The elusive star of Vergina
To visit the tomb of Alexander the Great’s father, a modern odyssey
I was in Thessaloniki for the weekend. Of all the things to see in the region, my Greek friends suggested, quite emphatically, that I visit the tomb of Philip II, the famed king of Macedon and father of Alexander the Great. I fell in love with the idea as well. If Alexander the Great was the real-life King Arthur of Greece, then Philip II was Uther Pendragon, had Pendragon been an actual person. To see such a tomb would amount to a spiritual experience, on par with my previous visits to the Anasazi Chaco ruins in New Mexico, the hallowed fields of Gettysburg, the ancient island city of Delos.
The catch was I didn’t have the option of renting a car. And while Vergina, the site of the tomb, is an hour from Thessaloniki by motor vehicle, the public transit options are daunting. How much more daunting I didn’t quite imagine when I set out for Vergina, on a rainy day in June. The journey revealed the typical frustrations of public transit in Greece — and the paradoxes of a nation protective of its Macedonian heritage, but utterly unable to support its nationalist claims through adequate infrastructure.
