A Journey through the time

Chapter Eight - The Nightmare

The Greek border officials were very suspicious of us, they thought we were Turks. There was a war going on between Greece & Turkey over Cyprus, so tensions were high. They checked our passports, especially the covers several times, both the Pakistani & Turkish passport have crescent & star on the cover, but Pakistani passports are green and Turkish passports are deep red. Despite this difference, they grilled us until they were satisfied that we were not Turks. Once out of the border post, we started to walk towards the nearest village, Kipoi. Many farmers were returning home after a day's work in their tractor & trolleys and a couple of them gave us a lift to the village. Once we arrived at Kipoi a couple of locals pointed us to the direction of a guest house. At the guest house a number of villagers gathered and wanted to know if we were Turk nationals. Again, and again they would refer to the crescent and star on the passport covers. It took a while to convince them that we were not Turks. After about half hour's questioning and much conversation between the villagers surrounding us the appeared to be satisfied that we were not Turk nationals. Soon thereafter they turned friendly, offered us Ouzo (Greek for Arak) and some pretty village girls brought us food and drink. 

The evening turned out to be a pleasant one after all. The next morning some villagers brought us breakfast and soon after we said bye to our hosts and were back on the road towards Thessalonica (pronounced as Salonica). The 350-km journey proved to be the most difficult and heartbreaking as there were hardly any cars or trucks on Greek Road. We would walk for miles and then rest for a while and then walk again. There were many apple orchards along the way, so we helped ourselves to a lot of apples which served as our lunch and dinner. After walking for about 15 km we saw a bus approach, waived it to stop, which it did, we boarded and when the conductor asked for the tickets we pretended not to understand anything. The discussion went on for about five km, the driver suddenly stopped the bus and threw us off despite our protests. Soon another bus arrived and five km later the same scenario was repeated. We had no choice but to continue walking until the third bus arrived and this time it proved lucky for us as some kind-hearted passengers pleaded with the driver not to throw us off, so we managed to ride the bus all the way to Thessalonica.

Thessalonica was a midsized city, as we walked through it, it reminded me a lot like Lahore, the shops the crazy traffic, horse-drawn carriages plying the roads, a horse being fitted with new horseshoes by the side of the road. We changed a small amount of money into Greek Drachmas and bought some bread and jam for sustenance. As we walked the streets of the city many café patrons invited us to join them in ouzo, we generally declined until the smell of good food overpowered us and we accepted an offer for food and ouzo. Not used to alcohol other than beer, I found the taste of ouzo rather foul, so I mixed it with water and surprisingly the drink turned white like a milkshake, the concoction became much more palatable. Bilal though two and half years my junior was much savvier with alcohol than me. He downed ouzo with great ease and without adding water to it. After about three hours of walk, eat and drink and generous Greek hospitality, we walked right out of Thessalonica to our next destination.

Having studied the Greek roadmap earlier, I had made a determination that the coastal city of Igoumenitsa by the Ionian Sea would be the ideal place to catch a ferry for Lecce, Italy as it would be the shortest route, hence the cheapest ferry ride. So, we headed towards the port city of Igoumenitsa, only Greek roads were once again without any vehicles, so hitching a ride proved to be next to impossible. We walked for a few miles without seeing a single vehicle until a tractor trolley showed up, the farmer was happy to give us a ride. There was a place for only one person on the tractor by the side of the driver, Bilal insisted on taking up that place and I ended up sitting on the front wall of the trolley, a rather uncomfortable position that is until I discovered that the trolley was full of large-sized tomatoes. I must have consumed three or four tomatoes, seeing this Bilal wanted to swap places, which I declined. The farmer drove for about three km and told us he has reached his destination, so we had to get off. But he was very generous and gracious and gave us a bunch of tomatoes before turning into his village. The 300-km journey to the Ionian coast proved to be very painful as there were long stretches where not a single vehicle appeared on the road. We were so tired of walking that even an offer of a ride on a bicycle delivery/rickshaw was very welcome.

After much pain, anguish and frustration, we finally managed to get to Igoumenitsa about an hour before sunset nearly fourteen days after leaving Lahore. Igoumenitsa was a lovely little town and the sea looked spectacular. Not having had a bath for several days, we shed our clothes and jumped into the sea in our underwears without a worry in the world. The Ionian Sea felt heavenly that was until the salt on our skins interacting with the sun started to itch and we waded out of the water, dried ourselves put our clothes on and walked to a booth to buy tickets for next morning's ferry to Lecce. After having bought our tickets, we went in search of a cheap hotel, but Bilal suggested that we sleep on the benches to save money and to be close to the point from where the ferry was to sail in the morning, so after getting some food supplies we returned to the benches by the coast. The sea breeze felt so lovely after the oppressive heat of Greece's hinterland that we fell asleep in no time. We were woken up early morning by the noise of the ferries blowing their horns. We washed up at the public tap, ate some stale bread with jam and were ready to take on Italy. We boarded the small ferry at 8 AM which was jam-packed and interestingly many girls walked around in bikinis, a scene we had only seen in Hollywood movies. The ferry ride was about 3 hours long, along the way I needed to use the toilet. After doing my business as I came out of the toilet and a bunch of girls screamed, I could not understand the reason for their hysteria at the time. Not being used to public toilets, I had walked into the ladies' toilet.