Private sector employee. Resident of Thessaloniki. Originally from a family of railway workers in Alexandroupoli. Her brother, Dimitris, a train driver, lost his life as a passenger at Tempi.
I am from Alexandroupoli, and my dad was a train driver for 35 years. His uncle was too. There was this small family tradition, so I grew up in a railway family and trains were something completely familiar to me. It was the means of transport I considered the safest. It was my dad’s job. I had been in the driver’s cabin since I was a baby, going back and forth in the engines, everywhere. We travelled endlessly.
At some point, it was announced that Hellenic Train would be hiring. My brother was a computer engineer, which was one of the formal qualifications they were asking for. He had been told the call would come out, and he was excited, because for us trains were as familiar as, say, a car.
He said he would apply. My dad was quite negative about it. I cannot say he pushed him towards that job, because there were many objective difficulties, mainly the hours, no holidays, all that.
The network in Alexandroupoli, where my dad worked, is single-track, but there used to be a lot of drivers, as well as depots, management, station masters. The Hellenic Railways Organization (OSE) used to be a well-organized company. Still, the last drivers hired before Hellenic Train took over were from my dad’s generation (he was born in 1957). For years, it was the same people working, and the roster was never renewed. When I say I grew up inside OSE, I mean my parents’ friends were drivers, and my friends, people I grew up with, were their colleagues’ kids. Those people gradually got older: 40 became 50, then 55, and the roles in OSE stayed exactly the same.
So, retirement waves started coming. Obviously, none of those people were replaced. It was not five out, five in. At first, they started cutting freight routes because they could not cover them, and then the profession itself basically started to be undermined. Routes were run at the expense of the drivers, who pushed back, resisted, did not get days off… They ended up doing lots of night shifts.
Where there used to be 30-40 drivers, they were reduced to five. They essentially let OSE fall apart. To me, it had been something very organised. Since staff were not being replaced, they also started shutting down intermediate stations in key towns and small cities, because there was no one left to staff them
My dad got extremely tired, even though he loved the job and had chosen it. He was an engineer; he could have done other things. He reached a breaking point, doing seven or eight-night shifts, which he felt was not right for someone in their early sixties. He left dissatisfied, because the workforce had never been renewed.
At some point he did his last route and said, “That is it, I am done.” He was working absurdly hard, when at his age he should have stepped back, maybe taken on a second-driver role.
So, in a way, my dad was almost discouraging the railway, but my brother still wanted it. It was also a time when salaries were very low. He could not live independently on what he was earning. He thought he would get a better salary and do something better with his life. And, therefore, he went for it.
He was part of that last intake they hired. When the crash happened, it had not been long. As a driver, he had been working for about a year and a half — he still could not operate a train on his own.
If I remember correctly, he was in the second intake. There had been a first round of hiring by Hellenic Train, then a second. He joined very happy and optimistic. He went to Athens for training, and when he was transferred to Thessaloniki, he was extremely happy.
At some point, he started realising there were serious issues — things that Hellenic Train was supposed to fix but did not. Yes, staff numbers had increased in the sense that new people had been hired, but there were still many problems.
Sometime later, I found some voice messages of his with friends. I had not seen them before, obviously I was not going through his conversations. I saw them much later, after Tempi, when I found the strength.
He was saying they had hired many station masters on freelance contracts. “What the f**k are they doing, are they going to get us killed?”. There was concern, people were being hired for critical positions with no experience. I do not think he ever imagined they would encounter another train on a curve. My mum would sometimes say: “So many trains, are you not scared?” and he would reply: “Come on mum, one train goes, one train comes.” But they were worried about someone going too fast, about derailments, and the tracks were often neglected too. Once, on a route to Florina, a branch had fallen onto the rails, they had issues like that.
My brother complained a lot. Especially to my dad, because they spoke the same “language”. What they basically said was that they were severely understaffed. That is why drivers filed so many legal notices and went on strike, which, as usual, were declared illegal and abusive
It is psychological. I cannot, and I cannot even imagine, getting on a train again. I can barely look at the OSE station in Thessaloniki. During protests that ended at the station, I just turned my back. It is very hard for me to even enter the building, let alone a train.
I also think it is foolish to get on a train right now. We do not have safety systems. Nothing has changed. Why would I get on a train? I see no reason, unless I had suicidal tendencies.
That said, I was recently in Austria, which has some of the most advanced systems. We were in Vienna and planned to go to Bratislava, so we took the train. It is a one-hour journey, and I had a panic attack. I even went to the last carriage. I waited to see which direction the train was moving, so I could sit at the back, to be sure I was not in front.
I was with my kids and my husband, and he told me, “Relax, I know… I have felt it too, but this is Vienna, there is constant train traffic, they have sorted these issues out.”
Just to say, I have not even taken the Thessaloniki metro, even though it is a single line. I have said I will wait a few months, let it go through a kind of crash test, and then maybe I will get on, probably in the last carriage.
What I am saying is, I do not trust them. That is why I do not get on. It is not like I was someone who avoided transport, I used everything. But I do not think I will ever get on a train in Greece again. I have developed a very traumatic relationship with trains. I do not want to know. My dad does not even want to talk about OSE anymore. It is like we have erased that whole part of our lives. I have almost erased memories of being on trains and I have taken trains countless times. I used them constantly: going back and forth as a student, trips between Athens and Alexandroupoli, travelling, going out… endless train journeys. And, now, it is just not possible anymore.
And I was one of those people who used to mock anyone who said they took the bus instead of the train. I would say, come on, the train is the safest means of transport. I do not know how many times I have said that in my life. It’s crazy.