How I Held up the Acropolis Express

David Seagrave

1972

It was the summer of 1972 and I was at Glasgow University. I had passed end of term exams so I decided to visit Greece to photograph her ancient monuments. Though the Colonels were then in power I took a pragmatic view - I was only interested in the ancient Greeks. I travelled by the 'Acropolis Express' and I had a fairly uneventful ten days where I took photographs of nearly every ancient Greek or Roman site in Athens and within reach. I had on me a voucher for a train ticket back to Britain which had to be exchanged in a travel agency in Venizelos Street. I was weary after a long journey on the Peloponnesus railway and looked in vain for Venizelos Street and had to board the Munchen bound Acropolis Express with the voucher, not the valid ticket or be stranded in Athens. Away went the train and as I viewed simply fabulous scenery on the 700 or so km journey on Thessaloniki I was accosted by ticket inspectors.

A fellow traveller told me that the Colonels had renamed Venizelos street Panepistimiou (University) Street because Venizelos was a Greek statesman of similar stature to Churchill and rightly honoured yet execrated by the Colonels but everybody still referred to the street by its old name. In 2007 I discovered that it is once more Venizelos Street with Panepisimiou below in brackets.

As the Germans had built the Greek railway system, bad German, 'pidgin German' is the lingua franca used by railwaymen when dealing with foreign travellers. I am very proud that I taught myself German as a boy but I had long forgotten the niceties of the grammar I got through to these inspectors that I had to run for the Acropolis Express because the train from Mycenae had been delayed. As on rattled the train. Then I was hauled off the train at Thessaloniki and dragged into an office with all my belongings still in the train. I tried to make myself understood as the trains engines were changed but then I heard the announcer chant out the names of the places served - I dashed across the tracks not looking for approaching trains and boarded the train as it moved off. I had to find my luggage still in one of the front coaches. The train was already on the move when I leaped on board and it gathered speed through the suburbs till I found my luggage which included a bag of oranges.

I was then accosted by a dog like railwayman as the train jolted, and the oranges rolled in all directions. I exploded 'Der Bahnhofs kapitanfuhrermeister von Thessaloniki hat meinen Fahrkarte Und Reisepass ver-LON-en' like Charlie Chaplin imitating a Wehrmacht sergeant-major (The Station captaionleadermaster of Thessaloniki has my ticket and passport LOST!)

Away went the dog like official with his side kick and I feared that I would be pulled out of the train at the frontier and dumped in jail as on went the train. Some time later officials returned with my ticket and passport and how relieved I was. I slept through Yugoslavia and Austria to wake in Bavaria where in the small hours I alighted to find a solitary train at the departure platform - I had evidently delayed the Acropolis Express and caused lots of people to miss their connections right across Europe. So I boarded this train and was told to alight at Ingolstadt which I duly did but as I enquired about the connection I was due to make I was told to get into the front four coaches of the train I had just alighted from. So I boarded it again and learned that this was a special train for home going revellers from the Munich Beer Festival and it operated like the dear old Atlantic Coast Express of my boyhood, with through coaches dropped off for every major German city. The front four coaches were for Cologne!

I fell asleep again and woke to behold the mist rising from the Rhine as through I was watching a silent film so smooth was the train. Elated but weary I crossed the concourse in Cologne to join a Brussels bound train and so back to Britain.

As a railway buff I know how the very earliest Morse Code electric telegraph was adopted by the Great Western Railway around the time of the railways opening. Did the Greek railways use a Morse Code with Greek letters or did they have something more sophisticated that enabled messages to be sent to and from trains on the move? I speculated... somehow the officials had acted quickly enough but I shall always remember the day I help up the Acropolis Express.