The Doc.

I got my bike to the surgeon today. :)
beautiful job. Mr. Zafiroulis in Larisa,
welded my fork nicely and now i can ride again carefree!
hop. hop.

it feels like i never i left this town now that i am back.. :)

A dream..

i saw this the first night i slept in thessaloniki and its not a joke.

i was riding my bicycle in a road, there was a sidewalk and a bus stop..
everything normal exept that , my tires were submerging in the road making a sound like krits -krits-krits.
the road was not a road, it was all a huge bugatsa with cheese....
a bit surrealistic no?
jem

Barcelona -Elassona mission acomplished! :)

hello!!yes barcelona elassona is a reality!
i left thessaloniki yesterday morning after having a very good time in the film festival over there..
so i rode untill katerini ,then went inside between mt.olympus and mt.pieria utill i reached ellasona (ole) and then i finally aproached larisa! nice.
no problems with the weather today... the only thing is that i had at least 50 tsompanboskila (dogs that guard sheeps.) at groups of five or more ,atacking me in only 3 hours. thankfully with no casualties on both sides..
i just had to face them and make it clear that i was not scared of them.
after that one or two aBbRRRRT and some OuSTo was enough to get me on my way again,dog-free. :)
so now ,chill, tsipuro, and i ill be on my way soon. i have a lot of friends here as i was studing in this town for 3,5 years.. :)
good times.. so.. cheers and see you soon again i n a few days.

aand a video just when i entered greece...

just when i entered..
feels like home haha

Trans-Balkanik! the train from the underworld!

jojojo!

its me again ! this time coming back to you from familliar grounds! after 24 almost hours of train i reached thessaloniki!
i used the only direct connection between zagreb and north greece.. a train that goes through hrvatska ,serbia,fyrom, and stops at thessaloniki greece.

the train is an old train like the ones we had in greece a few years ago. its dirty and it has dirty people working in it. jeje

the thing is that there is not a certain regulation about transporting bikes with train so everybody tries to take advantage of it.

at first i wanted to have a bed and the guy in the train said that i should pay 10 euros more and also give him "something" more to have a drink.
so when i tried to pay him with Croatian money he said no and that he would only accept euro (!) i didnt have any euros so i said, kuna or nothing.. after that he asked for more money
because it was not his preferred currency :P
he asked for 140 kuna that is 20 euros. i said no, its too much , so the deal broke and i just left and had a normal seat.
it was ok in the normal seats anyway.

now, apart from my ticket i had to pay overweight for transporting my bike...
That, i also had to pay it aboard... so...
i payed 3 times.
one at the croatian .train conductor, one at the serbian one and one more at the f.y.r.o.m.-ian conductor. everytime someone working in the train changed ,the new one was asking for money.!
luckily i had made friends with a family from f.y.r.o.m before the last time , so when the last guy asked me for money they told him that no and i already had payed and the guy just asked for one euro..

ridiculous .. anyway

it was a good experience and if someone is just traveling with out any bikes or something weired i would suggest it to anybody.
actually i suggest that all people from greece should travel in the balkans. know your neighbor!

zagreb was very beautiful and i had a very good time with sanja, my host there.
people in croatia are very much like Greek people i think in their attitude and way of behaving .

from the train i saw very beautiful sceneries. people working with the earth, even with horses..

the train crossed the bridge that was bombed by nato in serbia when a train full of civilians was crossing it. i met interesting people in that train and actually had quite a lot of fun!

hvala (thank you) good people for everything.

i will get back with the photos and the new stories from the greek stretch of the trip!
see you soon everybody

some thoughts...

hello everybody.
i am going to sum up things untill now.

so i have covered untill now 2700 km more or less. (40km+ or -)
i say more or less because the thing that measures speed and distance gave away his spirit
because of the cold. i hope it gets better now that i am spending time in houses the last days though..

in split, i stayed in the house of Sam , a very nice guy ,he , ''panic'' his girl and also their nice dog sviiiita made me feel like home for a few days and finally i had the chance to really rest.
all the tiredness from all this days of cycling is coming out now..

after that i found my self in Zagreb in the house of Sanja (another couchsurfer) for one night.
we also had a good time with all her friends and 5 dogs. :)

About the bike now,it has 2 cracks on the fork, one small and one bigger.
the good news is that the manufacturer had a very good customer support and respected their warranty on the bike so i am having a new fork sent in my house in greece in some days.
the brand is www.dawescycles.com and its nice to see a company that respects their customers. thats why i mention the brand name.

so what now. ?
after the awful weather in the coast that turned my moral into dust, i had to re-evaluate the plan. i was not anymore willing to ride there.

Biggest problem for me now is the short days and long nights. It means, that in order to keep up
with the average daily goal distance, i have to ride all the 80-100 km that i do normally, in one go without having many chances to stop and enjoy my surroundings. . or relax a bit.
thats creates some stress. because i just ride in order to go somewhere and this is not nice.

also it means almost 14 hours of doing nothing and having to sit in the tent trying to sleep
or whatever.

concidering also that most of the time when i ride i spent the time or alone, or in small places. villages ,with old people normally. and that i cant comunicate with them well because usually they dont speak english or spanish or greek :P
and of course the unpredictable weather.the whole experience is becoming quite difficult..

so thats way i decided to fast forward from this place. and jump to the last etape of my trip which is Greece of course .

plan is go to thesaloniki, and then ride down untill larisa crossing olympos untill ellasona, then larissa , and then head to volos and then pass on maybe from glyfa to the island of evvoia ride down to marmari and then pass on to the last strech and aproach athens.
this will be at least 700 km more
so i gues ill complete all that with 3400 km more or less and not 45oo.

i hope you dont feel like i am cheating. :)
but this way i ll have the chance to ride greece more relaxed , having a bit more time.
and also the advantage to speak a familiar (at least) language. :P

thats all for now . i ll post when there is something new to say .jeje
so see you soon everybody.

Zagreb!

so i took the train.!
sorry igoumenitsa voters. :)
i ll take another train in some days and go to skopje i think
or thessaloniki directly
depends on the weather and mood.
..from whichever place ,i will cycle to athens..
:)
i guess i am cutting a piece of the route,i am sorry..

photos are about to come!

so what am i gonna do after all?

i dont know.
thing is that tonight i will take either the train to zagreb or the boat to ancona
and then i'll see..

jm so everybody will have to wait for my next post to see what happened.
jeje

what will the (not so fearless) cyclist do next?

continue his adventures inside the Balkans?
chicken out and head to more familiar ground (igoumenitsa?)
find a girl and have a family in split? :P

stick around for the continue of this grrrreat story !
whewww whew

fiiinary. i am in split.. what now ?

sooo...

here i am in split,in a critical turn of my trip.. situation is this. the weather is beginning to be much more unpredictable. it turns from a nice day to a windy but really windy and also maybe rainy. in minutes.

the last days cycling here at the croatian coast was not much of a fun. i had a lot of wind against me,rain,wind again and some more wind. also as night is falling at 4.30 nowdays i dont have actually time for anything. i just need to pedal all day.

one more thing is that the coast may be pretty but. first its all more or less the same thing.

sea, rocks eventually some pinetrees and again rocks and sea. whats wrong with all this?

that it looks extremelly like greek coasts.. almost identical.

plus, the croatian drivers can compete the greek ones in bad driving manners. They beep at me to get out of the way, trucks passing me very close and fast and people in general considering me as an obstacle on the street.

overall it has not been the best strech of my trip. in summertime i would be able to enjoy the nice beaches and everything but now its not exactly the right time for this.

sooo considering all this . i have decided that i dont want to ride the coast anymore..

my choices are.

go with ferry to italy and then pass on to igoumenitsa. from that ride to athens,or thesaloniki firsts and then athens.

or with trains and blah,blah, go to zagreb ,then to skopja ,capital of f.y.r.o.m and from that, ride to thesaloniki and then athens. thing is that i can only see one road leaving skopja towards greece and its a highway that i am not permited to ride on . if anyone has some input about that road very wellcome to pass it on please.

so i dont exatly know what to do.. the boat looks atractive. the trains are a bit more complex about transporting the bike. but i dont really know..

so as i think of it please vote on the poll on your left! jejej

hasta luego. :)

Cooking class :)

i know ,iknow... i ll just keep on cycling.. :P

highs and downs ....

another post today..
i reached zadar. it was something i have never seen before in my life. the wind was so strong that i thought really,that it could lift me completely at some point.of course i could not ride most of the time. iwas just walking pushing the bike in flat ground... i got discouraged and i did auto stop to get away from the windy zone..
a nice guy took me and moved me 8 km further. that was it, no more wind... incredible.

after that i realized that i have technical problems too. it seems that i have a crack in my fork.
just below the bolt that holds the rack that holds my front right bag.. it doesnt look too dangerous but i have to find a solution for this fast as it can get worse and have a broken fork..
i think i will try toreach split in two days and work out the problem there. or maybe here,tommorow. i dont know..

apart from all this zadar has something magical.
water organ.
i cant describe it actually but i will try, the bay has a system of tubes beneath it that as the sea moves it pushes the air in the tubes and they produce sound.

it sounds like the sea meditating.it makes everything , wind ,movement,sea ,colors, views combine into one thing.it all comes together. music...
so i am happy again. :)
it will all work out nicely, there is a reason for everything and me today here watching the sun set. i found the reason to be beaten by the rain and wind for two days. in this.. :)

peace and love to everybody.

Croatian coastline...

ok.. in croatia now.. things have passed from one edge to the other..
first day, i entered from Slovenia to Croatia with beautiful weather, and everything was sweet.
i passed from the town of rijeka that was very nice.The views and everything was just spectacular..
so i kept on cycling happy and satisfied..
the road that follows the croatian coast was the only road traversing the coast a few years ago.now there is a highway.
Its a road that is by the sea most of the time but by no means can be considered to be flat. its a constant up and down with big altitude differences. also it is scenic, but it looks a lot like views from Greece. Rocks,sea and generally a hard landscape. beautiful .but not very unusual to me..
also as a tourist planet,the coast is a bit dead now. So no a lot of real villages on the way
,most are touristic resorts.
Of course the big cities are there but there is quite a distance between them.
So second day began like that.
Soft rain ,and soft headwind that in a short time turned into hard rain and hard wind.
cruel up and downs on the road. and nowhere to have a coffee...
i had to use the ferry to go to Pag island. there after riding for a while i
reached the city of Pag. i was already completely wet. soaked i would say. so i gave up for the day.
I had cycled for 4.30 hours and had only covered 50 km (normally lately i do 90-100) ....
i rented. a room and tried to get me dry..
so all in all i think that yesterday was the hardest day from the beginning of my trip.
today there is no rain. i am having a coffee right now. the wind is still here.
sometimes its even hard to walk.
i will try to do some distance today also and hope for the weather to get better....
i have to decide what will be the way i will follow next..
the coast?
should i go back inside of the balkans?
albania?
montenegro?
serbia?
jmmm
goal now is to reach Split and there i will think of all that.
so see you soon.

oh Thank you everybody for the support. its nice to read all of your comments. .
it gives me strength to go on. :)
ciao

landscapes

flowing..

ok.. so.. i had a great time a great time in Ljubljana with Masa and her family. (couchsurfing did it again.) .. yesterday was the day of tasting the new wines, so everybody that has a wine productioon makes celebracion with a lot of food and of course loads ofwine! its called st martins day if i am not mistaking the name of the saint.. jem jem.. i ate a lot and drunk a lot even though i was trying not to submit to all this drinking thing but Borris made me drink more and more.
at the end i saved my self hidding behind a full glass of wine.. :)
so next morning i set of to go to zagreb but,after spending 1 hour going around Ljubljana without
managing to find the correct road to zagreb, i met two cyclists that convinced me that it was much better to actually ride at the coast of croatia.... so, having heard that quite a few times, i changed my plans and now i am heading back to the coast. .
i dont know what i am going to do after that .. the thing is that this way i will not get the chance to see beograd and zagreb... anyway the plan is fluid so it will adjust. to the reality. jem?
well thats all for now.
sometimes i have guilts cause i am having such a good time but i will get over it fast :)
so see you soon with fresh news!

Ljubljana!

hello people.! i am in Ljubljana after a quite difficult ride .

i had a big nail raping my back tire ,fixed it and kept on, then a big climb in the mountain with a lot of fog, and after that ice falling from the sky witch i actually prefer from rain cause it doesn´t make me wet. After all that . i had a very good wellcome in ljubljana! in an hour of wandering around i had 3 invitation from people to sleep at their house! perfect.

so now resting again, at the house of Masa. a girl from couchsurfing. everything very nice ! i am impressed by the hospitality .. what can i say. thank you.!

so photos and tommorow ill move on with direction Zagreb!

a dove andiamo...

i am already in slovenia!
nova gorica.!
i hear that a lot of bears live at the mountain aaaand i will go to a hotel because i am not willing to take the chance.
brr imagine.. lying alone in the tent and suddenly lisening heavy,byt reealy heavy fotsteps around the tent.. nonono.
another time maybe.

until then watch this very nice and educating video.
nothing to do with the project though.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2En3H10eRZc

some statistics

ok.. so
i am in padova right now. 30 km from venezia.
soon the italian part of the trip will be over.
so here are some statistics.
total distance untill now 1650 km
days on the road 27
days of rest 9 (quite a lot jm?)
so
daily average distance : 1650/27= 61 km and a bit more.

well i dont know how much distance is left. the idea is to cross
slovenia,croatia,serbia,f.y.r.o.m.,and then drink alot of wine in Thesaloniki .
Depending on the day of my arrival in thesaloniki i might take the train to athens or not..
i dont know..
Everything is ok untill now. body,moral and everything in a good shape. its beggining to be
quite a bit colder every day. also, day is getting smaller and smaller so that means less hours available for cycling, but i will start to beggin a bit earlier. That is 30 minutes before sunrise or so..

thanks to the Couchsurfing.com site i am now in a students house in padova with some very nice and friendly and funny people. its nice to sleep in a house now and then..
so thats all for now . see you soon.

Bill the prioni

Vasilis !
today we are going to split. as Bill the train is going to take the boat from Venezia to patras.! i will keep on goin to the way to slovenia. :)
it was nice to have company for the last 1,5 week, but now i will have to continue alone..
jem . anyway the most intresting part of the ride is about to beggin. i cant wait.!
so thanks for the nice company billy! see you in athens.

lalalala

aaand this time only photos.

jeje

tommorow we'll be in Padova. everything cool :)

Moving on..

ok..
So we are in Cremona Right now.. we have been moving quite fast the last days..
we decided to change the route we had in mind an visit the lake of Garda. west of Venezia..
the last days we are in open fields,flat surfaces. they are ok, a bit faster if there is no headwind
but are also boring a bit, a lot of humidity in the tent everynight ,we have to let our sleeping bags dry out in the sun later on each day.. in general though everything is going smooth, in 3 or 4 days we are going to be in Padova and then venezia. ! after that Trieste. and then the balkans..
so see you soon everybody. this time no photos . sorry :)