Friday, June 21
Ermahgerd. She was so right.
That booth seat was sooooo comfortable to sleep on last night. So much better than any airline seat could have been. And we didn't have to sleep on the deck.
Around 6am, or i guess 7am since we've crossed another time zone, the ferry made its first stop Surprisingly, the majority of the people on the ferry got off there, including the snoring fellows in the next booth over. In my drowsy early-morning state, i panicked, thinking that we needed to get off the ferry, since i did not know that it made more than one stop in Greece. Amanda, probably still fully asleep, calmed me down and explained the situation without moving a muscle other than her lips. Then i freaked out again because i thought she was wrong, but noticed other people continuing to sleep and reasoned that she was probably actually right. Then i woke up.
EDIT: Amanda just read this and had no recollection of that conversation. She was clearly still 100% asleep.
I headed to the bathroom, which looked like it had flooded overnight, maybe not a good sign. I was glad i'd had the forethought to put on my shoes, but it kept me from performing the more heavy-duty actions. That can wait until we get to Athens.
I got another half hour of sleep in our little booth before the kitchen staff appeared and asked us to leave so they could clean up for breakfast. Since most of the other passengers had already disembarked, it was easy for us to score a much longer, curved bench out in the common area, where we put in another two hours of sleep before finally waking up to children watching Kung Fu Panda: The Series, in Greek. Digimon came on afterward, so we watched a little of that, because hell yes digital monsters, whether we can understand the dialog or not. After some girl muted the TV so she could use her cell phone, we went to investigate the breakfast bar.
Breakfast cost 18 Euros for a couple shitty omelets, a small roll and the condiments to put on it, water, and some deliciously juicy watermelon. We sat by the windows in the commissary facing the bow of the ship, which was a nice view early this fine morning.
Next we sorted through some of the pictures from the early part of the trip while a television show about a family with a monkey played on the TV. At first i was unsure if it was a sitcom or a reality show, but it turned out to be obviously a sitcom when the monkey foiled a robbery with the help of two small dogs. After that was a show about a family with a seal. No, really.
As the announcement came that we were drawing near to port, we packed up our things and headed back to the top of the ship, to get our first good look at Greece. It was quite windy up there and my shirt kept blowing up to my shoulders, exposing my rock-hard six-pack abs. Ladies. Anyway Amanda stole my camera at that point and wouldn't stop filming it and laughing at me, like she does.
It turned out that we were pulling into the port over an hour late. We were supposed to be off the ship at 12:30, but by the time we got to the bus stop just outside the dock's terminal, it was 1:37, and the next bus into town was expected in 7 minutes. Our bus to Athens was supposed to leave from either the train station or bus depot at 1:50.
Here's the thing with travel around Greece nowadays: it's impossible to book. I've talked about this before. We could not book trains in Greece from other EU countries, and we couldn't book the bus before we left home because the web site was in Greek and the English mirror was down, and frankly Google Translate is a gigantic failure when it comes to making Greek into English. The only option left to us was to book everything when we got to Greece.
The rails between Patras and Athens have apparently been torn up, also. Which is why we're looking to travel by bus. So when i say we missed our bus, all it means is that we missed the one we wanted, we didn't actually have tickets or anything.
I had inquired of a customer service person on the ferry as to whether we needed to get on this bus from the bus station or the train station, and she had said she wasn't sure, but thought that, since we were after a Eurail bus, we should go to the train station. The city bus #18 should take us directly there, or to the bus station if that was what we needed. When we did finally get on that bus, i asked the driver about it, and he told me bus station. So that is why we were doing everything i was talking about up there. I may have written this out in the most confusing way possible.
The attendant at the bus station told us that our Eurail passes were not good for buses, so we had to pay the full fare. All things considered, it wasn't a terrible price, and we've ended up on a bus directly to Athens. Our original plan had called for a bus to Kiato, train to SKA, and another train to Athens, so maybe this is going to be easier. As for faster, i guess we'll never really know. Actually, we don't even know how long of a bus ride this is, we've been on it for almost an hour and have no idea where we are. Somewhere in Greece by a large body of water which may still be the Adriatic Sea.
Getting on this bus was a clusterfuck. Our tickets are printed entirely in Greek, as you might expect. If you've never seen the written Greek language, here's something important to consider: they do not use the Latin alphabet like almost every other written language currently used in the world. If we can't even tell what the letters are, we've got no chance of using context to try and figure out words that are similar to other languages.
I asked the person at the information desk which of the six buses in front of the station we were supposed to get on, and she yelled at me like i was stupid. After a few minutes of verbal sparring with her, she finally told me it would have the departure time, 14:25, right on the front of it. The Greeks use the same numbers, at least, so that seemed pretty reasonable. I walked around all six of those buses, none of them had any numbers on them. Finally, after showing my ticket to three of the non-English speaking attendants outside, i found that it was the bus that was just about to pull into the station and not any of the ones already there. That bus also did not have the time written on it.
So along with the rest of the herd of highly-confused tourists mulling around the station, we finally got where we needed to be, which is here, on this bus.
Hope to get to Athens soon. Will write more once we're in our hotel room for the night.
--
So the girl sitting in the seat next to us talked on her cell phone for the first two solid hours of the bus ride to Athens.
The trip ended up being three hours, putting us in Athens around 5:30, a solid two hours earlier than we'd have been if we'd followed our original plan, which involved a shorter bus ride and transferring to two different trains.
The first trial of being in Athens, where everything is written in arcane symbols that may as well be Martian or Wingdings to the likes of our simple, American brains, was getting from the bus station to anywhere useful to us. Either the train station or our hotel would do. We walked around the bus station aimlessly, went outside and contemplated walking out there aimlessly, then instead returned to the inside of the bus station and aimed for the other side. This bus station, by the way, was more like a sprawling mechanic's garage than what we'd expect from a commercial transportation launching site, except it also had rows of restaurants and convenience stores within. The whole thing smelled of hydraulics.
Diametrically opposed to the exit we'd attempted to leave from (aimlessly), relative in distance to maybe two and a half city blocks, there was a city bus sitting just inside the garage door. A hut next to it, just big enough for a man to sit in and sell tickets out of, had literally just opened its ticket-selling window as we approached. So i asked about getting to the train station, and the occupant informed me that the bus we were looking at would take us to the city center, where we could get on the subway to finish the journey. He sold us a couple of tickets that were good for all the bus and subway rides we could use in 90 minutes for just a Euro and forty cents. That's cheaper than a one-way ticket on the Madison Metro. This is perhaps the first time ever that something in Europe has cost us less than its equivalent would back home.
The main reason for going to the train station was to book our trains for the way out of Greece, since, for those just joining us here or the kind of people who enjoy multiple flashbacks in their films, Greek trains can't be booked from anywhere but inside Greece, or their website which is written in Greek and impossible to translate. We were able to get the train from Athens to Thessaloniki booked no problem, but that's as far as Greek trains will go nowadays; from Thessaloniki, we need to get on a bus to Plovdiv, where our flight back to Germany departs from. Yeah...the last couple days of our trip are a messed up zigzag of transportation nonsense, hitting several more countries for very short periods of time, because when we were planning our trip initially we forgot to get one of our flights booked and by the time we went back for it a mere two days later, the price had doubled, and so rather than going to Romania from Greece and flying straight home from there, now what we are doing is flying from Bulgaria to Germany, then taking a train to Hungary, and flying from there to Poland and then to Chicago. Look at a map, it's really stupid. But it's going to get us home for a cost less than three limbs.
That was another huge tangent. Let's return to our story.
Our hotel, Hotel Nafsika, is very close to the train station. We checked in easily, and the man at the counter was very helpful to us. He whipped out a map immediately and drew on it where we were, where the best things to see in the city are, where the best places to eat are, and the best route to take to hit them all. Then he ushered us over to the elevator (!!!) to take us to our fourth-story room. I was so happy, every other accommodation we've stayed in, we've been on the third or fourth floor, and i've had to haul our bulky suitcase up a spiral stairway. This hotel also had a visible spiral staircase that i was steeling myself to have to use; i could not see the lift from where i stood in the lobby. So when we were led over toward the stairs and to the door next to it, i was shocked to suddenly be face to face with a thing that i have only seen once before in my life, and it was in a black and white film from the 1950s: an elevator with a regular door. As in, it's got a handle, and it swings out, as if entering a room. We closed the door, selected our floor, and the elevator visibly began its ascent. There is no other door between the elevator and the entry; you are climbing the building in a three-walled car, and the front of it sees the backside of each door for every floor on the way. Once we reached the fourth floor, we simply pushed on the door, and it swung out, releasing us from the tiny but cool in a novel way deathtrap.
We're very pleased with tonight's room. Nice comfy bed, our own bathroom, air conditioning which we can set ourselves via remote control, a mini-fridge, giant walk-in closet, TV, and a balcony, and this is the cheapest room of the whole trip. It's true that the whole thing has a very 60s vibe to it and the electrical parts of the room are wired...suspiciously, and said balcony overlooks only a back alley full of garbage, which i actually don't know if i can call an alley because there appears to be no way in or out of it, but it's still pretty nice.
Freed from the burden of our bags, we set out for Plaka, the food district.
Remember when i said that in Paris, the taggers were prolific? I've forgotten to amend that since. It's really all of Europe. Graffiti is everywhere, but nowhere is so ripe as Athens. The graffiti has graffiti. If i thought the tags were dense in Paris, i was wrong. There is not a square inch of wall left unmolested in this city.
As we neared Plaka, we rounded a corner, and suddenly, humans. Thousands of them. It was unbelievable; there was no gradual increase, no lead up, no warning of any kind. Suddenly we were just lost in the masses. At the center of it all was a stage, and some really bad dubstep music.
We moved through the writhing crowd and got to the street where all the outdoor cafes are. As we strolled, Amanda said to me, “If you see a place that you want to eat at, go for it.”
I said, “Let's just get a little farther away from this dubstep.”
So we kept walking, and i kept watching, and eventually, as the “music” subsided to an ignorable level, a waiter flagged us down, shouting above the din, “Two?”
“Yeah, sure!” i replied, sitting down where he'd motioned. He's proactive, he can win our business.
I've never really liked gyros, but i thought that being actually in Greece, i should try a real Greek gyro made by a real Greek chef, so i ordered a chicken gyro. Amanda ordered the special kebab. We'd had Greek kebabs our first night in London, so by the time we were actually in Greece, we were prepared for it not to be meat on a stick, as we'd expected that first time.
But when the food came out, my gyro most definitely did not have chicken on it. It seemed to be bratwurst. If that was chicken, it was prepared in such a strange way that i'd be fascinated to watch, just to see how the chicken got that shade of brown. Amanda's kebab was definitely chicken. To be honest, neither of us was entirely sure what a gyro was supposed to look like, so we thought maybe she'd been given my chicken gyro and i had her kebab, since she couldn't remember what kind of meat was supposed to be on it. Hers looked like the kebabs we'd had in London, though. So we switched plates halfway through the meal, and both of us were absolutely taken with how amazing each dish was. It was a truly great meal, even if they did mess up our meats. We're not sure what happened. But whichever item was the gyro, i'm a convert to it now.
After our meal, we fought our way through the street vendors, who were pushing the exact same shit we'd seen in Rome, Paris, and everywhere in between to make our way closer to the Acropolis, to try and get some shots of it lit up at night. We couldn't get very close and were really just getting ourselves more and more lost in the graffiti-lined cobblestone streets of Athens, but it worked out in the end. Once we finally found our way to a main road that we could identify on the map and set ourselves in the direction of the hotel, we stumbled across another outdoor music performance.
The band was just setting up, which we thought strange given that it was 11pm. I mean, back home, noise ordinances pretty much put a halt to any outdoor performance with a PA by 10. Even Summerfest in Milwaukee has to close down by midnight. But here was a stage facing some huge hotels and what looked like a prominent government building, still setting up for rock well past sundown.
The house music i couldn't identify, but it was clearly in English and sounded like a poor man's Tori Amos. I was thinking that, if it was any indication of the band that was about to play, they'd probably be terrible, i'd film one song for posterity and probable inclusion on my vacation movie, and we'd move along to the hotel. Then, as they were soundchecking, we heard the scratching of records. So there's a DJ in this band. I could see six people, including electric guitars and bass, so with a DJ in the group i immediately thought, shit, they're going to be like Limp Bizkit.
I was delighted to be wrong; they were not at all a rapcore band, but instead a much better throwback to the same decade: Trip-Hop. There's been precious little Trip-Hop in the mainstream since the 90s, and i kind of want it back.
They had a real indie vibe to them, too, and some rapping. If i had to describe them, i'd say The Joy Formidable meets Portishead and Tricky. If that seems as awesome to you as it did to me, check them out on Facebook, they're called Macadam Dive. They are from Switzerland.
I ended up filming the whole show. The video's kind of shit, but there should be something usable for the vacation video. The audio sounded great from where we sat, so hopefully my camera caught it faithfully, i'd love to have a good bootleg to listen to.
After the performance, i headed for the stage, hoping to score a CD and a setlist, and got one of those things. Their CD is sadly not available until September, but i'll be on the lookout for it. I'm very happy to have the setlist, and i came away with a shirt, too. They were really nice. Their singer has family in the United States, so they do want to tour on our side of the pond at some point, and when they do, i will be there.
As it turns out, there is a whole music festival this weekend in Athens, featuring live performances from bands on multiple stages across the city from 10am until midnight, June 19-24. If we didn't have historical landmarks to visit tomorrow, i know what i'd be doing. We got a program, but it's all written in Greek, of course.
We walked the rest of the way back to the hotel without incident, which made me happy. I was a little nervous to be an obvious tourist walking these graffiti-lined streets at midnight, but they were pretty well deserted. Most of the people we did see on our journey were young women in dresses and heels, so i suppose if they are comfortable traveling the streets at night, a big imposing guy like me's got nothing to worry about.
By the way, i mean “dresses and heels” in the classy way, not the prostitute way. We saw many references to prostitutes in the reviews for different accommodations in Athens, and were sure to pick a hotel that was not in any of those districts.
So here i am in the hotel room, finishing off this journal entry, and somehow it has become after 2am. So signing off from Athens, Greece, it's Trevor, and i'm going to the Acropolis tomorrow. Boom.
NOTE: I seem to have forgotten to mention the cats. This city is overrun with stray cats, they are everywhere you look. You can't pet them, of course; they will run away from your outstretched hand. But they are generally not afraid of people. There are so many of them, though.
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