1. intro
2. week 38
3. tour de crete
4. my need for progress
5. my favourite greek family
6. the monasteries of meteora

I woke up from my deep winter slumber and embarked on a loop around the island of Crete. Before reaching Heraklion, I met up with my favourite Greek family. From Heraklion, I hopped on a ferry to Athens and had a nice re-encounter with a french bike touring couple I met outside of Athens some months ago. They were on a fast track to Turkey. I was headed north. I followed the eastern coastline of Greece and ended up in the unreal looking place of Meteora.

A bear hibernates. I learned that as a young kiddo in school. It is a survival instinct to preserve energy when food is scarce during the barren winter months. What I didn’t know was that this need is not present in captivity where food is provided frequently and throughout the year. Captivity is also the reason why a bear would not gorge on food to prepare for hibernation. My Cretan winter break got extended a few weeks. But then one early day in the beginning of February, I emerged from my deep slumber. I pictured myself as a bear who pawes away a thick snow cover from his cave entrance and pokes out his nose with moving nostrils to get that first impression of the outside world. Then carefully the rest of the head with pinched eyes of a mole slowly getting used to the daylight outside. Stretching stiff legs. Growling belly screaming for him to roam nature and collect some much needed energy. It was a slow start on the bike for me. My hibernation period was a good thing. I didn’t see much adventure on the horizon when I decided to park the bike mid December last year in a little coastal village outside of Heraklion, Crete. Literally, the rainy dark clouds took that away. Now, though, my belly growls - it growls for more adventures, for new experiences, for interesting encounters, for fresh landscapes, for crossing borders.

Instead of crossing the sea to Athens right away, I turned my bike the opposite direction of Heraklion and the ferries which were sailing towards the mainland. Crete being an island, I thought the opportunity to do a loop would be an obvious start of the new touring year. Lasithi is the easternmost regional unit on the island of Crete and was my looping route with an ending point in Heraklion. The main city of the region is Agios Nikolaos and the other major towns being Ierapetra and Sitia. Most of Crete is made up of mountains so you can hardly go anywhere without having gorgeous views. As I was touring Crete in a winter month, you have the mountain tops covered with snow. It is such a great feeling to be sitting on the beach in shorts, t-shirt and sunglasses while you watch the winter landscape above you. You can spend a long time exploring small beaches along the coast line and even more time sipping greek coffee at local tavernas. You can spend an even longer time exploring the many gorges and plateaus of the mountains Thrypti and Dikti - I was quite content with the couple of beaches I explored and doing low passes over the mountains. Just couldn’t help myself being impressed by all the exploring opportunities. I biked in amazement through locations like upscale Elounda with the island of Spinalonga just off the coast and the formerly Venetian fortress doubling as a leper colony in older times. However, something was not quite right. A piece of the puzzle was missing. When you are doing a loop, you are going in circles. My dream is to travel east and here I am doing circles. A circle has no beginning and no end - you can move around for infinity and you always end up in the same places where you already have been. Somehow it seemed to lack progress. A feeling of going nowhere even though I was going places every day. (I know the world is round and therefore continuously heading east would eventually put me back where I started and hence be a loop… but please “bear” with me here - the world is too big to be considered a loop in my opinion).

So what is up with that, I said to myself. You get treated with mesmerising scenery and hospitality on Crete and I am not fully content. I wanted to make progress. I needed to make progress. I actually scolded myself a bit for being a spoiled little brat. Why do I feel this way? Is this need to make progress a product of modern society? Are we from an early age imprinted with the idea that our role in society is to be a productive individual with a never ending goal to make our country or world a better, more efficient and smarter place than it was yesterday? We live in a time where we can cure illnesses and repair human beings that was unthinkable a mere hundred years ago. We are making self-driving cars, drones that can deliver fast food and artificial intelligence that seem to be limitless. We are building space rockets to launch mankind into space and colonise Mars. Science is producing proteins out of thin air. What I saw in sci-fi movies as a kid is turning real with rapid pace. Miraculous progress happening on a daily basis. Don’t get me wrong, I think this progress is great. But I also think it redefines our daily lives and what is expected of us. Making progress has been second nature and the DNA of our modern society. Just look at countries GDP goals as an example. I don’t think there are many countries out there with a goal that says ‘stay at current level’. Our line of sight and way of thinking is set in one direction and that is forward. Has it always been like this? When I first heard about Buddhist teachings the idea of a circular existence with rebirth was one of the first things I took special notice of. You get born, you live, you die, you are reborn. Back then, perhaps not so many hundred years ago, you lived with the seasons. Your goal was to produce and forage enough food to last until the next seasonal circle began - and then you would repeat the cycle. Surviving and reproducing was an important and big success criteria (perhaps the only one). Now, we have industrialised and automated many tasks from the old days. We freed up resources and cracked the code of making major efficiency gains. We are gaining cumulative knowledge faster than ever and taking quantum leaps for each generation. It means higher living standards and happier human beings - or at least it is supposed to. Human nature works in mysterious ways and so do I. For better or worse, I am a product of this society. Instead of fighting it, I accept what is. My dream is to travel eastwards. My goal is to move away from the setting sun and I want to draw a line on the map in a general eastward direction that everyday transports me one step closer to a final destination. The more I travel and move around, the more I learn about myself. Guess I will take that into account when I plot routes for the future.

Regardless of my “pointless” looping around, it ultimately led me back to my AirBnB host’s family house. Over the course of my touring break in the little village of Hersonissos close to Heraklion, I had gotten on friendly terms with my host. During my stay she refilled my wine bottle numerous times with local wine from her vineyard, gave me homemade Christmas sweets and truly showed me the real meaning of generosity and hospitality - something that Greeks excel at. In her family town of Archanes I was invited with such a warm welcome, had inspirational talks about local culture and customs and the grandmother of the house made me mouthwatering traditional dishes. I only stayed one day but that day will forever be in my memory and heart. So thanks to this lovely Greek family for making travelling special. Experiences like this is a great part of what makes me get on the bike and travel to new destinations, new cultures and new people.

I said a heartfelt goodbye to my favourite Greek family and headed towards the port of Heraklion and the ferry to Athens. On the ferry, I had a chance encounter with a french bike touring couple (headed for Japan - WOW) which I had the pleasure to meet in December on the road towards Athens. We shared touring experiences from the past many weeks and had breakfast together the following morning in Piraeus. So nice to meet people with a fellow passion and common goals. You easily inspire and cheer each other onwards - sometimes without knowing it yourself. They are on a mission to Central Asia through Turkey and I will be sure to follow their travels ahead. For my part, I was heading south to the Cape of Sounion to follow the coastline as much as possible up north towards Meteora and, my next country on the list, North Macedonia. For the past week, I have been on my bike taking no days to rest. Over mountains, through plateaus and along busy highways. The eastern mainland coast of Greece from Sounion and up to Lamia does not give you many thrilling stories to tell. Besides riding along highways for days, you get a few hours on roads with beautiful views to the island called Euboea. This stretch has the potential to be a busy riviera visited by people of the world but there are only a few scattered hotels here, which by the way are in a sorry state like many other buildings, and the stony beach area is forgotten and cluttered with litter. It is like this area was a tried and failed tourist project. Perhaps we should just leave this area to the locals and give them the chance to shape it as they want. After passing Lamia, my next highlight, Meteora, was not far away. Before Meteora, though, another highlight was approaching - a mileage celebration. I reached 5.000 km on the bike just outside of Karditsa. I pictured myself passing that milestone in beautiful surroundings with time to make a proper victory video. But at that exact moment, the sky was pouring rain like God himself was emptying an ocean on top of me. Regardless, I got off the bike, jumped and danced, screamed and sang in joy. Good that I was alone on the road so locals would not think I was a wacko. Far away from Kalambaka, the city of Meteora, you start to see an outline of rock formations that don't look to belong. Incredible stone pillars soar to the sky. Green vegetation painted on the near vertical rock face. Impossible buildings are placed on top of the pillars. These buildings are the Monasteries of Meteora. Built from ancient times, only a select few have survived time’s harsh treatment. Today, the remaining monasteries are active and you can pay them a visit as you circle around one stone pillar after the other. I was in particular impressed by their chapels which are so heavily decorated that I couldn’t find even an inch of untouched space. I lost myself for hours in those chapels reading the stories told by the paintings, looking at the hand carved wooden decor and the gold and silver plated chandeliers in all sizes. Time stands still in these chapels and I easily had visions flashing before my eyes of ancient monks chanting and praying. I spent some days in Kalambaka doing some maintenance on the bike; replacing the chain, scrubbing the bike clean and mounting my new shiny rear rack to fix a cracked metal tube on the previous one. I have 3 long touring days left in Greece and will very soon approach the border to North Macedonia. It is time for a new country and time to make progress eastwards.

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