All quiet on the eastern front: Gianista - Kilkis - Say hi to the elephants, and hope the weather improves

August 16, 2012

All quiet on the eastern front: Gianista - Kilkis

GRAFFITI is a Greek word. I found that out this evening, along with Greek's being the oldest written language in Europe.

It seems that since the recession started here five years ago, Greeks blessed with thousands of years of written words have taken to painting many of them on walls. And when they are about politics, as they often are, they lack subtlety.

It's not the protests that have upset people, especially in Athens. It's that there's so much graffiti at all. And they have formed vigilante patrols to paint it out and to tear down posters. They can't get rid of it all and so they are starting with the political slogans, regardless of leaning.

I tell you this because there is little else to say of the day. We have been in the agricultural basin all day, on flat roads amid crops of all sorts but especially alongside fields of wheat reaped to a hand span of the earth and waiting to be ploughed back into the soil.

Beehives - a feature of much of the ride east of the Adriatic

And village shops. See, I said it was an uneventful day.

We had a siesta on the edge of a wood and climbed sweatily into Kilkis. Which, for a day on the road, doesn't sound much to report, does it?

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