📝 days 105-114: speeding to No Name Kitchen in Harmanli (Bulgaria)
Welcome back on this blog of mine. Some expectation management: this will be a short one. It only covers 10 days, and to be completely frank with you, not much remarkable happened. Some highlights include: seeing the biggest spider of my life, making a daily vlog, setting my cycling record for 140km in a day, and rushing to Harmanli! The staleness of those highlights should tell you something about the nature of this update post: nothing spectacular.
Okay, but let’s rewind to where I left you off. It’s day 105, you’ve just read the last blog post so you know that I’ve just left the magical lake Ohrid in North-Macedonia. By now, I’m convinced I’ve learned to waltz with my body and so definitely won’t get sick anymore (I think this is what writers call foreshadowing?). Sascha is accordioning the 2nd Waltz by Shostakovich on the night before my departure (watch this sweet french couple dance 👇)
The next day, I set off. I’ve been hanging out at Lake Ohrid for almost 2 weeks. I took the news of Trump winning the presidency, the Islamophobic chaos in Amsterdam and the subsequent mind-warping reaction to that (ENG | NL), and to be totally honest: they weren’t the easiest 2 weeks because of it. No bother though, Greece was waiting for me. So, hopped on the bikey, and off I went. Wind in my hair, I feel part of everywhere.
My next destination: Thessaloniki. Supposedly young, political, progressive: the place for me! Though in big cities the question is always: where will I sleep? I will let you in on a little secret. The internet is a scary place, right? A handful of corporations control most of the internet and are funnelling us towards the political right. But there are also corners of the internet that I think are so cool and still truly revolutionary: Trustroots and Warmshowers.
Trustroots: free, with users who tend to be alternative, political, vegans, hitchhikers, feminists, dumpster-divers or all of them.
Warmshowers: one-time payment of 30EUR, specifically for cyclists looking for… a warm shower (and a bed). Splendid.
They’re platforms where a certain type of people host each other on their couch or their spare bedroom for free (!), all across the world. Both platforms have a review system, so you can read what the host (and the guests) are like. You describe your interests, your personality, and before you know it you’re sleeping on a random couch of someone you probably would’ve never otherwise met. It’s true magic. (I also tried ‘Couchsurfing’ but concluded these 2 platforms are much better). Trustroots and Warmshowers have made traveling a lot less scary, because where ever you are, there are friendly people with couches to crash on.
Through Trustroots is how I found Giuseppe, a timid, generous and warm Italian man living alone in Thessaloniki. On my last day of cycling I really wanted to make it to Giuseppe’s house (it rained and was cold and I just very much did not want to sleep outside again). So I pushed and pushed and some hours after arriving at Giuseppe I noticed a familiar feeling: headache and a very warm head.
Hm, a headache and fever after cycling more than I can handle: do you reckon I get sick?
absolutely yes
absolutely yes
a goodbye-note by Giuseppe - what a kind species we can be! <3
🫂🍎☕️🍜💖
Absolutely yes I got sick. But this time, I wasn’t too fussed about it! Really, this is growth, people. Recognising I pushed too much to get to Thessaloniki, I allowed myself to sleep all day, and for Giuseppe to take care of me. A lot of credit here goes to the wonderful Giuseppe - he truly nourished me back to health in a private room with soft double bed.. This kind Italian man living in Thessaloniki made vegetable soup and apple sauce for me - two of my favourite sickness-foods. And on the day I left, I found this Bialetti coffee pot on the stove with 2 notes reading: “It’s ready” and “Good morning! As you cannot leave early why don’t you stay another day?”
While I was sick in bed the city erupted into an annual radical protest. In 1973 there was a student uprising against the US-backed dictatorship, which was brutally shut-down (2000+ people injured!). The protests ultimately led to the downfall of the dictatorship (protest works? what? wow! we should do that more often). Every year, this “polytechnic uprising” is remembered and protests erupt against Western hegemony where ever protestors see it. This article about last year gives you the basics. Anyhow, while molotov cocktails and tear gas was exchanged between police and protestors, I was sound asleep. (regrettably).
❗️new mission: border work with No Name Kitchen
While with Giuseppe I got news of a free spot with the No Name Kitchen (NNK) team in Harmanli as “communications person”. Starting in… 5 days! That’s.. very soon! I set off to Harmanli, Bulgaria, where the NNK project was based. If you look at my route, you’ll see it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that was totally fine. With this bike trip we are fundraising for No Name Kitchen, (sign up to become a sponsor if you haven’t!) so it made sense to partake in the organisation as well!
Halfway between Thessaloniki and Harmanli I felt like taking you along in an extremely typical cycling day. Lots of podcasts, music, coffee and cycling. It’s short (1:30min) so you can watch if you want.
finding camping spots in the dark always sucks - in the morning i discovered this was right next to a military training ground
As I rushed to make it to NNK in Harmanli I went on a streak of flat tires. Holy shit, friends, what a pain. Every morning one of my two tires was empty, and often it would deflate during the day too. Later I learned, thanks to my cousin (thanks David) that at some point tires become “hopeless” (?), and you cannot patch it any longer. Stubbornly and without knowing this though, I put on more and more glue, took out the biggest patches I had to stop the air from coming out and kept putting new ones on. Again, we learn, and that is what we call:
growth.
Now I have 2 new spare tires with me at all times because I never want to go through that again.
On November 22nd, I arrived in Harmanli. I was so excited to get there (and I had the wind in my back, so also shout-out to the wind) that I cycled 140km until reaching the No Name Kitchen house in the dark.
There, a new and different kind of adventure began.
