Belated Words on Greece!

So, Athens! What an adventure...beginning, I’d say, as we stepped off our plane onto the tarmac in Greece, the sun setting brilliantly behind the silhouettes of Grecian mountains, I took a deep breath, and I said to Ruth, “Mmm, the air is so...fresh!” And she corrected me with, “No, Yitka, it’s just actually warm here.” Indeed, Athens was a welcome respite from the icy temperatures and snow-laden cities that have made up the rest of our travels, and soon I can post the t-shirted photos of ourselves to prove it :)

On the Metro to our hostel, we made quick friends with another pair of backpackers who had been on our flight out of Vienna, two brothers in their early twenties, Andrew and Anthony. They are traveling the entire world (hitting up six different continents, stopping for a month at a time in certain places to do service work) for a year, and before we left the Metro, they’d invited us out for their weekly tradition of Pizza Sunday, which involves (as you might imagine) finding a pizza place in whatever country they are on Sundays. Pizza night was great, as was the accompanying wine and our fantastically hilarious Greek waitress, as was the magical evening of Athens-by-night exploration that ensued afterward...we wandered up to the Acropolis, Athens’ most famous collection of archaeological sites (conveniently within walking distance of our hostel) and explored that a bit, tasted intensely under-ripe oranges growing on the trees in front of our hostel (Ruth likened their taste to that of sour lemon warheads), and eventually found a massive boulder atop a hill that overlooked all of Athens, where we sat in general peace and quiet, staring out over the city, feeling good vibes about our upcoming days in Greece.

The following day, Ruth and I made quick friends yet again, this time with a girl in our room at the hostel, Kayla, who was traveling alone, and the three of us really stuck together for the rest of the visit. The majority of our time was spent wandering around various ruins, particularly around the Acropolis, which is up on a hill and surrounded by woodsy expanses, rocky outcroppings, lush greenery, stunning outlooks of the city, and even a few caves with engravings that date back to the third century A.D. (which my inner child insisted on climbing up inside, of course.) The rest of Athens is admittedly fairly polluted, gray, and populated with unimpressive architecture, but the ancient sites themselves are incredible. There were a lot of opportunities for hiking and exploring, with the added bonus of it being the off season for tourism, so I could entertain some serious fantasies about “discovering” the civilizations of ancient times. Words honestly can’t do justice to what it feels like to stand in front of these massive structures...

After a tasty dinner of amazing Greek food, giant blocks of baklava, and my first taste of “ouzo” – a hard liquor vaguely reminiscent of Jagermeister, pretty identical to the supposedly traditionally Turkish hard liquor that I was given by the manager of our hotel in Istanbul – we had a chill night in the hostel. Rolling out of bed late the following morning, we returned to our explorations, basking in the sun in front of the Temple of Zeus, wandering the Ancient Agora (where we randomly ran into Andrew and Anthony again), checking out the deserted Olympic Stadium of 1896 (where we ran into Andrew and Anthony for the third time), and eventually making it to the Archaeological Museum, only to find that it closes at 3 p.m. In a city with temperatures in the seventies though, I couldn’t complain about having to spend our afternoon and evening outdoors instead.

That night, continuing in our trip’s theme of coincidental run-ins, it turned out that the Andrew we’d met in Budapest had checked into our same hostel in Athens that day...so I got together with him in the evening for a couple drinks to trade stories about Athens thus far and his night in Belgrade, and eventually wander around the streets of Athens by night with a couple of other guys from the hostel (including one from Missouri! Excitement of all excitements!) in search of a bar, and failing that, wine and baklava...which has never tasted as good as it did the three times I had it in Greece :) and staying out until 2 a.m. in my effort to sleep as little as possible before embarking on our 41 hours straight of travel (Metro + suburban rail in Greece + 22-hour ship ride across the Adriatic + train to Milan + train to Geneva, which I am on now, typing this up in order to post later.)

Summary of thoughts: traveling is crazy, Athens is amazing, and...you can never have too much baklava.