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... and then I just escaped Fernando
From Thessaloniki, we cycled east and the landscape was, and stayed hilly. Fernando and I fought
our way uphill. It just went stright up nearly all the time: once you climbed up to the top, you could see the road winding up on the other side.  If we had luck to ride a downhill, the
roads were that bad, that we had to slow ourselfes down to pedestrian pace.
Because I didn´t notice the road condition the first time, I nearly wrecked my rim as I rode over a frost break in the road.
The sun was shining from the bright blue sky, and forests beside the road gave the landscape an individual smell. The earth was dry as a bone and not many bushes grew on the brown hard soil.
Sometimes we stopped to refresh ourselves from little springs which streamed out of rocks beside the road. Fernando always stayed back, because my pace was way too fast for him. Mostly I cycled  away, and waited somewhere beside the road to pick him up again.
One day I had enough of him, and cycled further on, didn´t wait for him.
From now on, I could focus on my further travel plans and could stay out of trouble I wanted to avoid.
My slingshot stayed in my handlebar bag for curious dogs. Most of the time, the dogs let me pass, without trouble, but if not, they got the good news fom my slingshot.
Now I always pitched up my tent in dawn, so I could be sure that nobody saw me, and tried to give me an unwanted visit during the night.
I had dinner in the evening, so as the day went by, I just had to pitch up my tent and crawl into my sleeping bag.
Every morning I had muesli with milk powder, that gave me the energy I needed, and also I
didn´t had to start with a full stomach. Cookies brought me the energy I needed during the day, and most of the time, I had noodles in the evening for dinner.
One day, I wasn´t that far away from Alexandroupolis, the sky went black: the farmer burned their fields to make make space for new plants.
Alexandroupolis was app. 30 kms away fom the border to Turkey. I
wanted to cross the border today, so I pushed my pedals harder. The crossing wasn´t that spectacular, nobody waited form e, but in fact, I didn´t excpected that, because nobody knew about my travel plans.
My heavily packed bike was the attraction at the border, but luckily, the custom officer didn´t check my luggage properly, because I wasn´t in the mood of unpacking the whole load.
I got a stamp in my passport and now I entered a new country. What happened on the next
kilometers, you could read in my next travel story!
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