August 17, 2012
What chumps, a small boy thinks: Kiklis - Serres
SOME PEOPLE look out the window, see cloud, and groan. Others, like cyclists who for weeks have been riding at 35 degrees or more under a cloudless sky, rejoice. We even giggled when drops of rain fell in mid-morning. Not only was the day cool but we were on quiet roads, charmingly quiet. And we left the agricultural flatlands to ride through repeated hills as rewarding as they were challenging.
We enchanted a small boy - at least, we think we did - who came to stare at our bikes as we paused for shopping. He stood mouth open, beside his own little bike, and gazed.
"Shame he's not as communicative as that boy back in Albania," I thought, because any attempt to talk failed,
"You've got an audience, though," Steph said. She laughed.
I agreed and gestured to him to come nearer. Again, he was too shy. But he didn't go away, either, even when his pal arrived.
"You wonder what life is like in a remote village like this, don't you?", I said. "I suppose it must drive some people crazy and they can't wait to leave. And the others just settle down and grow up with the kids they went to school with."
There was just such a group outside the bar a few paces on, men with friendly, rounded faces who had probably occupied the same tables for decades.
"We knew everybody at that boy's age as well," Steph said, "but the difference was that we decided how big the area would be, whereas here it's governed by geography."
I like to think that small boy reached the precise moment when he decided his village was too small for him. And then a worry struck. Suppose he was actually thinking "What a pair of chumps, riding round on bikes when they're supposed to be grown-ups."
We chuckled at the thought, waved goodbye and rode out the other end of his world.
And then we began to think perhaps he'd been right, that we were indeed chumps. Because the road ended. One moment it was there, narrow but decently surfaced, and the next it wasn't. Instead there was one mud-and-stone path that went straight ahead and out of sight and another that did much the same by curving off from the left. No clue which to follow or even if we had made an error some way back.
"Kalimyra," I called to a woman beside a shabby but comfortable house, half shack, half bungalow, who had made a point of fussing outside her door so she could keep an eye on these foreigners who'd wandered into her hearth. "Parokoloh... Kirkini?" I waved at one of the paths.
"Nay," she said, using the word for yes, which sounds as though it ought to mean "no". In the same way, the word for "no" sounds much like OK. It will be good practice for Bulgaria, where people nod up and down for no and side to side for yes.
The woman began a long explanation that we hadn't chosen the best of roads. Either of them. They both induced sighing and eye-rolling.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
And yet the map showed a single, simple road over the hills, through the woods and down to the reservoir that is now a birdwatchers' paradise.
Well, if in doubt, place no faith in maps, railway companies or much else. Those three or four kilometres of single, simple road took three hours and several reverse turns. The map people didn't think to mention that this is logging country and that there is maze of routes. Nor, when they marked the way as an unmade road of good quality, did they think to say that trucks had churned it up and that bends on hills, where they struggled both up and down, had been transformed into first war trenches.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
But what's the point of ho for the open road if you cry over that? It was hard, it was frustrating and it was hot and dusty. It was tough, pushing bikes uphill through mud as soft as sand. But after those two days in the mountains of Albania, it was like romping on lilies.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
Lake Kirkini was an appealing blue. It doesn't resemble a reservoir until you reach the southern end and see the dam. The plan is to expand trade by making the most of the area for ornithologists. Hundreds of bird species make their home here. There are birdwatching towers in the hills and there are gazebos, picnic rests, beside the water. But then the money ran out and they are all unfinished and waiting until Greece can afford such luxuries again.
We rose and dipped through a lightly wooded road, always with a view of the river. We have been surprised at the quietness of Greek roads away from the few cities. Even when we joined the main road, we found it quiet. We wondered whether it had been bypassed by an autoroute not on our map. Every business had closed. And when we turned into the villages alongside, it became obvious that they too had once been on the main road to Serres and that not all of them had coped when the traffic washed away elsewhere.
It did, though, give us a tranquil ride into a happy, bustling town with no sign of Greece's problems. One man's misfortune is another's gain.
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 2 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |