Last update: Monday, September 05, 2005

 
After crossing the Turkish border we decided to find a place for the night somewhere around Alexandroupoli. A place not to far from the border, not too small and not too big. Enough to do some shopping and continue our journey. During the drive we where struck several times by the neatness and modern style of Greece. Are our minds playing tricks on us ? Our memory of Greece was much much different. But than again our memory of Greece mainly consists of flashbacks of road trips 10 years ago. A lot has happened since, and maybe joining the European community simply makes the landscape around the asphalt roads more 'European'. In the afternoon we feel ended up with the image that we might as well be in Italy, Germany or any other European country. The truth is that the feeling preludes the end of our roadtrip. Definitely a thought we refused to give in to at that moment.

In Alexandroupoli we find a 'mega' campsite plastered all over with 'traditional' European campsite guide stickers. We decided to spend the night there to go for a shower, fresh water and a bit of sleep. To our big surprise we encountered Irma & Norbert again, who we haven't seen for a few weeks now. We exchanged the stories about our routes through Turkey, the places where we camped and the things we saw. Incredibly, after meeting them for the first time in Aquaba in Jordan we keep running into each other. We spend the remainder of the afternoon and a chilly evening chatting about future plans.

The next morning we started off early, the day was intense grey en rainy. Our first encounter with this kind of weather in months. Flashes of Dutch grey skies we've seen too much run through our minds. The reality of driving back home hits us hard that day. Luckily a streak of sunlight appears after Thesaloniki late in the afternoon. When we reached our destination for that day the skies where full blue again and the memory of going back home faded quickly. However our destination, Vergina has changed incredibly since we've been here 10 years ago. This historical site was just discovered back then and the site was nearly open. Now it's developed into a 'one of many' kinds of places, big parkings, many tourist shops and a few hotels. Money sure has found it's way here. We spend the evening and night on the big modern parking lot all alone. We expected to be sent away by police but well maybe being there all alone on the parking lot wasn't a problem.

Clear skies were gone again when we left Vergina for our visit to Peter and Maria in Mexiates. Driving modern highway roads funded by the European community made our drive to Lamias uneventful. We encountered a few travelers going the other way with campers and caravans. Maybe escaping winter time in Europe or starting a lengthy roadtrip just like we did almost 5 months ago.
In Lamias we lost our way big time, although we've been here a few times already. We ended up on the wrong side in the valley of Mexiates and drove quite a lot on this side hoping to find a road to the other side. Ofcourse too stubborn to turn back and try to find the road to Mexiates from there.
In a small village we just tried one of the many dirt roads trying to cross the valley to the other side. Well, at some stage we ended up driving through a riverbed downstream bashing big stones and mud. Our GPS pointing us in the right direction to Mexiates, but hell these roads are bad!! Getting stuck in Greece after sand & stone desert would be something we both think.

At some point we encountered a truckdriver bashing the mud too. He stopped us with his huge 10 all-wheel drive truck, looking quite confused to see two stupid foreigners riding a construction road / river bed. With the word Mexiates his confused expression changed and pointed us the way laughing. Back & mudtracking a few km's we found our way onto farmer roads to the other side of the valley.
In Mexiates we were welcomed by Peter, Maria and Demi in Greek style with strong coffee and home made cookies. They were in the middle of the olive picking business and we could join if we wanted. Without hesitation we agreed and a moment later we realised we became student olive pickers about to learn the trade.

The days after that our time was filled with picking olives, covering tree after tree. Driving the olives back to the farm, sorting the olives on size and transporting the harvest to the depot. We learned quite a lot about the olive business in Greece. As any other business it's not easy to keep things going with the fierce competition and all kinds of natural threats able to ruin the olive trees. The work is out in the open, and December in Greece can be quite cold. However our picking days were without wind, rain and sun, the best weather to wish for. The evenings we spend at local eateries in Mexiates and neighbouring villages eating souvlaki, having a beer (finally) and chatting about life in Greece.



At one point we were offered a farmhouse as a joke, but the thought of a house in Greece stayed with us for a while. Buying a farmhouse in the Mexiates valley sure sounds tempting: there's enough space available for a reasonable price, no traffic jams and mostly good weather and people willing to accept foreigners in their neighbourhood. And last but not least Mexiates is a good spot to start future roadtrips to the Middle-East and Asia. And as we plastered our car with mud a few days earlier, enough 4WD terrain to test new roadgear and keep up with terrain driving skills.



We pondered about this thought a few days and came down with one question: "What's home to us?". After 5 months of detachment from home we couldn't really answer this in just one word.  It's a complex feeling of family, friends and the horrendous stupid thoughts of a bathroom of your own, French fries and a cheap & fast Internet connection :-)
And this all happens to be in the Netherlands. A country which sticks to our minds as a small place stuffed with people, houses, cars and luxury all wrapped together with an ever growing book of laws and rules. It's not a place we have been specifically looking for and who does anyway?
Well, the thing is we've met enough people in the Middle-East who do this really bad. People looking for a better standard of living, more freedom, an endless list of desirable images of the western world brought by satellite TV.
And yet we feel that being part of this 'first' world does not bring us a particularly happy feeling. But the thought of moving our lives to another place is (still) too strong, although we realise this trip has tipped the balance quite a bit.

After having picked olives from many many trees we felt we had to move on. We still had a few weeks of relative freedom left and already had a few destinations lined up in our heads. We felt it was time to materialise our travel plans for the remainder of December and January.
We said goodbye and left Peter, Maria and Demi and the valley of Mexiates with a sad feeling while disappearing in the mountainous region of Karpenesi in a warm winter sun.

The drive to Igoumenitsa was nice and it took us 1,5 day to reach the harbour town. We passed snowy peaks and even a high mountain pass which was covered with heaps of snow just a few days ago. It was a strange sight for us, a country we normally see in the blazing heat now being covered with snow. The snow, the autumn colours made it a memorable trip.

We entered the SuperFast office in Igoumenitsa with the thought of snowy peaks on top of our minds. Our next destination will be rainy Italy......we thought. A real grumpy reception manager made it real clear to us that the ferry we opted for didn't sail from Igoumenitsa in this time of year. We took the news both amazed and a bit confused, but again after having travelled for so long this felt like just a small bump on our route. In a 4-5 week holiday mode we probably would have exploded on the spot. So Patras was the harbour for getting a ride to Italy without the possibility to camp out on deck. So we got ourselves a hut on the ferry in 2 days and with that the luxurious thought of a hot shower :-)

On the road to Patras we passed a secluded beach spot we remembered from our last road trip to Greece. We needed a place to spend the night so we ventured downwards on a new asphalt road and found the place virtually unchanged. Both happy we parked our car and sat on our private beach the remainder of the day in the warm winter sun reading.


The next day we reached Patras and checked in at SuperFast terminal for the next day. We did some shopping and started looking for a place to stay for the night. With all campsites in the area closed we finally parked our car hidden between trees near the beach on a closed campsite. A nice spot with view on the city and harbour of Patras. Sure this spot will set the summer tourist a heap of drachmas back we thought. A place where we would never show up in the highseason knowing it would be literally swamped by tourists. The rest of the day we cleaned out our sandy, dusty and most of all muddy roadrig and prepped it for real cold and freezing weather in western Europe.

At departure day we parked early in the harbour of Patras. It was real nice weather so we sat on the roof of our camper reading newly bought magazines and newspapers. Our stocks of books had ran out again, so the new reading material was a big treat specially in the warm winter sun. At the end of the day the harbour flooded by huge numbers of trucks.



At one point we where completely locked in unable to move our car. A car dealer had just unloaded his lot of used cars from Germany and the Netherlands.
Round boarding time we realised that we would share the ship with many truckers. The ground was shaking of all the roaring trucks moving into the belly of the huge SuperFast carrier. After having parked our car on the ship between long lines of trucks we checked in our cabin and enjoyed a long and hot shower. And for the first time in months we had access to a spacious bedroom, a real treat!! We could even walk from the bedroom to the bathroom!!!
That evening we found a few plane ticket adds in a Dutch newspaper for Middle-East destinations. To our surprise Sanaa (Yemen) was listed too and found the price not that bad, although still a lot of money compared to our nomadic budget life-style of the past months. After some calculations we decided to try and book a tour to Yemen when we got home.

The boat ride was smooth and boring, although there was enough to see on this brand new ship. A paradise for kids although there wasn't any kid around. (thank god) We disembarked in Ancona round 7pm and decided to try and reach the Brennerpass that night remembering a huge parking lot for campers. The drive was rainy, foggy and between lines of trucks all the way. We arrived round 1pm in a terrible freezing cold and a parking lot full of snow. Although it was real cold we slept like roses and woke-up with the noises of cars starting around us.

That day we drove into the area of Munich for turning in our 'Carnet de Passage' and to get our deposit back. But first we had to get a 'stamp de presence' from a German border official indicating our car was back in Germany. Well with European borders nowadays finding a border official is not particular easy. First we tried customs for trucks at the German border but well no luck there, only some mobile customs booth for truckers only. After asking the customs guy inside a van swamped with computer gear we got directed to a customs office some 30 Km further down the road.

Arriving at the 'Zoll' office we saw a few curious looks of people behind their clean and tidy office desks. We must have looked kind of worn-out in our dusty fleeces, ragged trousers and still desert-dust coloured booths.
Somehow we were surprised that the guy who helped us recognised the yellow Carnet de Passage and immediately knew what we wanted. The procedure was simple, a check of the chassis number outside got us the last stamp we needed to get our deposit back. That our car had a green colour instead of the black colour listed on the carnet seemed to be of no particular problem. Well we knew we could have lost all colour if we ended up in a desert sand storm. Bringing a can of black or green paint just for making our car match the carnet the passage sounds ridiculous but we know it could be turned into a massive 'bakshees' issue at Asian border posts.

That day we stayed at a parking lot near a lake in the Munich area to drive to the ADAC office the next day. Cold, wet and grey is the only thing which sticked out that day. Will we ever enjoy holidays in western Europe after our Middle-East adventure? It's hard to imagine with the neatly arranged world around us.

The next day we found the huge ADAC building in the centre of Munich. No parking space, but what's new? Having found an illegal spot (not difficult though, almost everything seem to be illegal here) we entered the neat ADAC building. To our surprise we ended up in the middle of the 'fernreisen' department between office cubicles, desks and ash-grey looking people doing their office duties. We handed over our stamp battered and thumbed Carnet de Passage to a woman who apparently handles these documents. We got some sort of a surprised reaction indicating that not all Carnets are returned with all stamps in place.
Within 20 minutes we were back in our car driving home with an ADAC receipt that our deposit would be transferred in a day or three.

Late that evening we arrived in our hometown, drained and with very mixed feelings. The sight of our house surreal, it even didn't feel like our house. Inside we stood there for a while and zombied around in complete silence.
Our family had decorated our house on the inside welcoming us back home again. This overwhelmed us by a avalanche of emotions, bringing flashbacks to powerful moments in our journey. Having a feeling we survived something, not knowing exactly what, we unpacked a few things and headed for our bed.
Not being able to find light switches in our own house made us feel we've been away for quite a long time...