GREECE TRIP APRIL 1966 - PART 1 HAHGS ON TOUR

GREECE TRIP 1966 – SAT 2^ND APRIL 1966-MON 25^TH APRIL 1966

PART 1 – HAHGS ON TOUR

There was great excitement at school when the allocation of places for the trip to Greece was announced.  As one of the girls choosing to study Greek (the ancient kind) I was on that list, together with my friend Gillian Mansfield whose chosen list of subjects for study was identical to mine – including French, Latin, Greek and Italian.  How my parents afforded the trip I shall never know; though being a grandparent myself now I can imagine family donations came into the equation.

Timetables were given out in advance, and we duly met the other girls and parents and the accompanying teachers which as far as I can remember were Misses Odder and Fry, (P.E.) and Mrs Patrinos (English) (though she may have joined us later) at Victoria station at 1.15 p.m. on Saturday 2^nd April 1966.  Fond farewells were said and outfits compared, Miss Odder saying she felt ‘rather old hat’ as most of us were wearing trousers and she was in a skirt) as the train trundled us off to Folkestone Harbour for the crossing to Calais, where we boarded another train and were shown to our compartments which included couchettes (bottom ones most uncomfortable and French officials inclined to burst in unannounced) for the overnight trip.  For some of us (especially us younger just-on-16 and-coming-up-to-O-levels-ones, it was our first visit abroad and maybe our first time away from our parents.

We awoke at 5 a.m. next morning upon arrival at Basle in Switzerland and continued our journey through the magnificent mountainous countryside which include passing through Strasburg, Mulhouse, Zurich, Sargaris, and Innsbruck.  We eventually arrived in Salzburg where we had a meal in the station buffet before boarding ‘The Direct Orient Express’, where we occupied magnificent wood panelled ‘suites’ for four persons, with comfortable, roomy bunks, posh chandelier-type lighting and our own washbasin and of course wonderful views.  Noting these were ‘Second Class Sleepers’, we could only imagine what first class would be like.

Yugoslavia particularly registers in my mind, with its rather forbidding countryside, ox-drawn ploughs and lines of tired looking women in a kind of national dress (a la Cliff’s ‘Summer Holiday’) on their knees digging up the hard dry soil beside the railway tracks with their bare hands. How privileged they must have thought us passengers as the train swept by.

Meals were taken in the very grand dining car – we reached this by walking though various grades of carriage which got more basic as we went; the last one being standing room and rough benches only, which entailed walking through groups of local people escorting their animals - which included dogs, sheep, chickens and several goats – presumably off to market or maybe better pasture.

However the food was plentiful and excitingly foreign and we enjoyed it round a large table with huge serving bowls in the centre. Such a contrast to the carriages we had just seen.  Another lesson in social awareness maybe.

The journey continued through Yugoslavia via Belgrade, which I believe has now reverted to its erstwhile position in Serbia, and Skopje which has reverted to being part of Macedonia.  Skopje had suffered a devastating earthquake nearly 3 years before and the station and most of the country was still in ruins.  It was a shocking scene. We disembarked for a while with a lot of local interest shown in a party of 30 teenage schoolgirls. 

It was near the border with Greece that the train was boarded by a large number of Yugoslav soldiers fully armed and ordering us all to line up and produce our passports in order to check our visas. We couldn’t understand a word they were saying as they pointed their guns at as and smirked, but being Londoners between the ages of 15 and 18 we had a pretty good idea and were glad to get back to our compartments when the men left.

Scary or what.

You can imagine with what delight we arrived in Thessaloniki in Greece although it was 2.15 a.m!  The man who was supposed to meet us there, who was supposed to be our coach driver for the mainland part of our trip, did not appear. Neither did the coach. Our first taste (of many) of the wonderfully relaxed Greek attitude to life at that time! We had been booked into the Hotel International, address Ionos Dragoumi 43, Thessaloniki, and our ever resourceful teachers eventually managed to get us there by taxi, only to find ‘no room at the inn!’.  We were eventually found rooms at the Hotel Metropolis. My room mates were Gillian Mansfield and two of the four Susans from our year (Upper 5^th) on the trip, Sue Guy and Sue Jenner.

Thus began our Big Adventure.