May 28 - Komotini

Two years ago, James was able to stay with a monk in a small town between Xanthi and Komotini. We had already arranged our accomodation in Komotini for tonight but we decided to pay Father Damaskinos a visit because he lives alone in a house next to a little chapel on the main road and seems to like visitors. He remembered James well. We hung out with him for quite a while, he made coffee and even served us Chiporo (probably spelt wrong), Greeks' national drink. Damaskinos was lots of fun to hang out with. He has a quirky, somewhat sarcastic sense of humour and could not wrap his head around why in the world people torture themselves by riding their bicycles from one country to the next for thousands if kilometers. A bit later he brought a bowl of Easter eggs, in the hope they were still edible. Unfortunately they weren't but we were introduced to the competitive Orthodox way of cracking egg.

Round 1: You bang the tip of your egg against the tip of the other person's egg. Whose egg cracks is the first time loser.
Round 2: Turn the eggs over and bang the wider ends together. If the egg that cracked on the top also cracks on the bottom, the owner of that egg loses. The unscathed egg wins the game!
On the other hand, if after Round 2 each egg has only one cracked end, you go to
Round 3 where you bang the still intact ends together. The egg with both sides cracked is the ultimate loser, the other the winner. Very fun game!
Damaskinos proudly gave us a tour of his little, yet beautiful chapel and told us of his hopes to soon get transfered to a monastery. He is sick of the ten years of traffic noise at his current location.

IT WAS GREAT HANGING OUT WITH YOU. THANKS FOR THE GOOD TIME AND THE REFRESHMENTS. WE HOPE YOU GET TRANSFERED TO THE MONASTERY SOON!

In Komotini we wanted to have lunch in the central park but could not find it so just sat in the shade of a big church next to the army base. The town was a bit chaotic to ride through so we hoped our contact for tonight was not on the other side of town.  James went to call him and it turned out he lived three blocks down the road. Great, what a relief.
Giannis made us feel very welcome. He had a safe place for our bikes (!!!) and we got our own room for the night. Giannis loves music and he has done some DJ work in local bars. He introduced us to some new bands we had never heard of such as Chinese Man and others which I cant remember right now.

THANKS GIANNIS FOR YOUR HOSPITALITY AND THE MUSICAL EVENING. ALL THE BEST AND HAPPY TRAVELS, WHEREVER YOU DECIDE TO GO.