Home » Tunisia Italy Greece » From Tunisia to Russia (part I)

My dear readers,<br /><br />Today, I am going to my trip from Tunisia to Russia. These who read my story from previous trip: Silk Road, may remember that I was motivated on it by a childhood dream about Takla-Makan Desert. On trip before that to Himalayas I was motivated by my mountaineering youth. This coming trip is also not without motivation. I want to go through the most luxurious places in Europe, such as French and Italian Riviera, the backpacker way (bosiatskim sposobom). Why the backpacker way? Because these places are very expensive and also because I do not like to travel the civilized way. I am motivated to this trip by two great Russian Travelers Romanych http://romanycz.travel.ru/ and Yuri Mossokovsky http://mosspower.w-city.net.ua Last one took a bold task to prove that the ordinary Russian citizen can afford to travel to Western Europe on a bike. He proved it, but lost 20 lb. on the way. I am going to prove that the ordinary American Social Seniority recipient can travel through Rivieras too. And I do not mind to lose weight ever.

From Tunisia to Russia (part I)

Alex Mumzhiu
2006-03-22 13:17:21

Displayed times (last time: )

Delphi are spotted with other oracle sites, but none such brand named as Delphi. This is why instead of taking a bus, I rode my bike part of the way to Meteora. I rode through places with such names as Larissa, Katerina, Anfissa. For some reason these are popular Russian women's names.

Meteora is an extraordinary place. It is made from the rocks with vertical walls on which monasteries were built in the 14-16th century, see picture below. There is no access from behind as you may think. Vertical walls are all around. So the first monk, who climbed this, should be a good mountain climber. They are pretty tall these rocks, the tallest is 954 m. I rode my bike to them. There were no other bicyclists around, Greece is not a bicycling country. Every time I arrived, people applauded. Two pretty girls even wanted to be photographed with me and my bike. The film is not developed yet, I will send it later. And you ask why I like to travel so much. At home pretty girls don't ask me to be photographed with them.

Meteora rocks very much remind me vertical rocks in Cappadoccia, Turkey. I was there in 2000 and also wrote Travel Notes. But I was not so well known travel writer as now, so they are not published anywhere. I will forward you later one of my TN from this trip, with pretty funny picture of these rocks. I will go by train to Istanbul tomorrow, so I will give you some of my observations on Italy and Greece now.

When you arrive in Greece from Italy it becomes clear that you are on the way to Asia. Streets are not so clean, traffic is chaotic, sidewalks are taken by street vendors. Greece, like Russia, is half way between Asia and Europe. There is a lot of graffiti in Italian cities: "USA = Israel", "Free Palestine or Jihad". And in the streets you will see many possible writers of this graffiti, Arabic people. In Greece there is no graffiti like this, as well as no Arabs.

In Sicily on the street I sometimes see beautiful, noble, Roman faces, surviving centuries. None in Greece. Many Greeks looks like Turks. This is a shame about which Greeks do not like to talk. During 400 years of Turkish occupation Turkish garrisons staying in every city or town enjoyed the right of first night. So they altered Greeks genetically. It is a most interesting topic of historical science, how the ethnicities get born, live and die. Greeks believe they save the spirit of their nation even through genetics changed. There is a good book on this topic "Ethnogenes (ethnicity) and biosphere of the Earth", written by Gumilev (in Russian)

So talking about other ethnicities, I met many legal and illegal immigrants from Russia and the former Soviet Republics, who emigrated after the disappearance of the Soviet Union 10 years ago. They are exploited terribly. They work long hours, 7 days per week, without vacations or holidays. And they don't complain because things at home are even worse. The only escape they have is in the spiritual world. As many people in the former USSR, they live in a fascinating and spooky medieval world. They are under the influence of bad and good fields. They hear THE VOICES, they believe in spirits and black magic. They do not believe in official explanation of world events, and always look for a hidden truth. Recent earth quake in the Caucuses was caused by, guess whom--Americans of course. Being hopelessly materialistic I do not believe in all that stuff, but I learned that I should not argue because they believe it 100% It is amazing how fast, the forcefully atheistic Soviet Union get changed.

Alex Mumzhiu
Tressaloniki, Greece
May 17 2002
10:30