Athina

(photo tech problems continue.)

Leave tourist-central, romance-language Italy, enter the world of anything goes.

There are a number of directions I could go with this post and none of them would probably give you a very good impression of Greece, Greeks, or Athens. Indeed, if I count and recount experiences, most of them will end up being or sounding negative. But looking back on it, an inordinate number of weird things happened to us in Greece or enroute and I can’t believe that that’s the norm. Aristotle, Sophocles, and Plato were Greeks for heaven’s sake, as were Zeus, Athena, and Dionysus. After everything, I still do hold Greece in high esteem, but it definitely deserves another look. I am willing to concede that some people and places fail at first impressions.

We got off the double-decker bus we took from Patras to Athens and had ni puta idea where we were, nor in which direction was our hostel. After an unsuccessful attempt at parking it and calling the hostel or finding the station on our teeny Let’s Go map, we ruled out walking because the area didn’t seem all that happening and the bus station itself was a dark, dirty collection of small, rundown store fronts and signs written in Greek. We directed ourselves to the ticket office and got chicken scrawl, questionably English directions on a little white piece of paper from the woman at the information window. Ok, bus number 50-something. A little disoriented with the language and luggage we got on bus number 50-something and Angela tried to hand the driver money. He started growling and pointing and opened the doors to eject us off the bus. We bought two tickets from the ticket window and got on the next one. No idea where to get off, we got off with everyone else at the last stop, because by doing a little letter matching between the posted route and our directions, it seemed like we were going the right direction.

We got off the bus and found that we still had no idea where we were and there were a lot of people hanging around. Like murienda time in Sevilla when everyone’s off work and the cafes and shops are bustling. We began to make our way down the street, past the people, looking for the metro stop our directions said should exist; two young, pretty girls with luggage, as if we didn’t stick out like sore thumbs already. We stopped at a hotel and got a map and real directions to Omonia, the nearest metro. Our map took us to a little plaza with crowded aisles and a dingy flea market of sorts on the ground. I clutched my purse to my chest, hid the map, and plunged in after Anglea, keeping my eyes on her and my head down. Greek. Everything in Greek, a language completely foreign and unrecognizable to my ears. Out of the corner of my eye I could feel the male stares and hear the “Hi”s and “How are you”s peppered in with a whole lot of gibberish. As I would do in Spain, I pushed on, my eyes down, my face deliberately not registering the English, not the stares, nor my discomfort. Keep walking. Don’t look back, as if not looking would make my skin and hair a little Mediterranean darker and my luggage disappear. As if it’s possible not to look terrified when I’ve never been more lost and uncomfortable and extranjera in my life. We cleared the crowd and entered the next Best Western we saw, this time getting real English directions and a real map. These streets were deserted but friendly, with red slippery tiling like in Seville and the weak setting sun shining, clean and tranquil. We didn’t leave the vicinity of our hotel until the next morning when the sun was already good and up and we had slept enough to almost forget about our welcome to Athens.

Athens is home to the Acropolis, it has the Parthenon, and it has the Agora, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, and the ancient statues at the National Archaeological Museum. All very ancient, amazing sights with so much history behind them, but after Rome’s ruins… well it’s hard to beat Rome. The Greek ruins aren’t much older than the Roman ruins but they’re considerably more “ruined.” The Acropolis, however, did seem pretty intact, but maybe that’s just thanks to the scaffolding that was all over the place. Impressive, yes, but even though it’s built on a rock overlooking the whole city and the ocean, it can’t beat the Colosseum. It did, however, beat the Colosseum in price, because we accidentally went on a free day. The only time, I think, we accidentally stumbled into anything good. The archeological museum is probably the funnest museum I’ve ever been to, besides the Children’s Museum in Las Vegas or was it Denver with the play supermarket. Its contents are super old, they’re not behind glass, there’s nothing super famous so it’s not as stressful as the major art museums, and photography is allowed. Taking photos is such a good way to internalize and appreciate the shapes and intricacies of sculpture. But the most memorable sight was the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in front of the Parliament building... the whole process was so ridiculous that it was hilarious and amazing at the same time.

Greece has its beauty more than anything else. The bus ride between Patras and Athens was stunning, and because Greece is so uniquely shaped, the road was by the Aegean Sea for half the trip, and for the other half, the Mediterranean. I couldn’t believe the view, the deep deep blue ocean, the green green hills, even the ferry ride off the coast of Greece, with islands in every direction. I’m going to be bold and say it was infinitely more beautiful than even the ride between Ventura and Santa Barbara; those oil platforms do get in the way. And the Oregon Coast and Northern California’s coast, these are all incredible beautiful places, but there’s just something about the air in Greece that make the colors just that much more brilliant. Maybe it’s the Mediterranean heat. You will see in our photos of the Acropolis that it wasn’t a very nice day, but walking around on that cloudy day we just couldn’t believe the heat. It was a creeping heat, a still heat, a heat that surrounds your body until your skin screams for a breath. But what am I talking about; I live in Sevilla, now that’s heat. Greece also has its salads. Angela and I probably ate 10 blocks of feta cheese between the two of us that week, with all the salads we ate. Olives, tomato wedges, cucumber, red onion, a big block of feta, with olive oil, vinegar, and spices. The best gyros we ate were actually on the boat, and we cried a little on the way back when the worker informed us that the machine was broken. Some nice Canadians we met escorted us to a gyro place one night for dinner because we were scared to go alone, and those were pretty amazing too, but I still kind of like to know exactly what kind of meat I’m eating. I also would like to give Athens credit for having the nicest metros I’ve ever been on. In a city that diverse, the metros could have been the creepiest most disgusting, graffiti-infested tunnels in the world. On the contrary they were right up there with Washington D.C., and the way the tickets worked it wasn't really necessary to pay.

Even so, I will spare you the dozen crazy, creepy stories we have about Greek people or people that speak English in Greece and leave you with a photo that explains the ferry in a nutshell. The ferry was like a mini cruise ship except the pool and the disco were broken, and instead of a bed, we had an airplane seat. The most restful two nights I’ve ever spent, clutching my purse, bundled in every warm piece of clothing I brought, wearing sunglasses and a scarf on my head to counteract the light, headphones to counteract the noise, trying to get around the armrests and the seats that didn’t recline all the way to… sleep…

In spite of everything, Greece, Italy, it was all an adventure. A splendid once-in-a-lifetime adventure that, more than pages and pages of words and pictures, I have hundreds and hundreds of memories and a very good friend with which to share them. And for that, I am thankful.