Komotini

Yesterday was one of those totally mixed days. Left the campsite and Hans and Anita, a super nice dutch couple that were touring across turkey for 90(?) days with their caravan who helped me in many ways getting prepared for turkey, got tons of free fruit from a fruitmonger (“you need the energy” and “in the end I’d be helping myself, since we are all one!”) and found this small little town called “paradisos”. Nothing there except paradise.

Then stumbled on a dull straight road with lots of headwind, nothing om either side (well except for the occasional _turkish_ town in the middle of nowhere in greece) and took a break 10 minutes before heavy rains started. So all good. Afterwards also ran into a couple from the UK who are also blogging their trip, and it turns out I already missed quite a bit of stuff in North Macedonia. Cannot see everything I guess.

But the thing worth posting about is dogs here. So, mostly, dogs are not kept here except for a purpose: guarding the territory, sheepherding, etc. That’s why here, and in albania, kosovo, North Macedonia, you see a lot of stray dogs. But the guarddogs can be super dangerous and scary, and I had already experienced that in a mild fashion before.

But now, just before komotini, three dogs came rushing towards me on a very wide (two or three lanes) road, and kept following me; usually they let off. These didn’t, and you will automatically steer away from them to avoid running into them; I ended up on the wrong side of the road, waving at cars to slow down because of these insane dogs. Accidents do happen this way and I have heard many accidents already have happened this way. They just rush into traffic.

I used to like dogs but these are horrible creatures. Online (there is luckily an online cycling community) people suggest to get off the bike, and go dog-whisperer on them. Yell and be authoritative; in any case it will be less dangerous than to keep cycling.

Just some experiences to share here.

Anyway, komotini is a nice little town with a mosque from the ottoman era (around 1400) and some few remains from the old castle.Read more