Since I had a lot of time in Thessaloniki today, I spent most of it in museums. After making the last of my ramen I headed out and went over to the Byzantine Cultural Museum. It had interesting stuff about the position of Thessaloniki in the Empire - apparently for a while it was a co-capital and at one point the primary capital due to Constantinople's occupation in the 4th Crusade. I do wish they'd had a little more info about the history, though I'm aware that isn't really what the museum was for. Then I headed over to meet Lindsey and Oscar once more at the archaeology museum. Oscar's insight was really helpful and he's super knowledgeable about this stuff. Lots of Macedonian stuff that would make the folks in Skopje very mad, but it's hard to blame Greece given that the Alexander's capital was only 40 minutes drive from the city and Thessaloniki is named for his sister. It's a very nice museum, though I will say that I was a little exhausted doing it back to back with the Byzantine one. We said our goodbyes and then I got on the bus. The drive was uneventful and the border wasn't a problem. It really shouldn't have even been noticeable, but Austria has been dragging their feet in allowing Bulgaria to be a full Schengen member so it's still a firm border with Greece. Bulgaria is the poorest EU state and they're about to adopt the Euro, so I'm missing out on the only benefits of EU membership that actually matter to me.

Sofia has an actual metro so I'll have to figure that out. It's the first metro system I've encountered since Budapest, I think, since otherwise I've only had trams. My area is attractive enough but I didn't have the time or energy to do anything other than grab some food and call into Thanksgiving. It's cold here and I think the mountains got a lot of snow, so I'm not sure if the excursions are even going to be running. We're supposed to get a lot of snow ourselves these next few days. I've still got to figure out what there is to see in this city, but that's an issue for tomorrow.