Travel Writer Tigger - Trains, Buses and Backpack

Saturday was something of an experiment.  F said we would go on my first train trip but when were on the train I reminded her that I'd been on one of these before; a train under the sea.

Of course when you are in the train under the sea you can't tell you are under sea.  It's just a long tunnel.  Mr B told me later that we have been under a bit of sea called (by the English) The English Channel.  And I was inside our van and the lights were on inside the train so quite frankly we could have been anywhere.  That was however my first ride in a train.

Today we went 'between mountains and the sea' but I am getting ahead of my story.  The first 'first' was a ride in a bus. 

Buses stop across the road from home and we have mentioned buses and the bus stop a few times.  We pass it to go down the rickety stairs.  On Saturday we waited at the bus stop.  When a bus stopped, F zipped my backpack lid and clambered us on board, bleeped a piece of cardboard past a green light, and found a place for us to sit down.  Buses are quite noisy and have virtually no suspension.  We had a seat near the back facing backwards and 2 other people further back than us kept staring at me (my lid was open again because I insisted on it).  I looked out the windows and feigned nonchalance; like I use buses all the time and this is perfectly normal.  

It's just a big van; more seats, fewer comforts.

We climbed off the bus at the port and negotiated on foot (F's feet) some streets full of people waiting for other buses, dragging luggage, selling stuff off boxes and blankets, and hawking handfuls of what looked like phone-chargers, before eventually arriving at a RAILWAY STATION.

Well, that's not what I expected!  City terminus railway stations in movies are always grand affairs, over-the-top architecture, some sort of statement about refined travel, advancement, civilization, (wealth and pomposity possibly...), a place where dreams are made, or come true.  This one is a strange mix of old and new: 'unloved and slightly crumbling' and 'new practical industriousness', old building, shiny new stainless steel ticket reading machines.

Platform 3, the lady told us.  I get the distinct impression we didn't need to ask; everything came and went from platform 3.  From our seat on the platform I squinted sideways at the bloke on his phone in the seat at the end of the row, at the bloke with plastic shoes and the overflowing backpack, and at a small elderly bloke in faded religious garb with his luggage on a little folding trolley. 

Fellow travelers.

Trains: Trains move off very smoothly and quietly; just a faint whine is all that gives them away and you have to be looking out the window to realize we are moving.  F says "that is electric trains for you.  Diesel electrics roar, and as for steam, well wait and see...."  So we are going on more than one train then?

Trains do stop more often that we stop the van and they do it with a little lurch right at the end, but when they stop there is good opportunity for people-watching (as they climb on and off), and speculating about their purpose for that day.  Our train was scrupulously clean and fresh, and had blue seats in the kind of plush fabric that fur sticks to.  Although I was dead keen to explore the train, check the cleanliness under the seats, and see how the doors work, F blocked my moves, so I arranged myself across her legs in a way that meant she had to hold onto me for the next hour and half - awkward for her, comfortable for me.

Perhaps remarkably, the railway is a relatively green corridor through the city, a strip of quite dense greenery with lots of trees and some gardens even.  Near one station where the track was slightly below the street level, the embankment between had been terraced by an industrious gardener and was growing a fine selection of tomatoes, peppers and aubergines, and some flowers for a spark of colour.

Leaving the city the  railway became more modern and less green; a concrete and steel corridor that ran between two halves of a highway through a landscape that contained all the industrial drivers of a modern society - oil refineries, tanks farms, ships, factories, heavy machinery, electricity pylons, glass and steel buildings. The few village houses we passed were small, usually a single storey, with terracotta tiled roofs.  Small collections of olive trees were tucked between rocky outcroppings in the otherwise dry barren hillsides that contained the clear scars of old fires - trunks of burned trees were lonely sentinels over a few scrubby bushes struggling to get a roothold on the droughty faces.

In places the railway clung to the cliff - sea below, modern motorway above.  It dived through a few tunnels, switched places with the road and carried us over that canal we blogged just a few days ago.  I knew where we were.... sort of....  from there the countryside changed dramatically.  We didn't follow the road into the mountains, but with the sea on the other side of us now, pointed west and traced its edge on into agricultural countryside. Now there were vineyards, olive groves, and citrus orchards; and oleander all along the track. It is very green.

Vineyards with row upon row of human height vines also had interesting covered lanes running around and through them.  Routes where vines had been encouraged to grow up and over frames that went higher and from side to side of the tracks and so created shady avenues through the working environment.  Shade must help slow the rate of moisture evaporation from the earth as well.  Feet in the shade, head in the sun.

At Kiato the electrified line ends.  For now.  It is being modernized and electrified all the way to Patras but we don't expect to be here to see it achieve that goal. Kiato station is 'modern' - concrete, glass and stainless steel, lift, electronic timetables (that were not working) affair, but it is already displaying the effects of wear and tear,  and a leaking roof. (The ceiling in the waiting room is the worse for that.).  The view outdoors was of blinding sunlight and dust, and low density, low level residential buildings in faded or dusty colours.  In the distance the sea... It turned out to be a kilometre to the sea so we walked it; F walked, I bounced along in the pack with her scarf over me for a sunshade.

En route we encountered an enormous tortoise.  It is testament to how quickly F  can take photos that in trying to take a picture of me looking at the tortoise, it had managed to nearly walk out of sight and I had lost interest before she got us both in the same frame..... not my best side.  That tortoise was nearly as big as me - shorter legs, not as handsome 😉

Traffic through Kiato appeared to be dominated by agricultural vehicles - a lot of tractor type things.  One looked like an enormous rototiller (without the tiller bit) made out of the front end of a small tractor (complete with lugged tyres) steered by long handlebars and towing a trailer on which sat the driver and his companion - a sort of donkey-cart style transport with an iron donkey.

As beaches go this was one of the better ones we have visited.  The promenade (or akti) looked recently renovated and had nice gardens, a high standard of road and pavement surfaces and nice cafes.  We like the small flat-stones gravel of the beach (no sand between your toes discomfort) and the manmade palm trees that provided extra shade between the real trees on the beach.  A coffee and an ice-cream (and a long sit in the shade watching the swimmers) later and we set off on our return.  Today the objective was the trip not the destination, but the destination has been confirmed as worth another visit.

Things we saw from the train: purple flowering thyme and lucerne (alfalfa in US), spectacular oleanders in shades of pink and pale peach, strange shaped buildings, interesting building fascias, graffiti, murals, the sea, mountains....

The train conductor pinged my ticket even though I was on a 'don't sit here' seat.  F let me choose my seat on the way back but made me sit on her scarf. 

The train cleaner chatted to me.  A few passengers patted me on their way past.  

And our day ended with another bus ride and arriving home just in time to see disappointed visitors pull up their anchor and depart - disappointed I hadn't been there to wave (regally) to them from my balcony.  I'm sure they called by to see me......

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