Pilgrim in the Palace of Words. Glenn Dixon

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      Have I mentioned hell journeys? Have I referred to marathons in cramped buses sitting squeezed and stiff for ten or twelve long, impossible hours? Sometimes there’s no other way to get where you’re going. In this case I was headed into the northern reaches of Greece. I’d already veered off track, and there was one thing up there that I thought I might as well see.

      I’d been on the road for a full day already when I tucked into the city of Thessaloniki. From there I should have had a short jaunt over the border and into Turkey, but it wasn’t that easy.

      Greeks and Turks hate each other passionately. The Greeks on their side of the border warn travellers not to venture into Turkey. “They eat babies over there,” they say. “Don’t go.

      It’s terrible.” On the Turkish side, meanwhile, they say much the same thing. “What do you want to go there for? They’re monsters … horrible, horrible.”

      Such antipathy no doubt dates back to the Turkish occupation of Greece for hundreds of years, but the discord really heated up in the 1920s when the present borders between the countries were set. Vast numbers of both populations were forced to relocate, sometimes leaving the places their families had lived in for centuries. There were tens of thousands of deaths, and what happened then hasn’t been forgotten by either side.

      I arrived in Thessaloniki in time to learn that I had missed the sole train across the border. There was only one other option — a bus that departed from the train station at three in the morning. This seemed to be typical: you could travel from one country to the other, but it would be as inconvenient as possible.

      After idling away the rest of the day, I tried to sleep, and when I finally got to the bus at the ungodly hour of a quarter to three in the morning, I discovered it was pretty much full. There were no tourists here. Most of the people appeared to be local. This was a chicken-on-your-lap bus. Everyone glanced at me as I got on, wielding my backpack as I buffaloed down the aisle. Their eyes followed me to see what I would do, since it was apparent there was only one place free. A small space was vacant on a bench near the back, but the other person sitting there was one of the largest human beings I’d ever seen, and I don’t mean he was fat. This guy was African, well over two metres tall, at least one hundred and forty kilograms of muscle, and was draped in gold chains. I shuffled in beside him, and every head in the bus swivelled to see what would happen next.

      “How do you do?” the huge man asked. His hand enveloped mine, and I shook it.

      “Uh … I’m okay. How are you?”

      “I’m fine, thank you. My name’s Cole.”

      Cole was from Nigeria and turned out to be exceptionally polite. He was soft-spoken and remarkably thoughtful. In fact, he had just finished his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Athens. He talked a lot about his own country. Nigeria had a lot of oil, he said, but nasty things were occurring there, and he fervently hoped he could put his education to use to help the nation extricate itself from corruption and dictatorship. “Two hundred languages are spoken in Nigeria,” he told me. “Did you know that?”

      “Is that right?”

      “I’m afraid it is. We’re a divided community, sometimes quite fiercely.”

      We talked until just before dawn and then I slept a little, huddled into my corner of the seat. The bus stopped often, and most of the passengers got off at little towns before the Turkish frontier. When we arrived at the border, a full twelve hours later, Cole and I were almost alone on the bus.

      Cole was travelling on to Istanbul, but I planned to head south along the coastline. He had a bit of time, though, and walked with me to the next bus. It was kind of fun striding through the streets with this towering giant. I was in a country once more where the shopkeepers were quite persistent, always trying to bully tourists into their stores. They didn’t bother us, however. The hawkers shrank into their doorways, faces pale and alarmed. At my next bus I said goodbye to Cole, shook his massive hand, and wished him well on his return to Nigeria.