Strumica + 5km – Zagorci

When we woke up this morning there was a bunch of older guys already fishing down at the river coming out of the reservoir lake. Nobody cared about our camping there.

We left a little later and climbed up to another, much bigger valley with another, much bigger reservoir lake. We met a guy who had lived in Cologne for 43 years before moving back to his home village in Macedonia, and who was happy to speak some German. He gave us 2 bottles of water and a bottle of cola.

Our road ended and turned into a dirt track. And what a dirt track. Sometimes it was a royal pain to keep cycling. Fortunately, it was mostly dry soil, even though we had to ford a couple of streams, but that was actually easy.

We made it to Zagorci, a village beautifully located at the western slopes of the valley we had been cycling along today. It was mostly abandoned, though. We met an old couple tending to their bees and from the little bits we could understand it was clear that there were only very few people still living here.

We camped more or less in the middle of the village, next to a well with drinking water.

Cycled: 50km

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Melnik – Strumica + 5km

The ride down to the Struma valley was easy, as was most of the rest of today’s ride. Not far from the city of Petrich I spotted a mini turtle on the road – and safely carried it across.

Petrich itself didn’t impress us much and we didn’t stop at all despite being in dear need of sun cream and a properly working battery for my phone.

Instead we continued along the valley of the river Strumeshnica towards Macedonia. The border crossing was easy and the border guard happily stamped our passports as souvenirs.

We are camping near a reservoir lake above the city of Strumica that has lots of plastic waste floating in it and looks too dirty to have a swim in. A bit disappointing, not only after a sweaty day of riding.

Cycled: 87km

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Melnik – Rozhen – Melnik

Melnik is located in an amazing area where wind, water, and sun have eroded the ‘sand stone’ hills to form interesting pyramidal shapes. In the afternoon we left for a little round-trip.

We cycled on paved road to Rozhen, then up a hill to its monastery. We had a grand view from there.

Then we tried to cycle a hiking path, but that turned out to be impossible, so we pushed the bikes. The path first followed a dry riverbed, and then, all off a sudden, emerged at the top of one of the ‘sand mountains’, offering a spectacular view of the surrounding impressive landscape in the evening sun.

The ride down on the other side of the mountain was quite exciting. We followed the hiking path again, which went down steeply.

Back in Melnik we enjoyed extremely loud, somewhat traditional Bulgarian live music with our dinner.

Cycled: ~17km
Walked/Pushed: 1km
Top speed: 70km/h

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Lake Kerkini – Melnik

We cycled along the eastern shore of Lake Kerkini, then turned east, following the river Strimonas to Bulgaria (where it is called Struma).

The last 10km before the border to Bulgaria where a bit of a challenge at times. We rode on dirt tracks that were located between the new motorway and the river. Those tracks had been flooded recently and where still quite muddy in some places.
The tracks ended and we turned east again, into the mountains, to avoid the motorway, but soon were stopped by two members of the Greek army. They ‘commanded’ us in an very arrogant and unfriendly way to turn around as there was some kind of army outpost on that hill. (I believe we were still on a public road and they had no reason nor right to force us…) So we ended up cycling on the motorway for the last couple of kilometers.

Right after the Bulgarian border we left the main road and cycled north-eastish on quiet backroads. Eventually we reached Melnik, where we are staying in a ‘tavern’.

Cycled: 66km

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Terpillos + 2km – Lake Kerkini

In the morning I fixed yesterday’s broken spoke.

From our camp site we cycled further north-eastish, and crossed the hills near the mountain Mavrovouni on dirt roads. We spotted lots of turtles that crossed our paths or jogged through the dry leaves left and right.

The ‘roads’ were bad sometimes but overall quite fun to ride on. The view from the western side of the hills onto Lake Kerkini was amazing.

There is quite some logging going on on these hills. We passed by piles and piles of cut wood. Horses, in bad shape, were grazing nearby. Probably they are being used to transport the wood from the hills down to the dirt tracks from where it is then carried away by truck, presumably. We didn’t see any human beings there.

Once down at the lake we cycled along its western shore to the town of Lithotopos at its southern end, where we had dinner, then continued after nightfall along the eastern shore for a few kilometers in search for a suitable camping spot for the night.

The weather was again sunny and pleasant with temperatures somewhere in the low to mid twenties.

Cycled: 44km

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Thessaloniki – Terpillos + 2km

Yesterday I managed to break my phone by updating some software… Now it wouldn’t even start up anymore. I had to find an Internet cafe and reflash it. All this took quite a while and we finally left Thessaloniki to the north at 12.30pm.

Thessaloniki has lots of ‘modern’ concrete appartment and office buildings, but it also has some nice spots where oldish buildings dominate. And of course there are the occasional ancient ruins.

We took minor roads as much as possible, and sometimes even rode on dirt tracks just for the fun of it. We visited the site of some ‘Early Christian Byzantine Settlement’. It was closed, though, and even after climbing over the fence there wasn’t too much to see.

Eventually we stopped near a river, crossed it through a ford, and pitched tents on some former meadow.

Cycled: 64km

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Budapest – Thessaloniki

The second night without sleep. After my arrival at half past 10pm last night we packed our luggage and re-packed the bikes into cardboard boxes. We were finished at 3.30 or 4am. I had a cat-nap and we left at 5am for the airport.

The flight went smoothly and everything arrived undamaged. However, we noticed that on András’s bike a little piece of the rear hub had actually broken off, though that had happened in Budapest or before already. We decided it was not mission-critical.

Anyway, we cycled into Thessaloniki on side roads and unpaved tracks, and decided to stay there for the night.
We almost instantly fell asleep after sitting down on the beds…

Cycled: 21km

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Bremen – Budapest

Today, once again, I headed to Budapest to start a trip from here. This time, my brother and I will travel across the Balkans. We will fly to Thessaloniki in northern Greece tomorrow and then cycle to Belgrade on a zig-zagging route.

The trip is named after a book by Karl May, btw. ;)

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DIY Frame Bag No. 2

This gallery contains 3 photos.

Tonight I finished frame bag No. 2. Inside, it features the holders for tent pegs and tent poles from the previous version, some velcro that can be used to form a little pocket for electronic devices (I’m going to use … Continue reading

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DIY Tent Compression Bags

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Cramming the tent into the frame bag isn’t much fun, and the result is not satisfying. The tent is not well compressed and it feels like there is lots of space in there that is basically wasted. So I experimented … Continue reading

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DIY Frame Bag

This gallery contains 6 photos.

Inspired by a post somewhere, and in preparation for the next trip, I decided to sew my own frame bag for my travel bike. I got myself a sewing machine and a friend showed me how to use it. I … Continue reading

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Two hours in the snow

My travel bike has had quite a long break now and it was time to remove the dust and get it in shape for the next trip. Two spokes needed to be fixed that I hadn’t fixed after my last cycling trip. I did that a few weeks ago, only to discover the next day that 4 more had cracked over night. All of them broke somewhere in the middle, not near the rim or the hub.

I fixed them yesterday and left for a test ride at 9pm. We’ve had a bit of snow over the last two or three days and I was looking forward to the ride in the dark and cold; temperatures were around -4°C.
In the end it wasn’t overly spectacular, though still very enjoyable. There was not a lot of snow left and the paths I rode on were partly covered with ice instead. On the other hand, it hadn’t been freezing long enough so that the soil on the fields was still soft and puddles under the thin snow cover weren’t frozen. I got stuck in the mud a few times. As soon as the rims got wet they developed a coating of ice that prevented the brakes from working properly.

On the way back another spoke snapped and I found yet another broken one this morning. I need to work on my wheelbuilding skills.

Cycled 32km in about 2 hours, partly off-road.

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Tbilisi – Kyjiw – Amsterdam – Bremen

The night was short. We got up at 5am, only to learn that the water had been turned off in the whole quarter. That meant: no shower with a full day of traveling ahead.
In the hostel’s lounge I met Misha, one of the owners, who I knew from last year and who had just flown in.

Irakli dropped us of at the airport and I received a precious gift from him: the magnetic taxi sign from his car’s roof (a look into the future reveals that it will be my fridge’s door handle).

We arrived in sunny and hot Kyjiw not much later, and took a crowded bus to the city center, which dropped us off at the central station after an hour’s ride. We had a quick look around and also had lunch there before we had to climb back into the bus. Another sweaty hour later we were back at the airport and hopped on the plane to Amsterdam.

This time all our luggage arrived just fine. We took a train to Groningen. This was probably the most uncomfortable part of today’s travels, as the train was packed and we ended up standing in an aisle with a crowd of other people, with no aircon for more than one hour. When everybody left we, realized we’d been on the wrong train all the time. We changed to the right one (miraculously that wrong train had gone in the right direction until now), which was completely empty.

From Groningen it was just another 2-hour bus ride to Bremen.

So, even though the entire trip went completely different from what we had had in mind when we left Bremen almost 2 weeks ago, it has been totally amazing and made me realize once more how beautiful Georgia is – in terms of people as well as nature. I’ll be back.

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Tbilisi

Another relaxed day in the city.

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Lake Sevan – Tbilisi

At night I was woken up by a noise that sounded as if someone or something had tripped over my tent’s guy-ropes. I yelled into the night but when I didn’t hear anything else I went back to sleep.

After waking up in the morning – Justus just returned from a swim in the lake – I noticed that one of the ropes was cut. Why and by whom, that remained a mystery.

We relaxed in the sun for a few hours before we started hitch-hiking back to Tbilisi. We managed well in Armenia and hitched rides with at least 5 or 6 people. A guy selling dried fish at the street side gave us some for free, and a truck driver we hitched with invited us for a coffee.

From the Georgian border the hitching went a bit slow and it started to rain, so we took a cab to Tbilisi.

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