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The original was posted on /r/bicycletouring by /u/yokobarron on 2025-10-19 06:39:26+00:00.

I’m currently on a bike tour from Berlin to Istanbul via the Balkans. Until yesterday, I’ve had a good run with dogs. Only a couple of aggressive encounters. It felt like dogs in Macedonia and Albania were more scared of a bikes than anything.

Then I entered Greece.

Immediately after crossing the border from Macedonia I was met with a couple of dogs, almost as if they were waiting for my arrival and got worse from there. I had at least eight aggressive dog encounters in the one day. Two genuinely intense ones, it felt like they chased me for over a kilometre and got at my back pannier. It feels like dogs in Greece have been trained on the blood and sweat of cyclists or something.

• Did I just get lucky in the Balkans or unlucky in first day in Greece?
• Has anyone ridden the coastal route from Thessaloniki (where I am now) to Istanbul, what’s the dog situation like?

I got bitten pretty badly on my leg by a dog in Georgia on a previous trip, which caused a huge disruption with expensive rabies vaccines, so I’d really like to avoid a repeat.