TUESDAY, JUNE 4
The four flights of stairs to the apartment in Thessaloniki were brutal. As much as we loved the yellow and black terracotta floor and stairs, we were happy to know that we would never again have to carry our bags up or down them. It’s beginning to feel like as soon as we are comfortable in our new apartment…sleeping through the night, adjusted to the bed, fan level or open window distance figured out, it’s time to leave. Travel fatigue has set in.
I’m guessing we are up to walking at least 15 kilometers a day, and now that it’s warmer, but not yet super hot, the sun and heat take a toll. Also we are learning lots of history, stuffing our brains, from the history of the Balkans to the most ancient history of Western civilization. This is quite different from our earlier travels through Europe where we visited art museums, and learned, or at least took information in, through art. Now it is churches and sites, primarily.
Greek trains are supposed to be terrible but not the train from Thessaloniki to Athens. We loved its dated , hipster style. It was probably built in the 1970s, a pale blue interior, cabins of six seats (we had an entire cabin to ourselves, thank god, since we had to take our bags inside with us), soft torquoise colored curtains (a bit tattered), a metal pull out table which I’m sure was quite advanced in the day. I felt like we were on the Orient Express. Chloe said it reminded her of a Wes Anderson film, The Darjeeling Limited. Definitely felt movie set-like.
Just to show that mother and daughter share the same genes…here is what we both did, in separate cars, without the other knowing, while we were waiting for the train to leave….
As strange as this sounds, the ride wasn’t long enough. We were looking forward to sitting still for a while and it only took four hours. I stayed awake the whole time, watching the scenery change as we moved south, browning and tanning, becoming rockier, villages more sparsely separated, hints of the country’s poverty. Some Roma children were burning garbage. Lots of clothes hanging on lines, blowing as the train passed. I glimpsed the deep blue ocean behind fields and hills every now and then. Mountains rose on the interior side of the train.
As we approached Athens, the buildings became more crowded together, the pale colors and whites more bleached by the sun. Everything seemed a notch more intense than in Thessaloniki. Graffiti and street art covered almost every available wall — on signs, homes, trains and buildings. Where there was vegetation, there were bright flowers of pinks and yellows. Flowers grew wild. Many white blossoms were out on trees. Orange trees burst with oranges that littered the ground and roads. Olive trees, glistened with a soft silvery sheen. It is Greece, at once dry and tropical.
Our apartment on Eoleon Street was 25 minutes west of the Acropolis, on the other side of the park where Socrates was imprisoned. Eoleon Street is in the center of Athen’s expansive, sprawling conglomeration of small houses, a dense megalopolis of over 3 million people. From a high point in the park, the city looks like small, white, building blocks dropped, without spaces between, next to each extending in all directions over the surrounding hills.
In neighborhoods outside the central, touristic parts of Athens, streets are narrow, and people walk down the middle, mostly because sidewalks are in such disrepair. Other people hang out on balconies or sit for hours in small neighborhood restaurants and cafes. Cats wander everywhere as they did in Thessaloniki, inside restaurants, along stone walls, in parks. We would even find one at the Acropolis when we visited later.
Greece feels like one huge community inhabited by a tribe of tightly-knit people. While sitting at a restaurant, passersby stop to talk to those in the restaurant. Everyone in a neighborhood seems to know everyone else. They are friendly, watchful, interacting smoothly and easily with great familiarity.
We walked a tiny way into the park, bought our supply of groceries and had dinner in the neighborhood. More startlingly good food at an unassuming restaurant called Asters. I had a homemade sausage; Chloe, a chickpea puree, and we shared a salad with raisins, walnuts, greens, peppers and a dressing of honey, mustard and sesame seeds.
