4/1/98: Up early for a 7am train to Istanbul. The train stopped in Pythion, the Greek border town.
4/1/23: When I wrote “the train stopped in Pythion,” I didn’t mean Pythion was a just another stop along the route. The Greek rail line literally ended at the border, and we had to debark. After waiting around for a couple of hours, we were allowed to walk through the gate, accompanied by armed guards, barbed wire and all, and across the border into Turkey, and then board a Turkish train bound for Istanbul. We departed Thessaloniki at 7:00am and didn’t arrive in Istanbul until 11:00pm. Also, what was touted as a “first class” ticket to Istanbul, turned out to only relate to the ride to Pythion, as there was no “first class” on the Turkish train. In fact, there was only a single car! But that was ok, since there were only five of us tourists making the journey by train.
Taking the slow and scenic route instead of hopping on an airplane, was not only less expensive, but provided the chance to meet colorful characters along the way. Fellow tourists included Sylvain and Nathalie, students from Ottowa, Quebec, and Megan, a kiwi from New Zealand, who was working as a tour guide in Turkey. While we waited at the train station in Pythion we met an old, Greek fellow who managed to tell me he had traveled to several countries since he was 15. As he spoke, he used several different languages all at once, including Greek, Turkish, French, German, English and who knows what else. I don’t know how we managed to understand him, but he was unforgettably charming and sweet.
The Turkish conductors (there were 3 or 4, even though it was a single car!) herded the five of us tourists into a small section at the back of the rail car, a decrepit and rickety old box that was impossibly noisy. But at least the windows could all be opened, which was helpful since the conductors smoked so prodigiously and continuously that the car was even still filled with the acrid taste of Turkish cigarettes.
The train moved only a kilometer or two before stopping again, this time at a tiny Turkish border town so that we could go through Turkish customs. To our distress, we were informed that, only one month prior, the visa charges had increased from $20 to $45 US. I’m not sure if it was merely the frontier guards imposing a little bit of on-the-fly taxation for their own pockets, or an actual fee increase that related to the kinds of political skirmishes with which countries sometimes bicker.
We arrived in Istanbul at 11pm-ish, and checked in at the only hostel we could find that had a double bed, then fell quickly asleep.