Psychologist. Resident of Athens, raised in Thessaloniki. Currently pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Thessaly in Larissa.
I was born in Athens, but from the age of three I grew up in Thessaloniki. If I remember correctly, I must have been in primary school when I first took the train, probably on the Thessaloniki-Athens route.
We didn’t use it very often, because as a family we usually travelled by car. But it was an option that existed, much more affordable and practical, to be honest, than flying. I started using the train more frequently when I became a student in Athens and still had some back-and-forth with Thessaloniki. I also took the Athens-Chalkida and Athens-Oinoi lines occasionally, because my family originates from Evia, from my village there.
But really, the most regular use of the train was during my student years, from around 2007 onwards.
The Thessaloniki-Athens train was full of stories. I remember this from my cousins too, who were studying in Thessaloniki while I was still in school. Half their experiences, half their stories revolved around the trains they took to go back and forth.
I remember that classic steam train, the “karvouniaris” (means: coalman), which I heard about as a young child and imagined as something like those cartoons where people are stomping up and down throwing coal into the fire. I also remember the classic student dilemmas: the anxiety about money –if we had enough for a ticket we would take the fast train, otherwise the slow one and we would be late– or taking the night train to arrive in the morning, or maybe missing the one we had booked. We would want to stay longer in Thessaloniki and take the overnight train back down.
Large groups of students from the same place would gather and all take the train together. So those five, six hours –sometimes even more– ended up being a journey experience. It wasn’t just a means to an end
Or that nighttime anticipation: Who will I meet on board? Who will be there? What will happen? There were families, people travelling alone, soldiers, students, many foreigners… the train was a multicultural phenomenon.
After my studies, I stayed in Athens, where I still live. I went years without using the train — not for any particular reason, just because I didn’t travel much within Greece, so it wasn’t useful to me. The only trains I took were within Attica: the suburban rail, the electric railway, the metro.
The most recent period of regular train use has been over the past year, when I travelled to Thessaloniki once, to Larissa twice, with another trip pending, as part of my master’s programme at the University of Larissa.
On a practical level, it was convenient. My two options were either the train or the bus. I prefer the train because it’s much more comfortable: you can move around and sit. There are more schedule options, so I would choose a route that I assumed wouldn’t be too crowded. I usually go and sit in the café car, either with my laptop or a book. Also, access is much better. The station is right near the city centre.
Tempi happened because of a long-standing, accumulated problem, not some momentary failure or split-second mistake. That’s the understanding I’ve developed over the last two years, through all the information that came out, through all of us learning more or less how a station works, how trains work, what Hellenic Railways Organization (OSE) is, what these organisations and services are. Even if you didn’t want to get involved, you heard information from everywhere.
On a personal level, however, I continue to take the train to Larissa and Thessaloniki. It’s automatic and instinctive, based on my own personal calculation of probabilities. There’s also a need to feel that what happened was an exception that it doesn’t happen every week, every month, every year.
Besides, we’ve always been somewhat accustomed to things constantly going wrong with trains — the most natural thing in the world would be a delay, being stuck somewhere for half an hour, an accident, something or someone falling on the tracks. As a student, I had a friend whose father was a train driver, and when you get inside information, you realise these things happen much more often than we imagine.
But this anxiety we’re seeing now is something different from what I knew. “I can’t believe you’re taking the train” or “I’m going to Larissa, so you might never see me again.” That’s the current climate. The other day, a friend of mine came over when I was about to travel and said, “Do you want me to drive you?”
I realised the scale of the reaction to what happened only in retrospect. For instance, in March, on the way back from Larissa, we made a stop for 20-30 minutes in the middle of nowhere, and everyone was on alert, despite the fact that generations have grown accustomed to problems and delays: from the woman who started crossing herself, to the man who made a dark joke along the lines of “here it comes, our turn now” and all people who were panicked. They had their faces pressed to the windows. “Is a train coming? What’s happening? Has something fallen on the tracks?”. They’ve lost that sense that the train simply stopped for a while, as usual, to let another train pass or because that's just how it is.
What happened has left its mark. I remember, even I was on the phone with my partner and very automatically, without feeling any fear, I made some stupid black humour joke: “Well, my love, that’s it. We’ve stopped in the middle of nowhere. It’s been nice knowing you. If I don’t make it back, just know that it was the train line.” And I realise afterwards, after we’ve talked, that this has entered everyday life, has entered our speech, has entered our jokes. It’s as if there’s a need to let off steam, even through a crude joke.
And I suppose that for us to be making jokes about it at all, something has slightly exceeded the bounds of normality. There’s something inside us that needs to be commented on, needs to be pointed out, even with a remark like “look, after everything that’s happened, we’re still stopped here.”
The next day, on the return from Larissa, the train was delayed in departing by 2 to 2.5 hours because, on its way from Thessaloniki, somewhere near Platy, a fire had broken out and they were waiting for the fire department to put it out — something that wasn’t the responsibility of OSE, TrainOSE, or whoever is in charge of all this. What you heard in the waiting room… from the classic cliché of the old man saying: “Mitsotakis will come and fix everything now, he’ll put out the fire,” to the woman crossing herself and saying: “Oh dear, what happened? Why has something happened and now we’re delayed?”. It’s made it onto the list of things people worry about, even if not everyone experiences it in the same way or with the same intensity.
I don’t think this is simply a matter of those in charge making an effort to change things in practice. Like so many things that operate in our country –professionally, educationally, in healthcare, everything– it requires uprooting and rebuilding from scratch. Which isn’t feasible and won’t happen. It’s not in anyone’s interest –it takes time, it takes money, it requires the state to have respect for its citizens and a concern for keeping them safe– something that doesn’t exist at any level or in any sector.
There was already a sense of a railway network that functioned poorly but still got the job done, more or less, and we would patch it up and get by because that’s the kind of people we are here, able to spend seven hours on a journey that would take four in another country, with a bag as a pillow… Well, now it’s ten times deeper. It’s as if a sense of trust has been wounded, trust that goes beyond the government and has reached our very fate.
I think that if I start thinking about all this, that’s when I feel anger, at the whole way it’s been handled. On the part of the public, the people, the citizens, it ends up being treated as if it were a natural phenomenon, when it’s not. A summer when dry branches catch fire and delay the train — that’s a natural phenomenon (though even then, you would think there should be crews keeping the tracks clear). But this wasn’t a natural phenomenon. It wasn’t a matter of luck. It wasn’t one of those events where you have to make a mental leap to give meaning to chaos, to nothingness. No. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end.