thessaloniki, pt 1

after four more days of waiting in sofia (nothing worth mentioning really) my departure date to greece finally came around. had to hurry to the bus station in order not to be late, but the bus was nowhere to be found. there were other travelers as confused as me there and we had to wait an hour until it finally arrived.

i'm getting really good at killing time on coaches now, the five hours to thessaloniki flew by like nothing. luckily no border controls again, but a girl from norway told me that the last two bus rides she took across balkan country borders had both been searched and one time, the serbian police dragged an american out of the bus because they had found some weed traces in his bag. "enjoy being naive as long as you can", someone once said.

walked uphill to the hostel and received my first impressions of greece. especially the poorer quarters already feel very strange, if you were blindfolded and put there, you probably couldn't discern if you were in cairo, thessaloniki or ankara.

checked in at the hostel, a small, cozy place with just a handful of people, half of them volunteers. everyone was super welcoming, i got great vibes right away. the supermarket however, gave me very bad vibes. the food is expensive as hell, especially given that greek people only earn like 700€ with minimum wage.

i still stayed for way longer than i had planned. the weather window for mount olympus had closed, and after some research and seeing some videos of people climbing the peak in winter, i wasn't sure if i could do it at all. that was until a pair of two australians came into the hostel and told us they had just been up there a week ago. i got some great info from them and apparently, the snow situation is wayyy better than on musala. one of the french volunteers, estelle, even decided to join me for two days.

in the meantime, we (an american, two french and a nother german) spent a lot of time hanging out together in bars, squatter houses and at the hostel with movie nights, chess and weed. finally, it had found its destiny. the other german guy, salomon, was also a great guitar player and kind of got me hooked on playing again. also had a tinder date and she got way to attached, oopsies.

went to a museum for the first time in three months, i'll try to do it more in the future. can't just let my brain rot away. i started to tryhard chess again as well, playing at a better level now than ever before.Read more