“Remember that time we almost got kicked off the train in Greece?”
That is a phrase my old team, the Wolf Pack, says to each other when we need a good memory to shake our heads and laugh at. I mean what else do you do when you’re a 4 hour train ride from Thessaloniki Greece? You take the four hour train and go see it. Simple right? Welll…
Sunday afternoon our host drove us to the train station and helped us get tickets for a fun filled, stress free, two days in Greece. We knew that the train didn’t cross the border so we would have to do some changing around. What that looked like we hadn’t a clue. We arrived in Kulata Bulgaria and followed the rest of the people, who looked like tourists, to wait for a bus. A bus came and we got on it having no idea if we had to pay for this or not, and since nobody said anything we just rolled with it. (rolling with it is a well-developed skill on the race and the sooner you refine it the easier your life will be)
The bus took us across the border and to the train station. We stood on the platform and waited for the train, we assumed would come (“assume” that dangerous way of thinking that is frightening in how often it works out), it ended up being three hours late because it had hit a car; I know great start. When it came, we got on, and found seats. Soon enough the conductor came by for our tickets, which as it turned out, we didn’t have since we had to buy them on the train. Another thing we didn’t have was euros, the Greek currency, since we had just crossed the border from Bulgaria and hadn’t seen an atm at the dinky train station on the Greek border.
Give me a moment to elaborate on the fact that, in that instance we had at least THREE different currencies among the six of us, and none of them helped AT ALL… Back to my story
We were told that, since we had no euros, we would have to get off at the next station (by the way this was 10pm in a new country and the next town very likely didn’t have a hotel, let alone an atm). We had no clue what we would do. We started brain storming, (we’ll circle up on the platform and I’ll take the first shift while you all sleep then we’ll switch then I’ll sleep) and praying. The man in front of us piped up, in ENGLISH, and gave us a suggestion; 1.see if the food car could exchange our Bulgarian Lei or 2. hide in the bathrooms. The food car couldn’t exchange and since it’s a little hard to hide 6 people in a train bathroom, we had to come up with another solution, and panicking was not an option. The conductors must have seen we were trying to do something and with the help of our English speaking angel we were told we could ride for free… this time!!!
We breathed a sigh of relief and settled back for the ride, which ended us in Thessoloniki at midnight.
That day and a half in Greece was perfect. A couple of us rented bikes for 2 hours and rode along the sea. We did a lot of walking, eating (Baklava, highly recommended) and relaxing. We finished the night as a team eating in a restaurant that overlooked the sea, at sunset.
The next morning Madi and I walked to the Jewish museum, got coffee, talked and walked. We got a bus that afternoon and had an uneventful-don’t ask me to define uneventful- ride back to Dupnista.
We laughed at how much we must stress out our guardian angels, but we’re grateful they stick with us, otherwise we’d be in trouble!
