Greece: 12 days of disappointment and crisis of faith...

18th – 30th September 2016  - 280km

We left Gijrocaster to enter the country of „12 Gods on the Olympus” with excitement and optimism. We were even more curious about this country as we had heard so many times about the Greek hospitality and their love of foreign languages (espacially English) from Artemis, our last host in Albania. Well, the truth is, we met about 6 people who could speak English (two of them are French cyclists) and 4 Greeks (all love bicycles) who helped us to find lodging. Sadly, no families invited us to their homes. The sad result was, we had to stop cycling for the first time on our journey to take public transportation to Athens. Of course, in order to get out of this disappointing country as fast as possible. So what actually happened during those 12 days?

The first night in Greece – Heavy rain got into our tent...

The first day in Greece, in Ioannina, after asking so many people (of course zero of them invited us to their house, even though it was Sunday), we found a campsite and thought that it would be alright. Well, at 5:30, a heavy rain came when we were sleeping deep and killed our tent from the bottom so our mattresses and sleeping bags got wet too. We couldn’t do much besides waiting for the rain to stop and it did stop after 1 hour. We had to bring everything out to hang under the sun and most of our neighbours were doing the same.

The forecast showed that the next two day would be rainy so we had to stay in Ioannina for another night. We (again, after asking around for so many people and received shaked heads from friendly Greeks) found a closed parking lot with roof and so we could camp under it without being wet. It should be a peaceful night! Well, everything was almost perfect if we weren’t woken up by uninvited guests. A flock of wild dogs surrounded our tent and barked aggressively as if they wanted to tear it in to pieces. At 2:30! Luckily, they left after 10 minutes. But that was more than enough for us in this city. We quickly left for the next big city, Arta.

                                             

 The second night in Greece – camp in the old parking lot.

                                            

The nice view from the parking lot where the wild dogs visited us in the night...

The situation of hospitality was not much better in Arta. We tried to asked people in the city center and in the village outside of the city, still the only answer was “No!”. People either showed us the way to a park, the yard of the church or a demolished house. The worst answer came from a women when she assured that no one in this city would help us. OK! That’s it. We gave up on Greek people and decided to camp under a roof in the village. But first we wanted to check out the nearby supermarket as dinner was coming soon. It was the best decision as Péter met a guy at the main entrance of the supermarket and he invited us to the hotel of his family. Great! Finally, we found someone who was hospitable in Greece!

The third day in Greece – a free room in Marathia hotel!

After the feast, comes the fast. A series of bad days came to us without controls. Firstly, we decided to camp in the yard of a house even though the owner offered his whole apartment on the 1st floor to us. Why? Everything happens for a reason. Looking at the 2 pictures below and be honest to us, would you sleep there for a night?

                                                  

                                          How could people offer this nice sofa to his guests?

Or this wonderful bed?

The weird owner didn’t give us the right to check or to use his toilet. Maybe it’s made of gold or designed only for Greek people. The only thing he gave to us was a tap which we were not sure if it provides drinking water or not. Then he just disappeared. We of course have some certain standards on lodging so we camped in front of the house and left the bikes in side.

We were happier to camp outside than staying even a minute inside...

The next day, we got up with painful bodies and Péter even got a light fever. We guessed the atmosphere around the house was full of hard-working viruses. More than that, we almost threw up when we saw tens of rat footprints everywhere on the panniers and everything stinked. Sorry our friends, you had a terrible night in the freaked house...

Quickly running away from that unfriendly village, we headed to Agrinio. Péter felt really bad when we had made just half way so we stopped in front of a language center in a village to ask for help. Once again, the famous hospitality of Greeks drove me crazy. A village full of big houses, several schools, a big church with a huge yard, none of those offered Péter a place to rest. To make our day worse, an old couple brought us some food and a blanket and told to Péter that he can rest on the pavement. Great! I really don’t know where could we find the famous civilisation, the wellknown hospitality and their friendliness. We had search for almost 300 km and could not find it.

Couldn’t wait more in this mean village, we had to move on to find help. By chance, we met 3 cyclists and they suggested us to stay at a sport center outside the city. A small fitness room became our shelter for 3 days when Péter had terrible infection that he got to the hospital.

Visiting the hospital in Greece was also an unforgettable experience. Healthcare is free in Greece and so we had a chance to watch a live action movie in the chaotic emergency room. In one corner, a wife with a broken nose – victim of domestic violence was crying loud next to the husband – the culprit. He was topless as his T-shirt was used as the first aid for the wife. At another corner, two illegal immigrants were handcuffed to each other and escoted by two unfriendly policemen. Meanwhile, a nurse was shouting at an old woman :”Shut up! Shut up!” as she groaned in pain from the injection. At the consulting table, doctors and nurses were quite stressful to...take the right fastfood that was just delivered to the room. Every 30 minutes or 1 hour, the old patients leave and give places to the new patients. Well, after all, it’s free, why not visit the hospital for any kind of troubles...

Hospital or a film studio?

After 3 resting days, we took an express bus to Athens instead of wasting time cycling in this country without gaining any knowledge or any experiences other than our disappointment.For the first time, we had to stop cycling, in the most expected country in Europe. How sad it is! Those days in Athens, we were hosted by Fillipos, a nice cyclist with a kind smile. Our only consolation was to discover the nice open markets with all kind of goods and everyday in a different street. Oh, we had fresh seafood everyday!     

The fish market near our place

How many kinds of these olive do you know?

                                                                                 

    More fish...

All kind of eggs...

Good-bye Greece! We know that the 2010 crisis killed your economy, but we were hosted by poorer families in the previous countries. For us, being in a bad financial situation is never a good reason for people to be indifferent or uninterested. Thanks Kae, Dimitrios and Fillipos – the true Greeks who didn’t leave us behind as so many of your people.

Finally, it was the day of the flight to Iran, our next destination. It will be a new challenge for us with the strict Islamic rules for Linh, different source of information on the security status of the country and a new cycling route – on dessert. We were quite stressful and worried about this new destination. Can we handle it?

(To be continued...)

Linh