Penny a Point, Ain't No One Keepin' Score

So Long Istanbul

Hello to all. We’re on the move and we’re on the train from Istanbul to Thessaloniki. Not sure how it is pronounced. We have the 8:30pm ticket to Greece. Makaila and I walk into the Istanbul Train Station at about 7:25 pm. Some guy looks at us pulling our bags. One of us gray, one of us blond (sort of a latter-day Mod Squad)

Anyway, we’re the only non-Turks in the station. Come to think of it….we’re the ONLY people in the station. He looks at us and says, “Slonica??” But my razor sharp mind and near pitch-perfect command of foreign languages and tongues quickly computes and I say, with authority….”Huh??” Then I realize he said, “Slonica” …Thessaloniki. I say, “yes” and he points to the only train in the station. Clearly, he is a man who knows his trains. Some guy leans off the train….I say, “Slonica!” (now that I have fully grasped the train lingo.) The man says, “Huh??”

I say, “Slonica” and he says, “Oh you mean Thessaloniki?” “Uh, yeah,” I say.

Anyway….we are on our way to Greece, you decide what to call it.

I have been corresponding with Anatolia College in Thessaloniki (which began in Turkey)…you can Google it. It has historic ties to the UCC mission board from the mid 1800’s. The UCC mission board was pretty strong here at one time. So, that church related college is now in Thessaloniki and still maintains a tie to the UCC. The head of the UCC/Disciples Global Ministries in the Middle East in Cleveland recommended that we stop there. So I emailed them last summer.

And…. we are staying there for a couple days and on Wednesday I have a meeting with the President of the college. (Do you suppose he's thinking to himself, "I have a meeting with the Senior Minister of Dublin Community Church"?) This should be interesting.

Oh my. I wake up at 7 on the train with the distinct smell of train diesel wafting in the compartment and certainly the next door compartment has some smoker since cigarette smoke has been circulating via the air system. We are in the hills/mountains of NE Greece. Interesting to note that somewhere on the frontier the train car was shunted around and now instead of moving forward we are moving backward. I do believe we are moving west. We should be in Thessaloniki in an hour or two (It’s 8:15 am). The steward is bringing breakfast. Beautiful sunny day with some frost on the fields (ahh….we pass a prison….now it feels like Ohio) and I’ve noticed that the stream beds are dry. I don’t want the local agricultural community to suffer but after 7 days of on/off rain in Turkey, I can be excused for being a bit selfish

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In the middle of the night we stop for Turkish passports and customs. Everyone is checked. (Only 4 of 10 compartments occupied in this car and I suspect fewer in the other cars) The Turkish officials are polite. Off the train goes the border patrol. Twenty minutes later we reach the Greek border guards and passports are collected again and then returned with a stamp. “Anything to declare?” We are asked, I declare that I am bleary eyed and pooped, but the Greek doesn’t understand and that is probably best. Snow capped mountains now; wind turbines too. Very beautiful. Reminds me of NE Washington State. And, we just passed a Mercedes dealership so we must be somewhat near to Thessaloniki (or we could be just off Sawmill Rd.)

We arrive. Thessalonkiki, Greece. Crowded. The woman at the information booth says the taxi stand is outside to the left. The cabbie outside says it is over to the left. When we reach the far left of the station, the cop says we walked right past the cabs who are really, pretty much directly in front. We can see that Greece will be another adventure; this is not for the timid.

I’ll blog you later from Anatolia College, or perhaps from the front of the train station if we don’t figure out this cab-thing.

                                                                                 

           The Orient Express from Europe ends here..
                                                  but we are heading West to Thessaloniki
                                                                                  Peace, Bob