Greek Journal One, Thessaloniki Macedonia, Greece

Blasted out of Ist Cerkegi station at 8:30 AM train bound for the Greek border at Pythion , playing the Daf amid the rapid clatter of the old train`s movements past endless houses and finally grassy feilds smelling like they had been fertilized with sulfury sewage.

Near the border I overheard a Japanese man and what sounded like a Spanish woman (I had seen her snoozing in the next car and had assumed her to be Turkish). Turns out she was Peruvian-Chilean, spoke little English and was bound for the same destination. In Pythion we were told that to fulfill our travel we would have to buy a 6.50 Euro supplement per person plus another 7 Euros for my bike box. The girl and I opted to wait for the alternative `free` train leaving in five hours, thereby also saving a nights stay in Thessaloniki.

We took the interim time to stroll around Greece and meet the people, finding a Byzantine tower at the end of the village and an old mosque in the center of town abandoned since the revolution against ottoman rule in the mid 1800s.

The people in the village were lovely and engaged us in conversations to say how few tourists they see.

Finding a compartment in the dingy Greek train at 8:30 PM - it appeared that our need for conversation was greater than the need for sleep as we got closer, pulled the curtains and enjoyed the motion of the train.

She told me her life`s story - how at home in Chile she had often been other men`s affair and how over the internet she had met a wonderfully kind , innocent, but not terribly attractive young German doctor. She had visited him on the way to Istambul at his home in Berlin. She was on the way to meet him again now at his behest (and, I gathered, nickle) to vacation on the Halkidiki penninsula somewhere. She was a very intellegent and naughty girl who valued the moment, we made the most of this train ride and shared a little of the cake she had brought without preservatives.

We arrived after a sleepless and sweet night in Thessaloniki and after some deliberation she went straight to her airport rondezvous with the doctor and I remained there, my three bags and bike box a homestead, repeatedly phoning my Thessaloniki contact Dimitris and snoozing on the ground as if drunk.

Incorporating and getting to the youth hostal with my rapidly self-destructing bike box was a challenge, the clerk irritable, and the facilities dank and depressing. After showering I set out and was miraculously granted the interance permission for visiting Mt. Athos and a reduction in the enterance fee, did some website work at a cafe, and took ricky deep naps on various horizontal surfaces in the town.

My first impressions of Greek people as I stumbled around half asleep were:

- after spending so much time with the Turks and extremely polite Iranians, the Greeks appeard to be rough around the edges and not inclined towards helping me or one another (eg carrying obviously unmanageable things on the street for example).
- Although slow and relaxed people appear to be walking around in some sort of grumpy funk.
- After Istambul, the cosmopolitan center of Thessaloniki`s fashion looked several notches more towards what was popular in the USA in the 80s.
- Reverse `hejab` (Islamic dress requirements) was in effect where it appeard women might be captured and fined if their halter top did not look like it was painted on their body. It is absolutely a uniform here with every woman and shop mannequin wearing a spaghetti strap backless halter top.

After sleeping or sleepwalking the whole day my brain awoke at 9 PM to the fact that I need to store my bike and bags somewhere while visiting Mt. Athos (the hostel refused to do this for me) and luckily I was able to reach my Thessaloniki contact Dimitris on his way to Athens and he gave me his girlfreind`s number.

Turns out my contact`s home was only a block from the hostel and lugging the tattered bike box over I met his girlfreind Varavara there on the street outside. She led me up to a nice apartment on the top floor and storing the box in a corner of the balcony we sat for some cool water and a chat.
My initial impression that Varvara is an artistic sort of person fell short as upon hearing my description of looking for Christ`s meditation at Mt. Athos she invited me into the living room where 100 identical glass bottles, each filled with a unique combination of liquid colors were arranged in a long single file line at chest length around one side of the room. "This is auro soma" she said sweeping her hand over the array. " Pick your first through 4th most favorite bottles, use your heart to choose." From my choices she devined that I grew up needing a special kind of love, excessive amounts of love, which I did not often get. That is still my inner character. I present to the world another face - one of dynamic large-audience-oriented confidence, attractiveness, shining, gregarious. The second bottle I cannot remember . The third bottle of pure blue is my state of peace or my seeking thereof. The fourth bottle of crimson and clarity is my future where I will seek the maximum development of the physical body and seek unconditional amounts of energy to support and express it.

Then she chose a quinticessence of purple cologne for me which I rubbed on my wrists and sniffed. It reminded me of some unknown thing. She had also completed the first two reiki courses and Tai Chi - I asked how many people in this city of one million plus she could speak to about these things and she said not many know about them. She felt alone in these interests here.



Some Survival Greek From An Outside Source