Of Shoes and Ships

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

"To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings." ”
—Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll

Keeping a daily blog is nigh on impossible, bearing in mind the constant travelling, uncertain internet connections and the (mostly) patient husband.  So these ones will be a mixed bag; a catch up while we're perspiring in the ~30deg Aegean sunshine.  

Moving from Turkey to Greece was a revelation - the country to the city - we know we are in Europe despite Greece's financial woes; and our trip across the border interesting to say the very least. We'd decided that we'd do our own thing to get into Greece, substituting about 10 hours backtracking by bus so that we could bus into Greece with what we thought was going to be a few hours by bus, then a hop across the border by taxi.  

Bus to Kesan was fine and dandy but we had to transfer there to a bus to Ipsala on the border.  An old rusty minivan turned up and the driver didn't want any money.  We were a little confused since we'd only paid to Kesan but decided that maybe we'd paid to Ipsala without understanding.  Out of the cities having no local tongue is definitely a disadvantage!! The van was crammed with passengers, and our luggage taking up what other available space there was.  5 minutes later the van pulled up at a spot in the main street and the driver indicated that this was the end of the line for us, turns out this was a transfer between depots. Following other passengers, with no idea where we were going, we were relieved to find ourselves in a lot full of 20 seater buses - apparently the half hourly service to Ipsala.

Ipsala:  easy... call a taxi and skip across the border into Greece - ahhh... NO!  Ipsala turned out to be a small agricultural servicing village.  (The lack of foreknowledge is called "changing plans and going with the flow", a bit of a trap at times!) The only taxi apparent an rusty old Renault with an equally rusty old driver.  However the locals took one pitying look at us and waved him over; no words necessary.  We were bundled in, heading off who knows where at whatever speed the poor old bucket of bolts could muster... the meter definitely didn't work and neither did the speedo it seems. Great relief to see the word "Douane" finally on a signpost, in amongst the unintelligible Turkish/Greek.  We were very politely deposited at the border and the taxi disappeared.  The only thing I knew was that you couldn't walk across the border, but didn't see any other option.  The Immigration official just told us "call taxi, Greek taxi" so we sat and waited for our taxi to turn up... 30mins later in the boiling heat outside the airconditioned border station our official came and said "YOU call.." - Ohhhhhh, right. Err - Who, exactly?  We had a Greek yellow pages in our pocket?  

So Galahad went wandering and met Hussein the other Taxi driver, waiting to take Greek passengers through the border.  He was awesome!  We sat in the shade under the tree with him and conversed in Pictionary; comparing our lives, while we waited about an hour for the Greek taxi he'd ordered from Mark's phone. He kept grabbing Mark's arm and chortling "very strong...", and was most impressed when we said we had six children... (it was way too hard to try and explain how we had 3 each); strength and virility are obviously high on the virtue list in rural Turkey!

From the very rustic ride to the border, once we were in our late model, air conditioned Maxima the 42k ride to Alexandropoulis was accomplished in a very short time - the expressway meant that we travelled between 160 - 170kph.  Almost worth the 70Euro it cost! The backtracking bus would have got us across the border in a very organised, no hassle and definitely cheaper, way but this day was really an experience that neither of us would missed for anything.