Balkan Adventures - Chapter 2

Acropolis of Athens, from fish eye lens

Greece - A dream destination for many. Former Yugoslavia - not so much. After the split of SFR Yugoslavia, many new countries were recognized. Starting with Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia (FYROM), and BiH that separated from Serbia. Then there was Albania, and its offshoot, Kosovo, in Serbia. When I was formalizing the trip, I had already started calling it a trip to the Balkans, geographically as well as politically. Since I had already finalized Bulgaria and Greece and had also booked a return flight to Paris from Venice, we had to travel via Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia that were outside the Schengen agreement and then enter the Schengen zone via Slovenia. With the support of just my Indian passport, I knew that none of these countries would hesitate to kick me out, or worse arrest me! I knew we wouldn't get arrested for approaching a land border and asking politely to enter with our French residence permit. I had gone through the websites of each of the counties' external affairs ministry for this purpose, as well as those of Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo and BiH so that I could plan further ahead.

Athens, Greece

The Balkan flexipass provided us the flexibility of traveling inside BiH and Montenegro along with Macedonia and Serbia. So we had also had made some preparations regarding immediate change of itineraries in case we could take a route from Skopje in Macedonia to Pristina in Kosovo followed by an overnight journey to Podgorica or Bar in Montenegro and then a day train to Belgrade or a bus to Sarajevo and then another bus to Belgrade. This was a very time consuming plan what with the limited connectivity these countries had in terms of railways and bus. It was also expensive for the standards of the Balkan countries to travel internationally by bus.

The Balkan peninsula

So we had fixed on a stable itinerary that involved a train to Skopje from Thessalonikki in Greece, a day trip to Kosovo and then take the same train from Skopje to Belgrade in the night. We would then have an entire day at Belgrade and for our non-museum and non-party night trips, a day was a lot usually, even in big cities. I'd say for my standard of travelling, outside India, Paris would be one of the cities where I'd need more than a day, but then that's because my student status lets me inside most of the museums for free! May be Rome too! From Belgrade we'd take the night train to Zagreb, stay for 2 days in Croatia, book ourselves a rental car and go visit the beaches. Zagreb to Slovenia, a short train ride, followed by another train and tram ride to Trieste in Italy after we had covered Ljubljana (pronounced Lyublyana). We'd spend the night in Venice, and would have the entire morning of our last day that we could spend in Padova or Venice, for the second time in my life! I hadn't expected that to happen so soon.

Santorini, Greece

After a charming two days in Athens and one of the Greek islands, Santorini, we had come to 'Saloniki. In this course, we had taken 4 flights, all within 50 hours and none of which lasted more than 45 minutes each! We had booked the train, Hellas express, till Skopje, but were informed that it would be a bus that would take us till the Macedonian border. (I've started using Macedonia here instead of FYROM, because it's just simpler. We were still in the Greek region of Macedonia.) We didn't ask further, because it was hard to comprehend with the broken English. Greek people usually speak good English, but it was just not our time then. We were promptly in front of the bus at the scheduled departure time.

The driver took our passports, checked our tickets and made us keep our luggage in the luggage storage before asking us to wait. 5 minutes before leaving he asked everyone around to get inside the bus. I quickly scanned all the faces and realized that we were probably the only tourists that day. Most of them were either Macedonians or Serbians, what with the train's final destination being Belgrade. Few Greeks were around too. All in all, it could have been 20 or less people. A middle aged man came to look at our tickets after asking if we were Syrians or Afghans. We proudly showed our Indian passport and said no. His questions still had not sparked that curiosity in us regarding the journey that lay in front of us due to our chosen path.

Our passports, and our resident cards, along with student ID and other Indian IDs in case necessary

Greece's struggling economy wasn't that evident in its tourism sector, but every now and then you'd see a young man trying to sell meager items for money in the trams or metros in Athens, and also some refugees just begging around. We almost saw no Greeks begging but the things they were selling made it obvious that many of them had hit hard times. The airport entrance road at Thessalonikki was surrounded by tractors with a make shift tent at the roundabout and a lot of slogans written around. The tractors were there for some reason, other than protesting. We knew that. Just didn't know what. We would soon learn.

We covered the 60 or so kilometres to the Greek side of the border in an hour and a half. The guy who had checked our tickets in the bus had told us in his broken English that we had to take a taxi at the Greek border which would take us all the way to the Macedonian border town train station. We had to share a price of around a euro and a half for this. We knew it was pointless to ask anything more or why we weren't told about it before as the discussion wouldn't even hold due to our incomprehensibility.

Greek side of 'Greece - Macedonia border' 

We get down from the bus at the Greek border and clear border check. A cakewalk! We were officially stateless in that moment, we were neither in Greece nor in Macedonia. We got hoarded in one of the taxis that was waiting for us. I struck up a conversation with a Greek passenger beside us. He told us that the train service had been cancelled as the Greek farmers had threatened to block the railroad with tractors without any notice. Also everyone at the border seemed to be in a rush and this was because on that day the farmers were preparing to block Greek-Macedonian road border. We were sympathetic towards the farmers but thought nothing more of it. Our attention was now on the Macedonian border post that was approaching. It couldn't have been more than 500 m from the Greek border post.

I had joked a couple of times that there was a possibility that the Macedonians, or for that matter the Romanians and the Bulgarians may not take us in as they were not inside the Schengen zone. If this were to happen, what would we do? The question existed, but we had never thought of answering it ourselves. Probably we would just stick around Hungary, and may be visit Slovenia and give Slovakia a second visit! The prospect of such an itinerary seemed funny for us.

'No visa, no Macedonia'. Our heart skipped a beat. We had reached the Macedonian border and had handed our passport as well as our residence permit along with others' to the lady at the counter while sitting inside the taxi. We knew it was because of us that the lady was taking time, when infact she had cleared the two taxis that were ahead of us in a span of 3 minutes, overall. She came out of the counter and asked us to show our faces from the taxi. She asked us to get down, because she wasn't letting us inside Macedonia!

We got out of the taxi and went around with her when we requested to speak to a higher officer. The higher officer, again, did not know a great deal of English. He specifically said that only a permanent residence permit from France or a type D Schengen Visa by a Europaen union country woud permit us inside Macedonia. Well, we did own a type D schengen visa, last year, after which we were given residence permit, that specifically said temporary etudiant (student) on it. It was really confusing for us to think that a residence permit would not be stronger than a Schengen visa! Really bizarre. As a last attempt, I asked if they could issue a visa for us on the spot. I already knew the answer. NO!

A junior officer suggested that he could call us a taxi that would take us to the Greek border. He wouldn't say how much it would cost. The taxi was in front of us even before we could check our wallets or think about walking the distance. After hearing an absurd price of 20 eur for a distance of 500 m, we told him that we did not have any cash on us. All the while I was just wondering what were we going to do from that point onward. We knew that this time there wouldn't be any helpful truck driver waiting around for us, since it was just too dark for any such attempts. The bus that had brought us, would have had gone by then and the border post did not seem lively enough for it to have a local transport service in that seemingly late hour.

The taxi driver pulled his car away and drove towards the Greek border, but stopped and turned 200m away, towards a Casino! When I was checking hitchwiki for random curiosity and had stumbled on hitchhiking to Macedonia from Greece. Someone had mentioned that one could travel for free from Thessaloniki to the border post if one could pose as a tourist for one of the numerous casinos and hotels that were running in this no man's land trying to benefit from the tax regimes. I remembered this info after looking at the hotels and casinos spread on the nearby hillock, but knew that there would be no such free rides waiting for us at that instant. We started walking back towards Greece. Greece, now seemed like that distant aunt, who would take care of us whatever be the situation. Greece, the schengen island amidst all the seemingly wild Balkan countries!

'What happened? Coming back walking?' Even though we expected such questions, we had hoped to avoid it as we would be entering and the border people would be different now. After asking a customs guy regarding getting a hitch, he suggested that once we clear immigration, we hike ahead a bit and then try hitchhiking. But he also warned that the tractors were coming! By the time our passports were stamped, we noticed that the entry side of the border was already blockaded completely by tractors haphazardly parked around the checkpost! Time was not on our side, we felt stuck in the border!

Tractors blocking the border

No farmer on the tractor, it is definitely stopped here! Too quick to grab a photo, while attempting to hitchhike on a truck that never moved - thus a blurry realization

By this time, there were at least 2 dozens of farmers standing around and chatting in Greek. We saw a truck and tried running towards it, but it was a lost cause. He wasn't trying to get out as he was pulling aside to stop. No one was getting inside Greece by a vehicle as long as those tractors were there. Our idea to hitchhike had flown away. We were running out of options, drastically and all we wanted then was to get back to Thessaloniki.

The white tower, Thessalonikki

Gevgelija, the station in Macedonia from where we were supposed to get on to the train. It felt now long gone. The only cafe/supermarket in the Tsoliades Greece border post was still open and serving the more than usual amount of guests, the farmers. We made our way in, as suggested by the customs agent, on approaching him again. We saw a young guy at the counter, but unfortunately that did not help us as he did not know enough English. But somehow we got to know from him that our only option was to take a taxi to Polikastro, the nearest town in Greece, from where a bus was supposed to go to Thessaloniki in an hour, more or less. The taxi would cost us 20 eur. And he would call the taxi the moment we say yes.

We asked him to give us some time, and we came out. We tried to have some conversation with the farmers, and one of them knew English. He told us that the farmers were protesting the Greek governments plan to impose the tax of two years for the same year which would make the farmers pay half of what they earned to the Government. They lauded the socialist nature of Indian government, when we told them that farmers in India don't pay tax. But we also justified the reason saying that Indian farmers were poorer than they'd think and it was important for the economy of India. I continued on a fair bit before I realized that we were stuck in a border of a foreign land and we had no means and no cash to go around discussing politics.

Maybe we did have some hopes of continuing a discussion with them. We had considered the prospect of spending the night there with the farmers, as they had also set up a fire and it was warm enough. But this thought soon died out when they informed us that they would be clearing off by 11pm. It was around 7.30 pm. He suggested that we could book ourselves a decent motel that someone he knew ran nearby. But we denied. We did not want to spend any more than we could. We told him.

We knew what we had to do. We had around half an hour for the bus to leave from that town and went inside the cafe. We asked him to somehow get us in that bus, headed to Thessaloniki, and thus call a car. He immediately got to business. This guy is one guy whom we will forever regret for not having thanked in that instant.

'You two. You want to get out of here?' Fifteen minutes later we heard someone call us from the door. 'Yes, to Thessaloniki. How much will you charge?' He had already taken one of our bags in his hands ad was rushing towards his Mercedes taxi that was parked just outside. We hurried along with him, without thinking anything else but how much he would charge. '20 eur to the town and around 5 eur for the bus from there to Thessaloniki per person.' 35 eur at the most, I though and was thankful that I had around 50 eur in my pocket. I had to lie to the Macedonian taxi driver, I couldn't part with 20 eur for 500 m, when the Greek driver was about to take me 15 km, over the 15 km that he had already traveled to get to the border.

The following events took place within the next 10 minutes, and both of us involved in this trip have different versions due to the fact that we dreamed about it so many times that we get confused what was reality and what was imaginary.

The taxi was parked in the direction of the border. The driver had another customer who was in the same position as us, except he was turned back by the Macedonians. He took the front seat and we all strapped our seat belts on. The taxi driver pulled ahead to turn the vehicle but a middle aged lady was trying to do the same to get out of the tractor mess. The driver shouted a couple of profane words, in English and started driving reverse. He went on at least for another 300 m before turning the vehicle abruptly, front facing Greece. He stepped on the gas and the powerful merc roared ahead , us sitting inside as comfortable as possible..

'I have told the bus driver that I am bringing two passengers. He will wait till it is exactly time, and may be another couple minutes. I will take you in this seemingly longer path, but a highway and I will turn towards the town from where I can block the bus if it has started. It should be possible.' The mercedes was flying on the empty road. For a second we were confused as to whether he had told long road or wrong side of the road! The speed was 150 kmph. After sending couple more profane words at the immigrants, at the Macedonians for not letting us pass, he told us we were luck because he was available when the cafe guy had called him. We definitely were, I thought, trying not to think of a cow or a buffalo venturing on the road in the night!

For the next few minutes, all we could do, other than hold our breath, was to check the speedometer as the vehicle accelerated more and more. I was not able to gauge the speed by just feeling, since the windows were closed and the ride was one of the smoothest I've ever had. The speed kept on increasing and increasing, and on one particular downhill stretch, the speed had crossed 200 kmph. He kept going on and on at the same acceleration, and we saw the lights from the town pass by. At the exit for the town he slowed down and received a call. Probably from the bus driver, because after he disconnected he slowed down completely and told us that the bus is waiting as it wasn't time yet. We had survived to tell this story!

We came at the bus stop and promptly paid him 20 eur and thanked him with all our heart, to get us till the bus and not getting us killed! We got our tickets for the bus and sat down. We could not believe what we had gone through in just the last 15 minutes. We had completely forgotten the 3 hours before that. At least, we were now sure that we would make it to the 7 am train going back to Sofia, the same one that had brought us to Greece!