Albania is a country that logic seems to writhe and soon resigned to understand it and I simply enjoy it with some astonishment. Do not give knowledge kilometers, only perceptions, and here the codes are surreales. Very impoverished homes and fields without work are mixed with high-end cars and luxury hotels in which you never see anyone. They are there, roadside, along with dozens of car washes and gas stations in the country growing like mushrooms after rain. Unforgettable picture of that icy mountain slope where dozens of men were waiting on the hard shoulder, with open every faucet hoses, car wash.
Albania was fun and welcoming to our eyes. In a roadside cafe I asked about internet and bar type gesture offered me his cell phone to connect. Then, where we sleep, luxury suite 20 EUR, ties put tablecloths as if there were a thousand people waiting dinner dance. Were us and them, alone, communicating by gestures and some Italian, co-official language in this part of the Mediterranean.
Albania had to Macedonia, country that did not remember neither the name nor the map, and we passed so quickly greeted with a friendly hello and we parted with a friendly goodbye.
When you enter Greece has the feeling of walking into the old history book of your childhood
Finally we enter in Greece and when entering Greece have the feeling of stepping into the old history book of your childhood. We headed to the city of Kalambaka, the monasteries of Meteora, with immense pain of not being able to head south, Athens and polis where man discovered that the shortest path between two points is thought first and then runs.
On route we stopped control heavily armed police. Vítor rolled down the window and asked the guy yapping papers. We started talking with them and something that looked superior told us: "I see coming from Macedonia (we saw a sticker each country we are facing in the car). They should not go to countries that steal the history of others. We are Macedonians, not them. Same as Bosnia, They steal the history of others ", We lectured the man. This curious world, without going into reasons or no reasons, in which a sticker made the image we give to others.
Meteora finally arrived and we stand in front of those legendary monasteries hanging from the clouds. Are subject to the sky through the air and to the ground by a stone hand which grips from the bowels of the earth. There we, paralyzed, without understanding that the world could be the thing. There are a few seconds you stay speechless, heartbroken before your eyes in which decipher stones over 600 meters where someone had the holy madness to build a dwelling on the "Urba" God.
Down with ropes to the underworld and rose after floating into the sky
Everything happened in the fourteenth century, when the pressure of the Ottomans forced some monks to hide from the world and decided to do it there, where at least would go looking very tired. Of the 24 monasteries came to be built only six and six generate a certain sense of bewilderment. How could they build a monastery on the rock? How did they live? Then when you visit them you explain that the monks, and in more modern times, down with ropes to the underworld and rose after floating into the sky. One look from there the emotional abyss and remembers legends tell that in the nearby river that everything was chiseled god Apollo to abduct his beloved and even questioned whether those religious will not be actually bearded pigeons learned to pray.
The next morning we left for Thessaloniki where we found a city with a boardwalk and design where people ate and drank in an endless row of terraces that had almost sacudías when you face waves. A curious thing about Greece is the ease with which many restaurants smoked just below the brand new poster that forbids.
We were served a grilled meat on paper
That night we went to sleep to Alexandroupolis, where we paid three glasses of wine 21 euros in one of its many bars people "very good" that should be open in Zurich and then ate in a tavern full of people where there were no plates and were served a grilled meat on paper. The restaurant was so good and genuine I did not need a name. It was a nice and friendly place rather than add to the route.
Greece had just started and Turkey. the end of Europe begins, the fleeting passage by Asia and the challenge of knowing whether we will be able to find a viable way to Africa. We are working as I write these lines, with great will and no certainty.
