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Published: January 31st 2008
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Turkey/Greece Border!
Finally, We Made It!!!!! Destination: Greece!
Goal: Walk across border!
We decided that in keeping with the whole "budget thing" we'd try to save a bit of money by WALKING across the Turkey/Greece border rather than PAY a tour company or taxi or bus to take us across. In Canada this wouldn't be a challenge ... however, apparentlly in Turkey and Greece it is!!!
Our adventure started by us taking a bus north to the town of Keshan, thinking we'd be able to catch a minibus to the border town of Ipsala. We arrived late though, and no more minibuses were heading that way, so a run-down-creepy-hotel it was! The next morning we successfully found the minibus heading to Ipsala and rode it gleefully until the driver turned around and said "Greece???". We said "No no, Ipsala." .... then it crossed our brilliant little minds that he was trying to be helpful and save us a bit of a journey ... so we both yelled "YES, GREECE!!" ... and the driver screetched on his brakes and stopped in the middle of the highway. We got out, he pointed down the road and said "Greece - 5km!". Uh Oh! Turkey weather in January is
Sun Rays
The most beautiful moment of the day ... rather cold and miserable ... and on this particular day it happend to be raining and at least -25 (ok ok, maybe more like 0 ... but it FELT like -25!!!). Off we went, big mother backpacks and all! After about an hour, we arrived at the border, forked over our passports and waited to be told that we could truck on through! Imagine our surprise when the passport man said "NO, you cannot walk!". Ummmmmm ... What do you mean we can't walk???!!! He said "Sorry, Rules." Ummmm "What bleeping rules????". We asked what on earth we were supposed to do, and his reply was "I don't know, maybe hitch hike?". HITCH HIKE???? $%#& !!!!!! Senor Passport Man basically told us that we had to sit there and wait for passing vehicles to come through, and then we had to try to wiggle our way into their car to cross the border. We're talking about the distance from your house to closest 7-11 or Macdonalds. We could SEE the other side of the border! First we tried to be nice to the mean man, telling him that it's cold out (really fricken cold!), and that no one would reeeaally
The Parthenon At Night
Night time hides the scaffolding quite well, no? notice if we walked across ... but when that wouldn't work, we started to yell and ask for our embassy. (haha, it's true ... we pulled the embassy card!). Still no go. Finally, after about half an hour of dashed hopes and broken dreams (haha), a naive young business man rode up to the booth and before he knew what was happened, Trevor was opening his passenger door and had crawled in! The guy looked at us rather dumbly, we looked back just as dumbly ... and off we went! (We think that the passport control guy took pity on our young cold bodies and filled him in and thats why we didn't get kicked out of his car). Soooo ... mission almost accomplished ... we made it to the Greek side of the border and set out to walk to Kipi (the border town in Greece). Again, we were foolish, foolish children, expecting that the border town would be ON THE BORDER, but nope, not for Trevor and Kristena. We set off to find Kipi, still just as freezing cold as we were on the Turkish side, still carrying the mother backpacks ... and 3 amazing KM later we
arrived! However ... Kipi turned out to be a ghost town! Except for the wild rabid dogs that is. No joke ... we were chased by the biggest meanest dogs Greece has to offer! UGH, CAN THIS DAY GET ANY WORSE???!!! We stumbled across a bus stop at around 2pm ... and it turned out that a bus would be coming through at 2:30pm! Whoooo Hoooo someone up there still loves us!!! The bus took us to Alexandropolis where we were able to catch a train west to Thessanoliki ... and Ta Da! We made it to Greece!!! What a gong show! Next time, we will take the bus from Istanbul!!!
As for Greece ... it has NOT been our favorite destination so far!!! We've actually been rather disappointed by the welcome we have received here ... Greek people are unbelievably unfriendlly and rude! We've come across the odd happy one ... but not very often and have spent the majority of our time getting snarled at. They all walk around with these scowls on their faces, for the most part are annoyed by the tourists and can't be bothered to help us out (directions, information, etc), even if
Check Out The Scowl!
... It's the national face of Greece! they speak perfect english!!! One guy even said to us "I don't know, it's not my job." Nice! It bugs us quite a bit ... especially because we have just come from Turkey where we experienced incredible kindness and hospitality from everyone!! Things here are quite expensive (we know it's only going to get worse as we head west). And, most disappointing for us is that the food here isn't even close to as fabulous as we dreamed it would be! At home we LOVE going for Greek food ... so we've splurged on a few dinners ... and have found that the food from a Greek restaurant at home is just as good, if not better (and cheaper!!!). We had hoped to see a few of the islands (Santorini and Crete), but because of the weather, ferry schedules are random and are not dependable, so rather than spend more time (and money) in a country where we aren't exactlly enjoying ourselves, we've cut things short and are heading to Italy tonight. We couldn't leave though without seeing a few of the "mandatory" sites ... Parthenon, Olympia, etc ... enjoy the pictures and a happy blog will follow soon from
Walking in the Rain
A couple walking in Athens Italy!!!
Trevor and Kristena
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Vittorio
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Translation!
ΩΡΑ = Time ΑΜ/ΧΙΑ(=ΑΜΑΞΟΣΤΟΙΧIΑ) = Train Number ΠΡΟΣ = To ΓΡ.(=ΓΡΑΜΜΗ) = Line ΜΕΣΩ = Via :)