Wanderlust: Greece Part I

The following day we set off after breakfast on what we thought would be the most difficult part of our journey to Greece. We needed to get across the mountains up into the central part of Yugoslavia and Skopje which was the closest major city to the Greek border. We got a lift quite quickly with a German couple, Ben and his girlfriend Utie in a lovely VW campervan. They also had a huge Great Dane, Sara. We stayed with them all day and continued down to Ulcinje which is the southernmost point of the country, bordering Albania which at that time was closed off to westerners. We ended up staying the night with them as they were so friendly. Drinking wine and listening to radio Luxembourg around a fire pit. We had a shock though when we woke up the following morning to find we were on a nudist beach! For two innocent lasses from Yorkshire this was fairly mind boggling!

We left Ben in the afternoon to find out about buses to Skopje and discovered that the next one was at 6pm. Whilst waiting for the bus we hunted for a bank (more difficult than you’d imagine) to get some currency for the journey. It was around £5 for the two of us. We came across some young locals who were keen to practice their English with us and stayed with us all afternoon even waving us off when the bus departed .

The bus journey was hell (though a couple of years later I would discover an even more hellish journey). We kept being badgered to give up our seats, but we took no notice. We’d paid for seats and we were keeping them. It was an 11 hour journey and although it was a luxury coach, sitting all that time was not fun. We arrived stiff and cramped and tired at 5:30am on a very dull, grey day. A fortnight after leaving home.

After finding a bakery open and buying fresh bread (the only time to eat it as later it became as hard as hell), we followed signposts to the road leading to the Greek border. It was a fair distance and we got a few odd looks from people on the way. We did manage to get a lift quite quickly though he wasn’t going all the way to the border and traffic on that road was very light with pretty much only an odd tractor every half hour. We eventually reached the border 6 hours later where we took advantage of the facilities to get washed and comb our hair after the unsettled night, find biscuits and milk before crossing the ‘no-mans land’ to reach the other border post.

With luck we spotted a car with a GB sticker so quickly raced ahead to try and get through the border before them so we could try and get a lift. And with more luck it stopped for us. Three lads from one of the home counties who happily agreed to take us to Thessaloniki and a camp site there. It was actually so nice to have someone to speak English with after two weeks. We pitched our tent close to the boys and spent several days there. It was a lively camp site with fire pits and lots of music (Woodstock mainly – this was 1971 after all) and we spent our days on the beach or going into Thess and walking around. There was an International Fair on whilst we were there so it was very busy. One downside was that I got very badly bitten by mosquitos which made me feel quite ill.

For some reason we made the (bad) decision to head over to Istanbul rather than down to the Greek islands. So after saying our farewells to the Brits who were heading homewards we continued our hitchhiking journey on the road to Kavala.

And this is when the “fun” began.