Chapter 16
Rolling Homewards
We laid our way north on the seaside route. Before noon we were passing through the Thermopylae straits. In the afternoon we passed the beautiful contours of Olympos mountain and for a time my favourite myths of my childhood sprang to life. We were driving on historic territories. By evening we reached the town of Larissa where we took a room in a small hotel. The next night we spent in Saloniki. This town has been wonderful, especially the endless embankment with the famous White Tower. We were to turn east the next morning and go to Istanbul. However, our courage seemed to reach its end. Driving 500 miles there and back with a vast baggage on top of the car has not been attracting. We would let our visas be lost and turn straight north.
We liked Greece very much, all of us. We found it a country not only fascinating with ancient ruins, but its people, although they always cheated us to a certain extent, have also been kind, and we experienced no such thefts, as it was well known about Italy. Their food was excellent, both their main dishes and their sweets.
After taking our last meal in Greece in the form of a breakfast, we started to the frontier. Driving through took some time because of the long line of cars, but in one hour we have entered Yugoslavia. And we felt soon as if in Ethiopia. When we stopped to have our lunch in the car, a small child in rags rose beside the road and kept his hand out to ask for something. Only he did not say : "Mr, give money”, as it happened in Africa, he said something in Macedonian. And it has not been 1991, it has been 1981 still.
We reached Belgrade at the afternoon of the next day and we had enough time to discover old and new town both. The old town with the fortress is a sentimental journey for us Hungarians. It was a Hungarian border fortress upto the end of our independence. In 1456 it was here that Janos Hunyadi defeated sultan Mourad and stopped Turkish progress for 50 years. He died there in the same year from the Plague and bells at 12 o’clock commemorate his death.