I love Thessaloniki, It's not as cool as counter-cultural Berlin, it's nowhere near as anarchic as Athens, nor as historic and monumental. It's not as dirty as Plymouth on a Saturday night, it's not particularly beautiful, it has it's disgustingly modern grid system, fancy boutiques and a sleazy strip bar district, but I love it. Why? I'm not sure. Maybe it has the sea. The sea is always there, acting like a heat sink for hot Mediterranean blood: Never allowing a boil-over.
The sea front (I've no Idea what they call it, but the locals basically promenade) is a popular choice for a walk in the city and one of the few placed that you can go for a run without breaking your ankle on the 'character-full' pavements. Recently someone has paid millions to extend this promenade miles along the coast with ornamental parks and gardens. So now they can walk further!
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| Mount Olympus at sunset. |
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| that old time religion |
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| The sea front promenade extension with nice wooden boardwalk and snazzy umbrella art. |
One of the first things that I did was to climb up through the old high town that escaped the great fire (Ana Poli) to the Byzantine/Ottoman fortifications at the acropolis. The Belted tower (below) was free to visitors and very interesting. It was an interesting land parallel to a Martello tower in design. The views of the city were great so a hint to any traveler, when visiting a city or town in Greece, always head uphill if you have the choice.
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| The belted tower was a key point in the city's fortifications, it is now surrounded by houses but once dominated the hillside. |
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| A view from the tower, you can see the line of the city walls and the Roman Rotunda and Arch of Galerius as well as the iconic White Tower by the sea front. |
The summit of the hill is capped by the defensive citadel know as Heptapyrgion or YediKule which both mean 'seven towers'. For much of it's recent history it was a prison with very hard conditions. Many Rebetiko songs have been written about it (so I've been told).
The prison was closed in 1989, so is still in good condition.
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| The prison door, note the wear on the steps. |
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| The exercise yard, I think there used to be barbed wire stretched over the top. |
Maybe I liked the city because there was history apparent everywhere, it hadn't been demolished to reveal the Hellenistic levels below, and there were remains from all of the cities history. There were even minarets still standing.
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| Kamara or Arch of Galerius |
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| Detail- Galerius was 'first among equals' in the first Roman tetrachy, that's why only he is wearing armour. |
I spent a lot of time in Thessaloniki for a traveler, I think even though I had a bit of bad luck finding a host at first and further problems with the first host that did accept, I did have the good fortune of finding a fantastic hostel to stay in and through couchsurfing met a variety of fine folk, all of whom I would love to be friends with 'in real life' if the chance ever arose. However, when travelling you just know when it's time to leave and after 10 days the itch to move on was impossible to ignore.
The next stage of the journey was great fun but simultaneously terrifying; Most travelers go the way of Istanbul via a direct bus, I wanted to enter Turkey through a more traditional route namely the old capital of Edirne which had in former years been the base of operations for the Sultan's armies in the Balkans. The problem was that there really was no easy way of getting there without a car.
I left my last hosts house in good time, but forgot to ask them how to get to the city bus station, so I asked a reasonably sane-looking person waiting for a bus at the Kamara and was told to get on the bus to the railway station (It was my fault, I said 'poo eena stathmos BUS parakalo') So i had to get another ticket there and find the correct bus to take me on my way. The result was that I was 5 minutes late to catch the bus I wanted and would have to wait another 3 hours for the next one. Also It would arrive late in the evening.
I was having mixed feelings about leaving Ellada, there are things that really annoy me about the place and like a bad romantic partner I want to change it to fit me better, but then again those silly things that I find annoying are also part of the appeal. I think I could live In Greece and be very happy indeed, not in Athens! Maybe somewhere in Crete or the southern Peloponnese where I can grow citrus fruits and watermelons in the garden.
Then there are all the goodbyes. Travelling in this way is a very personal business; I share peoples homes, I eat with them, get tipsy together, sometimes dance with them, learn things that a tourist would never know or know that they didn't know, talk about the most general and the most personal things in the same sentence, share a bedroom, clean their pubic hair out of the plug hole etc. The downsides of making so many of these connections is that one day you have to say goodbye to them all. There's no taking them with you in the backpack. We say that we will meet again someday and somehow along our path, but we both know that this is unlikely. It is a way of travelling that I worry will take a toll on me over the long term, but at the same time enriches my life. A kind of sadness that tears out and builds up. Too many goodbyes.
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| An accidental meeting with my fabulous last couch hosts when we both missed our buses and had to wait in the station, they were running about an hours sleep at this point... |
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| Last Greek sunset during the bus rest-stop |
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| So the bus left me 20km from the border at 9.30pm, in the snow... |
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| Goodbye Greece, hello Turkey. The long walk across a snowy no-mans land. |
Edirne or Adrianopolis is the first city in European Turkey, and very interesting. Here are a few scenes of the first two days before I go to Istanbul.
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| Leaving dirty footprints in the mosque courtyard, accidentally of course! |
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| Part of the old defensive structures |
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| Inside the museum, Google says they've automatically made this photo spangly, click it to see it in all its gaudy horror. |
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| An Edirne evening, Ataturk statue in western general's uniform. |
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| The bazaar, Mustafa Kemal watches you here, too. |
I'm travelling to Istanbul today, into unfamiliar territory. I'm rather excited about it all! I wonder what Mustapha Kemal would say?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attaturk#Outlawing_insults_to_his_memory
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