Greeciest Christmas Of All...

Hey everyone!  I hope that the holidays were full of joy, love and coziness for you all.  We sure missed everyone this Christmas and New Years, but we tried our best to make a memorable and not too homesick holiday season out of it all.  Let me catch you up on Anna and Cory's Greeciest Holiday Season of all.

Now, this installation is different than others because it was that portion of the journey which was neccesary, and interesting in a less colorful and glamerous way.  This is my way of justifying not taking many pictures at all.  Capturing this leg of the trip photographically would have exposed fairly lackluster views.  Not to mention the runny noses, the tired eyes and the pale skin we aquired while in the Balkans.  Your eyes would thank me. 

I think I left you at a dark, chilly and ominous Serbian train station.  Cory says prior to boarding this train was the only time he felt completely out of his element on the whole trip.  You know when the darkness just does something to your eyes?  This night is cast a strange, unknown film over everyone and everything.  No one would give us a straight story at the Belgrade train depot.  No English was to be spoken.  No one made sense.  We wanted to buy a sleeper car ticket for the trip to Greece.  The ticket lady seemed to understand.  Tickets were printed.  We get outside to what we assume to be our train, and the conductor tells us we still owe them more money for the sleeper cars, we only paid for the seats.  Okaaayyy....that doens't make sense, but what does?  We ask, who do we pay and how much?  He tells us as we go to get some money out of the ATM.  We do it and board the train which is even more enveloped with this strange layer of darkness.  There are ancient men hanging out of the windows, looking half dead.  There are multiple people outside the train telling us they had their credit cards stolen and we MUST give them 30 euros to get home.  There is not one light on in the entire train.  So inviting.

We get on, head to a sleeper car, which looked about ten times better from the inside (thank GOODNESS).  It isn't seeming to fill up too fast, so I am hoping against all hopes that we don't have to share this tiny room with 6 bunkbeds with anyone else.  Immediatly, an extremely small Greek man named Anar comes to our door and says, "I know there are other empty rooms, but I'd like to stay here so I have someone to talk to."  This is so European, to forsake personal comfort just for the opportunity to chat.  The exhausted American in me screamed..."NOOOOO!!!!", but he seemed really nice, and his BO hadn't sickened me immediatly...so of course we said come in.

Can I say I'm so glad we did.  As soon as he came inside and we situated our bags, a small older man with no uniform came in insisting we pay him for the sleeper car.  Well at least that's what our new translator, Anar told us.  Awesome, this guy has no uniform...no form of identification as a train employee, and he wants our precious Serbian Dinars and our tickets.  The paranoid cynic in me writhed with discomfort as we handed over our money.  He looked at it in disgust and said. "NO GOOD! NO GOOD!" and shoved back the money.  We ask Anar to transate and he said the man cannot accept Serbian currency.

Hmmm.  That is so interesting, being that we are IN SERBIA!!!  No, this man wants Macadonian money.  That is even more interesting, because the train was to travel through Macedonia, and not stop.  How, I am still asking myself, could be have gotten that money?  Sometimes when traveling, you feel like you may have lost your mind, and this was one of those times.  He will not take our money, but we had no way of getting what he wanted.  Anar was baffled as well, as their heated exchange continued.  At the end, the man begrudgingly took our Serbian money, as he waved a fistfull of everyone elses Macedonian money in our faces. Still to this day, I'm so confused.

We spend a couple hours chatting with Anar, who is a really sweet, small man.  I have a raging cold and go to bed with the assistance of my beloved Nyquil.  I slept for a miraculous 10 hours straight, to wake up to the rambling Macedonian countryside rushing by.  Not to long after my peaceful awakening, a large man comes in shouting at us.  Nothing is understood,  I wake Anar up.  They talk, and Anar tells us we are not there, but we need to get off the train NOW.  Great.  We aren't even in Greece yet, and this man apparently wants us to pack up and board a bus to ride the rest of the way.  He didn't seem to be directing any of this informaton at Anar, so I'm thinking to myself about the multitide of ways this guy wants to rob and mame us in this special "bus" he has.  I say I'm not going anywhere until we understand why.  I notice the few other people on the train getting off at this ramshackle stop we were at, and the thought creeped in that this guy might be legit.  Another man gets on and frantically yells at us to get off the train now.  When our greek freind jumped off, we felt it was okay to follow.

We follow the mysterious train guys to lo-and-behold...a bus.  We find out that there was a transportaion strike in Greece (which we now understand to be almost a daily happening here) so we need to take a private bus into the country from Macedonia.  Ahhhh, now THAT makes sense, finally.  Kind of.

The bus ride was fine.  The old man without the uniform who hated our Serbian money, now seemed to take special care of us, always making sure his stubborn American tourists got to where they were going.  When we got to Thessoloniki, where Anar helps us find the correct bus to our Couchsurfing hosts home.  We say goodbye to our Grecian guardian angel, and get on bus 56.

We drag our tattered selves up to their suburbian apartament, thankful that it was just the trains that were on strike that day...not the busses.  Our hosts were absolutley wonderful.  Their names were Christina and Perikles and they lived in a beautiful apartment about a half our outside the city with their hyper doggie, Ginger.  They insist we sleep in their bedthey promise that they love to sleep on the ground in front of the fireplace anyways.  So kind.  Perikles was preparing us a delicious pasta dinner, as we chatted and drank Ouzo, which is a very potent Greek liquor.  Turns out I like it (shocking) and we proceed to drink the whole bottle with our hosts.  We go out to drinks at a local bar after dinner.  As we chat like old friends, and I am once again struck with gratitude for the hospitality of strangers to some wayward travelers.

*Sidenote: If you are a traveler, please don't discount the philosophy of the website/culture of Couchsurfing.com.  Having people open up their homes to you, and visa versa can humble and bless you in ways you couldn't imagine.  The things you can share and learn from others through these sort of programs are precious.  Take the risk, and it really does pay off.  The end.

The next day we see the sights and watch a movie with our new friends at night.  The next morning we say sad goodbyes and rush out the door to catch the bus to Athens.  This bus ride was bad.  The weather was getting progessivly warmer as we headed south (not bad), however the bus driver insisted on blasting the heat out of of the vent which was situated right beneath me.  I. was. dying.  There was lots of me moaning, and swaying back and forth in pain.  Cory can attest to my ability (inability) to handle excessive heat.  It was as hot as the surface of the sun in there, I am sure.  Nauseating.  What was amazing that as I am fevorishly fanning myself, I look around to see locals completely unphased by the situaiton.  They are wearing leather jackets...with fur!  I was bootless, pants rolled up to my knees, stripped down to a tank top.  Finally, just as soon as was ready to give my life over to heat stroke, a girl from the back staggered to the front, begging for him to turn down the heat.  I collapsed in releif when I watched him go to turn down the temperature.  Thank you, girl I'll never see again...thank you.

The rest of the 6 hour trip was a breeze.  We pull into Athens as the sun is just setting, and catch a cab to the apartament my wonderful mom and dad had rented us for Christmas.  We stumble to the door of the apartament as  I hear my name shouted from the balcony above.  It was the Landlord, Panos.  He ended up being our own little Christmas miracle.  He is a small, round, Greek man who singlehandedly made our semi-lonely Christmas much less so.  He had stocked our apartment with Feta cheese, bread, wine, and all the other essentials.  He told us we had and hour, and then he would take us for a tour of the city.  And did he ever.  We went to every vantage point in the city to get a thourough percspective.  He took us out for their traditional street snack Souvlaki.  He rode us to the grocery store on his motorcycle.  He was amazing.

On Christmas day, we caught up on some much needed rest and slept until noon.  I woke up and performed my obligatory morning Facebook check, only to find out the wonderful news that my sister in law Mitzi was engaged to her boyfriend Erik!  After jumping on the bed and screaming the news to Cory, we were so elated, most of the day was spent recounting this new fact, and smiling about it.  We enjoyed having the city of Athens all to ourselves, and strolled the streets, relishing in the Christmas quiet.  Some calls to our families filled our hearts with cheer laced with homesickness.  We eventually wandered home to start our Christmas feast.  The night before we had only 20 minutes to plan and buy our big meal, as the market was closing early.  It was a bit of an Iron Chef Greece situation.  We had hastily planned a shrimp pasta, with mushroom and onion sauce.  We had so much fun fretting over our creation, enjoying the opportunity to cook without another hosteller waiting for the stovetop, breathing down our necks.  Dinner turned out spectaculary, and the evening was also blessed with a constant string of good Engligh speaking movies on.  This is extremely rare.  Even the old Christmas standby, Home Alone was on...which made me feel a little less homesick.  In the end, our unique shrimp pasta eating, no family Christmas abroad, turned out to be a huge success in our eyes, and one we will remember fondly forever.

So as the brief, round-one of Greece came to an end and we caught our plane to Isreal the next day, we knew when we returned, we would have so much to look forward to.  While our time with Greece was temporarily up, and we had a WHOLE new adventure nipping at our heals.  Isreal...here we come!