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Wednesday, October 9th - Thessaloniki to Petrich, 12,972 km
The morning is warm and fresh. There was probably a shower last night because the sidewalks a still wet in the crevices. I am off to an early start with breakfast at 7:30 and getting on the road during the morning traffic. I would have preferred leaving a bit later after the traffic but I want to make it all the way to Bulgaria tonight.
This is one of those days that I knuckle down and cycle in a determined, constant and controlled pace to achieve the maximum distance without injuring myself. I had set out with this intention when I left Split for Dubrovnik, and more recently, when I left Ioannina for Kalampaka, but on both those days I surprised with an unexpected ride. I doubt that will happen today. But the headwind from the north I have experienced the past two days has passed on and it is mild and sunny with broken cloud, which is excellent cycling weather.
The first half hour fighting the heavy, inbound traffic is a drag but in half an hour the suburbs yield to countryside and the air is fresher. By this point I have climbed a hundred metres and I have another 130 to climb to reach a low pass over a ridge of hills that separates Thessaloniki from a flat east-west valley to the north of it. This valley contains two sizable lakes, Koroneias and Volvi, somewhere to the east of my route.
I am on Hwy 12, a medium-sized highway that doesn’t have much traffic on it. It leads north to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, but there is not much over-the-border traffic between the two countries and no major towns before the border. Crossing the flat part of this next valley takes a little over half an hour. Then I begin to encounter a rolling landscape that eventually leads to bigger and bigger hills. At the 50 km mark for the day, around 11:30, I have just crossed over a 620 m pass. On the start of the down side I detour into the town of Kateres to find lunch. It is only a village but I am able to find a grocery store to supplement the few lunch supplies I have brought with me.
There aren’t many towns here in rural Macedonia beyond here, just rolling scenery. Fifteen kilometres further along the road enters a steeper sided valley and drops into the valley of the Struma River. I pass the town of Strymoniko without stopping. The valley is almost 20 km wide and the road crosses it in a straight line. At the far side of the valley I switch onto Hwy 63, which leads north up the valley into Bulgaria.
The road winds along the base of the hills on the east side of the valley. I follow it upstream for more than an hour north until the flat part of the valley ends, where the river comes out of a canyon before. I haven’t actually been near the river for the past hour because it veers west into Lake Kerkinis, which I can see in the distance across the valley. The lake is large, at least 10 km long.
There’s a bit of a valley floor in the canyon. The road remains level while the hills rise about 700 m above me on either side. At the end of the canyon I arrive at the Bulgarian border. The border guards check my passport carefully. It would be an advantage to have an American passport to enter Bulgaria, as the US has donated hundreds of millions to the new non-communist regime to help it get established. In return, Americans are given special treatment. Canadians are more of a curiosity it seems, but I do not need a visa to enter.
The problem I encounter instead is monetary. In true Balkan traditions, the Bulgarians will not exchange Greek money and visa versa, so I need to return to a money exchange kiosk on the Greek side to exchange my Greek money for American dollars. Once over the border again I can change the $US into Bulgarian currency. It is ridiculous example of the Human Comedy.
Six kilometres north of the border I turn onto Hwy 138 to reach the town of Petrich (Petritska), which lies in a valley that parallels the border twelve kilometres west
of the highway that leads north to Sofia. My eyes are open to see signs that I am in a new country, things I didn’t see in Greece. I see farmers hauling produce and other things in horse-drawn carts. The carts use the same edge-of-the-highway space that I cycle in. Before I see any carts I encounter the frequent “road apples” left behind by the horses. I see one gruesome sight that is very disturbing – a dead horse on the side of the road, killed by some motor vehicle that must have struck its cart and rammed in deep into the horse. A huge chuck of horse’s rear end is missing. I cannot free my mind of that terrible image and suddenly all the horror of my time in Croatia comes flooding back, leaving me feeling weak all over.
Fortunately Petrich is not much further. It is nearly 6 pm and I need to buy groceries before the stores close. There aren’t many retail signs in this smallish town and not many people speak English. I stop at the post office and someone there directs me to a grocery store and a bakery nearby. The western sense of service is definitely missing here. I find the unmarked bakery, select the bread I intend to buy and bring it to the cash. The proprietor takes my money and starts to ring in my purchase but the woman from the grocery store comes in to tell her some news and there is a flurry of discussing and laughter back and forth between them. Then suddenly they leave the store together to check something out and I am left standing there at least ten minutes before the proprietress returns. She makes no effort to apologize for leaving me standing there waiting for my change for so long.
Luckily, I am able to find a place here too, having procured the directions from the helpful fellow in the post office just before it closed. The room isn’t much, either in price or quality, but I am fine with that. The country is going through very hard times right now. I find a restaurant for dinner too. The waiter actually has fairly good English. He brings me to a table which is pre-set with a menu. There are over thirty selections and they have been poorly translated into English. He asks if I would like to eat. When I say yes, he disappears strangely without waiting for my order. He returns ten minutes later with a lamp chop, potatoes and beans on a plate. Apparently, as I learn later, that is the only food available to them at the moment. The whole country is making do with whatever they can acquire day to day, hovering on the edge of famine. I am humbled and grateful that they had food for me, but I am puzzled why they continue with the ritual of offering a menu with thirty choices on it. Perhaps the ritual is necessary at such times of crisis.
Of course there is nothing else to do in this town. It isn’t really that small, perhaps 20,000 people, but street life disappears by 9 pm. It has been a very long day anyway and I am ready for a good night’s sleep. I have covered 143 km today. Bulgaria is the 20th country I have visited since I started in March and tomorrow I will reach the 13,000 km mark of the trip.
PHOTO 1: leaving Thessaloniki
PHOTO 2: the town of Kateres
PHOTO 3: when I first reach the Struma River
PHOTO 4: the Struma Valley before the Bulgarian border
PHOTO 5: at the Bulgarian border
PHOTO 6: horse-drawn farmer's cart along the highway
PHOTO 7: the road west to Petrich
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