You can’t even piss in Greece without hitting some ancient agora – they’re everywhere!

That water sure is pretty.

Paradise Beach on Thassos.

The backyard of our hotel.

The view from our dinner table.

Note: Many of these pics are courtesy of Joel.

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The trip was the official summer excursion for the Sofia Hash House Harriers. The final total of people who went was nine, but we came in different groups at different times. One car left Friday morning, another car left Friday afternoon and the third group came by plane from Romania. I was in the car that left Friday afternoon with Tom (the driver), myself, Joel and Mirena. Te plan was to meet Tom in Boyana (a neighborhood on the outskirts of Sofia in the direction of Greece) at 4pm. Joel and Mirena would catch a cab in the center, pick me up on the way out and we would all meet Tom in Boyana. Well, at around 2pm a freak thunderstorm swept through Sofia and taxis all of a sudden became very hard to come by. It took Joel and Mirena about 45 minutes to catch a cab making us 45 minutes late meeting Tom. Poor Tom works halfway to the Greek border, so he drove up from work to pick us up then basically back down towards Greece again. Anyway, we all eventually made it to Boyana and were on our way around 5pm.

In hindsight, we made several key mistakes in our trip to Thassos.
1. Nobody bothered to look at the ferry schedule until we got to the Greek border. A quick glance showed the last ferry to Thassos leaving at 9:30pm. A quick glance at my watch at the border showed 8pm. An estimate of travel time to Keramoti (where the ferry left from) was over 2 hours. Uh-oh. We made it through the border in a record 21 minutes so (we thought) there was still a slight change to make the last ferry.
2. We didn’t bring a map. All I had was some emailed directions listing a highway (E90), the names of two towns where ferries left from (Keramoti and Kavala), and a larger town (Chrissopouli) which was located near Keramoti. I saw signs for none of these towns until we were almost to Thessaloniki. Thessaloniki is southwest from the border and we wanted to go southeast.
3. I was in charge of navigating. Usually I’m good, but for some reason Greece messes with my navigation skills. The fact that I was navigating without a map didn’t help either.

Once we got to Thessaloniki we saw the highway E90 and signs giving us the direction we needed to go. As soon as we saw the first sign showing the (still long) distance to Kavala we knew we would miss the ferry. 250 km after we crossed the Greek border we were entering Kavala. As we entered Kavala we saw a sign saying the Bulgarian border was only 80 km away. Needless to say I caught some flak for that. In my defense, we found out on our return trip that the border crossing on this sign was a different border crossing than the one we wanted.

On our way to Kavala we got a call from the two people who were flying in from Romania to meet us. They had flown into Thessaloniki, rented a car and drove to Kavala and realized they missed the last ferry. So we had a ferry schedule but never bothered to look at it, they didn’t have a ferry schedule at all. Obviously there was a lot of advance preparation that went into this trip.

On Friday night there were 6 people on the “Thassos trip” in Kavala and only 3 in Thassos. Since we all missed the ferry we booked a cheap hotel in Kavala. Cheap is the key word here. Not inexpensive – cheap. The couple from Romania (one was American, the other British – they used to live in Sofia) arrived ahead of us, booked the room and headed out to get something to eat. Probably around 45 minutes later made it to the hotel and there was not a single hotel employee in sight. We waited a couple minutes and still no one arrived. I got bored and started roaming around checking out some of the open rooms (it appeared some of the unoccupied rooms were left open to air them out). Some of them had a bathroom, some didn’t. Tom started rifling through the reservation book. There was no bell to ring. There were some keys on the reservation desk so I picked one up and opened its associated room. Well, there were bags already in there so it wasn’t ours. At this point and old woman storms out of a room asking what we’re doing. Apparently she was the proprietor which was good because I was about to just claim one of the open rooms. The keys on the reception which I was using to open random doors were, in fact, not ours. She pulled out some keys for us and showed us to our rooms while sucking on a half burnt cigarette. As she entered our room, the inch of ash hanging off her cigarette finally gave out and plopped in the middle of our floor. The room had a very basic bathroom and two beds. Tom and I would share a room. As we were unpacking Tom decided to mention he’s quite a snorer. Super.

I soon realized that the room had an air conditioner near the ceiling, but no way to control it. I headed back to the reception desk and asked if there was a remote for the air conditioner. The old lady gave me some crap about how cool it was tonight and we didn’t need the air conditioner – yea, cool maybe for the equator. It was still pretty warm out and the hotel room was even warmer. About the same time Joel realized the same thing I did and came looking for a remote. She let out a, “You want one too!” comment. Eventually I had my remote and headed back to the room. After we dumped our stuff we all went out to meet up with Christa and Simon (the couple who came in from Romania), have a few beers and some food, and watch the World Cup.

When we got back to the hotel around midnight I thought Tom’s snoring would be detrimental to my sleep, but in fact it was pretty low on the list of things that annoyed me that night. The total list of things that annoyed me were:
1. The air conditioner was friggin’ loud. I mean, this thing sounded like it was trying to haul a mile-long train of coal cars. I’m surprised it didn’t vibrate itself right off the wall.
2. The air conditioner didn’t actually blow cold air – regardless of what temperature I set it at. It did (at least) blow room temperature air … for a while.
3. After a while, the “air conditioner” (I’ll use quotes from now on) would stop blowing any air whatsoever. Note, however, even though the “air conditioner” was not blowing any air, the noise or vibrations it made never changed. I found this out at about 3am when I woke up drenched in sweat and thirsty as hell.
4. There were no glasses or cups in the room. Here I was, about ready to die of dehydration because of the non-functioning air-conditioner, and there were no glasses to put water in. I had to use the old-fashioned “clasp my hands into a cup” to finally drink something. Since the “air conditioner” was not functioning I just turned it off and opened the window which led to the next problem.
5. We faced a street that had no shortage noisy traffic going by at all hours of the night. I’m pretty sure there was a F1 race happening outside our window around 3am. I was only able to keep the window open for a short while before I could take it no more. I closed the door and tried the “air conditioner” again. Thankfully it started blowing air again (still not cold air, mind you). I laid down to go back to sleep when I found out another problem….
6. …the “air conditioner” would only blow air for about 30 minutes. Thus, every 30 minutes I would have to turn off the air conditioner then turn it on again to get another 30 minutes of air circulation.
7. The bed and pillow might as well have been made of concrete.
8. Oh, and Tom snored, but I barely heard it.

We were up bright and early (or all night, depending) to catch the 8am ferry to Thassos. As far as Greece Islands go, Thassos is one of the largest. To drive around the island is about 100 km. The center is mostly mountains with the highest peak being 1045 m (3428 ft). When we got to Thassos we had another adventure trying to find our hotel. Thassos Town is made up of a large number of narrow, one-way streets. We had a map that had printed only four streets, no street names, and looked like it had been drawn by a puppy. Here was my chance to fail again as navigator. Now keep in mind Thassos Town is small. You could probably walk the whole thing in 15 minutes. It took us 45 minutes of driving around to get to our hotel. At a couple points we could see it, but we couldn’t actually figure out how to get there with our car.

We finally made it to the hotel, changed into swim trunks and got back in the car to head to the beach. We were staying in Thassos Town which had a small crappy beach, but had good selections of restaurants, pubs, a ferry back to the mainland and other amenities you would expect in a small tourist town. Thus, we had to drive to the beaches, which didn’t have such amenities. There are two main beaches in Thassos – Golden Sands and Paradise Beach. We stopped first at Golden Sands and decided to head on to Paradise Beach. There was really no rationale for this other than we would see a bit more of the island and Paradise Beach was said to be the better of the two beaches. In my opinion they were probably about the same, but Paradise Beach was very nice. The only problem was we had to walk down a steep road to get down to the beach. We spend the afternoon napping, swimming and making trips to the restaurant for more food and beer. It was a good day.

We headed back to the hotel, relaxed for a bit (I watched the World Cup game, others went shopping) and got ready for dinner. The girl working at the hotel in Thassos was from Seattle and she recommended a good restaurant where our waiter was from Baltimore (and a bit too happy and prompt to be working in the Balkans). No wonder we have to bring in foreigners from poorer countries to wait tables in the US, all the Americans are going to wait tables in those poorer countries – go figure. Dinner was good and Saturday night’s sleep was a vast improvement – the bed was comfortable (although the pillow was a bit large), the a/c worked perfectly and I was sleeping with a very quiet Thomas (as opposed to the snoring Tom).

Sunday morning we went on our Hash run. Ken marked the run through town using clumps of flour (the traditional Hash method of trail marking). He had been up since 6am (his roommate was now the snoring Tom), so he had plenty of time to mark the trail. Before setting out Ken said the run would be pretty short – only about 35 minutes. Well, it went at least an hour and most of it was running up and down hills. It was darn hot too. Anyway, the run was still interesting because it took us past a number of ancient Greek ruins, and up a hill to give us a look over some of Thassos. We got back to the hotel and immediately jumped in the pool (the hotel had a nice pool in the back).

I hung out in the pool until we packed up to leave around 1pm on Sunday. We took the correct way back to the border. This way would have shaved off a lot of the driving time, but we got lost in one of the towns on the way back and ended up going circles for a bit. I think we still made it back in less time than on the way down.

The borders, both going and coming are a pain in the ass. First, they usually only have one booth out of 5 open so you have to wait in a long single-file line. Next, all the customs booths are on the passenger side of the car so you have to stop before the booth, get out of your car (or have your passenger get out) and walk up to the booth to show your documents. Even if you did drive up to the window, it’s too high to actually do anything without getting out of the car. The Greeks and Bulgarians need to take some lessons from the US-Canada (and probably US-Mexico, I don’t remember) border crossings. You can stay in your nice air conditioned car (unless of course they make you get out to search your car for illegal aliens sown into the seat cushions). At the first customs booth you show passports for everyone in the car, a green card (international car insurance document) and some misc. other registration information which Tom says changes every time he drives to Greece (sometimes they want to see it, sometimes they don’t, sometimes they want to keep a photocopy, sometimes they don’t – you never know until you get there). After you get everything stamped and checked at the first booth, you have to go to a second booth (still on the passenger side of the car so you have to stop and get out) and show all the same stuff again. What’s the difference between the booths? No idea – other than it makes it take longer to get through the border. Of course the order of people showing documents at the booths doesn’t always match the order the cars in line behind the booth (it’s a bit of a free-for-all) so sometimes you have to wait for the car in front of you to get their act together with the passports because, despite you already getting everything stamped, you can’t move your car until they pull through. Also, once the Bulgarian customs agent finds out you’re American you have to have a long conversation with him/her about how hard it is to get visas to the US – that takes at least 5 minutes.

So, aside from a longer border crossing of close to an hour, we made it back to Bulgaria without any more incidents. Total time from Thassos Town to Sofia was about 7 hours.

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The changing of the guard in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Athens. It reminds me a bit of Monty Python’s “Ministry of Silly Walks.”

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Me with my aunt and uncle

The Parthenon and Lykavittos Hill in the background to the right.

Me with the Parthenon in the background

Guard in front of the Greek Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

From the top of Lykavittos Hill

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The options for travel to Athens were plane, train or bus. Bus was eliminated immediately because 12 hours on a bus sounds like hell. I’ve also come to the conclusion that trains are also kind a pain in the ass. This left the plane. Although the plane ticket was 4 times more expensive than the train ticket, I felt it was worth it to eliminate 12-14 hours traveling (each way). A flight from Sofia to Athens is only 55 minutes. Only 2 airlines fly the route – Olympic and Aegean. Both are the same price, but Olympic had slightly better departure and return times (leave Sofia at 9am Saturday and return 5pm on Wednesday). I decided on an economy hotel mainly due to its proximity (50 meters or so) to our 5-star luxury hotel.

The flight down was on a small (60-seat or so) turbo-prop. The nice thing about flying on National (i.e. government subsidized) carriers is that they still don’t understand airline economics. This meant that on the 55 minute flight we were served breakfast and drinks. Sweet. The Athens airport is quite new, having been completed in time for the 2004 Olympic games. Despite being outside the city, the planners did a good job at providing easy options into the city. The options were bus, metro and suburban rail. I opted for the fastest option – the suburban rail. One ticket was 5 euro and allowed travel for up to 90 minutes on all public transportation which was important because I changed for the metro at the downtown train station to get me to my hotel (albeit only 2 stops). The economy hotel, appropriately entitled “Economy Hotel”, was fine. As with all European hotels that I’ve been to, the room had two small twin beds pushed together to look like one big bed. Apparently Europeans (well, Eastern and Central at least) all prefer sleeping on hard surfaces because the comfort level of every bed I’ve slept in is only slightly above “bed of concrete”. Even the Athena Grand had the two, rock hard, twin beds. The Economy Hotel also provided a free (but simple) breakfast buffet.

I checked in, dropped my stuff off, and headed out to experience Athens. My first stop was the Archeology Museum – the museum that “every visitor to Athens sees” (according to their promotional literature, anyway). The museum was quite impressive. It had large collections of sculptures, pottery, jewelry, etc. from various eras of antiquity. Unlike almost every other museum I had been to, visitors are allowed to take pictures at this one, although I only took a couple pictures. I can’t imagine a time when I would whip out the photo album to look at an ancient vase that had been glued back together from 40 different pieces. A couple hours later – after seeing about the 40th sculpture of a naked guy – I was ready to go.

Saturday afternoon we climbed up to the top of Lykavittos Hill – the tallest of 7 hills within the city. At the top were excellent views of the city. Also at the top was a small church and a restaurant. I took a quick peek inside the church, but didn’t go in. Orthodox churches (Bulgarian or Greek) all look the same inside (to me, at least). On the walk down I ran into a mother cat and her 5 kittens. Of course I had to stop to play with the kittens.

On Sunday I bought tickets on the “#400 Public Sightseeing Bus.” Tickets were 5 euro and allowed access to the sightseeing bus as well as all public transportation for 24 hours. The bus was ok. It was, in fact, just a city bus, meaning the windows were not adapted to seeing panoramic views of the sites as I would expect a “sightseeing bus” to have. A recorded message said a bit about each site before arriving – including how the Archeology Museum was something that “every visitor to Athens sees.” I did about half the sightseeing bus and saved the second half for the next day (although mainly just to get back to the hotel without having to walk). On Sunday I also hit the War Museum. The museum was so-so. I felt it was much too small and covered only a very small part of Greece war history (mainly WWI and WWII). The highlight of the museum was the collection of planes and artillery on display outside.

Sunday evening I met up with my aunt and uncle, just arrived from several days in the Greece islands (well, one Greek island), and we all went out to dinner. We agreed to meet at their hotel the next morning at 9:30am and begin seeing some of the famous ruins.

I made it by 9:30am and we headed off to see the sites on and around the Acropolis. When we arrived we found out the sites were all free on this day (cha-ching – that saved me 12 euro). We weren’t quite sure why, but we hypothesized it might have something to due with Pentecost. We hit all the major sites on the Acropolis – the Parthenon, Erechtheum (with columns known as caryatids), Theatre of Dionysusin, Theatre of Herodes Atticus, etc. They were all pretty interesting. Even relatively early the crowds were quite heavy on the Acropolis – perhaps because it was free today.

Afterwards we hit the Greek Agora (as opposed to the newer Roman Agora located nearby). There was also a small museum in the Agora with artifacts from the area and maps showing the progression of the Agora area through time.

My Uncle Keith had some good recommendations for restaurants so we were able to eat well for all our lunch and dinner meals. Most of the restaurants were in the Plaka area of Athens. Plaka is an old neighborhood with small and very confusing roads. This meant that a typical quest for a specific restaurant would go like this:
1) identify where we are on the map and identify where on the map the destination restaurant is 2) walk 50 meters and realize we no longer have any idea where we are
3) walk in a direction we think is correct
4) stop and look at map again
5) realize our direction was not correct so change directions to what we now think is the correct way
6) pass a guy who looks like Anthony Quinn in “Zorba the Greek” who is trying to persuade us to eat in his restaurant
7) take a right at Zorba the Greek’s restaurant thinking we now know where to go
go too far and realize we are lost again
9) look at the map and head in a new direction
10) End up passing Zorba the Greek again from a completely different direction. He seems as confused as we are to see each other again
11) Ask for directions from a local
12) Follow directions then realize they were wrong
13) Listen to Kat make fun of my navigation skills
14) Accidentally stumble across restaurant

During the few days we were together, my aunt and uncle were kind enough to pay for most of the meals. For this, I thank them very much.

Monday night I transferred to our 5-star mini-suite hotel room at the Athena Grand hotel. I highly recommend this hotel. The staff was very nice and professional. The breakfast buffet was excellent. The room was nice, although the beds were the standard “rock hard, twin beds pushed together to look like a full sized bed.” Irritating. The free in-room collection of soap, shampoo, conditioner and body wash was excellent. The whole collection was available from the front desk for 18 euro or for free from the maid cart in the hallway when no one was looking.

On Tuesday we hit a museum focusing on traditional Greek musical instruments and also the National History museum. The instrument museum was small, but interesting (and most importantly, free). The history museum was decent sized – situated in the old parliament building. This one cost money but I was able to use my student ID card to get a very reasonable student discount. I would like to thank Boston University for not putting an expiration date on their ID cards.

I left Athens on Wednesday afternoon, but was able to hit the Benaki Museum – sort of a hodge-podge of artifacts from throughout Greek history – before leaving. The flight home was on a Boeing 717 (rather than the turboprop on the way down) and was uneventful except that I left warm and sunny Athens for cold and rainy Bulgaria.

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The Arch of Galerius – built by the Romans in 305 AD to celebrate the triumph of the Emperor over the Persians.

Ruins of part of the wall surrounding Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki YMCA. Looks a lot nicer than the YMCA’s you’re used to, doesn’t it?

The White Tower

The bay on the Aegean Sea

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Australian: “Have you ever been to Bulgaria?”
Greek man: “No, but I’ve been to Los Angeles.”

That reply makes sense because Los Angeles is almost, but not quite, completely unlike Bulgaria.

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Regardless, the hotel was very nice. We had 2 single beds in a non-smoking room. The room was very quiet, mainly because it overlooked a dumpy roof and the some ugly backs of buildings. The hotel had a very nice indoor pool, Jacuzzi, sauna and steam room. Too bad they were only open during the day and not on holidays (i.e. Monday, which was also a holiday in Greece). Still, I managed to sneak a couple hours in the Jacuzzi on Sunday. The 5-star service also offered fresh fruit in the common section of each floor – but apparently only on Saturday since that was the only day we saw fruit.

Upon returning to the hotel room on Sunday night I was going crazy looking for the controller (because I obviously can’t be expected to change the channel manually). After I ruled out theft, spontaneous combustion, and the controller coming to life and walking away, I finally found the controller underneath the sheets of the made-up bed. Yes, yes, never mind that black thing – they left it on the bed so they must want us to make the bed over it.

On one of my down times in the hotel I flicked on the TV to see what was on. The first thing we saw was a horrible Hallmark-style movie with Ben Affleck and a wedding in a hurricane, but I couldn’t follow it, it was so bad. The real interesting part was the number of commercials. The first commercial break lasted FORVER. Now, people always complain about commercials, but this was ridiculous. On the next commercial break I counted 25 commercials. I used the bathroom, took a shower and changed – all before the commercial break ended. I also watched the movie “Aspen Extreme” but that is a blog in and of itself.

One thing I noticed right off the bat in Thessaloniki was the large number of scooters and motorcycles. It seemed like almost everyone had one. I guess it makes sense. The climate there is probably relatively mild for most of the year which would lead itself well to scooter travel. Plus, like most major cities, it looked like parking was a b*tch. Not so with a scooter. It looked like they pretty much parked those things anywhere they wanted to.

After I dropped my stuff off at the hotel I went looking for a place to eat. I went down a side street with several restaurants on either side. As soon as I got on the street I was hustled by a guy trying to get me to eat in his restaurant. His deal was free drinks if I ate with him so I took a seat. The food wasn’t that great, but there drinks were indeed free! While eating I was able to view the “hustle show” going on outside the restaurant. Each of the 4 or so restaurants had a “hustler” who would try to get patrons into their restaurant. Everyone who walked down that street was accosted by several of these guys. They weren’t mean at all – in fact, most people they hustled were laughing at them as they tried to out-hustle their competitor (they were a pretty good show, I must say). I think our restaurant’s hustler was the best as he was able to bring in several groups of attractive women.

Thessaloniki’s lower class, from what I could tell, was African immigrants. Sofia has essentially no black people so it was a shock to see so many of them in Greece. They would walk around through restaurants trying to sell CD’s, posters, and plastic giraffes. I have no idea why a resident or tourist in Thessaloniki would want to buy a plastic giraffe, but you could buy one. Saturday was sort of a wash for museum touring since they all closed at 3pm, but I was able to get out and see some on Sunday.

My first stop was the White Tower. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Tower_of_Thessaloniki) The White Tower was part of the original wall around the city and stands on the waterfront. I’ll let you click on the link to read more about it. I was able to go to the top where there was a decent view of the sea and the rest of Thessaloniki. There was hardly anyone out as it was drizzling which was nice since I didn’t have to deal with any lines/crowds. I also ran into a couple Peace Corps members from Macedonia there.

The next stop was the Archeological Museum which was highly rated by the travel guide. I asked to buy tickets and they informed me that only 1 of the 11 rooms was open. I responded, “Just today?” The museum employee responded with, “Just for the last 3 years.” Hmmm, somebody down there must have gone to the Bulgarian school of museum administration. I ended up buying a package ticket which also got me into the Byzantine Museum around the corner … where I hoped more rooms were open.

The Museum of Byzantine Culture (http://www.mbp.gr/html/en/index.htm), which wasn’t even in the guidebook (despite winning European museum of the year in 2005), was fabulous. The displays were very well done. The museum was set up chronologically and by subject matter as patrons went from room to room. I was very impressed with the diplays and the setup.

After the museum I wandered around town to look at some of the many old churches. Despite being Sunday, most of the churches were closed. Perhaps they were 7th Day Adventist Greek Orthodox Churches. There was one church open, but it was under heavy construction with the entire inside covered with scaffolding. On Monday more churches were open so we were able to see the “Largest Church in Greece.” It was big, but much smaller than I would expect from the “largest church in Greece.” It was probably about the same size (only with a lower ceiling) as the Alexander Nevski Cathedral in Sofia.

Thessaloniki used to be completely surrounded by a city wall. Near the waterfront the wall has been torn down, but much of it still exists around the rest of the city. We were able to walk around part of the wall Sunday afternoon. Since Thessaloniki is built on a hill, the back section of the wall is high on a hill overlooking the rest of the city and waterfront. The hike up offered some spectacular views. The wall is in varying states of disrepair around the city. In some places, people use it as a wall to their house. In other places the wall IS their house – with a little door and mailbox on the outside. My trip around the wall took me through some very interesting and rundown houses. In some sections, one side of the street would have very nice looking houses (likely because they had views of the city/water) while the other side the houses were essentially ruins. Some Roma (gypsy) families had taken over a few of them.

On Monday I was witness to a parade of Greek communists holding Soviet hammer-and-sickle flags. Ummm, hello – did these people see what happened to communism? Do they know what it did to the economies of those countries? Down the crapper is the answer to both those questions. The only reason those countries are doing well now is because they fully embraced a market economy. However, I opted not to voice my objections to the parade participants.

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This weekend was a 3 day weekend in Bulgaria (in fact, May 1st is a popular holiday throughout Europe – their version of our Labor Day) so I took the opportunity for a jaunt down to Thessaloniki, Greece. The plan was to take the train down to Thessaloniki, spend the whole weekend there and return Monday night. Round trip tickets from Sofia to Thessaloniki by train were a mere ~$30. I was also supposed to meet up with Paris and Kamelia, who were traveling by bus, but they think they had some bus problems so we never ended meeting up.

Most people in the US have a romantic image of trains in Europe being fast and efficient ways to travel – in Western Europe, maybe; in Eastern Europe … not so much. Trains here are slow. In fact, a list of Bulgarian transportation options in order from fastest to slowest would probably go like this:
1. Plane
2. Automobile
3. Bus
4. Walk
5. Crawl
6. Stand still and wait for the continental plate to eventually slide to your destination
7. Train

Still, the benefit of the train is that you don’t have to deal with driving and trains offer more room to walk around and stretch than busses.

I arrived about 30 minutes before my 7am Saturday morning departure time. Most Bulgarian trains look like crap, but the train to Thessaloniki was very nice – probably because it was owned by the Greek national railway. The train was very short – only 2 cars, a first class car and a second class car. People watching the train go by were probably like, “Huh? Aren’t those things supposed to be longer?” I had tickets to the second class car because there were “no seats left in first class.” If there were more than 4 people in the entire 1st class carriage they must have been invisible because I didn’t see them. Somebody lost money on that one. Anyway, the difference between 1st and 2nd class is just that 1st class has separate compartments while 2nd class were open seats. 2nd class was still nice though – equivalent to an Amtrak train in the Northeast US.

The train pulled out right at 7am and made its way at a snails pace out of Sofia. Just outside Sofia we passed through Roma village and several huge piles a trash. I was thinking this is probably a lovely introduction to anyone coming into Sofia via train. It was about 4 hours or so to the Greek border. We stopped on the Bulgarian side while customs collected everyone’s passport. I assure you they were in no hurry to stamp and return them to us. While at the border the electric Bulgarian engine was replaced with a Greek diesel engine. Greece didn’t have any overhead electric wires along their tracks as Bulgaria did. The Greek engine looked very sleek and modern compared to the very un-modern Bulgarian engine. Obviously any time the train stopped everyone rushed outside to smoke as many cigarettes as possible – since the train was (thankfully) nonsmoking.

The Greek engine pulled us another couple kilometers to the Greek border crossing where we went through the whole passport/smoking routine again. It was interesting to note that the Greek customs officials didn’t speak any Bulgarian – they spoke to the Bulgarians in English. I suppose most Bulgarians going to Greece speak English since many Greeks speak English and none speak Bulgarian. Still, I saw a few communication problems where the Greek English accent and Bulgarian English accent weren’t always mutually understood. I would have thought Greek customs officials stationed at the Bulgarian border would at least speak some Bulgarian, but I guess not. The whole border process took at least an hour. It was very boring.

We finally finished with all the Greek customs hubbub and were finally on our way again. The train went for another 10 kilometers or so then stopped. This time the engine had to switch sides and pull us from the other end. Why they set up the tracks so that this maneuver was required I have no idea.

The change between the track surface in Bulgaria and Greece was fairly noticeable. In Greece the track is smooth – not continuously welded, but still smooth. In Bulgaria I think they take every section of track and make sure it is off by about 1cm from the last section of track to ensure the bumpiest ride possible. I really noticed this on the ride back when I was playing sudoku. Greece – no problem. All the numbers are within their squares. Bulgaria – I could barely read my numbers much less get them in the squares. Also, the Greeks drive their trains faster in the train station than the Bulgarians do on wide open sections of track.

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