All Of Monday’s Reasons - 26
26. Head For The Border
Map
I spent the first half hour of the trip with my head out the window. This was a dangerous habit had I picked up. Leaning out the window had given me a feeling of motion, and reassuring notion of going somewhere new.
It was relatively safe away from the commuter hubs of western Europe, and once I was out of the train I could see what was coming. What was scary, however, was the moment my head went out because I didn’t know what was immediately coming, but such was the journey.
Most of the tracks in Turkey were single line anyway, so there was no danger of an oncoming train coming. The engines moved slowly so you can see the obstacles without your eyes streaming from the wind resistance.
An hour into the trip our car was still the only one on the train with no lighting. I fell asleep around midnight to the sound of the German couple drooling into each other’s ears and was woken up an hour later by a guard who wanted to see our tickets.
Half an hour later the train stopped at the Turkish customs office before the Greek border and everyone was woken up with bureaucratic hospitality. All the passengers were moved off the train without their luggage and made to line up in front of a building while we waited for our passports to be stamped. This was one of the two daily trains west out of Turkey, the other being one through Bulgaria, for which most Europeans needed a visa, including myself. So the train on my route was packed.
It took at least two hours for a couple of guards to wake up two hundred people, get them out, check everyone had their passports stamped when entering the country, and get them back on the train again.
Once this was done, it was getting light and half the passengers on the train couldn’t see the point in going back to sleep. These were mostly the people who knew unlike me that there was another passport control waiting for us at the Greek border. There our passports were stamped with Turkish exit visas, which were issued once the authorities were absolutely sure that everyone on the train was leaving the country.
After all this was done, it would have been impossible not to leave the country and live. The train passed through what looked like an Army camp. After a final guard house we travelled through a break in a wall of barbed wire four feet thick, then over a bridge across a river. On the other side of the river was a similar post, only smaller, flying the Greek flag.
Greece. You still had to shit standing up, but at least you could wear shorts.
The train stopped just inside the country, and after fifteen minutes a man in plain clothes walked up with a plastic bin liner. He stopped at our compartment.
“Passports,” he said without a hint of expression.
Everyone handed over their passports without so much as looking up from their maps and travel guides. He took them and dropped them into the bag with the others he had collected.
“Passports.” He held his hand out to me. He had no badge or uniform.
“Where do we collect them?” I was suspicious of the prospect of a guy sneaking out of the country pretending to be me. When he found a photograph which resembled him, he could assume that identity and I’d go to jail. I imagined myself as the unfortunate tourist trying to explain to the Greek officials that someone had taken their passport.
“Passports- where? Ten minutes?” I asked.
“Yes, yes - police.” He motioned further up the line.
He waved his extended hand. I got out my passport and gave it to him. He threw it into the plastic bag. What the hell, I thought, he looks nothing like me.
Ten minutes later the train moved away again and through the window I saw the man throw the garbage bag full of passports into the back of a frighteningly civilian-looking Fiat.
Twenty minutes later the train stopped again. Everyone was told to get out. We were shown into a small room where two hundred passports were arranged by nationality on a table before us. People were going in and rummaging for their passports, no questions asked by the officials. People were even taking three or four if they saw those of their friends’.
I never thought I would find myself complaining about insufficient bureaucracy, not after Turkey, but the lack of security seemed to me almost irresponsible.
But there’s something about border crossings that brings out the devil in me.
I went up to the American passports which were displayed next to the English ones. I picked up and American one and mine. I opened both of them and began leafing through.
“Um, excuse me,” I asked a guard standing behind the table. “Excuse me.”
He walked over.
“Ah, yes, I was wondering-” I said.
He looked confused.
I continued. “-wondering what- I’m sorry - Do you speak English?”
“A little.” He looked annoyed, so started to enjoy myself.
“What’s the difference between this one,” I held out the American passport, “and this one?”
I held out mine.
“What is this?” He was very annoyed.
“You see I’m going to Czechoslovakia and I don’t have a visa. Which would best suit my personal needs?”
“English?” Angry.
“Oh! English? Really? -Okay, well thank you for your time.”
I put the American passport back and walked off with mine, sniggering all the way back to the train and feeling as great as anyone can on three hours sleep.
There was a coffee break at the station for half an hour so the bar could rake in our drachmas which we had exchanged from Turkish lira at their own rate.
The train eventually left and the Dane, who was called Claus by the way, had met up with two Danish girls and had invited them to our compartment. He had arranged to stay in their tent in a camp-site in Thessaloniki. Had he not looked like the geekiest person who had the annoying habit of reading out the name of every station we went past, I would have branded him an international playboy.
Actually, that’s not fair. He was international.
They invited me along and since I needed somewhere to eat and sleep, so I decided to join them.
Now, this would have been a good idea if I spoke fluent Danish, because for the rest of the trip they babbled on in their mother tongue only occasionally stopping every ten minutes to translate a joke or two.
These were probably funny in their original language, but in English they sucked like a plane’s toilet. I laughed politely while helping them with their punchlines.
Saying: “Screwdriver? Yes, screwdriver, for turning. What? Ooooh - a hammer! Yes. Heh heh. Hitting the man. Right. Heh.”
But thinking: “Where the fuck is Thessaloniki?”
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