I only have this morning to take in the rest of the Athens Experience. My overnight train to Turkey leaves at 13.21 this afternoon. The morning sees me strolling over to Monastikiri, an ethnically mixed area very near to Plaka. Here you will find all kinds of stores, and the local flea market on a Sunday. It's an intriguing area with a small square, where I sit with a drink, and people watch.
Bag firmly on back once more, I make my way to the train station. Greece has one of the smallest rail networks in Europe, partly due to its mountainous nature, and mostly due to the under investment of successive governments. In a European capital of several million people, the train station has two platforms. You have a 50/ 50 chance of getting on the right train, and given that there probably won't be a train on the other side, not even the unluckiest of travellers can screw this up. We leave platform 1 pretty much on time.
The train is modern, albeit with a Victorian style lay out where separate cabins are linked by a continuous corridor. It's a bit cramped, but this makes it cosy too. I chat to a lady from the coastal city of Thessaloniki, where, incidentally, I must change trains. I had considered staying a day there, but there are few things in life more depressing than an out of season seaside town- I once went to Morecambe in November. Come to think of it, I once went to Blackpool in July....
It's a beautiful January afternoon,as the sun shines down from an almost cloudless sky. We pass snow covered hills, and wooded ravines, before travelling across a small plateau, looking down on the valley below. There's a real patchwork of orchards, fields and red roofed houses. All that can be seen is laced with an ever so faint wintral grey as we make our way north. It is a little after 6pm when we arrive in Thessaloniki. I indulge in a bit of leg stretching around the station, before hopping on board the sleeper train. I'm delighted to be confronted by convertible couchettes in a two man berth. Wasn't sure whether I was going to get to lie down when I booked.
It's not long before the second man appears, and he's quite a character. His name is Grieg and he's from Greece, but university educated in St. Petersburg. He's travelling to meet his Russian girlfriend for her birthday weekend, and we get on quite famously. We swap beer, his mother's sandwiches and travel stories. Grieg enlightens me on the world of a scuba dive instructor on the Greek islands. Anybody from Essex? Good. He tells me to remind him later of the full story of him being swept out to sea on a windsurf, only to be rescued in the pitch black in the nick of time. We enjoy a toast of the excellent Metaxanah before a relatively early night. The train rocks me in my slumber. The air begins to get cooler.
We're woken at the Greek border point at 2am. It transpires that Grieg didn't just take sandwiches from his mother- he also mistakenly took her passport as well. Fortunately for him, his ID card is enough to see him through. A full 40 minutes of travelling later, (must be the widest border in the world), we arrive at the Turkish side. I'm instructed to disembark, and pay my 15 Euros at the Police desk. I jump out of the train and land with a scrunch on a very thick blanket of white. I can't help but laugh at a huge neon duty free sign that flickers on over a tiny duty free shop right next to the security checkpoint. Formalities complete once again, I swap my new Ukranian passport for my actual one, and we're off!
Istanbul awaits...
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