Contributor: Bruce Nikolai
During our 2,400-mile ride across Europe on the EV6, we had two wonderful Warmshowers stays that stood out.
Our first was in Romania. I reached out to our host, who happened to be living in Belgium, and he arranged for us to stay with the woman taking care of his home. She didn’t speak any English, but she was so happy and chattered away in Romanian. We kind of understood her through her gestures and tone.
The place we stayed was a beautiful small cottage with an outhouse in the yard. The inside was decorated with lovely icons. I showered using the garden hose, which felt great in the Romanian 
heat. The house was in a small village, so we got an inside view of how people live there. It seemed like everyone walked around town in the evening when it cooled down and visited neighbors, which gave it a super cozy feel. There were also stork nests around the town, which was novel to us at the time.
We were riding through Switzerland, trying to make it to Basel, but it was getting late in the day, and it was obvious we weren’t going to get there before dark. We were going to have to put our lights on 
and tough it out. While climbing up a long, steep hill after passing through the beautiful city of Baden, a super-fit lady on a road bike pulled up next to us and asked about our route. When she found out we were doing the entire EV6, she invited us to her home for the night, including dinner and breakfast.
Anya and her husband, Sandro, as it turns out, are Warmshowers’ hosts but had marked their place as unavailable for a while. We swapped stories from the road and got to know them and their two children, which was a lot of fun. Anya was an inspiration; she seemed to have boundless positive energy and told us stories about her career working with recovering drug addicts through therapy involving exercise and sport. They weren’t aware of bike touring in America, so I sent them the Adventure Cycling link along with a few other suggestions. Hopefully, we will see them in the States one day 😊