“Look into my eyes! The ship is sinking! You have to jump into the sea right now to save yourself,” a middle-aged sailor from Samos, Giorgos Skrinos, shouts to a young girl whom he sees for the first time. She is a 19-year-old psychology student in Thessaloniki Maria Vasilaki, who is returning to her hometown of Naxos on the “Samina Express”, when there was a loud noise, the lights were turned off and everyone was in absolute panic.Sea water rose to the salons after a few minutes and life jackets were locked until in front of her this unknown fellow traveler didn’t show up.Still with a backpack with all his school books on his back, he receives another unexpected gift from Skrinos.He puts a spare life jacket on top of her bag.The boat tips over, they slide across the deck to the railing and push it out to sea. Her backpack gets caught on the railing, but he manages to throw the student off and he too falls in. They are later lost in the rough seas.

Basilaks are kept on the surface for 3-4 hours, but the lifebuoy light is not turned on manually and no one sees or hears it within 9 points on the Beaufort scale. He saw the boat go down, and then many boats gathering people. Another small light passes her in the haze. He is dead. And then another “light” like a candlestick. Two men and one woman, alive, with a life jacket, and all three are trying to escape. Some time later, after a torturous effort against the giant waves, they are collected by a sailboat piloted by Stavros Arelis. Her name is one of the first in the list of survivors. And from the open bag, which she still wears on her shoulders, everything scattered into the sea, except for the tiny icon of St. Nektarios, which her grandmother gave her. Her seven-year-old son’s name is Nectarios.

“It is unbelievable that death looked me in the face that night, but luck spared me. But even if you are saved, you are shocked and mourn with everyone who lost theirs, you are fully set for a long time,” Vasilaki tells K 20 years later. “After the crash, I had post-traumatic stress. The first semester, I acted like nothing was happening. I said that I returned to normal life and I can control everything. Then I began to have nightmares that I was on a ship, that my people were on board and we were going to drown. I couldn’t stay indoors, I wanted to be outside and with people all the time. Others from Samina could not even wash themselves for months, could not stand the feeling of water. Let’s not talk about swimming. Fortunately, I was spared the fact that, as a psychology student, I had a rudimentary knowledge of what people go through when they experience something like this, otherwise I think I would have gone crazy. Later, I experienced severe depression, I developed various phobias. I couldn’t bear a word about the ship. I remember that I returned to school and from a classmate became “Maria, who almost drowned in Samina.”

“After the crash, I started having nightmares that I was on the ship, that my family was there and we were going to drown. I couldn’t stay indoors.”

“The most difficult,” he admits, “were boat trips. I couldn’t stop them because I studied in Thessaloniki and lived in Naxos. However, even now, when the weather is inclement and I am at sea, I cannot overcome the fear that we will drown. It took me too many years, at least a decade, to say that grief had fallen asleep. It has not gone away, it is just in me and can wake up at any moment. Through work, I have trained myself to live with trauma. But when they are fresh, it is extremely difficult to do this. When a student accident happened in Tempi in 2003, images of “Samina” came back to my mind. I had nightmares again, I saw the ceiling of the room collapse and suffocate me. And of course now, when two trains collide. It’s like reliving a crash. I was transported back to 19 years old when I was on the same train to Athens – Thessaloniki. I put myself in the place of the students,” he emphasizes.

When the student accident happened in Tempe in 2003, images of the crash came back to me. I had nightmares again, I saw the ceiling of the room collapse and suffocate me.

“The most important thing that a person wants to feel after a tragedy is that he will know what exactly happened, so that through knowledge the illusion is created for him that he controls his environment. I tried to attribute the crash somewhere, to find out who was to blame, because it helped me to believe that it would not happen again. The truth is that at the age of 19 I suddenly became middle-aged, realized death, valued family, love for relatives and friends. At the same time, I also understood the role of luck. And I realized that life is about thinking, “Don’t take tomorrow for granted. Tomorrow may not be.”

“As a psychologist and also a survivor, I feel the unbearable pain of the relatives of the victims then and today. My father was waiting for me in the port of Paros and, until he heard my name from the rescuers, he was ready to dive into the sea and drown himself. Parents, siblings, partners of the lost never recover from it. This is Golgotha, which begins after the tragedy. You know, I celebrate Samina’s anniversary as if it were my birthday every year. I feel boundless gratitude. And one more thing. Trauma from Tempi, “Samina”, Oka, not only personal and collective. He goes out into the world, into society. But this happens with all the professionals who are called upon to cope with the tragedy in the first hours: rescuers, doctors, nurses, firefighters, reporters. They also want help. And our admiration and gratitude.”

Last year, one of the children seriously injured in the 2003 accident committed suicide. He was a sensitive person who may not have been able to recover.

“I am reliving what happened to my students at Tempe”

Dimitris Gekas is currently a retired philologist. In 2003, he was the principal of a secondary school in Makrichori, Imathia, and accompanied a trip during which 21 children were killed. He says to “K”: “The news of the train derailment shocked me. As soon as I saw the first image on TV I turned it off and couldn’t watch it anymore because it was similar to what happened to me and my students at Tempe. On the fateful trip, I had to face not only my own experience of tragedy as a bus passenger, but also the mental responsibility that I had as a high school principal and accompanied the children. It would seem that April 13 marks exactly 20 years since the conflict. And yet, no matter how much time passes, the trauma in the soul remains alive, even if circumstances, events and the course of everyday life erase the pain. But with each unpleasant personal or collective irritation, and with each case, the wound bleeds again, terrible scenes emerge in the memory. The teacher is like a parent, he sees the children as his own. So the fact that 21 students met such a death in the car I was also driving will torment me forever. “The first years were nightmarish, I dreamed of a repetition of what was. In my daily life, when I was in a car and saw trucks or lorries, I immediately felt fear. I had a hard time getting back on the bus after a long time. Of course, I had to turn to a specialist, but there were also psychologists who regularly came to the school. But I could never completely leave them behind me. Last year, one of the children seriously injured in the accident took his own life, was hospitalized, he managed to survive. He was a sensitive person who may not have been cured. However, when I see a new accident, I cannot but say that in addition to pain, there remains a complaint that so many years have passed, and the irresponsibility of the state for the safety of the lives of its citizens has not improved.”