Thessaloniki and Beyond

A few days after I arrived, I dragged my pack across the courtyard and up onto the bench where I would sit and eat my last breakfast in Athens. I sat with an Australian and an American, inhaling Nutella and bread and joking with the Aussie about tap water. Despite warnings from others in the hostel, we had both been filling up our bottles at the kitchen sink in secret. He asked where I was heading, and I told him I was training north to Thessaloniki, and from there I wasn't sure. If I remember correctly he was heading to Split, in Croatia - or maybe he'd just come from there? Over the coming weeks, I would grow used to having similar conversations with various travellers across the continent - I just didn't know that yet.

Soon it was time to go. Breakfast inhaled and teeth brushed, I eyed the pack up. It seemed bigger than I remembered. Declining the American's help I heaved it onto my back. I felt like a sea turtle standing on its hind legs for the first time like I might fall backwards if I stood at even the slightest wrong angle. 

Pack strapped to my back and map at the ready, I strode from the courtyard with the same reckless unstoppable abandon that had propelled me out of the airport a few days earlier.

Minutes later I would return to collect my forgotten charger and power bank. The Aussie chuckled. I was on my way.

Something I forgot to mention in my previous post - Greeks do not do directions. At all. Whether I'm stupid, or maybe my accent is just hard to understand, I don't know. The metro was supposedly ten minutes away, and it took me half an hour to find it. Along the way, I stopped and asked various locals which way to go, and their responses were all relatively similar and vague.

Down there, five minutes

Go right

Go left

Five minutes, five minutes

Eventually, I found the metro and managed to get to Larissa Station. I had no idea where I was, but the station had what I can only describe as a weird vibe. After purchasing my ticket I point at the time on the little slip of paper.

So the train leaves just after 3 pm?

Yes yes

The man dismissed me with the back of his hand.

It was 10 am in the morning, and the only other place I could have sat was a pub next to the station - outside a neon sign flashed, advertising horse racing. I wasn't keen so I walked to the track, huddling in the shade and clutching my ticket. Thank god I did, because it was two minutes before my train hurdled to a stop in front of me that I realised 3 pm was my arrival time. If I hadn't been so on to it I would have been waiting by the track for another five hours for a train that had already left.

So within a half hour, I was on the train to Thessaloniki - the second largest city in Greece. At that point, I didn't know whether I'd be staying in Thessaloniki or carrying on, but I was too excited to care. The train was hot, and after a while, my shirt was damp with sweat. I opened a window, which was promptly shut by an official-looking Greek man in a suit. He rambled something at me and disappeared. The next few hours were uneventful. I wrote, stared out the window at the golden Greek countryside, and made conversation with the Englishman sitting across from me - I never did find out his name. 

When I got to Thessaloniki, I wandered off the train with the Englishman who asked if I knew where I was going.

He pointed me in the direction of the international ticket office and within a few minutes he'd disappeared, leaving me to ponder my next move alone and in silence.

So I approached the man in the ticket office and asked him if there was a train to Ljubljana in Slovenia. 

From here you can go to Skopje in Macedonia or Belgrade in Serbia

I asked him if Belgrade was nice.

I was there about five years ago and it was okay

Sounds good to me

The next few minutes were spent confirming I did in fact want to go to Belgrade.

You want to go to Belgrade?

Sure why not?

The man laughed.

Alright, Serbia it is

He spent the next ten minutes scribbling down instructions and laughing with the other man behind the counter.

She's crazy!

He was almost falling out of his chair with laughter.

No I'm not I'm from New Zealand

He laughed even harder.

Within twenty minutes, I was waiting for another bus - that bus would take me through to Macedonia where I would board a train to Serbia. I'd be arriving in Belgrade at about 9 am the next morning. After all the warnings from family and friends alike, I had been totally fine up until this point. I felt confident like all the warnings were for nought. My head was in the clouds.

It was when I left the train station at Thessaloniki that I was pulled back down to earth again. Outside the station, on the corner where the bus was supposedly picking me up from, was a group of about ten men. They looked about my age, maybe a little older. I assumed they were just hanging out on the corner as I had seen the locals do in Athens, and kept walking.

As I approached the corner, the men stopped chatting and all turned around to stare at me. It was then I noticed they weren't smoking, nor were they playing cards or doing anything really. They were just standing on the corner, staring at me. I told myself I was just being paranoid, but decided to head inside where I knew there were other people.

At the station, there were two terminals connected by a dark corridor. At this point I was sitting in the second terminal. There were staff and other travellers, but no security guards. Within a few minutes, the men had sat outside the terminal, then one by one had trailed inside. I considered making a run for it down the hallway where I knew there was security - but as soon as the thought popped into my head, two of the men got up and walked down the corridor.

I was trapped. There were now men outside, men sitting a few seats down from me, and two more idling down my only plausible escape route, not to mention the ones who hadn't moved from the corner. Call me crazy but I began to panic. My bus was leaving in a half hour and I was frozen with fear.

It was at that point I decided to talk to the staff. There were two behind the glass just in front of me. I willed my legs to move. I tried to talk quietly but was unable to hide my fear. My voice was shrill, and echoing off the vinyl floor. 

I'm being followed please help me

The men behind the counter did not understand me. My already bizarre accent was made further unintelligible by my hysterics. Eventually, they got the message and one of them came out behind the counter and walked me through to the other terminal. He muttered something in Greek to the security guard who rolled his eyes and told me to have a seat. By now I was in tears. The strange men had also dispersed into virtually thin air. I wondered if I had imagined the entire thing.

For the next fifteen minutes I sat, feeling more alone than ever. That was when a man, travelling with his brother and girlfriend, asked if I was heading to Belgrade. I was so happy to find fellow travellers I fell off my chair. Upon finding out what had happened the three took me under their wing. They gave me a sip of water and a cigarette and within five minutes I had calmed down enough to chat with them. The two brothers were German, and the woman with them was Syrian. The brothers would be going on to Belgrade, leaving the woman in Thessaloniki. I wish I could remember their names.

So we went to get on the bus. Just as I was starting to feel normal again, the two brothers were told they would not be able to board. They argued with the driver, who beckoned me on. I took my passport from the dash where he had chucked it and sat down - only for the driver to take it off me again. My German friends were eventually let on, and they smiled at me as they walked past. 

Do you speak Deutsch or English?

I turned around and came face to face with another girl about my age.

He'll give your passport back, he just needs it for the border

I thanked her and turned back around, then turned again.

Can I sit with you?

Her name was Ronja, and she was from Germany. Within a few minutes of meeting her, she convinced me to stay in Belgrade with her, at a tiny place called Hostel Bongo.

She didn't know why the men hadn't been allowed on the bus at first.

The driver's German is too broken

She talked about refugee asylum, and how they often have blue passports just like my two friends. The thought hadn't even crossed my mind - New Zealand is so far away, and we don't have borders with another country. I had seen the refugee crisis on television but had never been directly exposed to it in this way before. 

Ronja went on to describe her journey from Italy to Greece.

There were people trying to jump the fence at the port, and security pulled them down. It was barbaric.

A few hours later we stopped at the Macedonian border, and my two friends were removed from the bus. The other passengers, including myself, could do nothing but look on in shock as a customs officer boarded the bus and yelled at the two men to get off. Within minutes we were moving again, the driver continuing our journey without a second thought. 

A while later we were dropped off at a station in the dead of night. Before us was the train that would take us through to Belgrade, Serbia. I had no choice but to keep moving. With Ronja at my side, we boarded the train.