[2017, June]
Ever since I started travelling on my own, I’ve always wished to get to the border region of the historical provinces of Macedonia and Epirus, on the shores of Lake Ohrid, in search of my family roots – that was the place where my great grandfather was born, some 150 years ago, in the times of the Ottoman Empire, when most of the modern Balkan states didn’t exist yet and the local population was ethnically mixed and fluid. However, although I’ve been criss-crossing the whole continent for some time now, my limited travel time, routes and destinations had unfortunately never created a favourable circumstance for me to do that. This time though, I’m not waiting anymore for the planets to align, but I’m heading right there instead, especially that the whole area is still missing from the international tourism maps, as it lacks busy airports, straight-forward motorways or fashionable resorts and hotels, therefore it’s exactly the kind of place I like to discover and explore.
Sensing the authentic Balkan savour. 620 miles
Geography compels me to start each of my travels south by finding my route through Bulgaria, which basically isn’t a bad thing itself, as the roads there generally are of reasonable tarmac quality and more traffic free than the ones in the neighbouring countries, except for the fact that I’ve already ridden most of them multiple times in both directions, so they’ve become quite boring to me. Therefore, every time I’m heading that way, I use to leave home early in the morning, my pace set on transit mode and my mind eager to get it over with, in order to start the real adventure as soon as possible. Unfortunately, today is the 1st of June, followed by the weekend and the Orthodox Pentecost and Whit Monday, which are all public holidays in Romania, so there is a great lot of people who are taking advantage of this five days long vacation to get in their cars and fill up the roads in all possible directions; therefore, once I arrive at the border crossing point at Giurgiu, I find myself at the end of a three miles long queue of cars and coaches, which means I’d have to wait for more than two hours until I’ll get to the other side. Almost genuinely embarrassed, I start overtaking them on the opposite lane, also with the approval of a couple of police officers I meet a few hundred yards farther, I cross the Danube bridge and reach the passport control booths on the Bulgarian bank; over here, another policeman waves me and few other fellow bikers to go right in front of the line, so, eventually, in less than fifteen minutes I’m already in Bulgaria and speed up onto the city of Ruse’s belt road, in order to get to … the North Macedonian border as soon as possible, which is about 400+ miles farther!
I take the first break today in a gas station nearby the town of Byala, just to brisk up and have a coffee; the parking lot is full of Romanian registered cars, on the café’s terrace the common language is also Romanian, so, as much as I’d try to, I can’t help socializing to quite a few curious guys, who aren’t able to understand how I ride long distance alone, without a full and noisy gang of bikers. And of course, I’m heading to Greece, am I not? What do I mean I’m not going to Greece? Where to then, Turkey? Whaat!? To Macedonia and … and Albania??? But what am I doing there, especially alone? Am I nuts? Those aren’t humans, they are animals! They’re gonna rob me, shoot me, run me over with their cars!!! Luckily, I’ve finished my coffee meanwhile, so I thank everybody for their concern and full of prejudices advice and hastily take off, hoping my next stop is going to be somewhere amidst all-Bulgarian customers, whom I won’t be able to communicate at all! [I’ve made this trip back in the times when very few foreign tourists were visiting Albania, therefore people knew little about what was really going on over there. To be honest, my memories of the first encounter with Albania, few years before this, are of utterly chaotic and rules disregarding traffic and heavily armed police roadblocks.]
Towards Sofia, the road is quite traffic free, therefore I easily overtake some trucks and few Bulgarian registered cars probably almost my age, then I pass by the city of Pleven and I get to the “Hemus” motorway, where I can’t resist the large bends winding through the surrounding mountains and involuntarily increase my cruising speed to 90+ mph, although a strong air-flow is pressing against my chest at this pace – I reckon I definitely have to add a windshield to my bike, especially for these long distance trips! At about one o’clock, I arrive to the capital and, as it’s still early, I decide to stop for a short walk downtown, around its centuries old Orthodox churches and shady wide boulevards, before I continue my route to North Macedonia. After another good run on the ”Struma” motorway southwards, I turn right nearby the town of Dupnica and, about half an hour later, I climb few mild bends and find myself in front of the border post. The Bulgarian officers don’t show much interest in me and just wave my off, but on the other side the things seem to be more complicated. After checking my passport, the bike’s registration and insurance, they start asking stupid questions: what am I doing in Macedonia, for how long am I going to stay there, what do I carry in my luggage, how much alcohol and cigarettes? Come on, guys, do I look like an idiot? Booze and smokes are twice more expensive in Bulgaria than over here, shouldn’t I have tried to smuggle them in the opposite direction, what do you think? Probably they were just boring, because they eventually take my word and don’t bother to search my luggage, then lift the barrier and let me in!
The road to Skopje is winding downhill a green narrow valley, passing through several small villages and a quiet townlet, while the traffic is low and slow, as most of the cars are as old as the ones in Bulgaria. My tonight’s destination is Kratovo, just 50 miles far from the border, where I booked a room at Etno House Shancheva, a rustic pension located in a traditional house within the town’s Ottoman style old centre. It’s not quite easy for me to find it, as it is hidden within a maze of narrow cobblestoned alleys climbing the steep slope of Mount Osogovo, and it’s even harder to get there by bike, as the rudimentary pavement is slippery as hell. I advance with extreme cautiousness and in really low speed among the tiny old houses in this neighbourhood and, while I start thinking I’ve already got lost, I spot it right in front of me; there is no sign at the entrance or anybody in sight, however I can recognize the building from the online photos, so I get off my bike and walk inside. In the kitchen, my host Stevche – a chubby guy in his fifties – is chatting to a friend over a couple of bottles of homemade raki and red wine and, without interrupting their conversation, waves me to sit down and join them; then, he quickly cuts into pieces some white sheep cheese, tomatoes and hot peppers, pours a glass of raki for me, too, and joyfully invites me to taste all of these. As simple as that! While continuing talking to each other, the two men ask me if I speak Macedonian or, maybe, Russian and remain optimistic despite my negative answer, reckoning we’ll be able to communicate somehow, eventually :). Fortunately for me, the so-called Macedonian language is more or less a Bulgarian dialect, therefore I get to understand about half of what they’re saying, and they also seem to know quite a few English words, so there we are! [My basic knowledge of Bulgarian comes from a very long time ago, when I was studying Russian in high-school and watching Bulgarian TV programmes meanwhile, and it got more recently refreshed during my countless rides throughout Bulgaria, as well.] This way, I learn about Stevche being kind of a local star, the proud promoter of both the rural tourism in Eastern North Macedonia and the slow-food concept as well, focusing on this area’s traditional food products and beverages, holding a handful of prizes and diplomas from several international events and exhibitions. To me, this also explains the looks of the guesthouse, which, besides its Ottoman style architectural authenticity, features a lot of old pieces of furniture, traditional outfits and sepia photos, all these making one feel like travelling at least one century back in time.
Half an hour and several raki shots later, Stevche’s friend leaves and there’s just the two of us left. He shows me the room I’m going to sleep in – alone in the whole house, as he’s living elsewhere and there are no other tourists for tonight, then we manage to squeeze the bike into the yard, somewhere between a pile of firewood and the stone fence, and continue our conversation outside, in the mild afternoon sunshine, passing the bottle of raki from each other; we’re talking about tourism and foreigners hardly coming to visit North Macedonia, the thousands of Syrian refugees who transited the country during the last summer – by the way, Stevche confirms the rumours I’ve heard of from different sources, that some of those “refugees” had been wearing expensive clothing and carrying lots of cash, smartphones and detailed maps of their route towards Western Europe – and, most interesting to me, the inter-ethnical relationships within the former Yugoslavia. Well, these appear to be more inter-confessional than inter-ethnical to him, and thus I finally get to understand how people that had been living together for more than seventy years within the same country started to fight and kill each other with such a Middle Ages kind of cruelty: besides unresolved centuries old mutual resentments, the main driver for this fierce hatred had been for one more time in history the religion and the irreconcilable differences between the confessions! Throughout our entire conversation, I’ve never heard Stevche speaking of either Macedonians, Serbs, Croats, Bosnians or Albanians, but solely of Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim. And, of course, Stevche being a fervent Orthodox himself – now I understand why his first question for me, when I entered his house, was: “You’re from Romania, so you’re an Orthodox, aren’t you?”, he is regarding his fellow pravoslavni / rightful believers as the only good and fair ones, while the Catholic were false and hypocrite and the Muslim mean and regressive. The fog within his mind is so dense that, when I’ll be asking him the next morning which way should I go from Kratovo in the North-East to Ohrid in the South-West of Macedonia, he definitely urges me to take the southern route, through the Orthodox towns of Prilep and Bitola, instead of the northern one through Tetovo, where Muslims are living and there’s nothing nice to see! Moreover, the next day, around Struga, I’ll get to learn this guy isn’t by far the only one who is thinking that way: on all the bilingual road signs, showing both the Albanian and Macedonian / Slavic names of different places, the latter ones were covered in red paint, as a strong statement about who owns the majority within that area. In fact, this reminds me of a geostrategic analysis I’ve recently read, which had been predicting that the next heavy casualties conflict in Europe might burst right here, in North Macedonia; or maybe Bosnia, may I humbly add …
Next morning, I wake up early and have my coffee out in the cramped front yard together with a full family of cats, before Stevche comes to prepare my breakfast; once again he serves me plenty of fresh and natural traditional products, another strong coffee, and tempts me with a shot of raki, which would be supposed to charge me with energy for a good start :). I eventually succeed in declining this offer, then we take a few pictures for the guesthouse’s album, say our goodbyes and off I go! I get straight out of Kratovo onto an unbelievably traffic free backroad, which is winding across green hills in the direction of Shtip. The places I’m passing by are looking so idyllic and calm, you wouldn’t say their inhabitants’ souls are full of hatred and resentment! Whatever, maybe the last evening’s conversation has impressed me more than it should and I’d better focus on riding, especially that the overall looks of the cars I encounter give me a hint about their drivers not paying too much attention to traffic rules. I take a short coffee break at a gas station in the outskirts of Shtip, an industrial town that doesn’t tempt me visiting it, then I continue my route westwards, across a steep hill sided by some unexpectedly tight hairpins. After I cross the Vardar River and the motorway heading to Greece, I enter Kavadartsi, another dusty town, featuring dull apartment buildings and way too many traffic lights for the number of cars in its streets; there’s nothing worth seeing here either, so I get on my way to Prilep without wasting any more time. The map shows me two options to go there: the more direct main road, emphatically named A1 although it has nothing to do with the concept of a motorway, and a winding backroad sneaking into the foothills of the Nidže mountain range, which separates North Macedonia from Greece, obviously longer but surely the more spectacular one. Unfortunately, the Street View app is missing images of those places, therefore I can’t tell if that route includes any dirt or gravel sections, so I have to skip it, as much as I regret doing this. Sadly, the traffic onto the highway is annoyingly busy with trucks, coaches, slow old cars and so on, forcing me to ride with increased care and preventing me from enjoying the scenery of some more forested green hills, then, an hour later, I eventually arrive to the town of Prilep. It looks big enough to be quite an important one, so I decide to take a tour downtown, but it proves to be as uninteresting as the former ones, so I hit the road to Bitola pretty soon. It takes me about half an hour to get there, on an incredibly straight stretch of road, flanked by endless fields and small bushes, as boring as it could possibly be, but this ancient city – also known by its Ottoman name of Monastir – seems to tell quite a completely different story! The narrow cobblestone paved streets downtown are featuring plenty of old traditional houses, secular churches and mosques, shady small squares and an overall ambiance that reminds me more of Greece than of the usual Slavic standards I’ve met almost everywhere along my route here. I spend some time wandering around, then, as meanwhile it's already past two in the afternoon, I continue towards my today’s destination, the twin lakes of Prespa and Ohrid, at the confluence of the North Macedonian, Greek and Albanian borders.
The road towards the town of Ohrid starts promisingly climbing the north-eastern slopes of Mount Pelister, through dense and cool pine forests; right in the maximum altitude point, before starting the descent to Lake Prespa, I find a tiny roadside café and can’t help stopping for an espresso. The only guy there is too old to speak any English, but he’s nailing about ten words in Italian, so, combined with my basic knowledge of Slavic ones, we manage to agree he’s not able to serve me any espresso, but some strong Macedonian coffee instead. “OK, and how is this Macedonian coffee? Is it like the Turkish one?” – I inquire; “Oh well, it’s quite the same thing!” – the guy answers. “Fine, then you can also call it Romanian as well; I’m very well used with grounds in my coffee, that’s ok!” Just like yesterday, once again I induce my interlocutor’s sympathy by merely being a fellow Orthodox, so we try to chat a bit more: he’s curious about me visiting Macedonia, I’d ask him about the condition of the nice-looking winding road which is connecting the two lakes across the Galičica Mountain, but soon we run out of Italian :) and our conversation is over! Half an hour later, I’m on the northern shore of Lake Prespa to discover that by myself and I stop one more time, for the mandatory photos this time; the calm stretch of water seems to be endless, as I basically can’t see its southern shore, and the tall peaks covered in thick clouds, which surround it entirely, are reflecting themselves into this stunning natural mirror. Further on, the barely ten-feet-wide road, alternating tarmac and gravel sections, is steeply climbing the mountain slope through a dense forest, then it comes out into the open alpine meadows, revealing fabulous views on both sides, across Lake Prespa to the east and Lake Ohrid and the Albanian mountains to the west. The descent on the opposite slope is much more animated, cars, campervans and cyclists literally filling the road in both directions and I even have to pay a National Park visiting fee once I’m down beside the lake shore, before heading up north, towards the resort towns of Ohrid and Struga.
The latter out of these two small towns has a special importance to me and I’ve dreamt of visiting it ever since I was a small kid, as this is the place where my family roots are. Sometime during the second half of the 19th century, my great grandfather, Iancu Târpu, was born in Struga out of a family of Aromanian shepherds from the nearby mountains, at the border of the two then Ottoman provinces of Macedonia and Epirus. By the time he turned 20, he left for the Italian city of Trieste – then part of the Habsburg Empire, where few years later he graduated in engineering and founded his own construction company. As an entrepreneur, he erected a number of both public edifices and private buildings throughout the Balkans, including ones for the Royal Houses of Bulgaria and Romania. Married to a Romanian woman, he settled in Bucharest during the mid-twenties of the 20th century, also becoming a Romanian citizen, and died ten years later, back in these very places, shot down in an endless vendetta between the local clans. Given this family history, I get mixed feelings of both anxiety and poignancy as I’m approaching the town and I remember an event in my childhood, which only here and now I get to fully understand: during the last century’s seventies, my grandmother travelled for the first time to Yugoslavia, wishing to also reach the place where her father had been born and then died, but, just a short distance beyond Belgrade, she got overwhelmed by emotions and finally didn’t have the power to go all the way to Struga. Maybe this one, besides my permanent and irrepressible desire to explore the less travelled routes, is another reason for me to be the only one in my family who gets to set foot right in this special place!
30 miles is quite a short distance to ride in this touristy area, full of hotels and guesthouses lined along the lakeshore; as I’m gradually running out of patience with each mile I advance, I skip visiting Ohrid, although the town is its main attraction, due to the long sandy beach, marina, casinos and ancient Byzantine churches, then I speed up for another ten minutes onto an extra-crowded highway and, finally, here it is – Struga! The town is elegant and good-looking – or am I just being biased?, with its granite slabs paved pedestrian main street, shops and restaurants along the banks of the Black Drin River and fancy hotels beside the golden sandy beach. Sadly, there’s no trace of my ancestors – the Aromanians, as everything – shop signs, road signs and street names (yeah, those bilingual ones half-covered in red paint), restaurant menus and even the plaque at the City Hall entrance – had been taken over by the Albanian ethnics. The Orthodox churches are on par with the mosques, but the latter are newer and obviously better kempt, and the graveyard is almost fully covered in crescents. OK, the border is just a few miles away from here, but still, it seems a bit too much! A part of me is doing well, my soul filled with the satisfaction of an accomplished mission, on the other hand I’m quite disappointed, as I don’t feel in any way connected to this place. I can’t say exactly what I’ve been expecting to find here, as I know too well the last century’s unruly local history of anarchy, war, forced assimilation and ethnic cleansing – quite common for the almost the entire Balkan area, as a matter of fact, but obviously the world my great grandfather lived in is definitely long gone for good. Actually, the Aromanians’ share out of the Struga municipality’s total population has dramatically decreased from about 25% during the late Ottoman period, to just 3% according to the most recent 21st century census, and this is also the case for the neighbouring Korçë county in Albania, where the Aromanian stronghold of Moscopole / Voskopojë – their most important cultural and commercial centre during the 18th century – has become just an insignificant village nowadays. Driven by these mixed feelings, I wander for about three full hours in the streets of the old centre, also having a tasty dinner in a riverside terrace restaurant meanwhile, before I hardly part Struga, almost at the fall of dark, and ride few miles southwards to the next village, where I set up my tent in a lakeside campsite and put an end to this long day with a couple of beers, while chatting to the Albanian owners of the place and making a bit of fun upon some Dutch tourists, who are terrified making plans and scenarios of crossing the scary Albania on their way to Croatia :)
Sofia
Sofia
Entering North Macedonia
Etno House Shanceva, Kratovo
Kratovo, North Macedonia
Lake Prespa
Lake Ohrid
Galičica National Park
Struga, North Macedonia
Struga, North Macedonia
Camping by the shore of Lake Ohrid
Sunrise above the Lake Ohrid
Strolling along the deserted roads of Epirus. 230 miles
In the morning, it’s time to leave the ancestry phantasms behind and focus on the second major target of my route, that is crossing Albania’s south-eastern region, or the Northern Epirus, which is one of the most secluded and less populous areas of the country; consequently, its infrastructure is on par with those figures, the only paved road connecting the large depression south of the Ohrid and Prespa Lakes to the Vjosë River valley and further on to the Adriatic seashore being the SH75, which crosses the remote Nemërçka mountain range in plenty of tight bends and steep up-and-downhill inclines, through dense forests and barren alpine meadows. Moreover, the human settlements are quite rare along this route – I’ve counted just five of them between the city of Korçë and the Greek border crossing at Tre Urat – and the fact that intrigues me the most is the Google Maps navigation app tells me it would take almost four full hours to cover that 100 mile distance, which means I’d better expect a hell of a ride today!
Being up really early, I get to pack my tent and luggage before anybody in the campsite even starts moving around, including the guys at the reception – it’s been a smart move to pay for accommodation ever since checking-in! At seven o’clock sharp I get on my bike, take a farewell tour back to Struga – that’s actually an excuse for the fact I forgot to refuel in the evening – and head towards the border crossing point at Qafë Thanë, where I’m the only customer this early in the morning and I’m off the four different check-points unexpectedly fast. On the first section of my route in Albania, along the Ohrid lakeshore up to the town of Pogradec, the road is traffic free and smooth, so I may carelessly enjoy the scenery; there’s nobody wanting to run me over or shoot me, as those smartasses in the gas station had been warning me a couple of days ago, but the only people I see on the side of the road are some boys trying to sell me freshly caught fish! Once I get into the town itself, the streets are coming instantly alive with plenty of cars, trucks and pedestrians, making me feel somewhat home! Further on, the road to Korçë welcomes me with infernal traffic and several steep hairpin bends which challenge hard all those old and wrecked trucks, so I ride patiently in line for the next 20 miles, then I serve another portion of chaos inside the city, until it’s suddenly all over: I’m off onto the SH75 leading basically nowhere, therefore I’m all by myself on a stretch of cracked tarmac which narrows down with each mile I advance, slowly dodging the overwhelmingly numerous ruts and potholes. The scenery, on the other hand, is truly breath-taking and compensates for the road’s poor quality – I’m in the middle of an ocean of mountain crests, which are stretching far into the horizon in all directions, with almost no human being in sight. Sadly, the beauty of nature stands in strong contrast to the extreme poverty of the few villages I’m passing by – the houses and yards are poorly kempt and decrepit, cars, even old and wrecked, are sparse, being replaced by mules and donkeys as transportation means and, few miles farther, several bored road workers are patching the huge potholes in the road by shovelling dirt into them. By far, the image that impresses me the most is the one of a dull communist era apartment building in the outskirts of the small town of Ersekë, its windows half-covered in makeshift brickwork leaving just a small opening into the middle, probably as an attempt to increase the thermal insulation during the harsh cold winters! Nevertheless, as in most of the poor and backward regions I’ve travelled to so far, the people are friendly and welcoming, many of them are greeting me as I’m passing by and, although I’m not really the social type, I feel obliged to return this kindness and wave back to each of them. In the end, Albania doesn’t seem to be the scarecrow I’ve heard of too many times at home at all!
Further on from Ersekë, the road climbs the second major ridge I have to cross enroute the Greek border, this time through a widely forested area, where I encounter many of the famous half-spherical concrete bunkers built during the communist era, in order to resist potential foreign military invasions. The word of mouth is there had been about 75,000 of these kind throughout the entire country, at a total population of less than 3 million people. Although the birth of the modern Albanian state some 100 years ago hadn’t been quite smooth and easy-going, also involving several attempts of annexation of its territories from its mightier neighbours – Greece, Yugoslavia and the overseas Italy, it’s not particularly clear to me whom they were afraid of later on, during the times it had become the poorest and most self-isolated country in Europe! Eventually, I’m approaching the end of my route through Albania and, after a series of blind bends into the woods, the small town of Leskovik reveals itself in front of me, superbly set in a large steep sloped mountain saddle, below an enormous vertical stone wall. From this point on, the freshly rebuilt road descends in staggering tight hairpins towards the deep Vjosë River valley, where the recently opened border crossing point of Tre Urat is located. My own descent proves to be equally dizzily, as the impulse of speeding up at the sight of the flawless tarmac ahead of me is promptly penalised by the debris and fresh cow pies in some of the bends, and even when I’m already on the bottom of the river valley I still can’t believe I escaped crashing down as the result of the uncontrolled skids I’ve experienced!
At the border, of course I’m the only one who’s disturbing the staff’s noon spleen and, as a punishment maybe, they assault me with questions: what have I been to Albania for, where did I get in, which one was my route and so on; and, damn them, they speak such good English that I can’t even pretend I don’t understand what they’re asking me! Meanwhile, another officer is thoroughly studying my passport and my bike’s registration and insurance, writes them down in a registry, then sorrowfully gives the documents back to me. Right when I think I’m through, there comes their customs comrade, asking the usual questions – what do I carry in my luggage, did I buy anything from Albania, did I sell anything (wtf???), but he doesn’t take my word for it, so he demands I take all my bags off the bike and open them and he’s not fully satisfied until he sees the bottom of each one of them! Well, I’m eventually off, I stay for five more minutes with them, in order to pack everything back and put the bags on the bike and finally they lift the barrier. I cross the bridge still swearing them inside my helmet and enter the Greek check-point on the opposite bank with the EU citizen’s serenity coming back home from the wild. Shit, I couldn’t have been more wrong! The Greeks are either bored, or overwhelmed by their importance as vigorous guards of the Schengen area. Damn, you aren’t that vigilant with the Aegean Sea illegal migrants, but you’ve found me instead as a threat to European security and welfare! They diligently check and scan all my documents and also ask me what my business was in Albania. “Just travelling” seems not a valid answer for them, as they double-check everything once more, then reluctantly pass me over to the customs officer. This one, fortunately, doesn’t want to look inside my bags, but lectures me a long and boring speech about the cross-border forbidden items, emphasizing on drugs and fire arms (again, wtf???) and the limited quantities of alcohol and tobacco I’m allowed to bring into the EU, all this while I’m making superhuman efforts to restrain myself from a hysterical laughter – whoever has listened to Greeks speaking English knows what I’m talking about! In the end, the guy calmly asks me if I understand my legal binds, I confirm and reach for my documents. Not yet though, as he goes back into his office, scans them once more into his computer, then he comes back and ceremoniously tells me: “Welcome to Greece!”, while he gives me back my papers. God, I’m about to shed a tear at this moment’s magnitude! :)
Well, it’s already past noon, as I’ve lost more than an hour at the border, and I’ve got 130 more miles to ride up to the town of Kalabaka, nearby the world famous Meteora hilltop monasteries, where I’d like to sleep tonight. Meanwhile, I plan to visit – that is on foot – the city of Ioannina and the picturesque mountain town of Metsovo, have lunch and totally avoid the motorway, as the old national road which is running in the same direction looks incredibly good on the map, meaning it doesn’t seem to have any straight-line sections throughout its entire length. Consequently, in order to gain some time and also because I’m really hungry, I take full advantage of the flawless road leading to Ioannina, which, as most of the recently built Greek highways, is broad enough to allow me overtake ongoing cars without crossing the middle line and features the perfect trace and incline in its bends, so that I don’t have to slow down below 60 mph at any moment. Once I get to the city, I park my bike on a sidewalk – try doing this anywhere throughout Western Europe, I dare you! :) – right in the core of its old centre, beside the citadel, then spot a taverna where I heartily tuck in a gyros – “Welcome to Greece!”, as the guy at the border just said to me – and take a long walk in the cobblestone paved narrow streets inside the 10th century castle walls. Back on track again, I leave the city along the northern shore of its namesake lake and I take the old national road eastwards, across the main section of the Pindus mountain range. Exactly as I’ve been expecting it to be, this road is truly each biker’s dream – completely traffic free after the “Egnatia Odos” motorway has been built, connecting the city of Thessaloniki to the Ionian seashore at the port of Igoumenitsa, broad and covered with flawless tarmac, it is basically an endless series of bends and hairpins which invites you to reach for your riding skills limits. For me, I have to admit, this is the first time I get to scratch the tarmac with my pegs while riding a cruiser, the only limitations in madly twisting the throttle being the odd stones on the roadway and the fugitive thought that there wouldn’t be many chances to get help in case of a crash, as the very result of sparse traffic. Nevertheless, I ride with a crazy delight, the never-ending twists and turns make me lose my sense of orientation, but curiously this doesn’t bother me at all and I don’t even realize it’s been more than an hour since I left Ioannina. I feel almost sorry when I get to the road sign pointing to Metsovo, but I really want to visit this one too, as it has long been the largest centre of Aromanian life in southern Epirus – known by the name of Aminciu, so I exit the main road and ride slowly up to the downtown square, as the narrow town streets are full of pedestrians walking by and also because they’re paved with extremely slippery cobblestones; I park my bike in the shade of an enormous plane tree and take a short tour on foot and a couple of photos, too – it’s quite nice, tidy and beautifully set up, but it looks a bit too touristy and artificial for my taste. Sadly, it leaves me the impression of being just a replica of the authentic Greek scenery!
From Metsovo towards Meteora, at least up to the motorway junction, I get to ride another section of superb free road, but this time I don’t speed up anymore and choose to enjoy the true mountain landscape instead. There are sheep herds grazing in the meadows and I also have quite a pleasant encounter with some friendly shepherd dogs during the short stop I make for some more photos of this alpine paradise. The last part of the route is much less attractive than the rest of it, that is a regular and quite busy road in both directions. Anyway, I had to chill down a bit after the mad race I’ve done before, so I’m not overly bothered by that thing. The only event worth mentioning is the mixed awe and envy reaction of a young guy attending the tables of a roadside taverna where I stop for a coffee – he asks me where I come from, which is my route onwards and whether I stopped to wait for my travel mates and, when I answer I’m travelling alone, he effectively rolls his eyes and whispers as for himself: “Beautiful!” Finally, I get to meet someone who truly understands this thing I’m doing! I reach Kalabaka at the fall of dark, but there’s no worry as I’ve already booked earlier a room in a reasonable hotel. I take a shower, then go for a walk in the both tourists and locals packed town streets, have dinner and a couple of beers in a quiet restaurant and eventually call it a day. A long and outstanding one, as it seems quite unreal to me that this very morning I’ve been packing my tent in a campsite somewhere in North Macedonia, then I crossed that wild area in Albania and now I’m basically in a completely different world! I bet I’ll be sound asleep tonight.
SH75 in Northern Epirus, Albania
The Nemërçka mountain range
The Nemërçka mountain range
SH75 in Northern Epirus, Albania
Leskovik, Albania
Ioannina, the citadel walls
Ioannina, inside the citadel
Ioannina, Greece
Lake Ioannina
Metsovo, Greece
Metsovo, Greece
The Pindus mountain range
Kalabaka, Greece
The unmistakable charm of Greek Macedonia and the dull ride home. 670 miles
Habitually, I wake up early in the morning and move around quite fast; I pack the few luggage I brought with me into the hotel room, go downstairs for breakfast – poor and prosy, bad luck with that! – and, as I’ve learned my lesson and already paid for accommodation since yesterday evening, I set off way ahead of the hordes of tourists going to visit Meteora. As my mood is mainly set for riding instead of being a tourist, I’m not going to waste any time climbing the long and steep stairs leading to the hilltop monasteries themselves, but I’ve conveniently planned my route onto the road winding among most of the enormous rock pillars which are hosting them, so that I may get to see these World Heritage sites on the move; moreover, I also take a short detour back and forth from the main track, in order to get really close to one of them – the 14th century Great Meteoron Holy Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Saviour. Shining in the bright morning sun, I can tell the tourist promotion photos don’t do them any justice, as they are truly impressive in reality, appearing like a connection point between the prosaic world below and the heavenly kingdom. There’s no wonder the entire ecclesiastic complex attracts several million visitors each year! After Meteora, the road climbs in large bends towards the nearby hill crest, through green pastures totally uncommon to Greece as I know it; by the way, somewhere around the maximum altitude point I pass by a suggestively named village – Vlachava, roughly meaning <the place inhabited by Vlachs>, this one being the name Aromanians are known throughout the Balkans, including Greece; and, since one of their main traditional occupations has always been sheep breeding, I think things are crystal clear regarding this matter, although this place is actually located in the north-western corner of Thessaly, hence quite outside my people’s historical homeland, which stretches from the Pindus mountain range as far north as the Treskavica Mountain, nearby Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Further on, I turn eastwards, across countless sharper or milder mountain ridges, in the direction of Elassona, a small town located at the foothills of the imposing Mount Olympus. The sun is rising above the surrounding hills, there’s hardly anybody on the road or in the streets of the small villages I’m passing by and I can hear the Sunday morning mass in the speakers of their churches; it’s an authentic and idyllic ambiance, so very different to the touristic beehive in Meteora! An hour and a half later I arrive in Elassona, which looks quite dull and uninspiring to me, so I skip going to the downtown and turn northwards instead, climbing the lower slopes of the mythological home of gods. Although its main peak is 9,573 ft. high, the massif is extremely steep and this means the road passes by quite close, but still at low altitude, the landscape being much less spectacular than the stunning one I’ve ridden yesterday. I’m a bit disappointed, especially that, as I’m approaching the city of Katerini, I’m also getting closer to the Aegean seashore and the boring Central Macedonian plain around the Axios Delta. Even I hate riding on motorways, this time I reluctantly take the one towards Thessaloniki, in order to get past that one as soon as possible, the heat and busy traffic not making it any easier for me. As my vacation days are almost over and I’ve also been to both Thessaloniki and Kavala – Northern Greece’s most important cities – quite recently, I guess I’m going to skip them and fill the rest of the day by making a brief foray to the nearby island of Thassos. Therefore, I stay on the motorway for all the section along the large Koronia and Volvi Lakes, then ashore the Strymonian Gulf and beside the foothills of Mount Pangaion, with the exception of a short detour to the closest village, in search for fuel. Eventually, after more than two hours of agonizing boredom, I reach the exit towards Keramoti, where the Thassos ferry terminal is located. I get to the port at about three in the afternoon, embark the ship which is almost ready to sail and lie down in the sunshine on its upper bridge, seeking for a bit of much-needed rest during the quite short crossing time.
Half an hour later, I disembark the ferry in the island’s main port, then quickly leave the small town along the eastern, more rugged coast. The road climbs in large bends the slopes of the 3,950 ft. high Mount Ypsarion, through a dense forest which, here and there, lets me take short glimpses of the intense blue sea and the white marble quarry and beaches below. The latter look so interesting and exotic, that I can’t resist the temptation and turn left on a dusty gravel road, which descends in tight hairpins down to the shoreline. Although it’s only the beginning of the summer holidays season, the beach is full of people, but I don’t have much time to linger around, so I just take a couple of photos and turn back to the main road. Few miles farther, I leave this one once again, this time heading to the small twin resorts of Chrisi Ammoudia and Chrisi Akti – these Greek names meaning Golden Beach and Coast, respectively, where I intend to spend the rest of the afternoon and the night, too. Indeed, a long and wide golden sandy beach welcomes me along a large semi-circular bay, lined by several rows of hotels and guesthouses, plenty to choose from. First, I stop for dinner at a random beachside taverna, then I rent a room with a nice terrace opening towards the imposing mountain slope behind the village and head to the beach, where I remain until the fall of dark; not quite an appropriate ending for a traveller’s regular day, still of great use after several ones of almost non-stop riding.
Paradoxically, although I’m facing a long ride home today, in the morning I act contrary to my usual routine and waste an awful lot of time over breakfast, coffee and packing, to the extent of leaving the guesthouse really late for the ten o’clock ferry to the mainland. Consequently, I run a reckless mad race onto the twists and turns of the narrow coastal road back to the port, arriving there just in time to hastily embark the already full ship. This first step successfully accomplished, once I get to the other side I speed up towards the motorway, trying to overtake as many of the ongoing cars as possible, hence most of them hold Romanian license plates and they’ll surely form a long line at the Bulgarian border crossing point of Makaza. Ironically, while riding on the motorway itself towards the city of Komotini, most of those cars just overtake me back, as the strong front wind makes it uncomfortable for me to do more than 75 mph, but I get to catch up with them once again at the border, where I ruthlessly cut the whole line with a broad grin on my face and leave them behind for good, as the road in Bulgaria is completely traffic free and I really don’t fear the potential speed traps at all. Onto the overly well-known transit route through Haskovo – Stara Zagora – Veliko Târnovo – Ruse I have the same fast-forward sensation as ever, the villages, junctions and bends just rolling in front of me without anything worth noticing, until I lose track of time. In order to break the monotony a bit, I ride through the centre of the enroute cities instead of taking their belt roads, this way having the chance of stopping for traffic lights, watching the passers-by or swearing at the odd driver who cuts me off – just regular city riding routine, you know! :) Further on, I wisely take a couple of shortcuts – the first one through the village of Tulovo, which spares me about 10 miles of crowded highway, and the other by Nikolaevo, onto a barely six feet wide backroad, helping me avoid the ancient cobblestone pavement and enormous speed bumps in the town of Gurkovo – before crossing the Balkan / Stara Planina mountain range. At about five in the afternoon, I get close to the Danube bridge at Ruse, unfortunately not close enough, as the apocalyptical line for the toll payment booths is stretching for several miles, up to the half of the city’s belt road. The parallel rows of cars are standing too close to each other for me to filter between them, so I hastily decide to make a detour through the city centre, in order to reach directly to the front of the line from another direction. Sadly, as I’m quite an old school rider and usually don’t use the GPS, I miss a turn and manage to get myself lost onto some one-way streets; I wander a bit, get to the cargo railway station, then to the port, which both are in totally different directions than the one I need to go to, then I eventually find the right way and cross the bridge without stopping at all, as motorcycles don’t have to pay the damn toll. Compared to the more than 1,500 miles I’ve ridden during the last five days, the distance from the border to my place is just a walk in the park, therefore at seven o’clock sharp I get off the bike in my driveway. That’s been a hell of a tour!
Meteora, Greece
Meteora, Greece
At the foothills of Mount Olympus
Sailing to Thassos
Thassos, Mount Ypsarion
Thassos, the marble quarry and beach
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