TRAVEL |BORDER CROSSING | GREECE

Stranded At the Greek Border

While trying to find a ‘helper’

As told in the last portion of this story, we were unceremoniously dropped off on the Turkey side of the Greek/Turkish border by our taxi. We had no idea how we were going to cross the border; we just knew that we needed to get across it somehow.

After our taxi dropped us off, we made our way inside to the Turkish customs office. This border was an exact replica of the Bulgaria/Turkey border that we had just come from, and we recognized the counter set up immediately.

Again, because we were the only people walking across the border, there was no agent at the desk. So we rolled our suitcases up to the counter, then proceeded to sit in the chairs that were off to the side of the room to wait for somebody to come and deal with us.

A few official-looking people came and went, but nobody paid us much attention. There was also a man at a desk that seemed to be serving people that were driving across the border. We would later learn that people were paying a vehicle tax at the counter, in order to be able to bring their cars into Greece.

After a while, some men started coming through the room rolling pallets full of boxes that appeared to hold different sorts of alcohol. They were being wheeled into what looked to be an office that was off to the side of the room. At some point, a large man looking like a customs agent came out.

“Get your suitcases out of the way!” He demanded of us.

We obeyed his orders and wheeled our suitcases to the side of the room to make way for the men operating the palettes.

After we did so he walked past us and just looked at us blankly. We watched him as well, hoping that he would acknowledge that we needed something. On his return trip into the room a few minutes later Chris finally asked him, “Is there somebody that will come and assist us?”

“Where is your car?” He asked us matter-of-factly.

“We don’t have a car. We came here in a taxi.” I told him.

“Where is your taxi now?”

“He left us here,” I said.

“No taxi, no bus! Go away!” He then proceeded into his office and slammed the door.

We sat there stunned. Of course, Chris was enraged and started a string of profanities that I won’t repeat here.

I quickly told him to cut it out, I knew that would certainly get us nowhere. “Stop it. You aren’t helping matters.” I told him. “Just take a deep breath, I will figure this out.”

I cautiously approached the man's sliding window hoping that he would feel bad and would open it up to talk to me. After a minute or so, I realized that it was a fruitless effort as he refused to even look up from his paperwork.

I then approached the man at the desk where people were paying their car taxes. I’m not sure if he spoke English or not, but after I asked him how we should proceed, he simply pointed out to the parking lot.

I walked out the doors and stood out on the sidewalk for a few minutes. There were about 4 lanes where cars were driving through to leave Turkey, and there were cars pulled over to the side of the road with the occupants coming inside to pay the taxes.

I asked one couple that approached if they spoke English. The lady did and I told her our situation. I sort of hoped that we could get a ride across the border with them, but I wasn’t going to flat-out ask. I knew that was a very big thing to ask of somebody especially when we are strangers and trying to cross a border, of all things.

She told me that she didn’t know what we could do.

I went back inside feeling very deflated.

“I don’t know what we are supposed to do,” I said to Chris. “These people are just paying their car taxes here at this counter.”

I stood and looked out the window trying to figure out what to do next. I knew that there was a solution to this problem, we just had to figure it out. We have traveled across enough land borders to know that there is always a way. I decided that I should go outside and speak to one of the customs agents inside the booths where the cars were driving through. Clearly, we weren’t going to get any help inside where we were.

I knew that I needed to find a ‘helper.’

As I made my way outside, I could see a nice-looking man in a uniform walking towards me. “Excuse me, do you speak English?” I asked him.

“Yes, I do.” Thank goodness.

“Okay, we are here on foot and we are very confused. We took a taxi here from Ipsala and he dropped us off and now we don’t know what to do.”

“Okay, taxis from Turkey can’t cross the border. To go further you need to call a taxi from Greece to come and get you.” He explained. I was so relieved to have finally found a ‘helper.’ I knew that one had to be around this place somewhere.

We didn’t realize it at the time but to get to the Greek side of the border was over a kilometer away. Plus they didn’t allow people to simply walk over the border. We had no option but to take a taxi.

“Okay, I don’t have a way to call them. Do you have a number?” He was already pulling out his phone, likely realizing that we had no way to phone anyone as we didn’t have a Greek phone number.

He phoned a few different numbers before one finally picked up. He spoke on the phone for a few minutes then said, “Take your luggage to the next gate and wait there for the taxi to come. It should be here in 15 minutes.”

“Thank you so much,” I told him. I almost felt like hugging him. It is in these moments when we truly appreciate the people that actually do care about other human beings. I don’t understand why people like the other man that we dealt with are even in the positions that they are in.

I went and got Chris and we came back outside with our luggage. “Have you stamped out of Turkey yet?” He asked.

“No, we haven’t.”

“Come with me,” he said.

We proceeded to one of the drive-through kiosks and the female customs officer quickly stamped our passports without so much glancing at our visas or our other stamps.

All told we were probably at this side of the Turkish border for about an hour while we tried to figure out what to do next. We were relieved that we were finally on our way to the Greek border.

We walked about 200 m and crossed through another checkpoint of some sort. Of course, the men wanted to know what we were doing, so we explained that we were waiting for a taxi to come and get us.

They pointed to an area where we could wait and we made our way over there. I should mention here that one of our suitcases has broken wheels and poor Chris really struggled with it all day. Of course, initially, we just thought we would be putting it on a bus and then taking it off and into a taxi when we arrived in Bulgaria. But as it turned out we walked a lot with our bags that day, and by the end of it, he was stiff and sore from manhandling the behemoth that wouldn’t roll easily.

As we waited for the taxi to come we were repeatedly visited by three stray puppies and another couple of adult dogs that would come around sniffing our bags and looking for snacks. They were pretty cute and we were certainly entertained by them. But after about 25 minutes I started to get anxious.

“Why is it taking so long?” I couldn’t help but ask out loud.

Of course, knowing that this was our only option, we had no other choice but to stand and wait for as long as it took. But we were both feeling tired and impatient at this point.

After about 35 minutes, and an attempt to get the other men at the closer kiosk to try calling another taxi for us, our taxi finally showed up. We loaded up our suitcases and headed for the border.

As we pulled up to the Greek border the driver asked for our passports. I handed them to him but we also assumed that we would have to get out and see the agent for ourselves, but our driver told us to just wait. The customs agent could see me in the back seat, but he couldn’t see Chris in the front. He indicated for me to wind my window down.

“Where are you going?” He asked.

“To the closest town so we can catch a bus to Thessaloniki.” I quickly concocted a story since we didn’t have a clue where we were really headed at that moment.

“The closest town?” He asked.

I stared at him wide-eyed and briefly wondered how close that actually was. I had looked on the map and it looked like a small town was right on the other side of the border. I had hoped that from there we could get a bus somewhere……anywhere.

“The closest place is Alexandroupoli, 44 km away.” He told me.

“Okay, I guess we are going there then,” I told him.

He nodded his head, spoke to the taxi driver for a minute, then stamped us into Greece. He never did take one look at Chris. I was amazed.

Here poor Bulgaria is trying desperately to be accepted to the Schengen Zone and to officially be an EU member state only to be told that their border protocol is not strong enough. Yet there is Greece, already a member for countless years and they clearly have far less border control than Bulgaria does. I just shook my head. But of course, we were not complaining. At least not until I asked how much the taxi was going to cost.

The driver counted out 6 fingers. Knowing that it was over 40km away, I knew that he didn’t mean 6 Euros. We could only surmise that it was 60 Euros. I rolled my eyes in disdain. Of course, we had no other option and I was just thankful that we actually had the cash available to pay for it at that moment.

The driver hesitated for a second, making sure that we were okay with his price. Chris nodded for him to proceed.

After what felt like about 20 kilometers, we drove into a small city. “Bus station,” I told the driver.

“Yes, Thessaloniki?” He confirmed.

“Yes please.”

After a few minutes, we drove down a tiny and narrow street that had about 4 buses parked on the side of the road. “Bus station,” the driver said as he pointed to the station doors as we passed between the buses.

We got off about 50m down the sidewalk where he was able to finally pull over safely. I paid the man the money we owed, then we made our way to the station. I went straight to the ticketing counter and told the man we wanted to go to Thessaloniki.

“Bus leaves in 2 minutes.” He announced.

“How much is it?” I wondered.

“29 Euro each.” He told me.

I paid him another 58 Euros, and we rolled our suitcases (well I did anyways) outside. The conductor loaded them under the bus and we made our way into it.

Our seats weren’t together, but we didn’t care. We were relieved that we were actually on our way somewhere legitimate, and we knew that from Thessaloniki we could figure out our next moves.

Over the course of the next 5 hours, we both drifted in and out of consciousness. Once in a while, we would open our eyes to catch glimpses of the most beautiful snow-capped mountains on the right-hand side of the bus, and the adorable bays and the sparkling Aegean Sea on the left-hand side of the bus.

Thankfully the bus had wifi and I was able to research a hostel to land at when we got to Thessaloniki. I screenshotted the address and upon arrival at the bus station, we were thrilled to find an official taxi stand with actual metered taxis. I showed the driver the address and he nodded that he knew where it was. Thank goodness.

He whisked us off to our destination, and after another 11 Euro tab, we arrived weary and exhausted at around 4:00 pm. It had been one hell of a 24-hour period since we had left Izmir the day before, but we at least knew that we could finally rest and recuperate.

The only catch was that we didn’t have enough Euro left from the 200 we had withdrawn to pay for our room, so we had to go find an ATM to get cash to pay for our stay.

We also had to find a supermarket and get some food so we could finally satisfy our hungry bellies. We still hadn’t really eaten all day and we were exhausted and famished.

By 8:00 pm I was fast asleep and slept solidly until 9:00 am the next morning. This was surely one of the most trying travel days that we have had in the past 5 years of travel. But, at the end of the day, we made it, and we survived.

Just another testament to travel and learning how resilient we truly are.

5 nights have gone by now and we finally feel like we have recuperated from this debacle. While we don’t usually plan very far in advance, and we like to keep our future wide open to see what unfolds, this situation truly challenged our senses and we have felt very turned upside down and discombobulated.

But we can’t help but think that we are exactly where we belong, and while we haven’t figured out why things played out the way we did, there is likely still a purpose behind it after all.

Tagging those that have been following this adventure already:

Dan Carlson | Julie KingGood | Charles The Scientist | Jay Davidson | Bruce Coulter | Michele Maize | Pramod Kumar | Osan Fernando | Vanessa Brown | Sandy Maximus | Julie van Maanen | Travel Ladies: | Robert Knight | Shawn Somerville | Tim Ward | Melissa Morris | David Perlmutter | Belcairn | Arthur Cleaves | Celeste Wilson | H F Sylaj | Isabelle Elliott | Sam Millichap | Louise Logan | Michael Rhodes | Suvadeep Paul | Mary Louisa Cappelli, MFA, JD, PhD

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