Thessaloniki, Arriving.

This afternoon was terrible.

I left my hotel in Kalabaka, outside Meteora, having been told by the man at reception that the train to Thessaloniki would arrive at 10:30. I got to the train station and was immediately suspicious of the fact that there was absolutely no one else there. Not even the ticket counter was open. I waited and waited, and by the time 10:50 rolled around I gave up on the train and hurried to catch the bus instead. So much for using my rail pass at all here in Greece.

The bus took just over three hours to get to Thessaloniki. On the website that I'd booked this hostel from, the directions to the hostel itself were very sketchy. "Ascend the hill to the place of the raised rocks, against the Starbucks continue ascend. You will see where the three streets join. Look for the old house with bricks." That sort of thing. So I'd saved the directions from google maps to my phone's camera roll and figured that, in the worst case, I could just point to street names and figure it out from there.

I got a good start on finding my hostel but began getting a little worried that I was walking the wrong way down a main street. Seeing what looked to be huge and fancy hotel, The Tobacco Hotel, I went in to talk to the receptionist, figuring that not only would she speak English, but that she would be able to direct me to another hotel or give me good walking instructions. She looked at my maps, saw what street I was trying to find, and gave me a very grave "That is in the old town, you just walk left, go for about 20 minutes, very hilly road." There was nothing but gloom on her face, like I'd been a terrible fool for having gotten myself so ridiculously lost and she felt sorry for the travels I had ahead of me.

With a gulp, I thanked her and turned back to the street, walking in the direction she'd indicated. I walked up and down streets, looking fruitlessly for any sort of landmark to orient myself with, and finally the main road I was on began to taper down -- I'd definitely gone too far. So I turned around and backtracked the way I'd come, again trying to match the streets I was seeing to the names on my map. I stopped again at a street vendor, and from him I learned that the street I was looking for was yet another 10 minutes back the way I'd come...putting me right back to the hotel I'd originally stopped at, the Tobacco Hotel.

I continued walking and stopped a random person in the street, asking for where my street was, and was absolutely thrilled when he pointed at the Tobacco Hotel and said "next street."

My hostel was literally right behind the Tobacco Hotel. As in, if me and the receptionist had gone outside and thrown a rock, it would have landed in the street I'd been asking her about. And because of her bad directions, I had wasted almost three hours walking back and forth along the main street! I'd also been trying to orient myself against the map, but none of the streets matched because I was looking at the wrong side of the map altogether!!

Argh! I want to go inside the Tobacco Hotel and strangle her!

But I'm here now. I met my roommate, a Japanese girl who's been traveling for three months now. There's another Japanese guy here who's been traveling for two years and plans on spending another 5 months at least touring Europe. There's an Australian who's been traveling for four months, and a Belgium guy who's just arrived. This place is also home to students in exchange programs and professors teaching abroad. It's very, very cool.

Location:Σαχτούρη,Thessalonika,Greece