Karaağaç Train Station

While waiting for a residence permit in Greece, I had to leave the country every six months to renew my tourist visa. These quick trips out of Greece could be quite adventurous.

One such trip had my husband, B and I deciding to take the train through north eastern Greece and cross the border near Edirne in north western Turkey. Edirne was once the capital of the Ottoman Empire and had quite striking architecture and a mosque Selimiye Mosque whose architect, Mimar Sinan was responsible for almost one hundred great buildings built between in the late 1400’s.

The trip was beautiful. It must have been late summer because as we traveled there were giant sunflowers are far as the eye could see. It was a sea of sunflowers. We were eventually let off the train in a field some way from the Turkish border where we had to cross by foot. I can’t remember how we managed to get to Edirne but we did and we spent the night in an elegant but very rundown hotel with a family of Roma camping on the roof outside our window.

Before we left Greece a friend had told me about a train station of significant architectural interest on a now defunct rail line just outside of Edirne. B was not that interested but after we had seen the sights of Edirne, I saw a bus with the name of the village, Karaağaç, where the train station was located. We jumped on with little thought and headed out.

Many Turks had lived in Germany so knowing no Turkish I decided to ask for directions in German (poorly as with all my foreign languages.) “Wo sind der banhof? Wo sind der banhof?” After wandering around repeating this phrase we were greeted, in German by two young men. They invited us to join them for a cup of tea and they would give us directions. I struggled away in German to ask and answer questions. They were very gracious and sociable young men. Finally, after one of my questions, one young man asked the other IN ENGLISH what to tell me. It was only at that point I realized they understood English and we had been struggling to communicate in a language that none of us spoke very well. This still makes me laugh.

Eventually, B and I walked to the train station which I found rather underwhelming and wondered why I had been so determined to see it. However, the trip back into Edirne was enlivened by a little vignette playing out across from us while we waited for the bus at a dusty roadside stop. A young boy, about ten years old was playing with his full-grown sheep…not a lamb, a big sheep. Here’s how they did it. The boy would chase the sheep with the sheep looking over it’s shoulder at the boy as it ran. The sheep would then turn around, head butt the boy and then chase him while he laughed hilariously. At some point, the boy turned and started chasing the sheep and the whole routine played out again and again. We had a chance to watch this for a while as buses to this rural location were few and far between.