Return to the North

After a long Friday night of carousing, we got up early-ish on Saturday (May 31) to finish packing, clean the apartment, and pack François’ car. And PACK it we did. There was only barely enough space for one thin-framed person to squeeze into in the back seat. We rotated seats fairly often, but having the shortest legs in the group meant that I volunteered to spend more time in the back seat than François (~6') and Xavier (~7’).
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We drove from Athens to Patra (NW city in the Peloponnese) and then crossed a nifty-looking bridge (called Rio-Antirio) heading northward into the Stereo Ellada region. Our ferry boat departure was from the northwestern port city of Igoumenitsa at 11:45pm. The road journey through Greece took around 8 hours, including breaks.
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Here’s a map of our route through Greece (Athens to Igoumenitsa):
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And here are some photos from the drive:
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Me in the backseat of François’ tightly packed car (photo by X.Gillard)
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The impressive Rio-Antirio bridge near Patra (photo by X.Gillard)
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From within the Rio-Antirio bridge (photo by X.Gillard)
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Athens flatmates, François & Xavier, at the Gulf of Patra
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Small coastal village of Amphilochia - on an inlet to the “Ambracian Gulf”
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"Superfast" ferry arrival at Igoumenitsa (shortly before our 11:45pm departure)
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Snuggling up for the night with hard plastic ferry benches (photo by F.Veynandt)
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Sunrise on the Ionian Sea (~5:45am)
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Arriving at Bari, Italy
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Until this trip, I had never been to Italy. And although we spent around eight hours there, it was eight hours of interstate highway [autobahn] driving. Unfortunately, there was no time for sightseeing, as we were on a very tight time schedule: We needed to be in Kassel, Germany, by 9am on Monday morning, in order to join a two-week university-sponsored renewable energy excursion with our former classmates from Oldenburg Uni (more about this in a future post). Thus, my first visit to Italy was completely uneventful (as if I was never there). We interacted only with highway "travel plaza" / gas station personnel… so of course, I gained no real sense of the country, the food, the people, the landscapes… at all. I’ll definitely have to go back for a “real” visit sometime.
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After our race through Italy, it took two hours to pass through Austria, and then we crossed back into Germany. We debated the virtues of stopping at a cheap hotel a few hours south of Kassel… but in the end, we decided that it would be better to drive late than to have to get up very early in the morning for more driving. So we arrived at the rendezvous location in Kassel, Germany, at around 4am and slept for around three hours before having breakfast and joining the bus tour.
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Here’s the second part of our road trip (from Bari, Italy, to Kassel, Germany):
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Back in Germany again