed till today. At first this was a bad thing but it turned into a little miracle.

This morning I went out with Anna for some appointments that we had with a few companies, which went very well by the way, and on the way home we stopped by the bike repair shop. Anna had met the man before to fix the same popped tire and he was very nice. We were able to spend some time with him and explain to him about what we were doing in Serbia, the projects that we run etc. In the end he changed the whole wheel for free as it had been slightly bent in a previous accident involving a car… The brakes had not been working either and I thought that they needed to be tightened so I asked him if he could do that as well. Turns out that the brake pads were worn down to metal, which explains why I had to use my feet to stop the bike from flying into some hapless pedestrian. Anyway he changed them all for free.
During our conversation I mentioned that I was looking into buying a bike while I stayed here, but that I didn’t want to spend so much money as it would only be for a few months that I would use it. He then looks at me and says, I have the perfect bike for you. Turns out his sister is selling her bike, an 18 gear city bike with a back seat so I can put on a child’s seat for Claudia. Its in perfect condition and he promised to service it for the duration of my stay. All for the bargain price of 3000 dinars. Sounds like allot? Well it isn’t its 30 euros! God is good :D