How can I find Turkish truck stops in Greece?

Question

I'm trying to hitchhike from Thessaloniki, Greece to Turkey.

Greece is a very very hard country to hitchhike in, Greek drivers seldom stop, and petrol stations which are useful in many other countries don't seem to work here.

Now experience has shown that Turkish truck drivers are awesome for hitchhiking. They are very friendly and like hitchhikers and can drive very far.

Not just in Turkey but in other nearby countries such as Bulgaria and Romania there seem to be quite a few truckstops run by Turkish expats and catering specifically to Turkish truckdrivers. These places have cheap food and surprisingly good atmosphere and sooner or later a truck driver will be going in your direction and offer you a ride.

Now I've been in Greece a week and a half and the locals assure me there are plenty of trucks going to Turkey but so far I haven't seen any Turkish truck stops here.

So, are there Turkish truck stops in Greece? How can I find them? And does anybody know of one in the direction heading from Thessaloniki to Turkey?

Answer 1

There isn't much of information available, but I could find one sentence that may help you:

Hundreds of trucks go daily from the port town of Igoumenitsa, in the north-west of Greece (coming with ferry from Italy), Istanbul and other Turkish destinations. 99% of these trucks will be driven by Turks and sometimes Iranians too, and the remaining 1% can be of any European nationality.

So you're best chance would be to stand somewhere on the road between Igoumenitsa and Ipsala, the Turkish border town right at the border to Greece.

As you can see on Google Maps, this is one highway to connects this two cities, and the highway really leads directly through Thessalonikis. So I would suggest to try it everywhere on the E90.