Osman Bridge Edessa

April 7, 2017 - starting the tour
 

 This year I am going to cycle the western part of Egnatia via Greece, Macedonia and Albania. I am starting in Witten, Germany. In the right hand, I carry the dismanteld bike in a soft cover, a bikebag in the left hand, a rucksack on my back.

It is 6 ^o Celsius and I am too late for my flight in Dusseldorf Airport. I am laughing, because at this time I don't know that. Easter holidays in Germany -protestant and catholic- and Greece- orthodox- are at the same day this year. So the checkin is jammed with people checking in bikes and big sport baggages with extra handling time. The fee is between 30 and 70 EUR.

As the next direct flight is three days later, I took an alternative route with stopover in Istanbul. 

No waiting time at Turkish Airlines counter in Dusseldorf.
Turkey is not as safe as it was two years ago
and most of the tourists on the plane are heading
to other destinations such as Kapstadt or Kabul. 

Istanbul - the link to the east. There are many girls and young women on the international interchange. They are well dressed and most of them wear a Nikab, speak perfect English with British accent and are heading for Baghdad. 

On the connecting flight to Greece, most passengers are between 30 and 40 years old and dressed simply, as if they were going to work in a factory or farm.

It is well known that northern European countries are wealthier than those in southern Europe. From these passengers I learn that there is a similar difference between Southern Europe and non-European countries south and east of Greence such as Tadjikistan.

April 8, 2017 -  Thessaloniki

The local shop WNCYCLES (website in Greek) will mount my bike within the next days. I want to send the bike bag directly to my destination Durres in Albania with dhl_parcelservice.

My friend Rainer will meet me tomorrow, then we will travel around 500 km in 12 days, that is not too much for us 65 year-old guys. We have been cycling quite longer distances - even in the last years. What I want to demonstrate here is that Via Egnatia is a really suitable and quite manageable route for the so-called silvercyclers.

They are called silvercyclers due to their bright hair and are the darlings of tourism because they prefer easy cycling, good dining and a nice and comfortable place to stay and they can afford it.

In general, the city of Thessaloniki is rather hard to cycle but the promenade is a must. You can cycle five kilometers on a separate path,while you have sea on onehand and musicians, jugglars and all inhabitants of Thessaloniki relaxing from a weeks work on the other. Thessaloniki is a young city it´s University is the biggest in Greece. 

Thr next event that happened to us was another bike event. The startup Sunnyhills provides a guided cycling tour along the promenade with visit ten adjacend theme-parks. Ditmar and Jonida oru guides and put us on new bicycles.  A headset with music and some some information about the surronding sights, e.g. villas of rich fabricants. They are built in style of their own, combining otoman architekture and art noveau. Telling about the time when Thessaloniki was harbour and intellictual center for the whole southern Balkans. The villas have been embassies and scenes of great romances. Novels and movies have been made about these stories. One can see them from afar. So after the tour you may visit them. Kostas and Anthi were just distributing their first flyers for the opening of their business. So we wish them the very best for their part of greek economy. We had a great time together.Visit them on Facebook.

Along Via Egnatia you find at least two Museums about Kemal Ataturk. Ataturk was born in Thessaloniki when it still belonged to the Otoman Empire. In Thessaloniki his birthhouse shows him as a statesman. It memorates, that the Greek president Venizelos proposed him as candidate for the Nobel-Price for Peace. But he was not awarded. He turned Turkey from a weak Empire into a strong modern national state. The ethnic cleansing following the Treaty of Lausanne sent 1.6 Millions of Greecs out of the land they have dwelled for 3.000 years and about half a million Turks from Greece to Turkey. The museum ois just 600 m fron the Main Street of Thessaloniki which is called Ἐγνατία Ὁδός (Via Egnatia). He is another figure of world history,  transfering ideas between West and East. The neighbourhouse of the Museum is the Turkish Embassy. That explains the armed post and the intensive controlling at the entrance. Historical problems along the Egnatia can becom actual along Via Egnatia .

The remains of Roman Egnatia were discovered, when Thessalloniki decided to replace its tram line by a Metro System. Works stopped when the old roman structures came to light. Besides that people asked whether a subway is the only way to inprove public transport in Thessaloniki.

Between Thessaloniki and Pella we wanted to move fast and took the national road. It is congested with cars and trucks. A route with less traffic is difficult to find and will ake time and kilometers. As a modern highway is under construction things might change when Greece can affored it.

About the small museum of the Balkan wars at Gefira we had read, that they just display a lot of weapaons militaria. Thats true. but what made our visit unforgettable, was the young soldier who in pefect English told the story of the osmanian villa and of three days of European history when the osman general Hasan Tahsin Pasha and Crown Prince Konstantin of Greece prevented the conquest of Thessaloniki by the Bulgarian Army. As Tahsin Pascha was borm in Albania both are our heroes of the day.

Hotel Istrion where we wanted to stay but is in use for refugees.

One highlight on Via Egnatia. the steps lead to the Edessos waterfalls in Edessa. We will try to replace the picture by a clip.

We went astray. Carried our bikes upstairs. :-) Is this the way from Thessaloniki to Albania?

This ancient bridge does not only connect two parts of the Edessa city, but on a lager scale, it used to connect the Otoman world and the West of Europe. Therefore it is also a symbol for our Egnatia project.

The Aigiai Hotel can easily be found two kilometers before you enter Edessa. It is a chariming family run hotel with perfect service.

For cycling the most beautyfull part of Egnatia is between Edessa and Ohrid. We were happy to do it on four sunny days around easter 2007. We went Edessos River up to Lake Agra. 

Cherry and pear blossoms next to emty roads.

Cycling the north side of Lake Vegoritida in the spring opens panoramas like reminding great

italian alpine lakes. The main difference is, that there is hardly any traffic. Later in the year the views hide behind trees. In the background the Troulos mountain -  1960 meters above sea level. 

Statue of a fisherman on a pier for sailing boats.

Direct after the border to Macedonia we kept left to cycle the paralel ottoman road under the old national road and maybe under that even the roman one. To keep his new conquered illyrian territory safe Phillip II. built Heraclea Lyncestis. And of course ha had to pave a military road inorder to keep an eye on the land of his second wife Olympia. So Egnatius just brought the work of his predecessor up to roman standards. The fortress and town Heraclea Lyncestis existed up to byzantian times till the migration of peoples. When the Slavic people moved in the land they started with a very small village at the site, later a monastry was built some four kilometers northword, in turkish language called Monastir. The slavic Macedonians call it Bitola, the aim of our trip this day. 

The Museum is indeed in a very bad condition, the excusion on the door of the exhibition is promising. Archeological site and  muesum together can tell more about Macedonian history than the expensive monuments of neohistorism in the capital Skopje.

We only saw visitors from nearby. Here a grandpa with grandchildren. Nice way to cycle Via Egnatia! Cycling is common in Bitola. 

In late Ottoman times Bitola has been one of the formost western towns in the empire. The legend has it, that the Bitolans liked to point it out saying that in Bitola six concert grands have been in use while in Belgrade they had only one. As a reminder there is a piano placed on a roundabout. One can find it 600 m west of the Egnatia on Uliza Partisanska (Партизанска).

On the first sight you only see two bridges. The picture is taken from a third one, the bridge of the old national road. The bridge in the middle may be built in late otoman times and the one behind is part of the modern highway. For me it was one of the rare moments to tell a story and explain my concept of Egnatia. For important information the antique world used parchment to write on, tanned goatskin, a very expensive material. After some decades it happened, that the value of the information has changed. One would erase the pachment to write another text on it. For modern historians it is not a big problem to  reconstruct the former text. Such parchments are called palimpsests.

According to changing needs of transportation, or when it was destroyed e.g. by landslide or flooding the road has to be rebuilt maybe on a different route  So poetically spoken Egnatia is written into the landscape like a palimpsest on parchment. The corridor along the Egnatia is suited best for land transport on long distances. It is flat, the passes viable and the rich agriculture offers nutrition even for large armies. So Egnatia has become a link between Bosporos and the Adriatic Sea or in a broader sense between east and west. 

There are more beautiful places to illustrate this concept, but on our trip it was the only one.

Despite poor maintainance the old national road between Bitola and Resen again is best for cycling. Traffic decreases to zero after some kilometers and you enjoy the calm forest and the songs of the birds. Still an old fountain from the middle of 20th century is refreshing the thirsty cycler. 

Resen from the pass of Mount Pelister, 1.760 m above sealevel. You are not too exausted, when reaching it, because the old national road is built for heavy transport thus inclining at a ratio of assumed 6 % at a maximum. 

Lake Ohrid near pass of Mount Galicica, about 1.600 m. The ascense was hard, we felt two heroes of cycling as the pass is mentioned on quaeldich.de. On the opposite side of the lake one can see Pogradec, Albania. 

In Elbasan Sheshi Gensher is part of the main road Rruga Bulevardi Aqif Pash.  It is named after Hans-Dietrich Genscher, a former German foreign minister, who paved Albanias road into NATO and the EU, the last one not yet reached.  

On the right the fortifications of byzantine-roman times, destroyed in the times of peoples migration, rebuilt by the Ottomans and again restored with the help of European money and a German curator of monuments. In the evening the road is barred by bollards to be used for thousands of Elbasanians for a stroll. I assume it is unique in Europe! 

Hotel Skampa adjacent to Sheshi Gensher.

Skampais the name of a place where the Roman settlement started. Elbasan is an ottoman name, meaning fortress. The noun is from arabic orign. There are several Towns named Elbasan. The hotel is built in the communist time in Bauhaus-style, with a landscape of voluminous sofas made of red leather - big enough to seat any diplomatic delegation. When I visited it eight years ago, I saw it declined - a deep whole instead of the lift and only one coathanger made of thin wire and me beeing the only guest - as I remember. But the doorman - just as in the movie Grand Budapest Hotel - was helpful to store the bike in a save place.

This time I was delighted to see the Hotel beeing refurbished - not in the Bauhaus style but - . . . it is OK - and doing well! 

We had to book another hotel as I could not find Skampa on a booking platform. The same applies for Hotel Odessa near the Border to Mazedonia.

About the hotel, where we stayed in Elbasan I will complain on their platform!

The heaviest problem for bikers on Via Egnatia is solved!

In 2009 I cycled Durres - Elbasan onb the national road and made a statistic of all these small cenotaphs. I found that  there was one  every 800 meters on the average, reminding young people dying in a road accident. In 2015 we found the national road changed into a highway with too much traffic to cycle on it - although we both had more than ten years of cycling exercise in Berlin. We tried to find a safe route neaby and got lost somewhere in the mud. 

This year the situation was totally changed: Between Elbasan and  Rrozhine the new national highway has a broad ard shoulder and from there to Durres a parallel byway is built.  So one can have a save  journey between the Adreatic and Edessa.

I passed several large signs showing the financial assistence of the European Union for Albanian road infrastructure.

The picture looks rainy, but I met only some drops.

The new national highway between Rrozhine and Elbasan has a broad hard shoulder So one can have ha save journey between the Adreatic and Edessa. I passed several large signs showing the financial assistence of the European Union for Albanian road infrastructure. As there are some kilometers left between Thessaloniki and Pella there is hope that things will change in Greece as well. Thar does not mean, that is pleasat beeing passed by some hundred cars and lorries.

If you feel uncomfortable biking Rgnatia either because of heavy traffic or heavy rain: You may use an eccellent busservice all along the Via Egnatia. All along means from Elbasan to Istanbul. In addition there is some sparse railway service. In Albania there is one service a day. The trains are unique and wellknown to trainspotters. I have not made it, but the ride along the Skumbi valley must offer great views.  In Greece the service is better. But it must be mentioned that there is no service between Bitola and Florina. That looks strange when you know that there is a regular busservice between Istanbul and e.g. Struga.

Of course there is a Via Egnatia in Durres: Rruga Egnatia leads straight to the harbour. Altough I do not know statistics: Durres must be a boomtown. 

View from the Casle of King Zogu. Durres streches out to the foot the mountains.

The new skyline along the harbour of aboiut 1 km. In the southern HJOuses People just moved in. On the northern side Some houses still are under construction. They all are decorated with a breathtaking million of coloured spots.