Day 6 – Public Transportation

So ancient Greek history is one thing and current history is another.

Today’s plan was to move on to Kalampaka further north, which is why I woke up at 6 and left the hostel at 7 to take the 8:20 train from the “Larissa” main train station. I got there by metro and this time really found myself in a “not so nice” part of the city. This also applied to the train station itself. Lots of highly armed and shielded policemen protected the entrance and wouldn’t let anyone with a slightly darker skin inside the building.

Although this caught my attention, I thought this to be just normal practice at first. However, my impression from the first and second day here was revised again. Suddenly everything seemed very poor again; immigration, racism and police presence was very visible and no one spoke any English anymore. There were also very few tourists. (I probably could get as many impressions of this city as days I spend there.)

While I was waiting, the delay of the train before mine (that should depart from the same platform) was announced and received with booing and hissing by the bulk of people waiting for it at the platform. And so began the waiting. One hour passed, then another, people were getting impatient and I noticed a conflictive climate arise.

Obviously I didn’t understand anything people were shouting or talking but suddenly there was one Greek man standing in the middle of the railways throwing stones at the bulk of people and shouting things like “Go to your country and go f*** yourself!”. The situation didn’t escalate for now but another hour of waiting later (the immediate incoming of the train was announced continuously) it finally did. Everyone jumped down on the railways, sitting down, shouting and laughing, blocking every train that arrived at adjacent platforms and stopping them from moving on.

It now was about 12 o’clock and pretty obvious that there wouldn’t be any train today. So I picked up my things and left the station, having my ticket changed for a coupon. Someone in the queue (Alexandros, I later got to know him better) tried to explain me in very bad English that it was all because of the immigrants from Syria and Pakistan who all wanted to get to Thessaloniki and from there to Europe but I couldn’t quite understand how this would affect the trains. It was much later today that I found out that the delayed train was a special train to transport Syrian refugees to Thessaloniki in Greek Makedonia. Greeks had apparently blocked the railways since the night before in order to stop the refugees from getting to Thessaloniki. And the bulk of people that were now blocking the railways were refugees as well. Which also explained the high amount of small children among them.

I asked my way to a bus that would take me to the main bus station where I was hoping to catch a bus to Kalampaka instead of the train. Obviously I wasn’t the only one trying to do so and the next two busses were full and I was put on a waiting list which finally got me a spot on the 15:30 bus to Kalampaka (for twice the money than the train had cost me).

I then spent the next 5,5 hours on that bus, entertaining myself by reading every written content that came into my sight. Having learned a little Greek before getting here is coming in very handy when talking to people and especially being able to read signs is very helpful and entertaining. It makes me feel like a 5-year-old again that just learn most of the letters of the alphabet and is now learning to deciffrate them into words. Very satisfying and endorphine-charged “Aha!-experiencies” are guaranteed every time I deciffrate a word that turns out to be something I know (like “εφημερίδες περιοδικά” (efimerides periodika) which means newspapers/magazines (periodic ephemeral stuff, isn’t that amazing?!).

I also got to know a young Greek girl and a Californian-mexican traveler and learned that Greek universities are free but very hard to get into, that there is a lot of corruption and that today’s events leading to cancelled trains were a sever case of “Greek logic”. Together we made our way northwards at “turtle speed” through kilometres of olive tree fields, green hills, the beautiful sea bay to the right and snowy mountains in the distance.

We changed busses at Trikalis, the village before Kalampaka. According to Eleni, the Greek girl, this bus’ speed would change from “turtle” to “two turtles holding hands and walking together”. And so the last 10 km took 1 hour and I arrived at Kalambaka at 9 and checked into the very nice Holy Rock Hostel. This means that I spent a total of 14 hours to travel a distance of 317 km. I sincerely had expected stuff like that in the other Balkan countries but not in Greece.