I intend to go to some Olympic competitions, really, just as soon as I figure out the Greek bus system.
I’m staying in a suburb of Athens, and I’ve been attempting to use public buses to get from Point A to Point B, although sometimes I end up at Point C, and occasionally I find myself, after many scenic kilometers, back at Point A.
This is because Greece, like many foreign nations, uses the Mystery Bus System, developed as a security measure to guard against the danger that some American tourist, somehow, will have a clue what is going on. Here’s how it works:
You go to a bus stop. There will be people standing there. There will also be several schedules, consisting of a long list of numbers, such as “20:38,” each followed by a word you don’t recognize, such as “tipiyokti.”
What there will not be, at the bus stop, is a place to buy bus tickets. In Europe, you almost never buy tickets to anything anywhere near the thing you are buying tickets for. You’re always supposed to buy the tickets someplace else, such as the post office, or a tobacconist, or Albania.
One rumor is that you can buy bus tickets at “kiosks,” which are these little sidewalk huts that appear to be made entirely out of magazines, with a little hole through which you give money to the man inside (at least I think there’s a man in there).
But even if the kiosk man does sell tickets, he will not want to sell you one, because all you have is a 100-euro bill. When you arrive in Europe and change your money, they always give you 100-euro bills.
What they don’t tell you is that nobody in Europe wants to take these bills: Everybody wants something smaller. Many American tourists in Europe, unable to purchase food, are forced to survive by eating their currency.
So anyway, you’re at the bus stop. A bus comes, and you get on, thinking maybe you can buy a ticket from the driver. But the driver doesn’t sell or collect tickets. In fact, as far as you can tell, most of the other passengers don’t even have tickets, although a few do, and sometimes they stick these into a little box, which stamps them. But sometimes they don’t.
So now you’re worried that you’ll be arrested by the Ticket Police and fined 27 euros, which means you’ll have to go to jail because all you have is a hundred.
You’re also wondering where the bus is going, which is impossible to tell because it turns every 75 feet. You appear to pass the same gas station four times.
As the minutes pass and the bus rolls randomly on, you become increasingly anxious. Just when you’re about to panic, a Greek person, a total stranger, taps you on the shoulder and offers to help. The Greeks always know when you’re desperate; they pick up your clueless-American vibe through osmosis (or, as the Greeks say, “tipiyokti”).
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You tell them where you’re trying to go, and they explain that (a) your stop is coming soon or (b) you need to change buses or (c) you are now in Albania.
Eventually, through the kindness of strangers, I always reach my destination. So, actually, I think the Greek bus system is pretty good. But for sheer bladder-draining excitement, you cannot beat the Greek taxi system, which I will discuss in a future column, assuming I survive.
In the meantime: Anybody have change for a hundred?