Spring Break part 1, Trains and Thessaloniki

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Now that I have a little more free time I'll try to give a little more detailed accounting of my spring break. This will likely take a couple of installments since I did so much in Greece and updating this blog isn't exactly priority one.

Anyways, break started on Friday March 26th with the conclusion of my Combinatorics midterm. Ranjan and I went to the CBA market by our houses to get some supplies for the journey, then grabbed our stuff and met up with the other 11 people who had elected to share in our adventuring.

Our journey comprised of two legs, the first train got us to Belgrade at about 10PM and the second took us the rest of the way to Thessaloniki. Despite taking nearly 26 hours the trip was actually quite fun, none of the trains were full so we were able to spread out over 3 6-person compartments. On the second train the seats even folded down nearly flat which my compartment only discovered at about 3 am while we were waiting at passport control in Macedonia. We didn't get a whole lot of restful sleep since we were woken up every couple of hours to have our passports or tickets checked. We passed the rest of the time talking, playing cards, and enjoying the scenery. Oh and throwing rotten kiwis out the train windows for people further down the train to catch....

Anyways once in Thessaloniki we dropped our luggage at our Hotel, the Atlantis and I managed to procure a map from the helpful man at reception. On our first night we wandered around the waterfront area and eventually ate dinner at the first of many Greek gyro shops we would visit.

Since our group was hankering for some beach time, I asked the even more knowledgeable 'Night Guy' at the hotel for his advice. Per his instructions, the next morning we (in particular Ranjan) found ourselves on board a Greek bus towards the beaches outside the city. Despite the cloudy weather we still had a great view of Mount Olympus home of the Gods! Some brave souls even choose to go swimming, though I opted out. I did take a nice walk through the town near the beach. I particularly enjoyed the abundant greenery having just come from the heart of Budapest.
The next day our group of 13 split into two smaller groups. One group went to Meteora and a town near Volos while my group headed down to Athens to meet up with Will's roommate Madhav. Though we had planned to take an early train to Athens it ended up being booked so we opted for an evening train and enough time to explore Thessaloniki. We followed the old city walls up the hills eventually reaching the old citadel which until 1989 also served as a prison.

That afternoon we caught our train to Athens and enjoyed the sunset over the Greek countryside as we rushed towards part 2 of break.

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