קסם וחסר מזה

Enchantment and lack thereof

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Location: Columbus, Ohio, United States

Saturday, July 02, 2005

Day 1 - Thessaloniki to Pyrias

Saturday July 2, 2005

Our first day out of Thessaloniki. We woke up early this morning to go to the bus station. Ktel, as the Greeks call it. A nice taxi driver took Moose and I there. We got to ride through the slims of Thessaloniki; an impoverished part of the city we hadn’t seen in our three weeks there.

The bus station or “Transbordome” was impressive on the outside, much nicer than any Greyhound station in the States. But inside the dome, the station was dirty, smelly, and otherwise shitty.

The driver, understanding our language handicap, helped us with our bags, and negotiated bus tickets from the clerk. The tickets were more expensive than expected (€ 30) but the bus was brand new. It took them quite a long time to turn on the air conditioning, they’re more used to the heat here. Even with the air conditioner running, it was still uncomfortably warm during the entire bus ride through the deserts of Greece.

The five-hour bus ride was punctuated with a single 15-minute stop at some isolated truck stop. We grabbed some old sandwiches and non-carbonated Fanta. Once we were on the move again, the bus driver treated us to a movie. An American movie.

We watched Soldier Blue, a movie from the 70’s that had tremendous potential to be a thoughtful, political commentary on the Native American genocide but was instead categorically disappointing.

The film was about a Shawnee Indian tribe during the Western Expansion phase of early American history. What could have been moving, inspirational, and meaningful was so ruined by poor filmmaking; The film was so badly made, you struggled to feel emotion during the climax when a village of Indian women and children are mercilessly slaughtered. Among its worst traits, the film had no plot progression, poor lighting, and an obviously anachronistic dialogue.

Our bus finally arrived in Athens. Greece! We got another cab ride to Pyrias, the port-city of Athens and bought our ferry tickets to the island of Ios. Instead of venturing away from the docks, Moose and I loitered around for eight hours eating overpriced tourist food and inhaling diesel exhaust. Air pollution is a big problem in Athens, you can feel your skin saturating with it.

We finally boarded the ferry, essentially a no-frills 1/5 scale model cruise ship. Once we were used to being out on the cold, windy top deck we were able to enjoy ourselves. Sleeping out here is sure to be freezing. Excellent first day, I hope I can write this much in future entries.

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