BELGREAT

On the street corner hookers are turning tricks in the rain. Riot police, slumped over their shields, are sheltering under the awnings of the building over the road. They show no interest in the girls or the curb crawlers who ease up now and then to lower their windows and negotiate terms. On the table in front of me sits a large empty polystyrene cup and the gardening pages of The Daily Telegraph. The rest of the paper sits on the seat of the chair to my right. The gardening section is the only to remain untouched. It is four in the morning. There are only three hours left until the first train to Thessaloniki pulls out of Athens. I look at the pages on the table in front of me. The section lead is an article on Autumn perennials. There's no way I can possibly get that bored.

We left the Greek Island of Santorini on the slow ferry back to Athens at three pm the day before. The previous four days had been languid, sunny and relaxing. I swam every morning, explored the island a little, cooked good meals, played cards and read on the beach. Four days of that was enough.

There are no flights from Athens to Croatia and just about any flight out of the Greek capital seems to come at a premium. After three hours looking at different options we abandoned the search and decided to catch a train to Belgrade instead. We didn't make any plans beyond that. We just returned the car we'd rented to get us around the island and hopped on the ferry. As a result I ended up sitting outside a cafe in Athens at four in the morning, drinking coffee, watching hookers and reading conservative publications.

Not only is Athens a prohibitively expensive place to leave by air it is quite literally the end of the line when it comes to rail too. For some reason there are no trains west through Albania, so in order to get anywhere you have to head about four or five hours north east to Thessaloniki. Our ferry didn't get back to Athens until well past 11pm and we missed the overnighter. That wasn't really a problem as the next train to Belgrade didn't leave Thessaloniki until four pm the next day anyway and that was more than three hours after the first train from Athens arrived. The only decision to make was between scrambling about looking for a place to sleep for a few short hours before catching our connection or pulling an all nighter. We already had a deck of cards and the weekend Daily Telegraph. All we really needed was coffee.

Anyway, I'm in Belgrade now and this entry is starting to bore the b'jesus out of me so I'm going to cut it off there. Congratuations if you reached this far. Belgrade's a great city. Overnight trains are pretty damn great. I'm going out tonight to drink unfeasibly cheap beer and eat dinner plate sized hamburgers. Life is good.

More mildly amusing stories to come shortly when I've had more sleep.

That is all,

Dale Atkinson