Dirt Roads

After crossing the border I quickly found a place to sleep. It wasn't easy finding a place in reasonably flat agricultural land. But I found a place behind a bush that was good enough for my low-profile tent and chair.

The next morning I found myself in reasonably warm weather again, having left behind the last mountains of North-Macedonia, so me and my sweaty shirt set off eastward. I managed to finally travel over those hard-packed dirt and gravel roads that I had pictured in my mind when I put together the bike and its fat tires. With Tenacious D sounding through my earphones, and the surrounding countryside being able to enjoy my singing, I had a wide smile on my face traveling towards Drama. The little villages I encountered that day had their roads arranged in an orthogonal grid, and I was happy to once more find myself in a country where there were little fountains at the center of nearly every village. This meant I didn't have to carry liters of water over the hills out of caution, rather restocking after descending the little hills. The houses where all various shades of white, with red rooftops and red accents along the trimmings of mostly two-story buildings. The curches looked different than any I've seen before in my life.

My mobile phone had decided once again that it would share the same fate as me: my body being wet with sweat, my mobile phone continuously warning me that its USB port was nonfunctional due to moisture. So far the problem always seemed to disappear after I cycled a couple of kilometers with the phone mounted on my handlebars such that the connectors were facing the wind. But it seemed that my phone became more certain of its ailments by the day.

Fruit

As I traversed a couple of hills and several more villages I came to a nice little descent snaking its way down to lake Vegoritida. There I found myself along flat lands crowded with all kinds of trees bearing fruit. Apples, peaches and apricots all ripe for the taking, but I managed to constrain myself. I tried to find a farmer to ask permission, but after spending half a day peeking between the trees arranged in another kind of grid, trying to catch a sight of a farmer, I gave up. I decided to head northward up the hills in order to arrive at the river Edesseos, guiding my way to the similarly named city of Edessa. There the houses became multistoried buildings of four to five stories high. It was a nice place to look at, but since I wasn't planning on staying there I tried to catch a glimpse of the atmosphere by riding randomly through the streets. After a while I followed the river running through the center in order to arrive at the eastern edge of the city. It was there that I realised just how much water was flowing in the Edesseos. The city suddenly ended, a lookoutpoint with guardrails providing a view over the flat land 200 meters below Edessa, and the water thundering through the city's canal in order to blast itself free of the city and transforming into a waterfall falling into the depths. On my way down I noticed a cascade of concrete troughs catching the waterfalls and guiding the water downward.

Having descended those 200 meters I suddenly found myself cycling alongside a small slightly elevated concrete waterway, not even half a meter wide, providing water to the surrounding trees. Seeing the orchards stretch out to my left and right into the hills I could only surmise that the Edesseos had been splintered into hundreds of these little waterways, providing all those fruit trees of their water.

Cotton and Rice

A little bit later I found a place to camp next to a little river. Not perfect, but good enough. The day after was not that interesting. I spent long stretches on agricultural lands, the last mountains to my north slowly transforming into hills, until even those hid behind trees, buildings, and crops. Endless fields of cotton and rice, where perhaps the latter crop, grown by flooding the soil with water, contributed to the incredible humidity that day. The most exciting part of the day was my first puncture of this trip forcing me to stop twice that day. The first time during the initial puncture, the second time after I realised I had botched the repair job and decided to fix it at camp and just put in a new inner tube.

In the evening I found a nice place to sleep on the first try. It had nice soft grass to pitch my tent and cook my food over, and I had nice soft supple skin for the conglomeration of mosquitos to pierce to drink my blood. After dinner and slapping my vampire-infested legs like no tomorrow I quickly escaped to the comfort of my tent. I took my phone out in order to learn that it was very persistent in its theory that its USB connector still retained moisture. My battery was at 5 percent and my next intermediate destination, Thessaloniki, was 20 km away.

That morning my phone decided to give up the ghost, so I was left without navigation. I realised I just had to travel eastwards and knew Thessaloniki was built on a hill, so going in the correct general direction was no problem. But getting into the city without ending up on a highway was a problem indeed. At some point I managed to arrive at the industrial area, swaths of big buildings spread thinly between unpaved roads, the swath itself nestled between highways. Traversal was like going through a maze, arriving at dead ends or highway entry ramps all the time. Asking people for their mobile phone or google maps resulted in them looking at me suspiciously and refusing, and asking people for directions resulted me in getting a route to the nearest highway. At one point I had to gesture that I was worried about the traffick killing me, as one particular gentleman thought my greatest problem was encountering the police (which he assured me wouldn't happen). I don't blame them, how many people know the nicest way to cycle in and out of cities these days?

Long story short, I managed to get into the city after three hours. In the city I was initially confronted with the large suburbs, with their countless refugees, begging children, and homeless people. Not that they were everywhere, but their presence weighed heavy on my mind. In the center of the city I started my search for a phone repair shop, quickly found by entering a stationary shop, buying a new filling for my pen and asking for such a repairshop. Apparently it was around the corner! Oh, how a bicycle trip is a nice series of coincidences.

Well, a quick visit led me to hand in my phone, grab a coffee, and upon my return learned that the repair would take a week since they had to order the right parts. They charged my phone, but were incredibly unhelpful in providing alternative means of charging. The result was me buying a wireless charger that ended up not working with a powerbank, and not taking the damned thing back. In hindsight I should've just went somewhere else. Still believing I could convince my phone that indeed Greece was quite hot, and there was no way there could be moisture left in its USB port, I made the ingenious decision of leaving Thessaloniki. About 25 km outside of the city I realised my mistake and made camp. Traveling without GPS navigation is something I've done before, but I didn't think about the fact that I need it for banking, staying in contact with people, and arranging the e-visa to get into Turkey.

That night I accidentally left my sunglasses (a rather nice gift from friends) outside the tent, as I was using the little cloth inside the case to try my best at cleaning the USB port, and the next morning realised it was gone. I found the bag that contained peanuts I ate that previous night 5 meters away from my tent next to some dogshit. Leading me to conclude the glasses were carried of by some kind of dog. I spent three hours looking for the thing on the hills I slept on, sad that I would've lost a precious gift (and my spare bicycle key inside), and by some miracle managed to find it 25 meters from my tent. Making a mental note to never leave anything outside my tent again I got on my bike and returned to Thessaloniki.

I visited the Samsung shop at exactly the time that they were closing, 15:00 on a saturday, so resorted to getting a cheap hotel (found by more luck, as I had no navigation), and the next day booked 4 nights at hostel Arabas. In those days I managed to get my phone repaired at another shop, really not wanting to go back to that same shop. It would take them a single day. All in all it was quite a costly ordeal, with the wireless charger, a powerbank with wireless charger (in case it happens again in the future), and the repair itself, all amounting to 200 euros.

I was quite annoyed that I would have to spend so many days in a hostel, after my little illness in Ohrid I was longing for days on the bike, but I couldn't have made a more joyous mistake. The hostel had an atmosphere like you don't encounter that often anymore. I met a lot of interesting people and spent every morning and evening there talking to all kinds of travelers from many different countries, each with a good amount of crazy stories to tell. I also found the time to do some bicycle maintenance, so I have cleaned bags and clothing, fresh grease in the pedals, and my rear axle's bearings have all been cleaned, greased and readjusted. I hope to encounter some of the cyclists again as I head east.

The city itself was quite a unique place as well. I spent a lot of time aimlessly wandering around, drinking coffee and eating various pasteries, spending some time on the coast, visiting various churches, and reading on random benches and in parks. The city's center is filled with multistory apartment buildings and streets mostly arranged in the same orthogonal grid. Some of those inhabitants look out on ruins of city walls and palaces, and immensely old churches from the times of the Byzantine empire. Occasionally, as you walk one of the streets higher on Thessaloniki's hills, you can look down a straight road running all the way to the sea, with containerships dotted around the waters in the distance, likely awaiting the time they're allowed to enter the port. For good measure I visited the museum of Byzantine culture where, if you walk from the beginning until the end of the museum, you can see the developments in pottery, glasswork, jewelry, clothing, and houses from the 4th century up until 1450, when the Ottoman empire wiped it from existence. The city's cats weren't so reverant of all of this history, using the fact that these ruins are usually cordoned off to lazily take a nap in the sun.

After picking up my repaired phone, it having had a proper talking to about its attitude towards moisture, I spend my last day at a football game of the club Paok with two other hostel guests. The ultras moved us away from our initial places, to which we had no particular objection, and at our new spot we could see them win with three against zero. That final evening was spent drinking some beers, and the next morning I set off again, very glad for taking the time to meet so many people. Once more I went over the same road northward, for the third and last time, towards the city of Drama.