It's all Greek to me

I decided to go to Greece after Skopje. After the very fake buildings of Skopje I wanted something a bit more real, and I felt in need of a mini holiday, strange as it sounds. Luckily there was a bus headed to Thessaloniki in the north of Greece for a fairly reasonable price, so I booked my ticket and was away!

Or so I thought. I got to the station in good time (I really didn’t want to be in the Skopje hostel for any longer than I had to), but there was no information board with departure information on, so for a while I had to entertain myself by running around looking at the front of the buses as they pulled in. All of them were in Cyrillic, so I had no idea which bus was which and very few people spoke any English.

I was getting a bit worried — it was about ten to six in the morning and my bus was due to leave at six. The ticket said the bus would be there half an hour early for luggage loading, but there was no sign of it. I figured the sensible thing to do was ask at the information desk, but I didn’t expect much joy, and I got it when the unpleasant little man behind the desk told me it was due at seven, not six. He then charged me a Euro for something, I’m not sure what. It was early, I hadn’t had any coffee as yet, and I was so sick of being in Macedonia. I was in such a bad mood, but you can’t argue information people. I paid the man and stalked off to wait for my bus, all the while cursing Macedonia and Skopje and myself for being fool enough to be there.

Truth be told I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to get on the bus. I bought my ticket online, but it clearly said that the ticket must be printed and of course the hostel didn’t have a printer, and it being a Sunday nowhere was open to get anything printed (or indeed do anything). The next bus was about 10 hours later, and there was no way I was staying in Macedonia that long. Enough was enough, and I’d had quite enough of Skopje. I put on my best “please just get me the fuck out of here” face on and thankfully the driver let me on, albeit with a strange comment about how the bus was his office.

The border crossing was a bit strange too. Usually on a bus across a border you stop at the border, give your passport to a border police person and then some time passes and you get your passport back and the bus drives on. Here, we stopped on the Macedonian side where the driver told us all to get off. We then had to cross the border on foot (my first border crossing on foot!) and get on a different bus on the Greek side. I also got an exit stamp in my passport, which you don’t get in most of the European countries but I was very excited about.

I’d been hoping for nice weather, but as we rolled through Greece it seemed that was not to be. It was raining when I arrived, and looked thoroughly miserable. Luckily we were dropped off about halfway between the bus station and the centre of Thessaloniki, which ended up only being a couple of kilometres away. The weather cleared up too.

It felt weird to be there. Greece as a country is as far south-east as I plan on going on this trip, but it felt like the most Western city I’d been in since Dublin. Despite the economic crisis there was, to my first impression, no more poverty than in many UK cities, and certainly not on the scale that I’d seen more recently.

I only had a full day in Thessaloniki, and that was scheduled as a bit of a relaxation day where I’d do some laundry and small chores but nothing too heavy. Visiting all these former Communist countries and learning about what had happened had been weighing on my mind quite a bit, especially Bucharest. It was good to have the chance to give the serious thinking a bit of a break.

Thessaloniki was nice enough, in small-city way. Located by the sea, it had a nice pedestrian area and when the sun did eventually disperse the clouds it ended up being quite pleasant, in a “thank God I’m not here during the tourist season” way. The people were friendly and everything was fine, but there wasn’t a great deal to do and once I’d wandered around for a bit, had seen some ruins and had some coffee I ended up feeling like I’d exhausted the possibilities Thessaloniki had to offer.

I did come across a concept I liked very much — the Wall of Kindness. This was a wall which had some interesting street art on it, but also had a few bolts driven into it. This was done during the economic crisis and was for hanging bags of unwanted clothes, food or medicine for the needy to collect. The concept didn’t originate here, I think it came from Iran, but what a great idea!

Feeling done with Thessaloniki, I was ready to move on to Athens. I’d completely forgotten that the bus driver hadn’t dropped us off at the bus station so I had no real idea how far away it was. It hadn’t taken long to walk from the bus to the hostel, so I’d dismissed it as a potential problem. It actually transpired that from my hostel it’s about a 5 kilometre walk, which isn’t that far but my bags weigh in excess of 20 kilograms and time was such that I had to get a move on. A relaxed walk it was not.

Still, the bus ride to Athens was completely worth it. The Greek countryside is beautiful, with large areas unspoiled by human habitations. The sky was brilliantly blue, with a lush green landscape. It was only January but could have been the height of summer in the UK.

The hostel was a bit of a disappointment. Most of the people were fine, but there was one Brazilian guy who just never left the room and didn’t say anything to anyone, apart from saying the odd phrase to his phone. I’m not sure why, he certainly wasn’t on a phone call. Then there was the girl who was our room mate for about 3 hours before disappearing with her stuff who obviously didn’t like any of us.

It was the electricity that was the most annoying thing. We had the same system you sometimes get in hotels, where you have to put your keycard in before anything electrical works. That’s fine for a hotel room, where you have one or two people using the room, and usually with some sort of synchronicity. When there’s six of you and you all have your own timetables that don’t match it’s just asking for trouble. Annoyingly the Brazilian guy stole my card one morning and lied about having done so, and another morning he took his card out while someone was in the shower. I had found my travel nemesis.

Fortunately his replacement was much nicer. An Australian, she arrived on my last day and it was great chatting to her. She’d been all over the place so it was good to hear some interesting stories. It was probably one of the longest conversations I’ve ever had (goodness, the girl could talk!) but it was nice and she showed me the fountains at Syntagma Square all lit up at night which was pleasant to see. It would have been great if she’d arrived a couple of days earlier though, I enjoyed her company.

I think my absent-mindedness annoyed one of my roommates. I had conversations that went like:

Roommate: [talking about Brazilian guy] Did he not wake you up when he left at 4 in the morning?

Me: Oh, he’s gone? He left at 4 in the morning?!

Roommate: Yes, he turned on the light, did that not wake you?

Me: He turned on the light?

Turning on the light at 4AM in a dorm room is, I should point out, a cardinal sin, perhaps only permissible if you’re seriously ill (and even then you’d better die from whatever you have). Usually I’d be first in the queue to protest, so I have no idea why I’m missing these things. Something to keep an eye on, I think.

Athens itself was quite enjoyable. It was quite busy especially when you consider when I went it was off-season, and I can fully imagine it being quite busy in the peak tourist season. The weather most of the time was great, with clear blue skies and just the right amount of sun. It was fantastic, and walking around in a T-shirt after feeling quite cold for the last few weeks was brilliant.

It’s not an especially cheap place though. I enjoyed the Acropolis and the Parthenon, but in-season it’s 20 Euros which is quite a lot for an attraction that is pretty much always going to be busy and, if we’re being honest, is little more than some ruins to wander around. Personally I found it much more enjoyable to wander up the hills and have a look at some of the views Athens has to offer. You can do Athens on a budget, but you can’t go see all the ruins and museums.

Wandering around Monastiraki Flea Market was quite enjoyable too. I quite liked being drawn in to a shop with no intention of buying anything and have the shopkeeper explain everything to me. I did, however, need to buy a hat, and successfully haggled the guy down from the frankly outrageous price of 8 Euro down to a much more reasonable 7 Euro.

I also saw the changing of the guard at the Greek Parliament building, which is one of the silliest things I’ve ever seen and I had to try so hard to maintain a solemn expression and not inform them that they looked quite ridiculous. You can watch it on YouTube if you don’t believe me — press here (it’s not my video). It’s worth seeing if you’re there.

One thing is for certain — I’m going to have to try and learn some of the Cyrillic alphabet if I’m going to be in the Balkans for much longer. It’s one thing not knowing what the words mean as you can sometimes infer from context, but it’s quite another simply not being able to read what the word is. For example, you can read the word “aquabib”, and though you might not know it’s a water drinker, you can make out the a, q, u, and a that make up the first half, and from there you can divine that it might be something to do with water. Not knowing, even very roughly what words might mean is becoming a bit of an issue that I’d like to overcome.

Another issue at the moment is some of my possessions are showing definite signs of fatigue. Both pairs of my jeans are becoming quite worn, with one pair needing fairly urgent repair. I may have to see about purchasing a new pair when I’m in Bulgaria or Ukraine. My shoes are wearing out and I’m not quite sure where I can get replacements. I’ve also used a pharmacy bag from Karlstad way back in the beginning as my toiletries bag, and even that’s wearing out.

Anyway, it’s getting late here and I haven’t eaten, so I’ll leave you thinking about my toiletries bag. Thanks for reading! Written on January 24th, 2018 by David Seddon