Buses

At short notice plans changed and we decided to go to Meteora for two days. We packed quickly, headed off to a local bus-stop and got on a very crowded bus. Once at the main bus station we went to buy long distance tickets and my sister realised she had lost her wallet.

The police at the bus station were kind and helpful and told us another passenger on the same bus was also missing a wallet. So - a pick-pocket. In excellent English the policeman said, 'This is what happens when people are hungry.'

We had an interesting 90 minutes inside the police station. At one point a suspect (for something else) who was sitting next to us went to move from his chair. The kind slow policeman behind the desk moved at the speed of light to fasten the handcuffs that I hadn't previously noticed were attached to the chair. Suspect protested and was marched brusquely out of the room. A few minutes later a scarf, belt and two shoelaces were brought back in.

All the plain-clothes police wore jeans and stubble. I wished I dared photograph the one who also had a rock-band t-shirt, black backwards baseball cap and wrap-round sunglasses, but feared that if I did I might also be reduced to scarf, belt and shoelaces.

Finally statements were completed, documentation issued and we could go. We decided it was too late for an already short trip to Meteora, so got this bus back to our Thessaloniki base, consoling ourselves with all the things that could have been worse.