Farewell Europe!

Farewell Europe, September 2021, Steppe FM :

The last week in the garden goes by quickly, we have a thousand things to do: finish planting and watering, fix the creaky bikes, find our stuff scattered all over the place and plan the route.

We finally leave on September 15th after a last lunch with Georgio. We give ourselves 15 days to arrive in Istanbul, the programme: 650 km, 6500 meters of positive altitude difference and a border to cross.

As we ride the first ten kilometres, the road starts to climb... We leave the coast and go into the mountains. I think that in one month our muscles have completely melted. It's horribly hard! We are dragging ourselves along. We have to do 3 km/h on a road that is barely 6%. At our first break, soaked with sweat, we burst out laughing: have we really ridden so far with such rotten and heavy bikes? We start climbing again, our legs are shaking, with each pedal stroke I curse us for carrying so much. It would be so much easier to travel with a lighter load!

Three hours later, night falls, we stop in a field where a horse is quietly grazing and we set up camp in the setting sun. We have travelled 30 km, we are behind schedule, and this from the first day. On the other hand, the tepee faces the glowing mountains, we cook by the fire and at night we have the luxury of watching a film in the wilderness.

As the days go by, it gets easier and easier. Our muscles are getting stronger, the landscapes are great, the bivouacs too and apart from a few problems with punctures (with a nice average of three per day) we catch up and ride about fifty kilometres per day. Our daily life is punctuated by flat tires. We finally decided to reinforce the tyres of the bikes with a Kevlar sheath fixed inside the tyre. Since that day, our daily life is punctuated by the punctured wheels... of the carts... Which is a little better.

Finally, after a week on the road, many bivouacs by the sea, a few beers offered by locals and a great evening spent debating with a Greek-French woman about the difference between radical feminism and liberal feminism, we arrive in sight of Alexandropouli: the last town before the Turkish border.

There is only one more beautiful descent to get there but the night catches up with us earlier than expected. We decide to go down to find our bivouac. I follow Rico and his squeaky cart, a strange smell of burnt rubber comes up to my nose and suddenly CRACK... I am stopped, I see Rico cycling away before I turn around and see, cut in two, my cart lying in the middle of the road.

A bad evening is in prospect. The night has fallen, Rico has come back and we look stupidly at the two pieces of the carts. The luggage has been spared, we divide it as best we can between our bikes and the remaining cart and re-assemble the other with zips. When empty, it seems to work. We set off again, the headlights light up the road. We don't have any water, a strong wind is blowing in our faces. We ride along unoccupied neighberhoods. Finally, battling against the wind, we find a house that is lit. We stop to ask for water. There is no doorbell, I open the gate and walk through the garden feeling like I don't belong here, the gravel crunching under my feet. I knock on the bay window, a man comes out...

And in fact, he is adorable, he offers us two bottles of water and proposes us to camp in the garden! The next day, he and his wife wake us up and invite us to have breakfast. They live in Germany, he is Iraqi, she is Syrian, they are on holiday here and offer us the best breakfast we have had for a long time!

We spend half a day in Alexandroupoli trying to re-weld the cart. I went all over town going from garage to garage. They all refuse. I join Rico and we decide to abandon the cart. We'll manage without it for the remaining 300 km. We sleep in a field a few kilometres from Turkey.

We arrive at the dreaded border: we leave the Schengen area and leave Europe. We expect to struggle, to have to negotiate to get through with the dog. A line of trucks several kilometres long makes us fear the worst. Nothing like that, we leave Greece without any problem. On the Turkish side it's the same thing, we pass three roadblocks under three huge arches without any problem.They don't even ask us for the dog's papers.

That's it, we are in Turkey, the water is rarely drinkable, the road has been transformed into a 4 lane road surrounded by huge monoculture fields and the people are adorable. We have 7 days to reach Istanbul, 300 km away. There is not much to tell about the first six days. We drive on the hard shoulder of a four lane road. The traffic is not very heavy and the cars do not go very fast. The hills follow one another, and so do the bivouacs a few metres from our motorway. People invite us to drink tea with them, offer us fruit and vegetables, and give us encouraging signs when they pass us.

We arrive in the agglomeration around Istanbul, with 90 km to go before we reach our accommodation. The traffic is more and more intense, the hard shoulder is getting thinner and thinner until it disappears, trucks spitting out big black clouds are passing us. We decide to take the small roads, which add distance and height differences but are much less dangerous. My rear rack, overloaded, breaks for the first time. We push the bike for 100 meters and find a mechanic who fixes it in three minutes. Here we go again.

It's 4pm, we cross the first bridge, we are officially in Istanbul! Except that we still have 60 km to go... One big climb later and we are in the middle of the city or rather in the middle of the capital. There are no more small roads but huge arteries and traffic jams. We start to ride in a very dense traffic. We drive, fortunately downhill, on a 10 lane road. We put all the possible lights on indicator mode. We take breaks every ten minutes to get the adrenaline flowing again. Cars honk, trucks and buses brush past us. Our hands are clenched on the brakes. My luggage rack breaks again... We transfer the stuff as best we can and continue.

Finally we find a wasteland in the middle of town where we stop for the night. A guard comes to see us, we are sure he will kick us out of here except that we are exhausted and there is no other place to sleep. He doesn't speak a word of English, he brings his friend back and we understand that he is offering us to sleep under a tree in the shade and asks us if we want some tea!

After this short night we are back in this urban hell. We ride the last forty kilometres slaloming between the cars on the way down and on the pavement on the way up. We finally arrive at Murat's house where we are staying this week. Tonight we have a much needed hot shower and sleep in a bed!

This is the end of an episode. We arrived in Istanbul, at the gateway to Asia, with our 30€ bikes. Mission accomplished. After 3500 km, 3 and a half months of travel, 2 and a half months of food sovereignty projects, 102 different bivouacs, about 50 flat tires and a multitude of unforgettable encounters, we have finished the trip... on our bikes!

Because we found a golden plan: accompany two horseback rides to help with the logistics before spending several weeks looking after the horses. This time we want to experiment hitchhiking with a big dog: all we have to do is find a nice disguise for Jehol to make him look like a nice harmless dog (which he is, even if he doesn't have the look of it)!

An olive grove lost by the Mediterranean:

An olive grove lost by the Mediterranean, August 2021, Steppe FM :

We arrived at the garden on the 2nd of August, in the middle of a hot afternoon. We spent the previous days riding slowly along the sea.

We first arrived at Georgio’s store, we get to know him: He is a forty-year-old Greek, he started gardening during the Greek crisis and it became his passion (Our first podcast interview about his story will come out soon).

Then he takes us to the garden, about 5 km from the village of Psakoudia, where we follow his little white Saxo on the sandy roads.

We arrive at the garden. And it’s great! It’s less than a kilometre from the sea. It’s an olive grove of about forty trees. In a corner, there is a small brick shack with holes as a window, with inside a tent and gas plates for cooking. Next to it, there are toilets that look like a fitting booth of the 30s, a sink for dishes and, most amazing, an outdoor shower.

We plant our tipi in the back of the garden where the grass is yellowed by the heat. We even add a small layer of straw under the tarp for maximum comfort!

!

The three of us dine together. Georgio runs both his vegetable shop (open 7 days a week from 8 am to 9 pm) and the garden. He’s having a hard time doing everything on his own and seems pretty happy we’re here. When we talk about projects that have already been done, we realize that he is starting to trust us to take care of daily tasks (watering, harvesting, tying tomatoes, chicken management, etc.) and especially that we will be able to take initiatives for the non-cultivated part of its small farm. In short, we are free to create new areas of crops, carry out Low Techs…

Georgio is going to pick up two young Spanish women who will also be volunteers in the garden.

An hour later, the two girls arrive. They are very different from us: very young, well dressed and with huge wheeled suitcases and this is the first time they leave their native country. We try to get to know each other by drinking a beer. And it’s not easy! One does not drink alcohol, does not speak English very well (to tell the truth, does not speak much in general, even in Spanish), the other, is much less shy, speaks very good English but seems held back by her friend.

We spend the two weeks alternating work in the garden when the heat is bearable (early in the morning and late in the afternoon) and going about our business in the middle of the day: coffee in the village to work on our podcasts with the computer, prepare the rest of the trip, contemplate the lightning of dry storms, going to the sea and beaches, napping and reading in the shade of one of the olive trees. Well, there are worse working conditions even if the sun is merciless.

We try to integrate the girls and even if I get along better and better with one, it’s a waste of time with the other. We also spend a few memorable evenings chatting with Georgio over a bottle of local wine embellished with Tsipouro (Greek grapefruit brandy that is produced directly from the garden bunches).

We usually go to bed late, because, in this scarry summer, the most pleasant is the night especially when we have a card game and a few cool beers.

Finally, the two weeks pass very quickly, the sowing of beans and pumpkin begin to come out that the girls already leave. In one day we complete the objectives we had set for ourselves. And after one last crêpe party with Georgio and his family, Rico leaves for France and the wedding of his older sister. My parents join me two days later for what will be a big week off.

After two weeks spent with my family sleeping in a bed, eating out at restaurants, debating ecofeminism with my sister, sleeping in the tipi in the middle of nowhere with the family and especially resting at the beach, I’m back in Georgio’s garden with the dog as company. I had almost forgotten the pleasant weight of loneliness.

While waiting for the few days before Rico’s arrival, there is a lot to do (grape harvest among others) especially since I realize that a large part of our seedlings in the open ground has been strangled by the weeds.

Rico back, we give ourselves a week to finish the plantations on the new boards, build two or three more improvements on the ground and especially to prepare our route and our next stop which will be for sure in Turkey!

1200 km through the Balkans

Steppe FM, July 2021, 1200 km through the Balkans :

After these last days in Croatia, at the Korana river, we rode towards Bosnia Herzegovina. The border is not a problem and we reach the big city of Bihac in the afternoon.

The cultural landscape has changed a lot, the churches are replaced by mosques, some women wear the veil, we are in a Muslim region. There are many Syrian refugees in town and on the road where we drive. After about fifteen kilometers we stop, a small old man proposes to us, with gestures because we do not have any more common language, to pitch the tent at the edge of the river in his garden. He also suggests that we watch a soccer match of the european championship. During the game we learn that he was a professional soccer player from Yugoslavia. He played for Sarajevo and even met the PSG!

For a dozen days, we ride in Bosnia. The heat, around 40°C, is almost unbearable. We try to ride very early in the morning or late in the afternoon. At noon, we make long breaks, generally in the shade of a tree or in a café. It is a fantastic country, the culture (Muslim, Orthodox and Catholic) evolves every 50 km, the landscapes follow one another, we pass from mountainous regions strewn with perfectly circular "holes" formed by the erosion of limestone. Then we ride on flat desert plateaus for tens of kilometers where water is scarce and grass is stunted. Every day we climb at least 600 meters of difference in altitude that we go down almost immediately. We met semi-wild horses, slept near lakes or dry rivers, visited Mostar by negotiating a tiny bedroom for us and the bikes and met a lot of people on the way.

One evening, we pretended to be Belgian looking to see a football match of the european championship. We ended up in a farm, nothing for 10 km around, in a room with old wallpaper we watched the defeat of Belgium while the old man who welcomed us snored on the sofa and his wife stirred fresh cheese in a huge pan. We slipped away, finishing the inevitable glass of schnapps, and set up the teepee in front of the lake under the moon: we are tired of losing, whether we are Belgian or French.

After a long day, half of which consisted in pushing the bikes on impraticable roads, some locals invited us to a café table (they must not see many travelers around here...) and then to dinner at their place in the town of Seroki Brijeg. We are welcomed by the whole family and some of their friends, one of them speaks French, for an aperitif and a huge meal. Thanks to Dragar and his family, we slept in a bed, washed our stuff and learned the history of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The next day, even though it was Sunday, Dragar opens his hairdressing salon. They "refurbished" us in 24 hours, and we had haircuts to make Beckham jealous

A last big climb at the end of the afternoon and we were in Montenegro. We chose to go by the coast to avoid steeps as much as possible. While everything had started well, the descent towards the sea was splendid and we rode about fifteen kilometers without any effort. We found ourselves in the middle of a seaside town. The evening falls, there is a lot of traffic, hotels and restaurants everywhere. We zigzagged between tourists in bathing suits, private beaches and casinos to finally find a vacant lot in the middle of the city where we could set up the teepee.

The next day, after having been kicked out of a coffee because we did not consume enough, we continued on the coast. The interior of the country looks very beautiful, which is not the case of the coast over-developed for tourism. Finally it is not as flat as we had expected, even at the edge of the sea. In spite of the heat, we had long days and enjoyed the sea during the hottest hours. In two and a half days we were at the Albanian border. This time we passed by the land.

We spent the first two nights in the second city of the country: Shkoder. We are hosted by an American couple in their sixties. They live here half of the year... between two cycling trips!

The reputation of the country we know is not well-founded, the Albanians are very welcoming : several times we are offered to eat and drink. Once, while we were sleeping, the teepee at the side of the road, we were woken up by a whole family bringing us goat cheese, half a watermelon and, inevitably, a small bottle of schnapps (which is now called raki).

In the east of Albania, approaching North Macedonia, the sky is grey, for the first time in more than a month. We are quickly disappointed by the freshness brought by the clouds when it starts to rain. Not a little shower. It rains, it hails, in a few minutes we are soaked to the bone. The road turns into a muddy torrent and it is impossible to see at 10 meters. We take shelter in a tiny café where they are obliged to scoop because the water seeps from everywhere. Finally, the rain calms down a little, we leave our watery clothes. We ask for hospitality to a family. They welcome us with pleasure in spite of the difficult communication (only the grandfather speaks some words of Italian). In their house in construction we have a room for us, we can dry our clothes. The night arrives, they invite us to drink coffee, Rico, acute illness in the stomach and in the head, declines. I find myself in the living room with the whole family. Cultural difference. Only the dean and I sit in front of a table and drink coffee. The other members of the family watch us discuss, they offer me coffee as soon as I finish my cup and cigarettes as soon as I put one out.

The next day, we have breakfast with all the family, we decline their proposals to lodge us one more night and arrive the same evening in North Macedonia.

We then spent three nights in Macedonia, just the time to go around the huge lake of Ohrid and to go down to Greece. Three nights and three strange bivouacs: the first one next to the tourist lake, we camp in an open air quarry, the second one at about ten meters from the "A3 highway" where we drive, caught up by the night. For the third bivouac, in the second city of the country Bitola, we set up the camp behind a restored amphitheater from where the guitar solos of the biggest Macedonian rock band (Leb i Sol) escaped. They let us attend the concert for free, our first concert since the pandemic!

That's it, we are in Greece. Apart from an hour spent filling in the entry form, we had no problems at the border. There is almost no relief, it would have been easy to drive if the heat was not so strong. We cook between 9 am and 5 pm. The first evening, we settle down near a lake of altitude. The place is magical, we decide to stay there for two nights. The fire blazes high and strong when the full moon rises on the horizon, at first orange it is tinged with silver during the night illuminating the camp under the stars, the tipi proudly erected towards the sky. A moonlit swim in the warm water of the lake.

The next day we share our fabulous place with a Hungarian cyclotourist we met while shopping. As a souvenir, he offers us a magnificent axe... just enough to complicate the next border!

Fortunately the road is flat because it is always very hot, during the other bivouacs we are invaded by mosquitoes, so much so that sleeping becomes a dream... One morning we find 7 of our 8 wheels punctured by thorny shells hidden in the grass. We lost a day to repair the tubes in the middle of the heat. We have no more patches, no more glue... After 7 hours, after a visit to the bike store we can leave, but the sun is already setting.

Arriving in Thessaloniki in the early evening, we spent the night walking on the huge promenade along the Aegean Sea before falling asleep in a park in the heart of the city. We spent the next day visiting the city, overwhelmed by the heat. The center is nice and the markets are great.

We continue to the South-East, in direction of the three fingers of Central Macedonia. We are about twenty kilometers away from a new chapter.

The Hellenic country marks the end of the first part of the trip. Indeed, we will stop south of Thessaloniki for at least a month. Two weeks in a project into a family farm then two other weeks for Rico to return to France by train to attend the marriage of his sister and to join me again. Iand Jehol, on the other hand, will spend these two weeks visiting the region with my family who will join me by car.