Two wheels, eighty students and a 1300 kilometer long journey.
On Thursday, April 3rd, the group students from all five university centers in Serbia, the route to Strasbourg starts from Novi Sad.
After months of touring hiking and driving bicycles from city to city and passing through many places in the country, the students decided that the mission of spreading the news of what is happening in recent months takes place in Serbia teaching abroad, cycling through several member countries of the European Union.
The end point is Strasbourg, the seat of numerous institutions of the European Union, and their journey will last 12 or 13 days.
In Strasbourg, cyclists will hand over an official letter from students from Serbia to the Council of Europe and will ask them to react to what is happening.
The physical goal and plan of the route is worked out in detail, but what they want to achieve is more important than the physical effort they will put in to reach the end point.
"The goal is to raise awareness of what is happening in Serbia. We don't think we have yet fulfilled our mission. We started that famous media war, which the other side thinks is being waged only through online media. We realized through our walks and our tours in Serbia that a media war can be waged directly on the ground, and this is only one part of that plan," Aleksa Savić, a student at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad, one of the organizers of the cycling tour, explains to "Vreme".
Tour de France the student way
Although they were skeptical at the beginning, the day before the trip they are very enthusiastic and ready for the adventure that awaits them.
"At the beginning, when we came up with this idea, we were skeptical as to whether it would be enough, who cares that 80 cyclists are passing through the south of Germany. However, when we officially announced it and started to implement it, we received invitations from national media services in England and France and Germany and Switzerland who will follow the column non-stop, together with our media. We think that this move will attract a lot of media attention in Western Europe. We will have four minutes in the French national television program tomorrow, which some is a huge thing", says Savić.
This idea was, he says, a logical sequence of circumstances after numerous walks in Serbia.
"We decided to go to the heart of Europe," says Savić.
Trip plan
Students will cycle through Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Germany and France, and they will cover more than a hundred kilometers a day.
They will ride along the Eurovelo six cycling corridor that stretches along Europe, so they will not pass through Slovenia, the country of the young cyclist Tadej Pogačar, three-time winner of the Tour de France.
"The route was chosen because of the easier terrain through Hungary. We only have one small part of the Alps that needs to be crossed, and if we were to go through Croatia and Slovenia, it would be much more difficult, there are huge climbs and part of the route would have to be covered by buses. We are very sorry that we will not visit our colleagues in Croatia and Slovenia, who gave us perhaps the greatest support in the region, but that is the situation," explains Savić.
The start is in Novi Sad, and the first night will be spent in Subotica. Then they continue through Hungary to Donavváros, from where they leave for Budapest the next day. From the capital of Serbia's northern neighbor, they go to Djerba, and from there to Vienna, passing through Bratislava.
Their next stop is Emersdorf, followed by Linz, Salzburg, Munich, Ulm, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, the oracles reach Strasbourg.
They worked out the plan in detail, so there may be deviations in case of problems on the road.
A van with supplies will accompany them to the border with Hungary, and another such vehicle is waiting for them beyond the border.
"The gathering has been reported to our and the Hungarian police and we hope that there will be no problems at the border", explains the interlocutor of "Vremena".
According to the plan, students will be outside for 12 hours a day. They will drive for eight hours every day, and they plan to take more breaks.
Local students and the diaspora will be waiting for them
"Every two breaks, a reception organized by students from the universities there or the diaspora is planned. The diaspora is the most deserving, they helped us a lot in terms of logistics, accommodation, finances for all that, while fellow students from all over Europe find what we are doing very interesting, it caught their attention, so they want to see why and what we are doing. We pass through Hungary, which is in a similar regime situation, so it is interesting from that aspect as well", explains Savić.
If everything goes according to plan, the students will arrive in Strasbourg on April 15. They have two elaborate plans for their return.
"Depending on whether we will actually arrive on the 15th or the 16th. If we arrive on the 15th, we will return by bus to Novi Sad, and in case it will be a day later, the return is planned by train to Budapest, and then by bus from there."
The students organized a test drive the previous weekend in order to show who is ready for such an expedition. The interest of the students was great, and 80 of them are now on their way.
Men lead among them, while a fifth of the fatal number are girls.
Most of the cyclists will be students of the Faculty of Sports and Physical Education (DIF). For most, this will not be the first such strenuous ride.
