pedestrian area with shops. Unfortunately, it was now almost midnight, and everything was closed. We started back to our train, starving and unhappy we were not able to exchange our money. Just as we started up the stairs, I saw a rumpled International Herald Tribune tossed on the stone walkway floor. I picked it up to see how Rip Kirby was doing—had he found the Elysian Fields? Doug, also a fan of Rip, read over my shoulder and then started up the platform stairs.
I threw the newspaper into an odd-looking Greek garbage can, frustrated. Why couldn’t I have adventures like Rip? I didn’t need to look for ancient buried treasure, but I needed something, just something to make this trip a little more interesting. I was about three-quarters of the way up the stairs, still mumbling to myself, when I heard Doug yell, “Come on, our train is leaving!”
When I reached the top, I found him already on the train tracks, jumping over them to get to our train, which was definitely leaving. It began to pick up speed.
I panicked: Fuck! Are you kidding me, all my stuff is on that train; I’m dead. And again: Fuck! Really, now I have to jump down on those tracks, too, to catch that train?
Now, I wasn’t married to Doug or anything. If the fucker wanted to act crazy and try to jump on a moving train, well, good fucking luck. But hey, I thought, he’s been a damn good partner so far. If he gets on the train and I’m left here without my stuff or my traveling companion—I’m dead in the water. And during these very few seconds I had a last stupid thought: What would Rip Kirby do? I didn’t know, but without further thought, I decided: go for it!
As I jumped down two or three feet and maneuvered over tracks, I looked up and saw Doug hanging on one of the exit door railings of the train car just ahead, his feet dangling as he tried to get stable footing on the door’s footpad.
Everything was happening so fast, with only seconds to react. I saw only one option: jump on the next car. I took a tentative step forward, the train was already moving along. If you have ever seen a guy jump a moving train in a movie, you know you must move with it. But I had run out of time—the stair rail was right ahead of me, it was almost gone. There was no choice: I jumped up from an almost standing-still position. Suspended in midair, I thought of Rip. Hell, he would never have tried this; it would be incredibly stupid to jump on a moving train without a running start. Any adventurer would know that; any class like Adventurer Jumping 101 would teach you on the first day of class at any credible Adventurers College to never do that.
I saw two metal handles above my head and grabbed. I thought, If I miss them, I’ll be bounced off the train and thrown under its wheels. To this day, I can remember the shock of the enormous force of that moving train as I latched onto one of the handles. As it pulled me sideways I held on, my boots barely on the doorstep edge. When I looked up, heart pounding, I saw a wide-eyed conductor staring at me through the door window. He got over his shock quickly, and started yelling, identifying me as a bandit or worse, and pushing the door in and out to try and knock me off. I shouted, “Athens! Athena! Athens!” But he kept swinging the door back and forth while bellowing furiously in very angry Greek.
He eventually succeeded in dislodging one of my hands from its handle, and by now the train had picked up speed. I bounced on and off the train car step as the Athens Express changed tracks, rumbling forward through the station. I held on for dear life and looked ahead. We would be out of the station soon, speeding into the pitch-black Greek countryside. That would be even more dangerous than my present dilemma. Panic was rising in my throat as I contemplated being knocked off the train as we sped into the dark Thessalonian night, landing on my head in some bush-and-rock-infested ditch. I’d probably never be found, or maybe in a hundred years, I’d be misidentified as a Greek warrior or, as my current conductor, let’s call him Phi, would imagine, a bandit.
My focus on the darkness at the end of the station was interrupted by the shock of seeing Doug bounce and roll on the platform pavement alongside our charging train. I could only assume a conductor had knocked him off, and I would be next. I didn’t think; I just dropped. There was no time to orchestrate a planned jump; we were at the end of the platform. My feet landed first, but only for a second. The brute force of the moving train plunged me uncontrollably forward. I started to roll wildly, thinking, Protect your head! and reached out to stop the tumbling, sliding to a halt with my hands stretched out in front of me, ten feet from the end of the platform.
I turned over onto my back and looked up to see passengers from another train gathering anxiously around Doug and me. Everyone was talking at once, asking the same thing in multiple languages: “Are you alright?” “Estás herido?” “Es-tu blessé?” “Are you hurt?” And from the wisest among them: “You fools, you could have been killed!”
I lifted myself up to catch a glimpse of Doug, checking on his condition after the fall. I mouthed, “Are you OK?” He nodded and pointed to the other side of the platform, five to six sets of tracks away. There was our train, just where we left it. What! I could only laugh. Then it hit me. Distracted by the adventures of Rip Kirby we had gone up the wrong stairwell. Idiots, we were idiots.
We hadn’t run over tracks to leave our train for the stairwell when we disembarked the train, so why would we think we needed to do that to get back on? And one idiot is bad enough, but wouldn’t you think the other clown would hesitate and think, Stop, this doesn’t make any sense! After all these years, I still don’t have an answer, a good one anyway. I guess you just do things in life, and you either get away with them or you don’t. Would I do it again—no way! I’m not crazy. As I said, we were traveling together; where he goes, I go; where I go, he goes.
A couple of people helped me sit up, inspecting the bloody scrapings on both hands and pointing to the blood dripping down the side of my face. I felt surprisingly okay, as I patted myself down checking for broken bones or body parts gone missing when I catapulted onto the platform.
Doug and I were still assessing our medical condition when we heard one passenger above the rest. Looking up, we saw a big, loud, ostentatious Texas-ranch-owner type with a southern drawl holler, “I would have given $10,000 to have had a film of that, boys! You both are fools, but it was worthy of film. Y’all couldn’t do that again, could you?”
Very funny, I was glad someone enjoyed it. All I knew was that my body ached everywhere and Doug and I needed to wash up and find bandages.
As we started to walk to the stairwell again, looking for medical attention, I felt the inside upper pocket of my sport coat, a kind of subconscious tic I had developed since leaving New York. I was checking for my passport—and it wasn’t there. Terrified, I yelled, “I lost my passport!” Everyone on the platform started looking. We searched desperately, until, about 20 minutes later, we heard that someone had found a passport and taken it to the police office downstairs.
We rushed back down the fiendish staircase, through excruciatingly long hallways and out to the shopping area where we eventually pointed to a lighted sign reading Αστυνομία (Police.) As we approached, followed by a group of concerned—or amused—travelers from the platform, numerous others surrounded us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw three foreboding black-leather-coat-clad figures approaching us. The other spectators automatically parted to let them through. Just as the guy apparently in command reached aggressively for me the Αστυνομία door opened and two Greek officers came out, pushing themselves between Doug and me.
It was scarily obvious: this was the old Greek regime and the new militaristic challengers competing for what just might be valuable spoils. The conversation between them escalated quickly; the yelling and hand-waving were getting more aggressive by the minute.
I couldn’t wait for a break in the action, so I periodically shouted, “I’ve lost my passport; do you have my passport?” They would stop for a second, look at our bloody hands and faces and go back to arguing. I feared they were negotiating about who was going to drag us away, the leather-coated secret police guys or local law enforcement, and I wasn’t sure which was the better option. The secret police could take us away to some godforsaken prison where we would rot indefinitely, and while I hoped the local guys wanted to protect us or briefly throw us in jail, it didn’t look likely. One officer especially—let’s call him Vladislav,