Greece - Thessaloniki

I took an early bus from Kosovo back to Skopje, as I heard the border could take several hours. Rather unfortunately, it didn't and we raced through to the Macedonian capital 3 hours before my train to Greece. This meant spending the time waiting in what must be the worst train station I have ever encountered, anywhere. Run-down, dark, and depressing in an almost post-apocalyptic way, to make matters worse my train was 2.5 hours late, which meant spending the entire afternoon in this hell-hole of a place.

The seafront was fenced off for construction. Not a pretty sight.

The train did eventually arrive and trundled through the night to Thessaloniki, Greece's second city, arriving just before midnight. My hotel was right across from the station, which was lucky as I didn't have a map. Walking into the reception, I immediately recognised some familiar faces - the two Irish guys I had met in Skopje days earlier. They were just arriving from Athens and immediately invited me out for a night of drinking, which was a perfect antidote to the day's boredom.

There are a few historical sights dotted about

After stopping for a typical Greek kebab, and almost getting in to an argument with the restaurant's owner over the use of the term 'Macedonia' to describe the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (you'll have to look that one up), we drifted between bars for the rest of the night.

The view from the hill

I spent the next day walking around the city. To be honest, there wasn't very much to see. It wasn't a nasty place - it was very clean, orderly and modern, but without a guidebook it was difficult to find many attractions. I did visit a nice Byzantine church and walked up the hill to the city walls, from where there was a great view, but doing this in the scorching Mediterranean heat was exhausting.

In the backstreets

A shopkeeper told me that most of the big cities in Greece are quite similar and to see the real Greece I should visit the islands in the Aegean, something I definitely intend to do one day. On the way back to the hotel I spent some time wandering the backstreets on the side of the hill, which were charming and almost completely deserted, unlike the thriving city.

It's quite a relaxing city

So all-in-all, not the best place I've been, but a rather relaxing stop after such a place as Kosovo and it's almost relieving to be back in EU territory, in a well-developed and modern country. Having said that, it's now time to move on to Bulgaria and Romania!