A Grueling Travel Story
Trip Start
Sep 08, 2009
1
29
35
Trip End
Nov 24, 2009
Lamia, Greece
Friday, November 20, 2009
Andre looking sad
. We finally asked the ticket man who worked on the train and he said something in Greek, motioned in the opposite direction the train was going, and wrote down the time we passed it (we think) on a piece of paper. We had passed it nearly two hours earlier! We were kind of in disbelief we’d passed it that long ago because the official train website gave us a completely different time and we’d been counting on it. We knew we had to bus to catch from Lamia to Delphi that wasn’t supposed to depart until 7pm, and it was only 3:30pm when all this was happening. So at the next train stop, we hopped off and asked the train station worker when the next train to Lamia was (going in the exact opposite direction we had just been traveling). She said in ten minutes. So that was perfect- we just ran over the railroad tracks and got on the right platform. When that train came, it was overbooked so we had to find spots to stand near the bathrooms, right where the rail cars connect. It was noisy and we kept having to move out of the way when people walked by us. And we weren’t the only ones standing there- so it was a bit crowded. We ended up having to stay on that train for about two hours before coming to a stop that someone told us was Lamia. We were happy to finally get there, but still confused because the town name at the platform did not say Lamia. It said some long Greek word that didn’t even begin in an “L.” We then went inside the train station and asked the worker if we were in Lamia. She said, “No, Lamia” and pointed away from the train station. We were really confused at this point, after a local had just told us we were in Lamia and then this lady was telling us Lamia was somewhere else. The train still happened to be sitting at the platform, stopping longer than normal, so we ran back onto the train. We asked some guy standing by the bathrooms where Lamia was and he said, “This is Lamia.” We had no idea what to do then so we ran back off the train right as it was about to pull away and went back inside the train station. We figured we had to be in Lamia and the train station lady must have been crazy.
By this time it was about 5:45 and our bus from Lamia to Delphi was scheduled to depart at 7:00. We had read that we were supposed to get to the other side of town where the bus terminal was. And the way to do this was by city bus. So we saw a city bus with a marquee that said “Lamia” and again were confused. Why would the bus destination say Lamia if we were in Lamia? We asked the driver and of course he spoke no English. We tried to communicate with him as best we could and he just motioned for us to hop on the bus. We did as he said. After about ten minutes, the bus got to a stop where everyone who was on the bus got off. We then did too, figuring we were at the bus terminal. But of course we weren’t. We were at another train station, just on the other side of town. We then went on a mission asking people where the bus terminal was. Finally one man told us, “go left, up, then right” and pointed us in the direction he wanted us to go. We followed his easily mistakable directions and somehow ended up outside a bus terminal. Was it the right one? No, of course not. The lady working there wrote down the name of the bus terminal we needed to get to and told us to take a taxi. She said if we showed the taxi driver the piece of paper, he’d know where to go.
It was about 6:15 or so by this time and we realized we had only a couple Euros left. (We’d been using a different currency in Istanbul and had some debit card troubles recently so we were low on cash.) So before we could begin to look for a cab in this tiny Greek town, we had to find an ATM. We asked a local where one was and luckily he pointed us in the right direction. A couple blocks later, we found an ATM and successfully pulled out cash. Another block later, we found a row of cabs. We walked up to one of the drivers’ windows and showed him our piece of paper with the bus station name on it. He looked at it for a long time before giving us a confused look and calling over another cabbie to help. That cabbie looked at it then told us we could walk there. He then gave us what we think were directions and sent us on our way. Instead of taking his (most likely wrong) directions we walked back to the main square by the ATM and asked what looked like an information booth/kiosk. The two people inside looked at the piece of paper with the same confused expression before telling us they didn’t know. We were beginning to think the lady who wrote the name (in Greek) on the paper had really bad handwriting. By this time it was about 6:35 and we were running out of time. We walked away from the booth and found a different cab driver sitting in his car. We handed him the piece of paper and asked him if he knew where it was. He said, “Yes, get in.” We breathed a sigh of relief and hopped in. Five minutes and €3 later we were at the right bus station. We had just enough time to buy our tickets and buy some water and day-old bakery food then hopped on the bus.
What we thought would be a direct bus ride to Delphi was not the case. After about 25 minutes the bus dropped us off at some small town right on the water (which we later found out was the Gulf of Corinth). We were told to wait till another bus came, to take us to Delphi. So we waited for a while and sure enough, another bus pulled up. We hopped on and then the bus ascended the side of a small mountain for about 20 minutes before arriving at a cute little town. The driver then announced we had arrived in Delphi. We got off the bus, found our hotel within five minutes of walking, and finally got to relax after being on the road for 24 exhausting hours.
