In all the small villages the conductors stand outside tumbledown station houses, paying careful attention in their crisp caps and faded old uniforms to the overhead wires and the red and green lights, making their tiny contribution to the continued order of the world by waving the train on with such simple integrity that you feel like crying for the simple beauty of it. But the moment is gone in a second and so is he and there you are again with the wind flowing and outside it becomes open country once more.

And then the methodic lethargy of the train is overridden by the euphoria of the last stops. At Udovo, the Vardar makes its final determined turn straight south. By little Marvinci, when the happy foul-mouthed youngsters disembark, you have been invited to come another time to a disco which no outsiders have heard of but whose immorality is gospel for locals.



Finally there is Gevgelija and the train comes to a halt. Those passengers depart who will depart and then you can see who is going all the way. There are almost never any Greeks; it is now only the labourers and vacationers and occasional foreign tourists and only in summer are there enough of the latter to make you late. The police come aboard, first the green-suited customs officer and then the blue-coats who stride more energetically than they need to through the corridor. It is better to have asked for a pen by now because the little white cards are being handed out and you must quickly scrawl your name and place of birth and nationality and passport number and vehicle registration number (except you don’t have one) and place of residence and then hand it back.

Sometimes the Macedonian police are difficult, but usually not so much. The funniest is when they peer for whole minutes over your visas and stamps as if the passport was some book of revelations. Consider it the pretence of professionalism and authority that prefigures the definitive slamming of the metal stamp down onto the page. But despite their vigour, there is never enough ink to find the stamp afterwards.



Unless there is some electrical problem or maybe another train coming from the other direction that must be awaited, in twenty minutes you are on your way- or not – for sometimes they inexplicably untether the final train car. If you’re in it, just hope that they inform you in time to jump up and onto the next car, or you will be left behind in Gevgelija. That is not really the end of the world, however. Gevgelija is hot, the hottest town in the republic, with a casino frequented by Greeks from across the border. The town has pleasing restorative springs near Vardarski Rid, a hill on the outskirts with half-dug ancient ruins. As in the wine country, there is a hearty pastoral spirit, and eating and drinking hold a place of high honour. Before the building of the railroad in 1873, barges had been used, Mississippi-style, to float goods down the Vardar to Salonica and the sea.

So again the train heats up and you leave the long yellow station to the right behind, moving slow and easy into the uninhabited dark of a two-kilometre border zone that was once militarised. And so you leave Macedonia and enter Macedonia.

Even if you aren’t aware of that paradox, don’t forget that the time changes now and it is one hour later than it was a minute before. Time, like everything else, moves forward on the Greek side. After five minutes there is the station at Idomeni, and the train slows down and stops precisely with a shudder and you wait.

Once again the same ritual, but with different police. Passports are taken and - after ten minutes - please come down to the window to wait to get them back. You survey your new environment, the long, low building with innumerable doors and old writing and the sun of Vergina, of Alexander the Great, painted defiantly across the middle wall precisely to point out the illogic of the Slavs. And there are the strains of the bouzouki wafting up from the delicious smoke of an outdoor grill, where you can get grilled sandwiches of pork souvlaki or beef soutzoukakia with ketchup and old chips and a liberal handful of salt the bald old proprietor throws in. It’s only two euros, and comes with a napkin too.

Behind the grill to the right is a duty-free shop that is sometimes open. On the other side is an uncomplicated café shop which is always open and populated by overweight or moustachioed station men employed in one capacity or another, and an elevated TV in the corner animating the room with the rapid-fire staccato of passionate Greek football announcers shouting about the match that’s happening then. The middle-aged wife of the owner is blonde enough and from Russia or the Caucasus and she smiles and rings up what you select from inside the old glass counter, filled with soft drinks and profiteroles and Greek yogurt and Greek beers like the ones the fat sedentaries are drinking.as they gaze at the screen through the smoke.

If you remember to look at the back of your hand, and if you haven’t licked it off along with the stray ketchup from your sandwich, there is the word ticket inscribed on your skin and you are reminded to follow the walkway to the ticket office, past the card telephone peering from the wall and before the other one with it’s guts ripped out and just wires showing.

The ticket office is a big room with a small egg-shaped window you have to stoop down to see through and which is blocked by a wooden slab that must be removed from the inside. But there is usually no one behind the window and you have to go around to the other side of the office, all lit up and ask the old man to please come. But if he’s not inside, you have to ask the policemen sitting at the picnic table under the little chalkboard where the train timetables have been inscribed to please find him. The ticket to Thessaloniki costs six euros and sixty cents and try to have exact change because they might protest that they don’t have any. The ticket itself is a small rectangle of yellowed cardboard, the printed black letters still in drachma prices, and the ticket man on the train punches a hole through it with a metal punch to void it.

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