Introduction

This story is about my bike trip to Sicily in the summer of 2022.

I would say it was quite an adventure as how I got to Sicily – so do bear with me (or don't, then just go forward to the first day...). I promise to spare you a lot of the details...

This is how the journey goes. In the month of May in 2022, I started a bike trip through the Balkans, with the original goal of getting to the island of Crete (well, at least to a port somewhere close to Athens), as my mom was celebrating her birthday there with my dad. I started from the Slovenian city of Celje on May 9, then rode to Zagreb, then onwards through Bosnia, to arrive in Montenegro and then to Kosovo. I was doing quite OK and not all too far from Greece, there was the country of North Macedonia in front of me. Not sure how much you know, but the two countries, Kosovo and North Macedonia, are separated by high mountains, which I was just about to cross, when I heard the news that the border was blocked by snow (all this in the month of May). Hmmm, there was the possibility of a diversion through Albania, it would have meant a longer trip, but would have still arrived more or less on time in Athens, from there to take a ferry. Alas, the Gods thought differently – just one kilometer short of the Albanian border I had a freak incident: my premium Chris King hub (an important, integral part of a bike) gave up its soul on a steep, steep section.

I am planning to write a separate blog on this Balkan trip of mine in the near future, which was my second journey in that area, the first one having been so 10 years prior to it. I enjoyed it quite a bit, let me give you the impressions of the countries. Slovenia looks pretty much like Austria, nice, green, though somewhat boring. In Croatia, I rode to the capital, Zagreb, then the trip took me to a mountainous area with surprisingly backwardly infrastructure. There was a patch of road, some 50 kilometers long, with nothing but small villages – meaning no shops, no restaurants or hotels. Bosnia was quite the contrary, as soon as I crossed the Una river on the boundary, on the shores of which I had ridden a decade ago, life came back and it was a lot of historic cities. Montenegro was more quaint, but the nature quite beautiful and Kosovo was, somewhat surprisingly, the highlight – interesting towns with large bazaars and the scenery is full of snow capped hills. The people there were also nice and helpful – but more on this in the near future, inshallah, as they say in many of these countries.

So my bike breaks down in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of some distant mountains, quite distant from any major point in the civilization, it is quite a sophisticated one, I will share my adventures of how I got back to a main town, tried, in vain, to get my bike repaired and I looked for options of how to get back to “civilization”, well, Kosovo is really quite civilized, but they did not have a lot of bike stores. In this town, called Priznen, I found a bus stop and inquired as to when and where the next bus would leave to – it turned out to be an overnight bus to Zagreb, via Serbia. OK, I paid my €45 and spread out, somewhat prematurely, on the back seat. The bus kept filling up and suddenly I was squeezed in, with five of us occupying the last row. I did end up dozing off, only to be rudely waken up at the Bosnian-Serbian border, having to get off twice, then at the Serbian-Croatian border, twice more.

In Zagreb, I rolled my bike to some shops and to cut a rather long story short, I found a bike mechanic who repaired my bike for €20 (in Vienna, they would not have even touched it like at four times the price….). I then called a good friend in Vienna, who jumped on a bus and we spent a day in Zagreb, enjoying the pleasant capital city, then rented a car and the two of us drove down to the island of Krk, spending a four nice days there, swimming in the sea and exploring the island.

Wow, I promised to write about a Sicily trip and am going to get to that – but first, remember, I wanted to get to Crete to my parents. From Zagreb, flights to Crete would have been both expensive and complicated, so I booked a Flixbus to Milan, they even carried my bike for a few euros extra. There was a direct flight to Crete from Malpensa airport. A looong bus trip, leading through Slovenia, the worst part was the traffic jam front of Milan. Finally, having arrived, I rode from the bus station to the train station, which were – fortunately – quite far apart and was charmed by the city of Milan. I slept at an airport hotel, who would not want to store my bike, but luckily, Italians are a friendly folk, I convinced a man in a house right next to the hotel to lock my bike in his garage for a couple of nights.

An uneventful flight to Crete and I was happy to meet my parents. A slight glitch was that they were initially booked to a hotel, which I though - incorrectly - they were staying at, was later changed in some sort of an upgrade to a different hotel, some 250 kilometers away. Without consulting with them, I found a hotel at the first town and started noticing on Google Maps that the distance to it was increasing as my dad was driving us from the airport. Then I understood – my booking was in the wrong place. The Gods were on my side, I was able to cancel free of charge and found an OK place – a bit dirty – not far from my parent’s luxury resort. It was quite an upgrade they had gotten! A two-floor villa with a beachfront lawn, extremely friendly staff and great breakfasts, fit for a king. We enjoyed the island, rode to some nice beaches and found a great restaurant, somewhat of a hidden gem, right in front of my hotel.

Returning to Milan, the same friend who I was in Croatia with flew to meet me there; through some organization skills, we both arrived in downtown Milan at the same time, one plane from Crete, the other from Vienna. Our accommodation, while somewhat outside the city, was cool, a colorful 1930s apartment with furniture of that era. The thing we enjoyed most was the amazing architecture in the city, first we visited the Navigli flea market with its canals, then we strolled around town for like two days, being awed by the wonderful Mediterranean-like architecture.