Woah, it's been a long time.

Sorry about the lack of writing on here. Things have been really, really hectic as far as school work and getting to hang out and suck the last few drops out of my Greek time. Since the last time I wrote I went to Turkey, Delphi, Corinth, Sparta, and a few other places. I'm mid-packing right now. I take off tomorrow to go to Lyon, France for Christmas, followed by a sojourn in Vienna, New Years in Rome with some friends, and back to Athens to show off my new knowledge of Greece and fly home on January 6. It's been one hell of a semester. I have all of the details of my trips written down in my journal, so I'll be putting them up when I get home and am not quite so busy. I promise one new post a day for that week I'm home. It'll be great, just you wait and see.

here are some photos

No blog yet, it's really really busy here. I'm working on some papers, so I should have some time to put something up when I'm all finished. This weekend sounds good.

In the meantime, here's some photos from Delphi and Istanbul (Constantinople)!

http://nd.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2123823&l=90512&id=5612540
http://nd.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2123831&l=fe7ad&id=5612540
http://nd.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2123087&l=52a34&id=5612540
http://nd.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2123084&l=7b8de&id=5612540

Bingo!

Me, my mom, and two backpacks

It's been a few weeks. Since the last time I wrote here my mom came to visit for fall break, which was a lot of fun. Here's my best effort to summarize up the events of that whole week, which we spent backpacking all over several islands (she wanted me to say that I made her backpack to prove to everyone that she actually did it - see the photographic proof in the photos).

-in Crete we met this couple from Michigan that were big MSU fans, but still thought I walked on water since I knew more about Knossos and the Minoans than the tour guide (or was bs-ing a lot better). The guy was also kinda racist, and probably had adult onset ADHD. We ditched them as fast as possible because we Champlins don't tolerate MSU fans.

-We felt like idiots on Santorini because we walked around the deserted wrong side of town for a few hours, complaining about how lame and disappointing the island was. Then we went over a hill, saw the postcard views on the other side of the super-thin island, and stopped whining

- We bought a lot of souvenirs on Santorini, my favorite being a white shirt that's made of something kinda like cotton gauze. As the guy was giving me his sales pitch he started to talk about how I can wear it as protection against the sun, since I have "very pale leather." Then he told me that since I'm so thin, if I wear tight clothing I would look "something." He couldn't express "something" in English, but held his pinky up and gave me a weird look. I think he either meant I would look like a post, or gay. I can't tell. But I bought the shirt, and it's super comfortable. And it only looks like 30 percent gay on me.

-we rode donkeys up this huge staircase in Santorini. There was poop everywhere because of the dozens of asses all over the place. There's a good picture in there of the crazy German riding with us talking to himself and making an "attack face" behind me (links at the bottom of the post)

-in Mykonos we ran into this guy on a deserted, dark, narrow street off of the main drag, and he looked at us in this really, really creepy way, shuffled over closer, and said, in a perfect Greek Igor voice, "Wo-Would you like to see my paintings?" we went the other way. I wanted to see what he painted, but you gotta look out for the mommy. I can only hope it was landscapes, not his murder victims.

-also on Mykonos, we bought a ferry ticket from a transgender-looking Dutchman, who sent us to the wrong port so we missed the boat. I hate Greek Dutchmenwomen.

-Nafplion was pretty tame, we just bought a whole bunch of souvenirs. And ate gelato and climbed around this fort. Oh, and I kicked the French embassy, which was gratifying

-And we rode a ferry that was running amok with gypsies... no joke. There was this huuuuge family with a ton of kids. The kids were really muscular, too, which was really weird, since they couldn't be older than 8.

Alongside all of that, it was a really nice, relaxing weekend. The only complaint I have is that none of our hotel rooms had shower curtains. I mean, it could be a really nice, all-tile bathroom in a nice hotel, and they would just have a shower head siting on top of the faucets. It was weird.

Since she went home on that Friday morning, I've been hanging around doing school stuff and cavorting around Greece. I saw a fight in the flea market, but don't know what it was about since they all yell Greek, not English. It was actually a fight-ridden week or so, because a few CYA kids got into a scuffle near a bar, and another one almost happened at a soccer game with a bunch of Greek dads, one of which was kind of a jerk. I got to yell, but really, I'm glad a fight didn't break out, since he was big. This coming weekend is a class trip to the Delphic Oracle, which I really want to go see. See if I can't get it to tell me the future or something. Here's to crossed fingers.


PICTURES
here
here
here


Enjoy!

Oxi day...

Not too much has really happened since the last post. I went out shopping and got some sweet cheap tailored pants and a tailored shirt in the sketchy shopping part of town, then that night it rained for the first time since we have been here. It poured for a few hours, flooding every street and some apartment buildings. The entrance of my building had about 3 inches of water on the inside, and the street outside had about 8 inches of really fast moving water. I wanted to make a little boat and float it down the torrent, but I didn't. C'est la vie.

Later that night we ended up having a snow day. Hot chocolate was made, pajamas were worn, and a scary movie was watched. That night was some clubbing for a birthday girl, so we got to get all fancy in our new tailored clothes.

Two nights ago was another good one, when I got bitten by a dog. It was pretty sweet. It's a dog that lives on my street that I've been petting for two whole months. And it decided to take a chomp out of old Jimmy for petting him at the wrong time. It was definietly bleeding, but since there is no rabies in Greece I just washed and sanitized it as best I could then wrapped it up. I might have to get a tetanus booster, who knows. It really wasn't the hand pain that was the worst. It was the violation of trust. Yassas (the dog) and I were pretty tight, and unfortunately our relationship ended with a streak of expletives directed at the dog. My roommates and I now only give her cold stares, not petttings.

The next day was a better one, however, because my mom came into town. Which is always better than a dog bite. I rode the metro to meet her at the aiport, then dragged her jet-lagged, sleep deprived self to the National Archaeological Museum for a few hours. It was great to see some family over here. Plus she brought me stuff. We grabbed a bite to eat and had a pretty low key night. Today we ended up going to see the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the Acropolis, and the Ancient Agora. Which is a few miles of solid walking, usually uphill. She hates me now, but when she's looking back at it she'll realize that she doesn't hate me for it, just loves me significantly less. Plus she got to see some cool stuff. Tonight is the start of the real adventure, as we board a ferry bound for Crete. We'll see Knossos and maybe some other cool stuff there before going on to Santorini, Delos, Hydra, and whatever other islands we so choose to visit. It should be a blast. Pictures to come after the trip, probably around Friday.

Oh, and I'll include a shot of the dog bite, for posterity's sake.

Photos from the last post

I got my photos posted and tagged, so here they all are. Enjoy!

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TWO

Still Alive

It's been a long time between posts, but really there hasn't been too much to write about. Same old schooltime grind with some trips to ancient sites stuck in the middle. The ancient Greek Agora here in Athens has the best preserved temple, with the original roof still attached. We've also been exploring the city a bit more. We found a Lebanese club/bar that was pretty sweet and a few other places here and there. Culinary experiments are still going down as well. I tried out some Greek seafood that was interesting to say the least. Octopus (suckers still attached), smallfish (whole fried minnows), prawns (the kind with the eyes still attached), stuff like that. I also ate an entire pickled lemon thinking it was a meatball. I made the mistake of going with peer pressure at the table and put the whole thing into my mouth at once (amid debate of what it was). It was tart, to say the least. Tart and gooshy. But not as bad as it could have been.

This weekend we went to the Peloponnese, mostly around Nafplion, the first capital of modern Greece. It had a ton of old Venetian castles and buildings, and felt really Italian. But everything there was totally explorable. We hit up a few sites from ancient times (Lerna, Mycenae, Tiryns, and the Treasury of Atreus for those who are interested). These were really impressive, especially the Atreus thing. It was this huge room dug into a hill and lined with stones, so that it had the whole whisper wall thing going on for it. The entrance was really huge, and makes me want to go to Egypt.

We also got to explore around an ancient temple complex that had a theater built into it. The acoustics still worked pretty well despite the amount of stone missing from the structure. I made the decision to Rocky it, and sprint up all of the stairs in a race. I made it to the top, fell down, and almost lost my cookies. Pretty poor decision, I think. And to top it all off, I lost. But to be fair, Jeff is a runner with longer legs than me. So I'm ok with it.

The coolest contemporary thing we got to do was see some of the burned spots after the fires. It was from the bus, but still. It was pretty devastated, with burned out trees and shrubs dotting the orchards and olive groves. Speaking of which, I hate olives. Satan fruit, if you ask me.

I'll get some pictures up later on, I have to get paper writing. Things are starting to pick up what with the whole "going to school here" thing. It shouldn't be too bad though.

So yea, pictures to come.

The Minotaur? More like the Mino-snore

Crete was beyond all words. First, it’s a lot bigger than I thought it would be. We went to the main city there (Iraklia) on a ferry, which was around 9 hours overnight, and they split us up into four groups. My group went to an ancient Minoan villa and a palace at Malia on the first day. I left my camera on the bus for both of those, so no pictures of those two. But the next day we went to a museum that has every Minoan piece you see in textbooks. EVERRYTHING! It was pretty unbelievable to see the famous stuff in person. I’m not really a big museum kinda guy, but wow.

That afternoon we went to Knossos, the Minotaur’s pad. It was pretty sweet, but really really crowded. Lots of Germans there, all of them climbing the walls and getting yelled at by the guard ladies. The coolest part about the sites here is that you are allowed to walk all over the place and touch everything since it's so stable (and reinforced with concrete here and there). It was pretty cool to touch stuff that was touched by humans 6k+ years ago. There really isn’t that much more to say about the ruins, since it's pretty much just a bunch of rocks laid in rows.

After that we spent the night in a sweet hotel up in the mountains. It was really green with a big central lawn surrounded by a pool, a bar, and a bunch of pomegranate trees, which we picked clean within ten minutes of getting there. It’s not stealing if it’s growing on a tree, right? They even had a restaurant attached to the hotel that had its own fish farm. So we got to feed the fish, then eat them. We took over the bar and turned it into a big loud annoying dance party, which really amused the Greek guys sitting in the back. I turned around once to see one take my picture with his cell phone, then throw me the thumbs up. No idea. Kinda creepy. Speaking of which, about 90 percent of the Cretan guys have moustaches, and lots of them carry a dagger wherever they go. It's some kind of big machismo thing.

The next day we all took off to Phaestos, which is another famous palace way up on a mountain (the mountains in Crete are pretty huge, which means that to get anywhere you have to drive up these huge cliffs and curvy roads). Phaestos was pretty empty, so we had the place to ourselves to explore and look at stuff. By that point it was kinda boring since it was the third or fourth set of ruins we saw. But afterwards we went to this beach that was once the hangout of the Greek hippies back in the day. The water was really clear with huge rocks under the surface, and when you swam out a ways you could climb up into caves carved into the mountains flanking the beach, most of which had benches and what I can only assume were toilets of some kind carved into them. A lot have paintings on the inside too. A bit further out was a cliff you could climb up the side of to about 30 or 40 feet. A few kids jumped off, but I didn't because I was feeling sick from swallowing sea water and battling the currents. Plus I'm a wimp. But the view was still stunning. Back on the beach itself there were tons of even older caves carved by the Romans as a cemetery, which we climbed all over to around 50 or 60 feet up. It was amazing. I've never been somewhere so cool. On another note, I pulled the old “too cool for sun block” maneuver, and as a direct result I got ridiculously sunburnt. It doesn’t hurt now, but it’s really itchy. Kinda lame.

On the last day of the trip we went the Samaria gorge, the second longest in Europe, and hiked from the top of it to the bottom, about 13 kilometers with a descent of 1.5 kilometers. It was awesome. I fed a kri-kri. The pictures I put up on facebook are good, but you can't tell how freaking huge everything is. None of the photos use any zoom at all, they are all of just massive rocks. So after that we all got on a ferry, then a bus to Xania (another cool city with a big Venetian castle [they used to run the place]), then another ferry back to Athens, where I slept for a while and did my laundry.

Oh, and we found a Catholic church here. It's for immigrants mostly, since 98% of Greeks are Orthodox, so it’s a bunch of African immigrants and Filipinos. The music is very.... different. Electric piano and bass dominate, along with really stilted rhythm since it is translated and sung by people who don’t really know the ins and outs of the English language. It’s actually pretty hard to follow. On the plus side, I'm taller than everyone there. There are more people packed into that church than can ever be safe, as in more than a mass at the Basilica after a home game. I'm going to try to get pictures of the church, maybe after mass next week.

The photos are here:

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THREE
FOUR

Quick update

So the reason I haven't written anything on here in a while is that there hasn't been much going on. The only interesting events of the past week were dressing up for a formal dinner with another apartment (getting fed is always a plus) and bribing a cab driver to let six of us rather than the maximum of four into his car. We were way out in the middle of nowhere (near all of the clubs that move to the beach for the summer), and it was 3:30 in the morning. The conversation went something like this:

"We need to get to Kolonaki and Pangrati... and we have two more friends coming with us."
"No, maximum four!"
"Even with a really good tip?"
"No, maxi---How good?"
"How much would it take to get six people into this car?"
"Mmmm, 15 euro."
"Deal! Get in, guys."

It was still a cheap ride, and taking the tram would have taken an hour and a half to get home.

I have some more to write down, but I just found out that I have classes today- I was told they were cancelled...... And I haven't started packing for the week long Crete trip, which leaves 10 minutes after my last class ends. So I should probably get on that.

edit: It took me about twenty minutes to pack, so I have an hour to write some stuff out. Here goes.

This past weekend was pretty relaxed. I stayed in Athens and was just bumming around town. Which was good, because a lot of people got stuck on islands this weekend due to rough seas. They have to take the boats straight to Crete, and miss out on the sweet 15 hour ferry ride. Which I am really looking forward to. Should be a lot of fun. Hopefully I don't get seasick, though I never have before.

Classes are classes, same old same old, and the weather has been nice. A little bit colder, but still nice.

Oh, and to end on something interesting- I found out that I can fit 43 straws into my mouth at once.

The land of the Snail-eaters

So I spent this past weekend, Thursday through Sunday, in France. It was a good time. I already posted the photos yesterday, so look for those below.

The trip started off well- first we got ripped off by a taxi driver, who overcharged us about 7 euros. Then, since he was such a nice guy (really, he seemed awesome), I gave him a tip. What a mook I am. So after this ride we are in the airport here in Athens a few hours early to make sure we get through security and all that. Really, we didn’t need that much time. The Greeks have yet to even glance at my student visa. Anyways, we got on the plane bound to Brussels and, after about fifteen minutes, had to disembark before takeoff because some guy got on with a false passport. After booting him off, they had to search the plane to make sure he didn’t leave anything on board. So we got to Brussels about an hour late, which was fine, seeing as how we had a six hour break between the flight landing at the airport and when our train left.

So once we got there, we are looking around for a city map when a taxi driver asks us if we have any questions and what we are looking for. He was really taken aback when we said we would just walk around the city center (usually really safe over here) at night. He flatly told us that it was totally unsafe, and that we had to stay in the airport. So we did. For six hours. We did meet some guy who was from Nigeria who lives in Athens. He was really nice, although a little creepy at times. That was probably just cultural stuff and the fact that everyone there was zombified by lack of sleep. I exchanged cell phone numbers with him, and he’s going to show me a good Catholic church in the area with English masses. Then some clubs geared towards African immigrants. Should be pretty sweet. He had a lot of questions, some got kind of awkward due to the language barrier (his English was good, not awesome) and content. Like, “Isn’t America very unfriendly to its blacks?” We gave him a quick history rundown and assured him it was ok in America for everyone. He was headed to Amsterdam to buy a car and ship it to Nigeria for Christmas. Apparently it was cheaper that way.

Once we got on the train at 6:30 with our new friend and a guy (Danish, I think) we met when I asked him about the trains, thinking he worked on them (to be fair, he was wearing a dirty orange and blue jumpsuit like all the transportation workers wear), we got to the southern train station in Brussels and took our train to Paris Nord, which is the north station. The Paris subway is super crowded and the stops are really far apart. Really, not one of my favorite subways systems. But anyways we had another train to catch bound for Chartres in another station in Paris (Mont Parnasse). Once in Chartres we met up with the big ND group (about 60 students and some priests), and toured a really old cathedral (built around 1026). It was built for Mary, and once contained the clothing she wore when she gave birth to Jesus. There were also more statues than I had thought possible, most of which were missing the heads. Apparently they didn’t like statue heads during the French Revolution, so they broke ‘em all and ripped up Mary’s clothing. Pinnacle of civilization, those French.

After the brief stay in Chartres the group went to Le Mans, a medieval city that acted as the base-city of the CSC (which founded Notre Dame). We got shown around the old city and cathedral and all the religious stuff there. Like Fr. Moreau’s parish church. They had a big stained glass window there that had the Dome and a bunch of guys wearing mortarboards on it. We also had a little reception with Fr. Jenkins and a bunch of the other priests from ND. Some wine, fancy pizza-like appetizers (I can’t spell that French phrase for them, but it sounds like “ordervs”), and, as Fr. Jenkins put it, a lot of schmoozing. Photo op, anyone? On that note though, I am now on the ND website. Pretty cool. The university’s photographer was going bananas (b-a-n-a-n-a-s).

The beatification ceremony was so-so. It was mostly in French (with a little English and Spanish tossed in), so I was a little lost even through we had books with translations. But there were around 4000 people there from all over the world (the States, Africa, Chile, everywhere) and it was in this huge sports arena. A cardinal came by to represent the pope, who elected not to personally attend the first beatification under his papacy. Well, they can’t all be JP 2. The beatification itself involved the bishop of Le Mans formally asking the Portuguese (I think) cardinal to consider Moreau to be called blessed, and the cardinal said, essentially, “Yeah, ok. Il Papa is cool with that.” I really didn’t like it that much. The cardinal stood awkwardly far away from the bishop and didn’t participate in the service outside of reading his script, all the while surrounded by attendants of some sort and sitting in a really nice decorated chair. Basically, a throne. This extreme formality and power display, mixed with the apparent disinterest of the cardinal made me feel like I was watching someone deign themselves to tell us filthy peasants that we can call someone blessed. It was just so impersonal and blasé at times. I mean, I can understand stuff like St. Peter’s being really awesome to display the greater glory of God and revering religious figures and the like, but the bishop, representative of the pope, just came off as pompous and inconvenienced to be there.

Anyways, they rolled out a giant photo of him and we all sang some French song and BAM he was beatified. My favorite part of the ceremony, though, came at the end, when a bishop was getting up to proceed out and the sleeve of his vestment snagged up a little bit, revealing the video camera he held in his hand. This was timed perfectly with the camera being fixed on him, so the gigantic video screens they had set up was focused right on him. He noticed that and, with a sleight of his hand, flipped his sleeve down to conceal the camera.

Afterwards they had really good champagne and amazing cookies for the reception. It was simultaneously funny and embarrassing, watching some of the people there get more than a little tipsy in front of a bunch of priests and nuns. Back in Le Mans, we walked around the city a little bit and ate at this fancy-ish restaurant where I accidentally ordered a raw fish appetizer with my meal. I was hungry and it was pricey, so I ate it. Raw salmon and tuna. Not processed either, just cut right off of the fish. It was really bad on the first few bites, but once I got past the texture and temperature it wasn't too terrible. It got down and stayed down, which is all that really counts.

That night (and the night before, for that matter) we stayed in Le Mans in this cheap hotel. The rooms were super tiny, and they didn’t have soap or shampoo in the bathrooms. Luckily, they did have a hand soap dispenser right next to the shower so I was able to bathe, kind of. But it was pretty much just an uncarpeted room with three beds in a stack, a small table with a stool, and a bathroom, which came with complimentary silverfish (and hands soap). It was rather Spartan. And not in the madness, kicking Persians down the well sense of it, but the other sense of the word. Come Sunday morning, the train left to get to Paris. We had first class tickets, so we got to sit in the nice coach in huge, overstuffed chairs among a bunch of rich old people.

Paris is nice, but so big. And the people are weird. I'm not a fan of them. Some were nice enough to give me directions (I learned how to say “I don’t speak French” and “do you speak English?”) when I asked though. We got to see the big three (Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and Notre Dame) but not go inside any of them. We also stumbled upon the school that Napoleon was trained in. It was apparently the main French military school. I was expecting a small hut staffed by mimes and maids, but it was actually really nice. Anyways, we didn’t get to go inside because we only had three hours or so, and it was a huge stretch to even see the ones we did. The lines to get into all of them were ridiculous. Like, several hours to get into Notre Dame. I did, however, find time to buy a red beret and get a nutella crepe, which I ate while laughing haughtily. We got to CDG on the train and randomly met another student from here in Greece who was also in France. On the flight, they served us food. I love Olympic Air. It was a three hour flight, and they gave us really comfortable seats and a full dinner. In the US, you would be lucky to get a glass of water on a three hour flight.

We came back to Athens around 1 in the morning to see that the New Democracy party (incumbent) had won the national elections, which happened on Sunday. People were going nuts, waving New Democracy and Greek flags out their car windows, screaming, and honking their horns jubilantly. I scored a sweet flag that fell off of a car and got blown over to the side near the sidewalk. I got home, called it a weekend, and went to bed.

Au revoir, I’ll keep you posted the next time something interesting happens.

I went to France, I'll write about it later

But in the mean time, here are my pictures


Album one

Album two

I climbed a mountain (sort of)

Photos linked at the bottom.

Last night I decided to go with my fellow Domer Jeff to climb a mountain. It was behind the Kolonaki district, and there is a small Orthodox monastery dedicated to St George on top of it. We walked there from school (about 20 minutes, all uphill) and felt like we had already done climbing. So, stinky and tired, we just got on the train that takes us up to the top. It was kinda shaky, being pulled by a steel cord while another car was being lowered down simultaneously. Jeff listed it as "a deathtrap," since there really were no emergency exits of any sort.

After a minute or two we were at the top. It was breathtaking. I have never seen a city so huge, nor have I seen anything from a vantage like the mountain I was on. The city spread out to the surrounding mountains, right up to the steep inclines, and to the Aegean Sea on the other side. Amazing! There was a little restaurant on top too. The church was dark and, like all other Eastern Orthodox institutions, creepy. Really, really creepy. Something about the mysticism, methinks. I snagged a bunch of photos while I was up there, and a little video too. It was great. The photos, however, do it no justice. It was cool and breezy on top of the mountain, a nice change from the hot and stuffy city. Anyways, that's about all I have right now. I just wanted to post it asap.

Enjoy the photos here

Everybody's working for the Greek-end

Sorry about the pun. I had to. Photos linked at the bottom of the post.

So since I last wrote on this there have been a few new things. They are few, but indeed new. Classes started up, and so far I really like all of them. My profs are pretty easy going and all that, this being a school expecting its students to travel and everything like that. Well, most of them are anyways. This past weekend was my first weekend to really see the city. First and foremost, it is big. There are only a few buildings over a couple stories tall, so that means it’s really spread out, and has a lot of really narrow streets. Which I like a lot, actually. It makes me feel like I’m seeing something ancient. But on that note, the architecture and history here has some surprising twists in it. For example, there are ruins and buildings from 2400 years ago, then some from the 1850s. Almost nothing exists between those two times. I don’t know why, but it gives the city a really cool dichotomy. On a side note, I decided that dichotomy is one of my favorite words ever.

Anyways, I went out with a big group and trekked over to the Plaka district, which is full of cheap touristy shops and some tavernas (taverns, kinda). We got a bite to eat and just roamed around trying to find either the Gazi or Psiri district, which are both really well known for having good clubs and bars and the like. Lots of nightlife. We ended up lost in a shady part of town near the Hotel Eratos. I think it’s a bordello. There were also a bunch of what I can only assume were strip clubs. I never want to go in there, taking into special account how hairy everyone is here. Ew. We turned around and headed backwards, eventually getting to the far edge of the Psiri district. It was neat, but not the crazy party we were hoping for. Lots of strangely dressed, kind of androgynous Greek teens. My favorite was a girl sitting near us with her boyfriend, serenading him with some Yankee pop song from a few years back. I don’t remember the name of it, just that it has the line “I’m wonderin…. wonderin….” repeated a lot. That and she had a funny accent. We headed home soon after that, which took us past some ruins and the like. About forty minutes later I was in bed and happy for it.

That was Friday. Saturday, most of the ND crew took a tram out to a local beach. Instead of sand, it’s all pebbles. The water is the bluest I have ever seen. Ever. The backdrop of the area was a huge mountain range off in the distance. It was a public beach, inhabited mostly by older men, all of whom love playing that tennis-like game with a tennis ball and wooden paddles. They all also love wearing banana hammocks and bending over to pick stuff up. As I mentioned earlier on, keep in mind that people here have a lot of hair. It was pretty gross, so I just stared out to sea. We managed to meet some Iraqis nearby who were vacationing in the area, so that was pretty cool. Oh, and there was this guy who liked to sit next to girls and do this seductive pose while smoking a cigarette and not saying anything. He was the creepiest man I have ever seen. I took a picture of him, it should be on Facebook. Just look for the one tagged as “weirdo” in the album. After the beach we did some boring stuff like a movie and some dinner, but then we went out to Belair, our CYA bar of choice. It was some guy’s birthday, so everyone was celebrating appropriately. Especially him. Jeeze.

Late night, came home, went to bed. Did homework and watched Lawrence of Arabia on Sunday. The homework is going to be a pretty big bummer while I am here. It really seems to have a lot of reading involved. Like, a lot a lot. But who knows, I’ll figure out some way to manage my time and get it all done and still travel.

Photos of the beach found HERE

Photos

From now on,I will start off each post with a link to the newest photos I have put up. So here you go. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2107899&l=df6e1&id=5612540

The Land of the (Edited by request)

I know that i never really even finished up the last blog. Munich will just have to remain a mystery for all. You'll never know about Sandor, my Hungarian best friend. Or the Western Union Hotel Misadventure. Nope, never know.

Anyways, I'm in Greece. Athens, to be more specific. The Pangrati district, to be obnoxiously specific. My school is located right next to the stadium they used in the 1896 Olympic Games (the first modern ones), which was built in the 4th century BC. It's pretty cool. From the fourth floor windows you can see right up to the Acropolis, and the sun sets right behind it. It's a really awesome sight. My apartment is about a thirty second walk from here, in a kind of dirty and cramped section of the Pangrati district. Most of the students live in the Kolonaki district, which is really posh and expensive and nice, but about a 20 minute walk from the school. Add to that the fact that Athens is the embodiment of the word "hilly." So basically, I'm happy with my dirtier, closer home. I live with five other guys, most of whom are from the Northeast. They had us fill out a housing form to make sure the roommate situations worked out, unlike some back at ND (read: anyone stuck living with Saylor).

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I didn't just apparate in Athens (though I really wish I had). I flew out of Chicago after a night at the Butler household. They were nice enough to give me a ride to Chicago after the game Saturday night, then put me up in a spare bedroom until we had to leave for Midway around 6:50 AM. Really nice. I flew over to Newark, which didn't smell nearly as much as I had feared. I checked back in and waited for a few hours before getting onto an Airbus bound for Amsterdam. It had the super awesome movie screens in the headrests, so I ended up not sleeping on a transatlantic flight yet again. On the plus side, I did finally get to see Shrek the Third, and some other decent flicks. The Reaping was another entertaining one. Though watching horror movies on a plane is probably a bad idea. First, I noticed the lady sitting next to me look really really awkward as a sex scene came on in the movie. It was brief, but pretty obvious. That last sentence refers to both the sex scene, and how awkward the lady looked. She then pretended to be asleep for a while. Also, when a scary part happened suddenly, I jumped in my seat a bit and woke up both people sitting next to me. Being startled awake miles above the middle of the ocean isn't fun, apparently.

Anyways, we landed in Amsterdam for a six hour layover. Well, six and a half hours. From 530 AM to 12 the brave Domers sat in the uncomfortable airport seats with their unnecessary armrests and hard backs. We also found a bathroom. It would have been cool had we been able to leave the airport. Or even the terminal. But we couldn't so it was mind-numbingly boring. The four hour flight was... ok I guess. I wasn't awake for more than 10 minutes at a time. I slept through takeoff and all of the snack servings. Well, I did wake up for one, when the stewardess held a roll directly under my nose and gave me some water. Anyways, I woke up for the landing, after which we got off the plane via some steps, just like in the old movies. I guess the airport was full? They lost some of our luggage (well, really just one person's luggage), so after filling out the claim we were all on our way. No customs to enter, by the way. We got in the cabs that the school had waiting for us and, after a forty minute, cramped cab ride, I was home.

The biggest culture shocks for me so far involve two things. One, no hot showers. I had a warmish one today, but the last one was FREEZING cold. We have to turn the water heater on manually, and hadn't quite figured out how long to let it heat up. The water pressure is just a trickle, too. Barely enough to cut through my mane of hair. It just rolls off the top. The second, and probably bigger, shock is that we cannot flush the toilet paper down the toilet. Which is a) gross and b) really off-setting. It goes in a little trash can nearby. It's gross. But apparently the pipes are too small to handle the paper load. Cikos has the same issue in China, so he and I have some commissertaing to do.

The past few days have been orientation mostly, learning about the school and a bit of the language. so far, I know zero Greek. It didn't stick with me quite yet. I did learn about a big cultual tabboo. It's called the five finger curse or something, and is performed by holding your open hand palm out with the fingers spread. Kind of like "talk to the hand." But this will make people fight you. And I've done it three times. In all cases I was trying to say thank you, or excuse me, but to them, it's been me bumping into them then saying "Five curses upon your household!" or "Thanks for the pizza. Five curses upon your household!" I just hope I don't get beat up over it. Maybe my charm and wit will save me. Without Greek though, I may have to express it through dance.

Worst night ever, maybe my best story.

Okay, so on Friday night I was forced yet again to take the nightbus. I went to the subway stop near the girls’ apartment, but there was no map. Fine, I thought. I could just ask the next person where it is. Five groups of scary men later, I finally plucked up the nerve to ask someone where the stop was. He had a friendly looking dog, which I took as a sign of a nice person. The person helped out a ton, but the dog was terrified of me. It was a big one, but did not want to be standing there at 1:50 A.M. talking to this stranger. I guess I am a bit on the intimidating side. Anyways, I got to the stop, and the sketchy “adventure” began.

I was waiting for the bus to come to the stop when, about five minutes before it arrived, a guy in his mid forties came and stood nearby in the stop area. I nodded over to let him know that I saw him come up. You know, just to acknowledge that he was there and be polite. Well after a few silent minutes, he said something about it being really late, and that waiting for the bus was boring. Seeing a chance to speak some more German before I had to leave for home, I naively replied. He realized that my German sucked (surprise, surprise) and we struck up a conversation. When the bus came he got on before me and let me get into the seat first. Which at first I thought was nice, but later realized that it kind of trapped me there. It was this order:

|| Seat seat aisle “Hans” me ||

So I was kinda stuck. We chatted for a while, making small talk in German as we waited to get to our stop at the main hub near the opera house. He was a baker headed to work the night shift from something crazy like 3 am to noon. He mentioned something about just getting back from a long vacation. Over in Europe they get 3 weeks per year, but this guy had taken two years worth and put them together to get a crazy good vacation. But he didn’t really want to talk about himself. No, I was the interesting tourist. The interesting, confused, nubile young tourist. It began when he would ask me a question and just tap my left knee with his hand. That isn’t too weird. A lot of people do that here in the States, and it isn’t really that huge of a deal. But soon, the taps were more along the line of touches, pausing for a second on my leg after he asked the question. Questions like “oh, and what did you think of that?” interrupting the monologue I was using to try and keep him from asking more questions. I know that I am irresistible, and my appeal transcends both lingual and national barriers, but this was ridiculous.

So at this point, my spidey-senses are tingling. I know where my wallet is, which person looked most likely to speak English if I had to yell for help, and what point on the guy looked elbow-able. Hopefully the guy was just nice, and this was the weirdest it would get. Ohhh no. He kept on asking questions during my rambles, and the touches went to what I can only call “lingers.” It only happened a few times, towards the end of the trip, but it was enough to creep me the hell out. At this point my monologue had wound down, and there was an awkward silence. He turned languidly towards me, touched my leg ever so gently, and asked if I had a girlfriend “in die USA.” As he let the question roll out and I began to answer, his hand didn’t move. But his index finger did. Gently back and forth on the fabric of my jeans, right above my knee. I said “No” paused… looked at his hand then up at him, then “but I used to.” I REALLY hoped that that got the message got across, but he asked me yet another question and did the same “linger.” I don’t remember the question because my entire cerebral cortex was screaming “DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!” but I remember a few more touches.

It was easily the creepiest experience of my entire life, much less the trip. As soon as the bus got off, I crossed the street against the light and got to my bus stop. Well, I went to a different one until I saw him get on his own bus. Then I took a cab home, packed, and went to bed.