We started the day driving from Athens, attempting to make our way to Thessaloniki.After a few hours of driving, we were doing about 70km along the national roads, when we noticed the car drop a gear and go down to 3rd, and the overdrive button which allows us to drive over 70 with an extra gear had stopped working.As it was a Sunday, we decided to camp at a beach nearby (which happened to lie under Mount Olympos), and wait till the Monday to get some help.We after waiting around for hours to hear back from the AA, we were eventually given the number of a Toyota dealership Larisa, a university town 30 km away, but we had to wait another day before we could go there as it was closed on the Monday.So on the Tuesday morning we got up early and chugged along the emergency lane of the national road at 60 km/h, trying not to blow up the engine by increasing the revs too much, with cars and trucks speeding past us.We eventually got to the Toyota dealership at about lunchtime and about 6 hours later, after about 10 phone calls to different people and waiting for hours for someone to help us that could speak just a little English; we had finally solved the problem. One of the mechanics, after flogging the car along the national road, had discovered that our transmission was shot, and needed to be replaced.We spoke to wicked campers and one of the managers at the dealership and arranged for a new gear box to be sent from the U.K to the dealership, and they would fit the new one...for 500 Euros! Thank god, wicked are covering all the costs otherwise we would be up s*** creek! So now, we are in a hotel room in Larisa, paid for by the AA (who have been a pain in the arse the whole time and will receive a nasty letter of complaint from us in the next few weeks!), spending our days waiting for the new gear box to arrive, then waiting for the mechanics to fit it on before we can head off again! There's not a great deal to do in Larisa, it's a very small city full of young people because there is a university nearby so at least the bars are packed every night. The whole dilemma has put us behind a couple of days, which means we probably won't be able to make it to the coast of Bulgaria and instead head inland, but we're trying to look on the bright side, at least our engine didn't break down in the middle of nowhere ad we don't have to wait weeks for a whole new van to come from the U.K (although we probably wouldn't complain if we had broken down in a bigger city like Prague or Munich where there would be more to do!)