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Greece
“At least it's quiet here…”
4 January 2007
Northern Greece
We're sitting in the bar car of the train from Thessaloniki to Alexandropoulos, near the Turkish border. It's a long ride, so we're thankful for the bar car! It is sort of funny to watch the train attendant try to be strict with the no-smoking rule, as people in Greece smoke everywhere and the passengers clearly are not used to this law being upheld. Cigarettes are even for sale on the train, and every time the attendant leaves, the bartender herself lights a cigarette.
We spent the last three nights in Thessaloniki, which seems like a really nice city. As was mentioned in a previous entry, we visited an excellent ouzeri, and we even made it to a 'jazz' club. More about this shortly. There are not exactly a lot of sights to see in Thessaloniki. There are a few museums and the White Tower, which is just a tower and not white. The White Tower is important for historical reasons: when this part of Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire, there was some sort of a massacre of Christians there. On to more interesting stories…
The 'jazz' club we went to was a night to remember. We arrived at about 10pm, apparently about three hours too early. Once the music finally started, we were surprised, to say the least, by the band's musical selection: they played everything from Destiny's Child to whatever other American female 'diva' was on the radio that month. Ugh. Definitely not worth the three hour wait, but at least we snuck away before they got the cover charge off us!
In Greece this time of year, there are very few tourists, which is very nice in a way, but it also means that a lot of things are closed. In theory, we should be able to get a look at Greek culture the way it works outside the tourist industry, but so far we haven'' had much of a glimpse of this aspect. All we can tell is that the Greeks are, alternately and apparently without reason, sometimes very rude and occasionally mildly friendly.
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We have now arrived in Alexandropoulos, and arrived at the Hotel Mitropolis. We are now about 30 miles from Turkey, but we've decided we don't have time to go there. Instead, tomorrow we plan to catch the ferry to Samothraki.
The train ride here was interesting. After a couple of hours, we made our way to the bar car. The attendant was hanging out in the bar car, too, and between yelling at passengers for smoking, he would have a cigarette. We started talking to Eva, the bartender, and eventually the attendant joined in the conversation. From this gem of a man, we heard the following quote, referring to countries with poverty issues: “I don't like these kinds of countries, with misery …” Another interesting quote came from Eva, in response to our comments on the kindness of the Egyptian people: “In Greece, we're not so nice, but at least things are quiet.” These quotations, in themselves, are interesting, but they serve to make a point here: the Greeks seem to be, in terms of personality, somewhere in between indifferently straightforward and shockingly rude. Not that we're complaining …