Kind People and New Countries

Nov 17th-22nd Rome,Italy to Durrës, Albania

 

Well actually we haven’t made it to Durrës yet and are currently on an overnight ferry. It’s supposedly 10 hours long. After an Albanian woman informed me that the ferry yesterday took over 24 hours due to rough seas I’m not so confident.

The past week has been possibly my favorite part of the trip and a perfect way to end Italy. After spending four days in Rome we were eager to track down our package from the Italian Post Office and get back on the road.

A couple hours of riding brought us to a warehouse complex and there it was. It was an early Christmas present. So here I am, typing with a keyboard again.

Almost instantly I felt a difference in the people in southern Italy as opposed to the north. More honks. More waves. More smiles. The attitudes toward us by the locals has been a huge factor in our overall experience of a country. When they show interest in us and our bikes, it’s always re-energizing and reminds me of how great this experience is.
Lunch on the second day out was a tad different than others when an older man in his 60s talked with us for 30 minutes on his views of the world. “Man is a chicken” was his central theme. His reasoning was that we beginning soft and lovable and mature to loose our soft outer feathers and are constantly rubbing up one another. He had some interesting points sprinkled with some pretty ridiculous remarks. Joe and I laughed about it and rode on to Naples the next day. Being renowned for the world’s best pizza, we helped ourselves to 2 medium pizzas each and strapped them onto the back with a bungee cord. We looked like pizza delivery men as we road to what we found to be a makeshift soccer field for all the kids in the neighborhood of middle school age. The second we stopped, they swarmed us like bees and begged for pizza and beer.

That night we rode out of Naples and headed up to Mount Vesuvius. We biked to the base, hiked up by headlamp, and reached the top of the crater by midnight. The view was spectacular. It was clear and individual lights of houses, cars, and streetlights could be seen for miles. We were in a cloud of fog for the sunrise so any view was obstructed but it opened up slightly as as we hiked down.

Like I said, people are far friendlier in the south. The only exception was a man who called the police on us for setting up our tents in his building which consisted of solely concrete pillars and several floors. I doubt he had any plans to finish it. Half an hour passed as the police took our passports before then handed them back. I don’t know why it took so long because they let us on our way and nothing seemed to have happened. We biked on and settled for another night in a field.

The wind was at our backs these three days and we got by without many problems. However, this was the beginning of a phase of bike chain troubles for Joseph. Some of links were weaker and constantly broke off. He’d be biking along and the chain would break leaving us looking for the missing links for sometimes 15 minutes. This would happen sometimes 4 or 5 times a day.

We reached of port town of Bari with smiles as we finished Italy and looked onward toward eastern Europe.

Nov 23rd-27th

Well these four days of eastern Europe have been drastically different from what we left in the west. The formerly communist countries of Albania and Macedonia have been fascinating to bike through. The first thing that stuck out was how kind and curious people are. On our second day in Albania, Joseph’s chain broke again and within a couple minutes four people were helping by searching back and forth on the pavement for the missing links. The locals love yelling “Hello!”. They seem confused as to why an American would want to bike in their country but are welcoming none the less. This stretch of 10 days has taught me what the people of a country can do to your experience in it. I’d take warm people over warm weather any day. At least for now when it’s hovering in the chilly low 40’s/high 30’s and not quite freezing at night.

On our first day in Macedonia, rain poured on us more or less the entire day. We stopped in a small shack of a bike shop in a small town. The mechanic replaced Joe’s chain and gave us half a bottle of homemade Macedonian whiskey. Although the chain turned out to be even worse than the original, the whiskey was of great use at night when Joe and I would find empty, unfinished houses to camp it. Albania and Macedonia have no shortage of them. As the rain would pounded the roof, we’d be dry inside playing cards and jammin to music with our speaker.

This week couldn’t have ended any better. Through several connections, we had a place to stay with an American family living in Macedonia. Not only that, but it was Thanksgiving. So the middle of Macedonia I was still able to stuff my face with all the traditional food. Home suddenly didn’t seem that far away.

Today we’re heading out and pushing to get to Sofia, Bulgaria in two days while cutting through Serbia. From there we’ll cut east to the Black Sea and then south to Istanbul. Europe is coming to a close and nearly 3 months have passed since we left Washington. I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for you all. Family and friends have taken on a greater importance while halfway across the globe.

Beginning next post I’ll have a different format on this blog. I write these posts often many days after the events have already happened. To me it can seem somewhat convoluted and I sometimes forget key parts. I’m starting to journal and I’ll post my entries in this blog along with a short summary of what happened. I hope that this will give you all a closer and more personal look into this trip. Peace!

Loaded up

hoodrats and pizza

In Southern Italy, it seemed that most dogs hung out is gangs of 3 or 4.

Castle-like church in Bari

room full of treasures

Albania!

Too much mud for my fenders to handle

Alexander the Great, Macedonia’s claim to fame

Tobacco is sold by the box here