It would be a bit challenging sleeping in the train, but we have done it once before. So I felt kind of prepared for the trip when we left Porto Rafti at about 20:00 on Thursday night. The bus was a bit late, and the busdriver had a very strange idea about climate control. While the temperature outside must have been in the lower twenties, not bad at all. He seemed to have thought that it was a good idea to try and recreate the typical summer temperatures of Greece, by turning the heater of the bus to it's maximum capacity. Because the travel bag on my lap blocked the space between me and the seat in front of me, the hot air coming from below had nowhere to go. To compensate a bit, or was it to recreate the Greek sea breeze, the air of the airconditioning coming from above my head was quite chilly. So there I was sitting feeling like some volcano, hot from below, with some chilly snow at the top, leaving me a bit ready to explode!
After an hour and a half , when we finally reached the metro station, the destination of our initial bus trip, it turns out that the metro is closed, apparently because it is the public holiday. We were astounded. The only time in the Netherlands when public transport closes down is from about 8 o clock on New Years Eve. With some trouble we managed to convince two taxi's to take us to the train station, where our next surprize was waiting. The trains were also not going.
The irony of it all was that we had booked tickets and reserved beds for the night on this train. Aparrently no one knew that the trains were not going to go when they sold the tickets or they did not care to tell us that it is a Greek habit to sell tickets for trains which they know would probably not go at all.
When we tried to talk to people at the station a friendly young lady told us that all the nations around were not working on that day, mentioning England, Italy and who knows which other countries. I sincerely doubt if the 1st of May in England would mean a national train strike, but OK, Italy I can imagine. It did not seem possible to convince her that there is a slight difference between celebrating a public holiday and having a national strike. Maybe both words come from the same Greek word. You never know! This all happened while the electronic boards were still announcing the departure of our train in about half an hour. The person responsible for updating the information, i.e. announcing that the trains till the next mroning were all cancelled, was apparently celebrating workers day too.
While I was describing the Greek mentality in some poetic languag, two of our team went of to look for a place to stay. The rest of us were sitting outside the station at some restaurant discussing the value of the EU and it's subsidies to this country of hard-working people.
The two scouts returned and led us to a place where we could all try to catch a bit of sleep. There we were. Six people in a small room. Two ladies and four men. Most of us just crashed in our clothes since we would have to get up in a couple of hours anyway.
When we got to the station it turned out that the train was full and the only option left was to take first class tickets. No ammount of protest could convince the person behind the counter that it was actually a blimmen shame that we had to pay extra to upgrade our tickets to first class while they refused to return the money we spent to reserve beds for the night train.
So at about 6:50 we were sitting first class on our way to Thessaloniki. Well it had some advantages. A free coffee and a nice compartment. Between nodding away we managed to enjoy the view of a beautiful Greece we would otherwise have missed during the night.
All in all it was a nice trip, even with the hassles. We comforted ourselves a little by the fact that the apostle Paul probably had some trips that were a lot more difficult. How long would it take him to make the journey that took us more than 5 hours in a fast train over mountains and through tunnels? I guess we could learn something from his attitude in Phillipi....
No comments:
Post a Comment