Return Of The Magic Bus

 

Back in 2017, THC did a post on the memorable trip he took with the future Mrs THC on the Magic Bus in September 1978, traveling from Athens to Paris.  The post has drawn more comments than anything else on Things Have Changed.  As wild as our adventure was, many of the comments have matched or exceeded our experience for sheer weirdness.  The Magic Bus remains prominent in the memories of many of its passengers forty and more years later.

 Last month THC was contacted by Spiros Vasiliou, a writer for the popular Greek online newspaper, Reader.gr, who was working on an article on the Magic Bus and had come across my 2017 post, which I gave him permission to use.  I learned that the Magic Bus, which began as a transport on the Hippie Trail in the early 70s, going all the way to Nepal originally, also had a place in Greek culture and memory.

You can find the lengthy article here, including photos and excerpts from my post, but you'll have to do the translating yourself! 

Spiros also told me that the Magic Bus inspired a very popular rock song in the 1980s by one of the pioneering Greek new wave bands (it's got 2.4 million views on YouTube).  The band was Tripes and the closest translation of the song title is Psyche Taxicab.

These are the translated lyrics:

London, Amsterdam, or Berlin

You've forgotten exactly where you want to go

No matter how much I borrow, I won't let you

Go for rides on the Magic Bus anymore

 

Traveling soul 

And if I want to be by your side, it's hard to stay

It's time to see my own life

On this trip I won't wait for you

 

I'll go shopping and one night

What I have inside of me for you I'll erase

The road you've taken is a one-way street

And I don't see you turning back 

Take a listen.  It's pretty good.

 

 

Translation of the section on our trip:

American Mark Stoller is one of the thousands of passengers who traveled to Greece in the late 1970s on the Magic Bus. Several years ago, he decided to record that experience on his blog. What followed was something he never imagined. Dozens of responses to his text, from people who had similar experiences! “I am still amazed that my post on the Magic Bus has received more comments than anything else I have written on my blog since I started it in 2012,” he tells us. “So many years later, my wife and I still have such enjoyable memories of our month in Greece and the Magic Bus,” he adds, and kindly provides us with the itinerary of the trip, as it was distributed to passengers in the summer of 1978!

The article then goes on to include a long quote from my 2017 post.