For example, I've lost several hours in Salonica today, searching an appropriate cyber cafe and finally ended in a informatics school for children in Kavala, Greece, where hopefully we'll manage to put the photos on the web. Kula and Meropi at Cybernet on Ipirou st., 1, are being very nice and helpful while we're really trying hard to get the photos to you. Many thanks!
Beside the internet access problems I've also had another type of problems during the last few days. Catastrophic road conditions in north eastern Albania, and security situation there. Everybody advised me not to drive during the night there, and the 100 kilometre road from Bajram Curri to Kukes was advised not to touch in any time of the day. We're talking about an area close to Kosovo border, where police patrols are non-existent and the area was said to be in hands of armed gangs. It's at least what I've been told.
When I left Komani on an overloaded ferry across a 30 kilometre accumullation lake to Fierza, the true wilderness of that part of the country, unnowingly I entered in a trap. Indeed, the first contact with the locals wasn't pleasant at all. Everybody on the ferry was trying to persuade me that the road to Kukes was bad and that I would spend at least eight hours for reaching the destination. Nevertheless, I turned towards Kukes (everybody else from the ferry left for Kosovo), and suddenly a Mercedes was behind me. Seven people got out of it and out of the sudden the road to Kukes was perfect, taking only two hours, and one of them wanted to enter my car to accompany me. Oops! I returned to the car, pushed the gas after the convoy, but never managed to reach them.
So, I decided to go through Kosovo, as it was suggested to me on the ferry. I reached the border 45 minutes after the sunset, but international forces wouldn't let me pass, as I wasn't in posession of a special insurance for Kosovo (even themselves didn't know whether it was a third-party or a full coverage insurance), that couldn't be bought on the border, reached after three hours of almost off-road driving. The Albanians wouldn't let me return due to safety situation, but I also couldn't stay with the Americans and the checkpoint closed at 7 P.M. I stayed enclosed on a noman's land in noman's responsibility, behind the wire fence.
I had two possibilities in the morning: to sleep the following night in Fierza and return with the ferry (departure at 8 A.M., but the checkpoint doesn't open until 6 o'clock), or take the 110 kilometre road to Kukes on the Albanian side. I left the checkpoint one hour prior to sunrise and reached Kukes after six hours (the first time GPS was really indispensable, as no road signs are present there), safe and alive. But the Partner didn't, as »he« had to survive the harsh off-road conditions and many rock hits, the exhaust-pipe of my Eberspaecher air-heater was broken and lost, as it was the lowest point of the car.
I got to Tirana at seven o'clock and decided to keep on driving towards Greece, as I didn't want to loose too much time in Albania and to destroy the car that has to get to Ljubljana (and to make several hundred thousand kilometres more after that). After twenty hours of »Marathon drive« I stopped exhausted in Veria close to Salonica.
At this point I would like to express my gratefulness to Rok Pavlin that is taking care of the updates on this page, but apart of that, in shadow helps in many more ways. Yesterday for example, he arranged in a few hour action that I was received today at the Kosmidis garage in Salonica, where the broken exhaust-pipe was replaced with a new one, that doesn't aven affect anymore the vehicle's ground clearance! Many thanks also to the German Eberspaecher and its service network for a fast and excellent job!
For tomorrow I am planning my arrival to Istanbul where I'll take a few day break for cleaning the car, putting the luggage in order, to visit the city and to lower my pace...
Below: Partner's chassis with the original air-intake and exhaust pipes and after the Salonica repair.