Distance: 76km
Elevation: 768m
When I woke up, the sun was shining as if it had never rained before. Shortly after 7am, I went down for my breakfast.
I needed to ask for supplements several times before I was no longer hungry.
During the rain of last day, my bike computer had died. That did not help with navigation.
Also, my helmet was broken, and Rosinantes‘ gears were not in order. Also, her steering tube was somewhat lose and needed fixing.
The plan for today was, to cycle across the Greek border and make it to a town called Kilkis where I would meet my friend Susie. We both lived in the same village back home.
The weather was beautiful, I had a strong tail wind, pushing me uphill for quite a while. After 30 km or so, I was close to the Greek border.
A French guy with a bike packing setup caught up to me. His name was Enguerrand. We cycled together for a while and chatted about life on the road.
He was 34 years of age, and had worked in sales in the software industry. He had meanwhile quit his job, put aside some money, had no girlfriend or kids, and was free to roam around in Europe for a couple of months.
He definitely was one of the kind, that wanted to work to live rather than live to work.
A part of me found that appealing. On the other hand, I knew how important my wife and kids and my family were to me and I was so happy that this had a big place in my life.
Also, I loved my work very much.
And yet, I was able to do this great tours once a year. What a privilege this was!
This was not his first tour. He had done a long tour of about 6.000 km the year before in which he had cycled through Greece.
This year, he had started in Triest just like Francesco who I had met a couple of days earlier. Neither his route nor his destination were totally fixed. He wanted to cycle through Turkey to eventually end up in Albania.
We compared our impressions of the countries and people we had cycled through along the way. We found many similarities in our observations.
We had a coffee together short before the border, before I moved on.
I crossed the border into Greece without any problems.
This was country number eight on this fundraising tour. It felt great to have reached Greece all by the power of my muscle muscles. And Rosinantes help of course.
After another 20 km or so, I reached Kilkis. Since it was early, I was planning to find a bike shop for Rosinantes remaining problems.
It was 3pm and the first bike shop was already about to close. The owner tried to do a quick fix to get rid of me quickly.
I went onto the other remaining bike shop called „The Biker“. It was tricky to find these shops because everything, was written in Greek alphabet obviously.
Luckily, I came across Anghelos who was a really gifted mechanic, spoke English and was very kind, patient, and supportive.
His shop was also about to close, but he made some extra time for me.
He did a proper diagnosis and told me that I would need to do a major overhaul of the gear-set when I reached Istanbul.
Nonetheless, he adjusted the gears as good as possible as well as the steering tube, fixed an issue with the front break and 2-3 other little things.
Also, he sold me a new bike computer and a fancy new helmet. At the end, I payed 50€ which I found quite inexpensive.
In the meantime, my friend Susie had arrived to pick me up. It felt great yet surreal, to meet her here in Northern Greece, when I had met her for the last time in our village close to Heidelberg back home. 
Anghelos (Greek for angel) helped to load Rosinante into her car and we drove out into the countryside where Susie was staying to take care of her mother in law for a month.
In the meantime, Vasili and his wife (who was also called Susanne), who normally lived here together with her mother, were enjoying some vacation. They were staying on the Pelion, a peninsula a couple of hundred kilometers south of here.
Once we arrived at the house, we were greeted by two giant dogs and about five cats. Susie showed me around. The house was truly beautiful and designed with a lot of taste. It had been built on the foundations of a former house, that had been abandoned.
I took a shower and washed up some clothes. We had a beer and sat down near a fireplace to catch up.
A little later, I met Mrs. Reinhard, the 92 year old mother of my friend Peter, Susie‘s husband.
Peter had also been my bike mechanic for a couple of years. He was also the one, who had put together Rosinante originally.
We did a group call on WhatsApp and it was fun to have all the friends get together.
Susie had prepared goulash with pasta and green beans. While she was finishing dinner, I had a chance to get to know Mrs. Reinhard a bit better.
She could not walk so well anymore, and also her eyesight was fading. But her mind was working flawlessly, and I was impressed by the eloquence of her language.
Over the past weeks, Susie had been reading out to her all of my blog posts. So she knew exactly, what I had experienced in the last days.
She was interested and asked a lot of good questions. It was an enjoyable conversation.
The dinner that Susie had prepared was easily the best dish that I had eaten in weeks!
It was a true feast and we chatted about many things. I enjoyed it a lot. 
After a nice desert, we closed with an Ouzo, as it should be in Greece, and I went to bed in my little erimitage. 
What a great day it had been again.