Comic artist/illustrator. Resident of Athens, born in Larissa, studied in Thessaloniki.
I grew up in Larissa. When I was young –many, many years ago– we mainly used the train to go to Thessaloniki, where my aunt lived. A little later, as students, we would take the same route to go out on weekends in Thessaloniki. We never used the bus. Either we managed to find a car or we took the train.
It was very cheap back then, I remember we paid next to nothing. Subconsciously, we also considered it a bit safer, more reliable. With the bus –which we took to our village in Kozani, because there was no train there– there was an issue. It would stop at various villages, took much longer, so it was a bit of a hassle. Whereas with the train, you felt that for little money you would go straight to your destination. Personally, I liked it because you could go to the bar car, you could stand up and move around. It had a certain comfort as a mode of transport.
Later, as a student in Thessaloniki, I did the same route in reverse: from Thessaloniki to Larissa. And even later, when I came to Athens, I still used it constantly, because every weekend I worked at the Macedonian Museum. So, by then I was using it for work as well. I would leave on Friday night and arrive in the morning just in time to get to work. Then I would leave again on Sunday to reach Athens by Monday morning. And, of course, I continued using it for family visits or holidays.
After Tempi, my family stopped using it immediately. They freaked out, they were very scared. Especially my parents. After that, they wouldn’t even take the Larissa-Thessaloniki route. I don’t just mean coming to Athens to see me — they wouldn’t even take the suburban rail to Thessaloniki, which is only an hour and a half. They developed a phobia. My mother won’t go near trains now. Same with my brother.
I used the train once after Tempi. But at some point, with all the uproar, the discussions, the issue opening up so much, I started seeing it as a political event. I felt I had to take a stand on it
And I built up the reasoning that, okay, this mode of transport –having been so degraded, having killed so many people, and having become an object of financial and political exploitation by this particular government– I don’t want to use it. A reaction welled up in me, and I stopped using it.
On top of that, from what I remember –because I had been using it for many years before– prices have gone through the roof, reaching levels comparable to plane tickets, at least for Thessaloniki. So, some trips I now make by plane. Therefore, both financially and ideologically, in my own mind, I wanted to renounce it.
Two days before the crash, I had taken the same route: Larissa-Athens. That route was very familiar to me, and the location where it happened — all the images I was seeing… It could have been me on that train. I had made that trip very recently.
Because I had used it for so many years, I didn’t expect this. I had built up a sense of safety around this mode of transport, despite all its issues. Sure, it would stop sometimes, there were delays, but I never felt that fear. It was a shock when I saw that disaster. But then there was also anger, because the more we looked into the issue, the more we saw that, in the end, responsibility wasn’t placed where it should have been. So that anger builds up inside you.
There’s also a bit of nostalgia. Because I used this mode of transport, it was very familiar to me — I saw it as a very working-class, popular means of travel. And then I saw its transformation. I thought, okay, this mode of transport has lost the role it had when I first got used to it: the convenience, the cheapness, the directness. So, I no longer want to use it.