Greek birthday cake and on the road (sea) again

After another overnight boat ride Eleni and I arrived in the northern Greece city of Thessaloniki. This is the second largest city in Greece behind Athens, and the home to a couple large universities. Eleni has been living here for a few years and studying music at one of them, so for her this is home. It's an interesting city with a mix of old and new, from Byzantine churches to modern shopping centers, all topped off with a large castle atop a hill overlooking the city as it runs into the sea. It's also very lively with the large student population and Eleni lives right in the center of most of the activity. However, after the long trip we decided to take it easy the next couple of days, just seeing some of the local neighborhood and spending an afternoon at a nearby beach. One evening we met Eleni’s friend from school named Dimitris and the three of us went to the port where they have “drinking” boats. You get onboard one of these floating bars and they take you for a short ride around the bay while you have a drink and take in the scenery. There are a few different ones to choose from depending on the type of music and atmoshpere you’re into. The ride wasn’t all that long but we had a good time. Dimitris is a nice guy. He was on a weekend leave from military service and really excited to be out on the town for a change. In Greece it’s mandatory for every young man to serve the country for one year.

The next day we didn’t do much, then unfortunately I started to come down with a cold so I didn’t make it out of the house. I spent the time trying to figure out how I was going to get back to Italy. Since it was the end of August all the flights were either full or way too expensive so it looked like I would have to find an alternate mode of transportation. My last day there also happened to be my birthday, but I was still feeling lousy. That afternoon while I was sitting alone using the computer, Eleni, her roomate Elia and friend Christina (who I knew from Mytilini) came in the room with a birthday cake while singing “Happy Birthday” to me in perfect English. I was totally surprised and it made me feel really good, they're all so sweet.

That evening we went out with Elia and her boyfriend Padalis to have dinner in a taverna. Since we had been eating in most nights I decided I really wanted to pig-out on some Greek food this time, but I can’t hardly read the menu so I asked Padalis to just order everything he thought was good so we could try it all, and he did an excellent job of that. We had about six different plates of food to share including calamari, stuffed potatos, mushrooms, cheese, fries and Greek salad to name a few, followed by a main course, mine being meatballs covered in a yogurt sauce on a pita bread. We washed this all down with some sort of Greek wine called Petina Malamatina that's yellow in color and has about twice the alcohol of normal wine and they mix it with Coke. Everything was great and it was just what I wanted, plus we got to watch a 60+ year old man risk his life doing handstands on some old chairs for tips.

After dinner we headed to a small bar to go dancing, but I started to feel the effects of my cold coming back and didn’t really feel up to dancing much so we called it a night shortly after. I knew I had a long journey ahead of me the next day so I needed to get some rest. Despite being a little under the weather I still managed to have a great birthday thanks to my friends. I can’t say enough about the people I’ve met here in Greece, they have all been really good to me.

The next day I had to leave. Eleni had a thesis to write and I needed to get back to Italy to do whatever it is I do these days. She went with me to the bus stop, but I was running a little late and there was no bus in sight so I had to catch a cab, leaving me only enough time to say a quick goodbye and get on my way. I had a great time with her the last couple of weeks and in the short time we’ve known each other I think we’ve become pretty good friends, so I’m sure I’ll see here again someday.

For now it was time to think about the road ahead of me, starting with a six hour bus ride across Greece from the east to the west coast. The bus was nice and I got to see a lot of the country on the way, including some impressive mountains and valleys and it was all very beautiful. Fortunately the trip was not affected by the wildfires that were ravaging southern Greece at the time so we didn’t have any problems with those and we arrived at the port of Igumanitsa shortly before sunset. From there I was to board a ship for a fifteen hour overnight trip across the Adriatic sea to Ancona on the east coast of Italy. While I waited for the ship to arrive I saw several Greeks on motorcycles loaded up for a long trip and also waiting for the boat. I knew we all had the same final destination beacause that weekend was the Italian Motorcycle Grand Prix race at Misano a few miles north of Ancona. I really wished I could have been on a bike and traveling like them, it looked like so much fun, maybe next time.

When I got on the boat I was planning on putting my sleeping bag somewhere on the ground like usual, but when I got onboard I found that this ship, despite being bigger and nicer than the others I had been on before, didn’t provide much open floor space for sleeping and the place was full of people and families taking every free spot to lie down. It looked like a refugee camp with kids everywhere. After searching around for a while I decided that I was feeling too sick to spend the night outside and I knew I needed a good night’s sleep to get better, so I paid around $130 more for a bed in a tiny cabin. Fortunately it had a private bathroom too so I was able to take a nice hot shower which made me feel a lot better. I followed that with dinner and then went straight to bed. I slept about twelve hours solid and woke up shortly before we arrived in Ancona. I felt much better and I was really glad I was able to get some sleep.

So after two weeks of being away I was finally back in Italy. I know it's still a foreign country to me but each time I come back it starts to feel more like home. It was nice to be back.