Hello everyone! Recently, I was in a fencing competition in Florina (Φλώρινα), that is located in the north of Greece and nestled between hills, with most of the town lying north of the Sakoulevas (Σακουλέβας) River.
I don’t know about you, but when I think of Greece, the Acropolis, ancient buildings, Greek gods and hot, sunny weather come to my mind. This is probably describing the south of Greece by Athens and the Mediterranean Sea. Florina lies very close to the border of North Macedonia and not far from Albania. The town is surrounded by mountains and there are even ski resorts there. Northern part of Greece is incredibly hilly and mountainous. Who knew!
Our flight from Stansted to Thessaloniki was smooth. Not long before landing, we could admire snow covered mountains directly below us. Thessaloniki Airport has the most incredible approach from all the airports I have been to. The runaway extends 1km into the sea, which means that when landing, all you can see from the airplane’s window is the sea and if you did not know that the runway extends into the sea, you would think the airplane would land on water.
Once we managed to collect our fencing bag, we headed to the car rental company to collect our tiny Kia Picanto, that cost us £9.84 for 3 days (Friday – Sunday). Those that aren’t Greek might be wondering why we didn’t just travel on public transport as we usually do. Well, Florina is around 200km away from Thessaloniki, so car renting (especially at that price) was the only feasible option. We took a very scenic route that took us past blooming orchards first and then through several tunnels. It was a great opportunity to see more of the Greek countryside.
Greece surprised us in so many ways. I already mentioned the snow covered mountains.
While driving in northern Greece, one of the more popular road signs, if not the most interesting and unexpected one, was the bear crossing warning.
While you expect to see bears in Tatra mountains in Poland and Slovakia, signs like this are not a common sight in Europe, especially not in the UK.
A quick look at the satnav and a decision was made that with a slight detour we should be able to get to the Albanian border before the sunset. Could not miss the chance to visit another country, even if only very briefly.
The Greek – Albanian Krystallopigi – Kapshticë border crossing is predominantly a road one and not catering for pedestrian traffic. Not really surprising, taking into consideration that the crossing is in a mountainous area, without pavements and out of human settlements.
Since we could not take our rented car out of Greece, we parked it at a car park next to the border crossing and decided to walk across the border. I guess, we were the first ones in a while to cross the border on foot. The traffic was not heavy, just couple of cars each side of the border. We jumped the queue and squeezed in for the passport control between cars. The border crossing booths were so different to the polished and loaded with electronic surveillance airport crossings. Here, the booths were filled with cigarette smoke, and the border guards wore uniforms that saw better times. To our surprise, my dad was asked if he had a written permission from my mum to travel with me across the border. He didn’t but fortunately the guards let us across the border both ways.
My Albanian friend reliably informed me that this reads: ‘New look same fantastic taste’
Having returned to our car, parked on the Greek side of the border, we started the final leg of our journey to Florina, which took just under an hour.
While navigating the tight turns of the mountain road, we noticed saddled horses resting at the side of the road and stopped to take some pictures.
When you visit this part of Greece, you will notice dogs in considerable numbers freely roaming villages and towns. They are not just any dogs, either. All of them are large canines of a Great Pyrenees or Greek Shepherd type.
Another prominent feature of this part of Greece is the abundance of tiny roadside chapels. Some really dated and rusty, some brand new. On local roads you could see these every couple hundreds of metres, in some instances a number of them bundled together on the side of the road.
We also noticed crosses on some of the mountain peaks of which the most prominent one was the Florina Cross.
Saint Panteleimon Church with Florina Cross in the background
Pickup trucks seem to be one of the most popular type of vehicles in this part of Greece. Over the weekend we must have seen more makes and models of this car than ever before.
We finally arrived in Florina around the sunset time and quickly made our way to the rented apartment.
We do not have high expectations and usually stay in budget accommodation. However, the place turned out to be inhabitable with no heating or hot water and outside temperature during the night just over the freezing point. For the second night we moved to another place that was fabulous. A bit of warning here. We booked the accommodation through booking.com and afterwards approached them asking for a refund, especially that we ended up having to pay twice to rent different apartment for the second night. The company just would not care and said that the inhabitable accommodation had nothing to do with them, and we could only ask the owner of the apartment for the refund. So that’s one company we would not be using in the future.
We finished the day with a delicious pizza (margherita, obviously 😊) and a smoothie.
The next day, on Saturday morning, my dad planned on buying couple of bottles of local, Greek wine from a vineyard located just couple of minutes’ drive from Florina. However, the place was closed so, instead, we purchased the Greek wine from a store in town. Whenever we travel to a place producing wine, my dad always brings some local bottles back home.
Afterwards, we drove over to the competition venue, or at least where we thought the competition was held. However, there was a bit of confusion with this because the Florina Fencing Club, where we arrived first, was all locked and empty. After a quick call to the competition organiser, we established that the competition was held next to the Florina Municipal Stadium where we drove next and found a football match going on there! Slightly peeved, we realised the fencing was taking place in the municipal sport hall, next door to the stadium. The competition was well attended and a decent one. I managed to secure some important ranking points.
After the competition, we drove back to Florina, where we found our new apartment, had a shower, and refreshed, decided to walk to town to find a place serving local cuisine for dinner. The walk was an easy one as we simply followed the course of the river.
The restaurant we settled for was totally empty, which was strange, since it was Saturday evening. We ordered some delicious chicken souvlaki with an orange juice for me and a Greek beer called Alpha for my dad.
During our walk back to apartment, we noticed that while most of the restaurants in town were empty, the ones on the river front were bustling with guests inside and outside.
We walked after dusk and had a very similar impression to the one we had in Varna, Bulgaria: there was a huge number of teenagers and adults spending time outside, everyone behaving in a civilised way, put simply – the place seemed safe, unlike a lot of places in the UK.
That night I went to bed straight away, since we planned for an early start on Sunday. Wake up at 5am to set off back to Thessaloniki before 6am.
Let me digress here, this might just save you a huge headache in the future if you find yourself in a place you don’t know. One last, most important step, once everything is loaded into the car and you are ready to go. Set up your destination in maps or satnav. Not something that you ever give much thought to, just type it in and off you go. That is obviously if you know your destination. In that split second, we realised that the place we rented car from was somewhere in an industrial part of the city, next to a petrol station, about 5 – 10 minutes’ drive from the airport. But no address. A free shuttle bus took us from the terminal to the rental company, and it never occurred to us to take the exact address of the place. We started our online search, looking for that petrol station we used to take petrol before driving to Florina, but no luck. We could not phone the rental company to ask for the address, as they did not open till 9am on Sunday. We could not find the address searching for the rental company name as it was literally a portacabin office next to a petrol station. Having spent about 20 minutes searching online in vain and almost giving up, I somehow managed to find the place. What a relief. Make sure you have the address of the rental company before you drive away. 😉
The rest of the day was uneventful. It took us about two and a half hours to get back to Thessaloniki, where the guy from the rental company drove us back to the airport. On the way, we chatted to him about the Greek alphabet and pronunciation. For some strange reason, from all the Greek words we saw over the weekend, we found Έξοδος the most interesting one.
I think what my dad liked most about the country, was that all the Greek letters used in mathematics and physics, he remembered from school, were there, wherever you looked, as part of written language. However, what I enjoyed most was the unexpectedness of the countryside and the fact that in a couple of minutes we could visit two countries! I would definitely recommend visiting Greece, especially the North, and I am going to try to come back here next year!
I do have a little bonus for you. Have a go at deciphering the Greek words from the picture below and once you did, post in the comment what you think the picture depicts.
