Day 11 - May 16 - Hmmm....

 I managed to get up (quite a feast feeling so tired...) and had a good omlette for breakfast. I was watching this tiny mountain town come to life, people driving to work, youngsters to school- the others consuming their obligatory morning coffees.

I was bit confused about my bearing, there were two roads leading uphill, neither seemed to be the correct one. Oh no, now I had to backtrack to reach the correct junction. Oh well. Some downhill, then a hard, but spectacular climb followed. Even this scarcely used mountain road was in good condition. I spotted a police car, waived him down and got piece of news that surprised me - the crossing to North Macedonia was closed due to snow conditions. They did offer an alternative, which was to cross over to Albania via Shishtravec.

There were tiny mountain villages overshadowed by minarets, at one small place, in Krusheve, I stopped to ask whether the info from the police was correct. They did say that the snow was no bad, however, the road was gravel and on top, could not predict the behavior of the Macedonian police.

I decided for the detour - which was to head into Albania. If I would run out of time, I can always catch a bus or train in the northern part of Greece. I knew by now that I would not be arriving for the birthday itself, but I was still within the "budget" to reach Pireus, then a ferry boat to Crete.

Now I did have some trouble with my drive belt earlier, it misbehaved strangely a day or two prior to this, so I adjusted the position to make it tighter. There was a sign showing the Albanian border to be just 3 kilometer away, but what three kilometers it were! I struggled for each meter, such an ascent it was. I was just about to switch one gear down when, suddenly, something strange and unexpected happened - I just suddenly just pedaling into "nirvana", the force transfer to the wheel was suddenly gone! So something really essential was broken - and I had no way of cycling anymore. Knowing I had no chance to fix this, memories of Vietnam came vividly to my mind (when my drop-out broke in the mountains close to the Chinese border). I hate this feeling (no kidding), and I thought to myself: "you are in remote mountains of Kosovo, how on earth will you navigate back to society?". The bike was able to roll, I turned and rolled back from I had come from to Krusheve, there I hitched a car (not much of a waiting, the people there are very friendly) and in a few minutes, was back at the town of Dragash. There a car mechanic took a look, I was impressed how quickly and professionally he disassembled the hub, but he had no means to repair it.

I waited half an hour for a small bus, and in the meantime, chatted in almost perfect Hungarian with the owner of a shop called Budapest. He had worked in Hungary for about 10 years. The bus arrived, but was too crowded, so I took an aged Mercedes taxi to Priznen for Eur 20. After a few feeble attempts at finding a suitable bike shop (it is a complicated piece of equipment), I considered my options. - somehow I need to get back to where there is a chance for finding a mechanic.

I discovered a long-distance bus station, the most promising connection was Zagreb. The lady ticket agent was a bit surprised that I wanted to leave that very day, so I purchased the ticket (€45, was a bit surprised how expensive it was). I had some dinner, where an old man invited me for a beer - nice of him. The dinner was good, but there was a taste of defeat in my mouth. At 7 pm sharp, the bus departed en route to Zagreb...let us see what happens next.