Olympus

Climbed Mt Olympos the other day. It's a 2000 m climb on a well marked path with several refuges, that the guide books recommend doing in 2 days. As usual, my plan was one day. Managed to find a loop path, some 20 km horizontal in total. Yes it was doable in a day (10:40 in my case), although at the top I did have to answer surprised questions about whether I really wanted to go down today and if I had a torch and a radio. I did have the torch, but it was not needed as I reached the bike soon after sunset.

Most of the climb was dull (1st pic), but then from the Skala summit, when the view to Mytikas opened, it became really frightening, a "YDS class 3 rock scramble" according to Wikipedia. There were rope attachment places and views straight down on both sides, and the general feeling of being about to fall off the mountain. But the weather was unbelievably favourable, sunny and no wind, so I decided to go anyway, despite wearing my Salomon town shoes. Most other people had proper boots and helmets, some also ropes, and the guidebooks say that most people climbing the mountain never even attempt the actual summit. In retrospect it was a very enjoyable "class 3 scramble".

Border crossings

Given all the refugee business, with pissed-off truckers rumoured to block border crossings, my expectations south of Schengen were pessimistic. But it turned out ok. All of the following on the main Zagreb-Belgrade-Sofia-Istanbul highway were doable in less than an hour:

• Croatia-Serbia 15 min queue, no problems 
• Serbia-Bulgaria 30 min queue, no problems 
• Bulgaria-Turkey no queue

The system at the HUGE new shiny white border crossing complex on the Turkish side was interesting though. When you approach the police, they don't pay any attention, so the natural thing to do for me was to move on slowly and expect to be stopped. Indeed, the customs lady stops you, says you need to go to the police. Park your bike here and walk back. Ok, done. The customs lady looks at the police stamp and waves you on to the third counter some 300 m further. There the guy looks at the bike papers, then at his computer, and says you have a problem. You have no customs clearance for the bike. Go back to the customs lady. Ok, third meeting with customs, and the bike has clearance. Back to the third guy, who asks for the barcode sticker. What's that? You get it from customs. Go back to customs. Ok, fourth time at customs, sticker attached to bike, and the gate at the third counter finally opens.

All of the people involved were friendly and helpful, looking professional, working with their unbelievably complicated database system with a 1990s style UI, manually keying in data from my machine-readable passport for the nth time (yes I peeked at their screens). If the point of this process would be to solicit bribes, I would understand. But they didn't, to the contrary, there were large signs about bribing being a criminal offence, and, once more, the people were really friendly and helpful. What's the point then? No idea. Anyway, it seems travellers are expected to be proactive on the Turkish border, and ask to be checked.

Being proactive and actually looking for a police officer to check me certainly worked when exiting Turkey. The Turkish-Greek border was fine, almost looked like a border between two friendly countries (if you disregard the numerous gunmen standing around everywhere).

Morning exercise

This time, did the morning exercise without the bike. Yet another closed coastal hiking path off-season. Getting past the closure took quite some scrambling, but found these heroic flowers in the process. Don't know what they are called in English, but at least in Estonia they used to be one of the most common domestic plants in my childhood. After the jog, thought of going swimming, but the beach was sort of ..um.. flooded?

Mudguard

Another morning exercise, BMW riding school, lesson 17: riding with a blocked front wheel. The front mudguard on the GSA protects the mud well (compare bodyguard), it takes VERY hard work with a tire lever to clean the narrow gap between the tire and the mudguard. No idea what the engineers were thinking when designing this - that it never rains around here? That people only do wheelies in the mud? That the adventure with the GS Adventure is getting to know nice local people who help push you out of the mud again? (In Hungary last year I ended up drinking beer with the kind guy who pushed and pulled the bike with me for about 4 km.)

Anyway, since I had seen this before, turned around immediately when the mud started accumulating, but going back those 200 m to firmer ground still took a whole hour.

If anybody knows what to do with the mudguard, please comment. Removing it involves removing the front wheel, which is not my idea of fun when already stuck in the mud. Having it always off seems to leave several fragile-looking parts vulnerable. Touratech sells a replacement, but it is not really much different, and even cannot be, because there is simply no room for a more distant mudguard.

A view on Europe from the outside

Just before leaving Istanbul (the posts are out of chronological order now), crossed the Bosphorus for this pic.

Off the road again

After the Startup Istanbul conference the schedule was finally relaxed and I got off the motorway. Here is the beginning of the real road. Regardless of what your map or gps tells you, there is a decent road on the coast between Dikella and Platanitis in North-Eastern Greece, in most parts doable even for cars, and lined with signed architectural sites.

 A little morning excercise in the sand. The Heidenau K60 felt better in the sand even with full luggage and normal pressure, than my previous TKC 70 without luggage and with lowered pressure. More on the K60 in a future post though.

And then some work on qlaara in a taverna that later served absolutely delicious local fish.

Later in the afternoon, there was one thing about mountain roads that I had never seen anywhere: they just ended. Not like ending at a remote farm, or at a landslide, or simply fallen out of use and grown full of trees, all of which I also saw that day. I mean really ending, so that there is nothing at the end of the road and there has never been a continuation, just unspoilt mountain ahead. The one on the picture is small and sort of expectable, I came from the left and it ended on the right. But also much larger, almost two-lane, maintained and used gravel roads simply ended in the middle of nowhere, without any warning, many kilometres after the last turning point. I tried four such roads in an attempt to get North from the abandoned village of Kaliva, and all of them ended like this.

Vignette

Slovenia has recently updated their vignette system with more automatic checkpoints and also manual checks at the borders, if you approach the border on a highway. A week's vignette for a bike costs 7.50 eur, the fine for not having one is 150 eur. The police is nice and speaks languages and accepts cards. I think the balance is now even, the fine approximately covers all the vignettes I have not bought over the years.

Alps

As usual, was trying to beat the gps in navigation, but didn't notice that the route over the Alps I chose involved a railway shuttle, Bad Gastein to Mallnitz. Didn't want to turn back either, because after all I'm in a bit of a hurry, so took the train. This was my first and probably last time to do this, because, really, why would one want to be in the tunnel under the Alps and not riding on top of them.  Anyway, the shuttle goes every hour (20 minutes past the hour from the North), costs 17 eur and does take bikes. Bike groups require advance registration, because they have fixed straps for securing the bike, and I only saw one set of straps.

Therme

The first stop was at Therme Erding, claiming to be the biggest in Europe, a large part of it textilfrei. Well worth a visit.

In the middle of the night, realised that I had forgotten to fetch my new fancy business cards that had been waiting for me in Tübingen. This resulted in wasting almost 3 hours looking for a fast printer in München who would do business cards, getting there by filtering through the Stau, and getting the cards printed. The one I found was Wenzel in Schwabing, again very helpful people, printed and cut the cards for me in about half an hour despite the constant queue at their counter and the fact that it normally takes at least 4 hours. After that, finally got on my way South.

Starting again

Finishing my lovely and rewarding stay at Tübingen and starting the next trip. No commitments at this stage, but this just might become a long one. To start, heading down to Turkey and Greece. In addition to random thoughts and impressions, the plan is to also post information that might be useful for fellow riders considering similar routes.

My bike was very helpfully prepared (and stored before this start) by the friendly people at Walz Motorsport in Herrenberg. The photo is with Eveline Walz and Klaus Walz. A big thanks to them.