Macedonia (FYROM) was a pleasant surprise for us. Its capital Skopje was dotted with magnificent statues of great figures such as Alexander the Great, his father Philippe the Macedon, and other lesser known figures such as Saint-Cyril, Saint-Naum and a random minister. These two saints will come again and again throughout our Balkan stories as they shaped the culture and identity of all the region’s Slavonic christian orthodox countries. We had traveled south from Skopje through the picturesque town of Ohrid nestled on the banks of the lake of the same name bordering Albania, and arrived in Macedonia’s second biggest city, Bitola.
Bitola wasn’t particularly a big city nor was it bursting with sights to see. Apart from the great mosque and the old mosque, one next to the other, a commercial street with plenty of restaurants and good food, the city did not invite to trek through its sinuous streets. Although with temperatures up to 30°C and a cloudless sky, we did not feel eager to continue our research either. The city was rather dusty and busy, and after a long journey from Ohrid, we decided best to retire to our quarters.
The hotel’s staff we were staying at was most helpful in providing us with crucial information about our journey ahead through the Balkan peninsula. We were wanting to cross the Greek border, just south of the city, and enter the town of Florina, where we would catch a bus to Thessaloniki. From there, we wanted to reach, within the same day, Litochorou, the town closest, and at the foot of Mount Olympus. Unfortunately, there is no bus or train to cross the border. So unless we’d trek, we would have to take a taxi all the way to Florina. The receptionist was glad to help us out and reserved a taxi for us. It may sound odd for a taxi to drive through a border crossing, and in a way, it is. Macedonia isn’t part of the EU, nor is it a part of the Schengen Agreement, so Macedonians require a visa to enter Greece. But taxi drivers don’t need that, since most of them have Bulgarian passports through a loophole in Bulgarian law. Hence, they may enter Greece as European citizens. In any case, it’s common practice to take a taxi from Bitola to Florina. We were hence reassured to know for sure that we’d be on our way to Greece the following day in the morning.
Yet, as much as Macedonia was a calm, peaceful and joyful nation, Greece was all the opposite. Not two hours after our taxi reservation was booked that the reception called to announce that the border would close in a few hours until the next day because of strikes. The precise hour of the reopening was unknown and the taxi driver wouldn’t risk going into Greece without knowing for sure he’d be able to go back. Our options were to either leave at 2 AM for Greece (since the border would still be open), or take the first train back to Skopje and hope that there would be an early bus to Thessaloniki. We chose the latter.
4 AM rang. We woke up, packed our things and called reception for a taxi to take us to the station. It arrived within minutes. Macedonia truly is obliging. At the station, we wandered around for a bit in search for the ticket booth. There was a brand new ticket office inside the building, but that was for the buses, not the trains. The train ticket office was the dilapidated small building next to the grand looking station building. It had a small window with no glass where a jolly looking fellow was distributing the same ticket to everyone, but put great effort into recording every sale, marking every ticket with the needed stamps and signatures, and counting every dinar he was handed. He was not alone. In the room were about ten other people, some in train inspector uniform, others in normal clothing, but all were either smoking or were rolling cigars or cigarettes. The room was abundant in smoke. Our ticket officer would also indulge in great conversations with his peers in Macedonian. He even had a helper who counted the number of tickets sold, but both spoke English enough for the transaction to occur. In our backs stood a brand new state of art train ready to depart for 5AM. It was the only train in the station.
Next to this room was another room but with no windows, only with a wooden green door. It was abruptly opened by a a tall chubby bald man in his fifties. He wore only a white yellow-stained vest in the cold early foggy morning. Inside seemed to be a worn out wooden table, and a bed with a mattress. As he stood at the edge of the room, he frighteningly gazed at the train, considered it for a few seconds, then rushed back in, put a green jacket on, closed the door, and walked steadfast to the train.
The train wasn’t particularly crowded, so we had ample space to gaze at the landscapes Macedonia had to offer. The countryside, which the train would cut through, was absolutely gorgeous. The main photo of the blog is from that train ride. As the sun dawned on the land, a sudden burst of yellow and bright orange coloured the whole land. Crops and forests afar would turn browny-orange and the land would be flat until a hill or a mountain would show its peak through the early morning fog. The small towns on top of rolling hills would wake up to the church bell, or the mosque’s call to prayer, or both. As we approached Skopje, the landscape became flatter and more industrialised with tractors, factories and chimneys, all abandonned.
The train ride, albeit an improvised journey, was one of the most beautiful rides, and were it not for the Greeks, we would not witnessed the Macedonian countryside waking up. I would recommend doing it.
Back in Skopje we headed directly for the bus ticket office, exactly under the train station, and asked for the first bus to Thessaloniki. It was not due to depart before 5 PM. It was now only 9 AM. If only we’d known about it in Bitola… But reception had no idea nor had it any means to know. We had to find a way to enjoy the city once again, and make the best out of this layover. We bought our tickets and took a taxi to the city centre. We were by now, all too familiar to this foreign land and were not fooled by taxi drivers demanding a higher price for what was a five minute drive. We enjoyed a small breakfast, then walked some more around the old town and the Muslim part of the city, and ate a big meal for lunch.
When in Macedonia, one must try Ajvar. It is known as the Macedonian Caviar, and is delicious. Alongside it was served Zelnik, a puff pastry filled with spinach and cheese. Mouth watering simply to just write these sentences. All in all, we highly recommend trying Macedonian food. Its garlic and ham filled mushrooms cooked on stove, with orange ajvar and zelnik, topped with an assortiment of cheese, together make up a Macedonian Mezze, and is perfect for a summer lunch.
The time had come and we boarded a minibus. The driver was Greek and spoke good Macedonian. He had a tight schedule and was supposed to leave at a specific time. He had to wait 10 more minutes for a woman and did not hesitate to show how angry he was. He was quick tempered clearly. The bus ride was fine, as long as we were on the motorway, but then the motorway stopped, as it wasn’t yet fully built and we had to take smaller roads all the way to the border (which we hoped was open)! His quick temper also showed in his driving skills as he overtook multiple lorries on a 1×1 curvy road. After 3 long hours we reached the border. We went through the Macedonian border police, and then drove slowly past long lanes of lorries parked just before the Greek border. The border police were doing their job, but their colleagues at the customs were on strike. So anyone who had goods to declare had to wait, until the following day. After 30 minutes, we were finally in Greece and was another hour and a half before we entered Thessaloniki, the second biggest city in Greece.
We were dropped off at the train station in Thessaloniki at 10 PM EET (9 PM CET). Our next leg was to reach Litochorou, at the foot of Mount Olympus. We knew that there was a bus at 11PM for the town and we knew that trains weren’t running because the strike hit all public transports. Yet, weirdly, there were still train ticket officers at their desk. We asked (in vain we knew) whether there would be trains to Litochorou, but of course, there weren’t. And even if there were, we’d still had to walk an hour from the station to the city centre of Litochorou because the station was nowhere near to the town. So we asked whether there was a bus. They said yes, a number 43 or 48, or maybe 48B, they replied. We went outside running and looked furiously for a 43 or 48B. We asked an old man who, after conversing in Greek with his younger colleague, told us in half-Greek half-sort-of-English that it was supposed to arrive on that side of the dock. So we waited there.
Because no one seemed sure of what they were saying, and because we didn’t trust them either, we asked a group of three girls which bus we had to take to reach Litochorou. They responded with the same numbers, 43 or 48B. After a few minutes, 48B came but stopped 10 metres from the bus dock, we rushed to catch it but the bus driver told us off in Greek and gesticulated that he’d come back round to come and pick us up.
He never did, he simply drove off and continued his journey. We were stunned. We didn’t understand how anything worked or what we were supposed to do. After another few minutes, another bus came, the number I don’t remember but we boarded it. The bus driver looked grumpy. He was grumpy. I asked for two tickets. He didn’t answer, simply threw his right hand behind his shoulder and pointed to a machine in the middle of the bus. The machine was a ticket dispenser, but only accepted coins and, we would later learn, only the exact amount. We only had a 5 EUR note and Macedonians dinars in coins. I explained this to him and he didn’t replied; he again gesticulated that I should sit down and he’ll sort it out. All of this happened of course as he was driving through Thessaloniki at 10:30 PM. After two stops he halted suddenly and pointed to a night shop. I understood what he meant: I needed to change my 5 EUR into coins in there. I rushed inside but found no one. From behind me came a Pakistani man and with a broad smile under a thin mustache, and said he doesn’t sell bus tickets. I said I didn’t need tickets, only to change my banknote into coins. He obliged and wished me a lovely night. I ran back to the bus, thanked the driver, inserted the coins in the machine and it produced two identical tickets, but didn’t gave me the change I was entitled to. I then asked the driver which stop was Litochorou, he replied in English that he’d let us know when to step off. So he did speak English.
After 15 minutes or so we reached a big circular building with plenty of buses. He pointed to the building and said that we would find a bus for Litochorou in there. That’s when we realised that no one explained the whole thing to us, only bits and pieces. This bus we took was only a local one, taking us to a much larger domestic bus station. Inside, the building was mostly empty, and 11PM rang a few minutes earlier. We looked on a board where all the buses were assigned a dock. We rushed to the place our bus should have been and found nothing. It left probably a few minutes earlier.
We missed it. We walked to the main area where tickets were sold. Each desk had an assigned region and would sell tickets for that said region of Greece. Only three desks were still open. The desk for Pieria, the region we were aiming for, was open. We asked when the next bus for Litochorou was, she looked at the board and answered with 10 AM and a big smile. Our bus was well and beyond Thessaloniki already. She said the only other option is to buy a ticket to Athens and see with the bus driver whether he’ll drop us off in Litochorou. We went to the Attica region desk and explained our situation to this man. He understood and offered with a solution: take the trains. We explained that the trains weren’t working because of the strike. He was dumbstruck, he hadn’t heard of any strike, surely the trains would work all through the night, he said. We explained, insistently, that we witnessed the strike, that we came from Skopje and had to travel over a thousand kilometres to reach Thessaloniki, and that trains weren’t working and that the customs were closed. He only heard ‘Skopje’, and raised his voice to ask whether we spoke Greek. We don’t speak Greek, we answered, we’re from Belgium but traveled here from Skopje, which by no means, speaks anything close to Greek. He insisted on whether we spoke Greek.
After half an hour of deliberation that no, we did not speak Greek, that no, he could not guarantee the bus driver would stop in Litochorou, as his only stop was Athens, and that yes, he is sure trains were still working, we left the bus station and headed back to Thessaloniki. We had a reservation anyway for our last night in Greece in the city, so we headed for our hotel on a bus with a driver who spoke better English and was glad to help us reach the correct station. At the hotel, we explained our situation to the receptionist. He said that unfortunately, the hotel was full for the night. However, the hotel was in alliance with another one, two streets away, and after calling them, he booked us a room for the night at that one. We arrived at the second hotel just before midnight, payed for it, and crashed on our beds.
After 18 hours of travelling, one closed border crossing, one 6 hour layover, a few buses to and fro the bus station and a crash-course in Greek, we had arrived not where we were supposed to arrive, but at least somewhere where the beds were nice and soft. We called our hotel in Litochorou to let them know we wouldn’t be arriving that night, but the following day. They were very kind and offered to cancel that night, not billing us for it. An act that seemed a miracle in that evening of cultural misunderstandings. But of course, the heating in the ceiling was leaking somewhere and had to go to sleep on the sound of droplets hitting a hard metal board. Lovely.
コメント