We spent probably more time and brainpower necessary trying to figure out how to get from Meteora (one of the most beautiful, unusual spots I have ever been to) to Delphi. Our incredibly nice & helpful hotel guy in Meteora explained that the Greek train system is terrible ever since the Nazis bombed it. Stupid Nazis. Before WWII the Greeks had an excellent train system. But ever since those dumb Nazis bombed the tracks, everybody was too dysfunctional to rebuild it and nobody bothered and they now have a subpar train system, and nobody cares enough to make it work properly, up to the point that you can’t even really get proper timetables in advance.
Anyway, to get from Meteora to Delphi by bus, what would be a 3 hour drive turns into an 8 hour ordeal of many, many buses. I hate buses. I get very carsick on windy roads in bumpy, improperly-ventilated buses. Nausea abounds. So we thought we’d figure out a way to do at least some of the trip by train. We took a train to an extremely windy place called Livadia. Actually, we weren’t in Livadia at all really, we were in extremely windy OUTER Livadia, while the bus to Delphi was to be from the bustling center of Livadia. To get to INNER Livadia we had to take a cab or bus. We took the short bus ride to Livadia and as we were pulling into town, saw the bus to Delphi passing us on its way out. In other words, they couldn’t get it together to (a) put the bus and train stations anywhere near each other in this small town, or (b) coordinate the bus to Delphi with the train arriving from the other major tourist attraction of Northern Greece. Oops. The next train would be in 3 hours. We saw a cab, asked him the price, and got in.
I sat in front, to minimize possibility of carsickness. As we drove out of Livadia, heading to the highway, the cab driver asked where we were from. “New York.” Blank expression. “United States.” “Ah! United States! George Bush!” We shook our heads. “No, not anymore! Barack Obama!”
“No!” said the cab driver. “America, George Bush!” At which point he reached down and picked up a large gun. “George Bush!” he said, pointing the gun at his own head, while driving. “Pow! Pow!” Then he laughed. “Um, yes” said I “George Bush does seem to promote violence, doesn’t he?”
At this point I considered demanding that he pull over to the side of the road so we could get out. Then I reconsidered, recalling that he had a LARGE GUN. So on we drove. To Delphi.
The rest of the trip was uneventful, and we found Delphi to be a small tourist town in an incredibly beautiful valley. We took a nice little hike up the side of a hill at sunset and took in a truly incredible vista, the valley and mountains, with olive groves and bushes and trees, ruins of a temple to Athena off to the side of the valley and the gulf of Corinth shining aqua blue in the distance. Gorgeous, really.
