Thessaloniki

Makis had a fairly sizeable apartment for only two people. Two bedrooms, two living rooms, kitchen, two bathrooms (one with laundry facilities), and a full balcony. I awoke sweating as the screen door to the balcony was left open in the living room where the couch I was surfing was located, and the heat from the day was beginning to reach it’s peak. The humidity was almost unbearable.

Makis was already up, listening to emo music and rolling and smoking cigarettes. This was a very defining feature of the guy. He would roll a cigarette, light it, take a couple puffs, put it down, and then start rolling another one. Upon completing that, he would re-light his first cigarette, smoke it, and then repeat the process all over again. This was something which he did constantly the entire time I hung out with him. It made me wonder what made him so depressed that he had to smoke that much and listen to such terrible emo music, but I didn’t ask.

Makis was an art restorationist. In the spare room where Mike slept was a workbench filled with brushes, tools, and pieces he was working on. I knew he had to do something with art because his apartment was filled with a lot of pictures and paintings all over the walls. After making some incredibly strong coffee, Makis said he would call over his friend Alex who spoke better English than he did.

Alex arrived an hour or two later. Alex studied for a year in the US and spoke fairly good English. He was a huge fan of basketball and told me about how Greece was really good at it. He wished that the European teams would hurry up and step up to American standards of play. I thought it was a good thought, and could serve to promote different cultures within the US, something that is sorely needed. The problem is that European basketball has a few different rules and regulation, for instance, their quarters are ten minutes instead of twelve, ad the three point line is a little closer than in the NBA. I hope in the future basketball would take a greater hold in Western European countries to the point where they would create a European Basketball Association and start doing intercontinental games with the NBA.

That night Makis and Alex took me out on the town, to experience Thessaloniki from the locals’ point of view. We met up with a few of their friends at an open patio bar in a small plaza. We exchanged pleasantries over several rounds of Czech beer, with Alex mostly serving to translate. They all spoke spats of English, but for more complicated things Alex was a big help. Greek is a pretty hard language to wrap one’s head around, and next to the Slavic tongues was one of the strangest languages I had encountered to date. After wrapping up dinner and drinks, we then headed to see Thessaloniki’s most famous site: a coastal tower that is one of the last remnants of Byzantine presence.


From there we walked along the waterfront and saw many bars along the way that were almost completely empty. Alex explained to me that Thessaloniki was a college town, and that this was the main strip where all the students would normally be getting drunk and partying. Unfortunately, since I was here at the height of summer, everybody was still elsewhere, and barely anyone was around. More inland, we found a section of the coastal wall that was something like 1500 years old.


A little farther up from that, we found ourselves at a castle overlooking the city. The city was not large, per se, but the city lights twinkled in a dance mirroring the stars. It really was a pleasant town, not as big and bustly as Athens but not too small to be considered insignificant.
Here is a video panoramic:

I find it hilarious at the end where Makis wants to go smoke a cigarette. Nothing sums up the man more than that statement.

The next day Mike and I were to take a bus the rest of the way to Istanbul, a ten hour excursion at best. Makis and Alex took us to the bus depot and made sure we got the right ticket and were in the right place, because there was practically no English signs anywhere, everything was in cryptic Greek. I was very happy to have met Makis on the train. I was beginning to wonder whether something like this was going to happen on my trek across Europe. I was beginning to wonder if those tails of locals taking in backpackers was really true. So many of the preconceptions I had about backpacking across Europe were completely blown out of the water, but this one did ring. In my experience, it only happened this once, but I am sure it happens more often, with a little bit of luck. Alex and Makis were very nice to me, and I guaranteed them a place to stay should they ever come to visit Arizona. It seems only fitting that I introduce you to them. Here we are in a final photo: Makis in the middle (with a cigarette, of course), Alex on the far right:


Thanks for the good times, Greeks! Opa!