August 08, 2010

by Tom Dorwart in tbilisi, Georgia

In Eastern Europe, the people are warm and good-hearted. They are incredibly hospitable. But without much Czech or Hungarian in our repertoire, we struggled to find the friendly folks we were searching for. One woman told Judy (in english): “in Czech republic we speak Czech.” We searched for a nice quiet spot to grill out in southern Hungary one night, so we pulled in to this small town at about 10 pm. We wanted either to grill our burgers in the town pub’s parking lot or to eat at the pub. We got lots of stares as we pulled up and as we walked past the 15 or so local patrons. We might have been the only foreigners to ever visit that local pub. The bartender didn’t speak any English and instead if receiving us they said they were closed and shut their doors.

So we headed south.

Borders, customs, tolls, traffic, and poorly organized construction zones have lost us the most time. We will sit to go through a border for over an hour. In the line to go from Macedonia into Greece we accidentally cut quite a line of cars since we didn’t know where we were going. A young guy from Macedonia let us in to the line while others yelled different languages at us. The guy told us no big deal and he spoke great English. Said he had lived in Manhattan for a year. To thank him we gave him a tshirt. we have many pictures of this and other happenings that we’ll post later.

One guy who had gotten out of his car to smoke a cigarette in the line signaled to us to turn on our siren and speed through the line. Small town after small town we get stares and applause when we turn on our flashing lights.

We arrived in northern Greece to make our way down to Athens. Although a bit out of the way we had a delivery to make. Some German friends who helped with getting the ambulance had asked if we could in return take a stretcher to an event they were hosting in a small mountain town south of Athens. So we went to Greece.

Our first stop in greece was leptokarya, a northern coastal town on the crystal blue aegean sea. The town had small tan colored buildings and fresh fruit markets. We parked the ambulance and headed for some food near the beach, where the whole town seemed to be enjoying the sun along with possibly a few serbian vacationers. We were likely the only other tourists and definitely the lone Americans and german.

After a long drive through Macedonia - which was very scenic with rolling hills and lots of green - and after sitting in the border crossing line for three hours, we needed some lunch and a brief break. The cafe we chose in leptokarya was right on the beach and the waiter spoke a little English while we used our minimal Greek to say please, thank you, and delicious. Our team split some Greek salad, calamari, and mussels. The friendly host gave us free coffee, two bottles of water, and ice cream. We had found our southern hospitality and attempted to leave a small tip for our server. He even came back and asked how much our bill was again and said we gave him too much. After our meal we took a quick dip in the sea.

The water was warm and clear. Before we left town to make progress towards Athens we went to the supermarket. But… There was little to buy. In response to a new European union law allowing imigrants to move from country to country to work in the same field of work, we later found out, set off a nationwide trucker strike. The store shelves were empty… No meat no eggs no drinks. We got what we could and hit the highway once again to make our way to the birthplace of civilization. along the way we saw numerous trucks stopped on the shoulder of the road. We tried to fill up on gas at one gas station but the men manning the pumps told us they were out if gas. The trucker strike had struck… just about everywhere and it had been going on for nearly a week.

We rolled in to Athens after camping out at a rest stop. More on our adventures and a chance meeting with two AU WCL students in Athens to come.

Sorry we are a little behind with the posts. Internet access has been tough on the road. Thanks so much for following. We are headed to baku now and have many more stories to tell of our time in Serbia, turkey, and Georgia

Tom