June 23-27, 1984

June 23-27, 1984

I am running short on time. Back in school, I had made arrangements to meet another classmate in Greece on the 28th. I thought I had plenty of time but I didn’t realize how long the journey takes. One route is down Italy to the boot heel and then across the Adriatic Sea by ferry. The more direct route is straight south thru Yugoslavia, an unknown quantity. I chose Yugoslavia. You can tell I am now a veteran-backpacking traveler. No way I would have done this a month ago, and by myself no less!! I left on the night train out of Berlin towards Greece. The route goes thru Zagreb, Belgrade, and Skopje in Yugoslavia. I am going to be on this slow train for a couple days.

All the Yugoslavian people on the train were nice and even offered me strange kinds of food, but it was impossible to communicate with them. At one point I almost lost my passport to immigration official who couldn’t locate me on the train. That could have been a disaster. Fortunately the conscientious officials wouldn’t let the train pullout until I was found.

My Eurail pass didn’t work in Yugoslavia and the train was very crowded. So much for thinking that I could sleep on the train. At one point near the end it was so crowded I resorted to sleeping (or at least closing my eyes) in the hallway.

Finally the train pulled into the city of Thessaloniki, Greece. I had never really heard of this city before and it wasn’t on my “want to see” list. But I was more than ready to get off the train. In retrospect I should have gotten off the train and explored the Yugoslavian cities we passed thru but Yugoslavia was very much an unknown for me with little attraction.

From reading the guidebook I learned that Thessaloniki is Greece’s second largest city and has lots of Roman ruins. Thessaloniki (or Salonica) is the capital of Macedonia, and was named after the sister of Alexander the Great. It was an important city of the eastern Roman Byzantine Empire and later the Ottoman Empire. I spent most of the day walking around looking at the ruins. Near the port I saw the White Tower, part of an Ottoman fortification, and now symbol of the city. Farther inland are the Arch of Galerius and Rotunda from late Roman times. The Rotunda looks very similar to the Pantheon of Rome. A few blocks away are the remnants of the Roman forum, including a theater.

From the port I walked uphill to a spot overlooking the city. There I saw extensive ancient city walls from Byzantine times. Amazing this all still exists.

Greece is another test of my tourism skills. Even though I spoke little of the languages of the countries I visited so far, they all use the same English alphabet so I could easily pronounce and match street names to ones found on the map. It was an entirely different story with Greece. The Greek alphabet is very different, but yet I found it to be navigable with a little patience. From science and engineering I knew the name of most Greek letters and what English letter they correspond to. So I could mentally transcribe the Greek words into ones with English letters. Ακρόπολις transcribes into Acropolis. One confusing letter though is “P” which is really “Rho” and sounds like an “r”, not “p”. (“π or Pi” is the “p” sound).

From Thessaloniki I took the train to Athens. I was anxious to see the Acropolis. It was my first destination. The Acropolis (high city) is the ancient center of Athens and is a large rocky sacred plateau high above of Athens. You have to walk a ramp up the side of the Acropolis and then up the stairs of the “Propylae” or monumental gateway. Atop the Acropolis are several temples including the Temple of Athena Nike, and the Erechtheum, a temple with several columns in the form of female maidens. The most famous temple is the Parthenon, built in the Golden age of Greece. The Parthenon is supposed to have ideal proportions. Despite being built 2500 years ago, and accidentally blown up in 1687, it is still beautiful. Unfortunately the decorative carvings from the pediments are in the British Museum in London.

From atop the Acropolis you can see lots of ruins below including two theaters (Herodeion & Dionysus), the Agora old marketplace, and several temples (including Olympian Zeus & Hephaestus).

Afterwards I walked thru the nice but slightly touristy Plaka neighborhood where I bought a sweater for me, and some Greek blouses for my sisters. I packed them up and mailed them home to minimize my baggage. I also bought some leather sandals. Everything here is really inexpensive.

I also walked the city between the two main plazas, Syntagma Square and Omonia Square. In the middle next to the University of Athens is the Academy, which looks like a just-built version of what Athens probably looked like in ancient times.

Before leaving on this trip a Greek classmate gave me his telephone number in case I made it to Athens. From a telephone booth, I called him but instead got his parents who spoke little English. They invited me to lunch with them. Since we could not converse, it was a long lunch. But they did take me on a touristy funicular ride up Lykavitos Hill (a tall rock sticking out of the middle of Athens) and then drove me to the nearby port town of Piraeus to show me where to catch a ferry for the Greek islands.