thelenstefan
- Jun 8, 2023
- 2 min read

23. Stage from Bitola to Edessa

I had breakfast today at a café near my really great apartment. The typical buffet has sweet pastries and sweet spreads on one side and tomatoes, cucumbers, feta cheese, sausage and scrambled eggs on the other. A little of both and by 8:30 I was on my way. Today a new country point was on the plan: Greece

As is often the case, the road out of town was not the prettiest. Outside Bitola, the traffic soon eased and I had quickly done the 16 km to the Greek border. The border crossing can not be more desolate and unadorned. Really noticeable was that with the transition to Greece the roads were free of man-sized potholes and no more garbage in large quantities adorns the roadsides - is better so.

The first 30 km went through a flat plain. Except for a longer gravel passage there is little to report. On the roadside you see more and more small devotional sites. These look like small churches and they are. In the past as a place of prayer for the farmers when the church was too far away. More recently as memorials for accidents that ended well or tragically.

In the second part of the route, the altitude meters were on the program today. Shortly after the halfway point was the mountain classification of the day at just under 1,000 meters altitude. The view as always great - but different than in northern Macedonia.

Then a really lovely valley, which was once again deserted and stretched over 15 km between the hills. However, I was not completely alone. The encounters with the wild dogs had so far all gone smoothly. Either the animals were scared or barked a bit. My plan: slow down, do not flee! has worked so far. I had noticed that with the transition to Greece, the self-confidence of these dogs has increased by leaps and bounds. Up to now, however, they had always traveled individually. Now I suddenly found myself surrounded by 5 four-legged friends who didn't want to play, were in a bad mood and obviously didn't want to let me pass either. My strategy "slow down" was really hard for me this time. After they had barked at me for some time, they let go of me - thank heaven. After that, however, I watched to get back to the main road with more traffic and to bring the last 20 km to the end.

Edessa, so one finds it with Google, is called also the city of the water. The city is crisscrossed with many canals and watercourses and is located on a cliff edge. The channels flow into an impressive waterfall, which is the biggest attraction here.