Thessaloniki - Seriously, Thessaloniki

Who knows? Maybe, we’ll get two entries out of Thessaloniki, though it seems like much more of a one-entry town. We’ll see.

I came to Thessaloniki not knowing anything about the town except that it is the home of PAOK (a football club), it is the second-largest city in Greece, and you pretty much have to go there if you want to train out of Greece because, from this direction, it is the gateway into eastern Europe. I decided that since I had to go there anyway, I’d spend a few days and see what it had to offer.

Arriving at the train station, I knew I was staying at a Holiday Inn that was supposed to be very close. The directions were simple – exit the station, turn right and walk about five minutes. Fair enough. That’s what I did and lo and behold, I was at the hotel. As in Athens, the neighborhood in which my hotel was located did not appear to be too promising. There were sex shops, strip clubs, and x-rated movie houses all up-and-down the street. It appeared that I had found myself in Thessaloniki’s red-light district and it didn’t have anything near the charm of, say, Amsterdam’s.

Because of train strikes in Greece, the only train I could get out of Athens left at 6:50 in the morning, so I was pretty tired when I got to Thessaloniki. I had noticed that I was getting wifi at the train station from somewhere, though I couldn’t get it at the hotel without paying through the nose, so I decided to walk along and see where else I could get it. I turned and walked in the opposite direction from the railway station.

There were little, grungy cafes and army surplus stores, but I only had to walk about three blocks before I found a Starbucks. Excellent. I hate Greek coffee. I sat down and had some coffee and went back to the train station to check my e-mail and maybe get a ticket for Sofia. When I got back to the station and looked around, I noticed that getting out might be a little difficult. There were eight ticket stations, but only three of them were open and they all had lines about 40-50 people deep. There was one lane for international tickets and that was closed. I decided that it should be a job for the morning, so I checked my e-mail (there were two cafes in the train station that had free wifi), grabbed a ham-and-cheese pie and went to the grocery store, where I bought my new favorite five-euro-red-wine. It was a Macedonian wine and I could read very little on the label, but it was sweet and not too strong and went down well.

The next day, I returned to the station and discovered that morning was the best time to get a ticket out of Thessaloniki. The lines were short, and the international booth was open and only one person was in the line. Because the ticket to Sofia, with reservation, was only 18 euros, I decided to buy a ticket rather than using up my Eurrail pass.

I still hadn’t found anything even close to scenic in Thessaloniki. As far as I could tell, it was all porn shops and Starbucks, but I ventured a little further this first full day. Three or four blocks up from the Starbucks was a little square and a pedestrian (other than motor scooters) way. There were dozens of little stores and cafes and, to the right, it went on for five or six blocks all the way to the Mediterranean. I walked down to the sea and had a look. It was beautiful, but the weather was sort of dismal, which took away from the overall experience. I knew I would be in Thessaloniki for a few more days, though, so I had high hopes for a better day.

Coming back from the sea, I stopped by a gyro shop and ordered a sandwich “with everything.” Now, this gyro “with everything” was a new one on me. It had pork, tomato, onions, french fries, ketchup and mustard. What, realy? French fries, ketchup and mustard? Where’s the tsatsiki. Well, tsatsiki might be fine for you fancy folks in Athens, but in Thessaloniki, they were using french fries, mustard and ketchup. Is Primanti a northern Greek name? I don’t know. Still, it was mighty good.

It looks like I’m getting two posts out of Thessaloniki after all because I haven’t even mentioned walking along the shore or Greek Independence Day. I will, though.