Boston to Probistip

Yes I am here, as if you hadn’t noticed, Mikey…to hear you tell it, so far I have 1. eaten you out of house and home 2. used up a day’s worth of hot water in a single morning 3. given you ulcers by insisting on drinking coffee near your precious computer 4. scattered crumbs on your previously tidy floor and 5. generally disrupted your swe-e-e-e-t bachelor existence.

Okay, so I’m pretty bad with crumbs, but I’m used to having a Dust Buster, now aren’t I? Give me a few days to adjust.

Michael tells me everyone wants to share travel experiences, so here’s the bottom line: Boston to Athens via London on British Airways is a pleasantly uneventful journey. Athens to Probistip—not so much. But it was much better than it would have been without the advice of other PCV’s, who responded generously to our pleas for guidance on making the trip and spared me a dozen additional hours on local milk runs.

Alexandra, Michael's counterpart, put us in touch with a nice young taxi driver who drove him all the way to Thessaloniki and back to pick me up in the middle of the night, cutting another 6 or 8 hours off my trip. At least I think he was young—it was pitch dark and I had already spent 29 hours on trains, planes and automobiles (not to mention a couple of buses) by the time Michael wrestled my luggage to the parking lot from the train station.

“Wrestled” is no exaggeration, in this case. Advice to anyone trying to carry six weeks’ worth of clothing plus two bags full of items their PCV needs from home between Athens and Macedonia: DON’T. Pop for the cost of shipping or hire a taxi to get you out of Athens before the local transportation authorities get a crack at you.
The Greek citizens I spoke to were lovely and helpful, but transportation employees seemed to take sadistic pleasure in throwing as many roadblocks as they could in my way. They suddenly didn’t seem to know which bus went to the train station, where I could find a telephone or cash machine, or even if there WAS a train to Thessaloniki that night.

When a kind passer-by actually reversed direction to lead me to the correct bus, the driver tapped his foot impatiently as I stumbled toward the door, considering it beyond his purview to help me haul my large wheeled bag out of the street, to which it had escaped after hitting a crack in the sidewalk. It also did not occur to him that I might get to the door sooner if he picked up my smaller suitcase, which had cast off the bungee cord binding it to its big brother and escaped in the opposite direction during the melee.

I did finally make it to the train station, only to discover that for reasons known only to train employees, they refuse to accept your baggage until one-half hour before your train departs. Having four bags and five hours to wait for the train to Thessaloniki, I tried to ask the five men idling and smoking behind the luggage counter if they would make an exception. With a grin of great self-satisfaction one of them said clearly, “None of us speak English” and shared a guffaw with his coworkers.That’s when, to my delight, I discovered that there are certain universal hand gestures which they DID understand. I know it was beneath me, Mother, but it felt wonderful.

So enough with the complaining. As anyone who has been to this mountain valley knows—the trip was well worth it. When I finally ‘came to’ from my jetlag, we walked down cobbled streets to the town center to cries of “Hello, Michael” and “What’s shaking, Michael” from just about every passing child. They all seem to be getting a great kick out of learning American slang. Their eIders stopped us at least every block to engage us in enthusiastic conversation, even though I couldn’t understand a word and Michael caught only a few here and there. It didn’t matter if we didn’t speak the language, they let us know: we must come in for coffee.

I can’t begin to do justice to the natural beauty of this place and the friendliness of the people in a short blog, so I’ll break it into small pieces in future entries. For now there are boxer shorts and lace panties to hang out to dry on our balcony and garden tomatoes, local cheese and crusty bread to collect from little shops down the street.
Swe-e-e-t.