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Athens: Making People Homicidal Since 3000BC
"Feeling my way through the darkness, guided by a beating heart, I can't tell where the journey will end, but I know where to start. They tell me I'm too young to understand. They say I'm caught up in a dream. Life will pass me by if I don't open up my eyes. Well that's fine by me. So wake me up when it's all over, when I'm wiser and I'm older. All this time I was finding myself and I didn't know I was lost." - Avicii
Ever see a horse that doesn't want to be loaded get dragged onto a trailer by trainers holding lunge whips and lead lines threaded through the windows? That's kinda the way I got on the ferry back to Athens. Four boats in three days. That had to be a new record for me. Never mind that Athens was my least favourite destination so far, and I didn't want to go back.
I spent my last afternoon on Crete in Heraklion's city centre, towing my suitcase around like a donkey pulling a cart while I waited for the ferry. My hotel's twelve-o'clock check-out had left me no other choice. By cheer coincidence, I ran into one of Elena's friends at the bus stop that I'd met the night I arrived. She helped me haul my luggage onboard, both of us laughing as we took turns stumbling and dropping either end of the elephantine bag.
I had lunch at Ippokampos, the seafood taverna on the waterfront that I'd promised to come back to. The food was fresh and a glass of wine was only one euro. The stuffed grape leaves I ordered were homemade, and the waiter showed me how to dress my fava with olive oil, raw onions and olives.
As if the universe were trying to rub it in my face, another mother and daughter with North American accents were seated at the table next to me (really!?). I twisted in my seat so I was half-facing them, open to starting a conversation if I got the chance. As I listened, though, I decided I'd rather not intrude on their lunch. The teenage daughter was confiding in her mother that she was nervous about going to China - some kind of student exchange from what I could gather. She said "Sammy" and "Jess" had just texted to tell her they'd received their acceptance letters from domestic colleges and she wanted to go with them. "I don't even know what grade I'm going to be placed in or what to pack" the girl whimpered. I recognized the teary look in her eyes, the trembling lower lip. It was a vulnerability a young woman only shows her mother. And I recognized the mother's stoic, bolstering encouragement, that cool, unemotional sobriety behind which she really wanted to say, "I don't want you to go, either."
I watched the skies as the evening wore on. The wind was picking up and clouds were stirring in a way that turned the rumour of a storm into a promise, shadowing the city in early darkness. The seagulls overhead looked too white. I almost hoped the ferry would be cancelled. No such luck. I arrived at the port to find it docked and ready for departure. I stood at the end of the ramp, pretending I didn't know where I was supposed to go until two officials chased me around the parking lot, yelling that it was okay and trying to coax me onboard.
Ever gotten lost on a boat? I have. The Festos Palace, operated by Minoan Lines, was even bigger than the Blue Star ferry I'd taken to get here. It was another orangutan-in-a-tuxedo feeling when I entered the marble-pillared reception area. Adorned with life-size Greek statues and gold trim, the circular room more resembled a luxury hotel plaza. I was told to take the elevator up to the seventh floor, where I spent the next twenty minutes wandering aimlessly until another attendant pointed me in the direction of public seating. The extravagance of the vessel was wasted on me. My only thought as I traversed what felt like kilometres of intersecting hallways was that it would be impossible to find my way out of here if anything went wrong. I couldn't help the impending sense of doom I felt. The words of the rapist in the movie 300 suddenly came back to me: "This will not be over quickly. You will not enjoy this."
Thinking a stomach full of comfort food might help me sleep, I ate every last bite of a heaping plate of spaghetti bolognese in the self-service restaurant. I chased it with baklava and ouzo in an attempt to self-medicate. Little in my life have I regretted more, however, once I was bowed over the toilet in one of the bathroom stalls. I passed most of the night on the floor there, wishing I could throw up just to make the sickening churning in my gut stop. Unfortunately my stomach had always been stubborn, refusing to give up what I'd already put in it. I had never even been seasick, but if there was ever a time for it, it was now. It was pitch black outside the windows. I hated to think how big the waves must have been to rock a ship of this size. Even the waiters in the restaurants, who made the trip daily, were staggering drunkenly from table to table, struggling to balance trays of food as the room tilted at nauseating angles. Every so often there was a bang and the ship shuddered in a way that reminded me of airplane turbulence. Images of the quaking chandelier in the Titanic ballroom crossed my mind.
I was in a cold sweat when I finally returned to my seat. I had the shakes too, though whether they were from nausea or anxiety, or both, I couldn't be sure. I chewed a couple of Pepto-Bismol tablets and curled up in a fetal position, praying for sleep to come and save me from the next nine hours.
Never. Again. I descended the ramp in the port of Piraeus with the conviction that I was through with boats. I was breaking up with boats. The next time I ran into a boat I would turn and walk the other way, pretending I hadn't seen it.
The morning was a dark one. It was still raining as I walked to the cabstand and let the driver put my luggage in the trunk. I gave him an address I'd written on a scrap piece of paper, something I always did in case my pronunciation of a street was wrong or, like now, the driver didn't speak English.
I rarely stayed in hostels, opting instead for more private apartments or guesthouses. This one, however, had large, individual rooms, each with a lock and its own bathroom. It was closer to a cheap hotel, really, than a hostel. It was located in a rather rough neighbourhood, though, Athens' Chinatown, hidden amidst a slum of Indian grocers and boarded-up shops with Chinese lettering and graffitied garage doors. I was the only white female staying here. Almost all the other occupants were Pakistani, or some variation of Middle-Eastern. I heard Arabic for the next three hours while I dozed on the couch in the twenty-four-hour reception area, waiting for my room to be ready. There was one other man there, sleeping off, I guessed, a late-night bender. Finally the desk attendant woke him with a blunt kick to the armchair he was slumped in. "Don't sleep here," he said. "Please, go to your room or I will give it to her."
Stress, combined with exhaustion, has a way of shooting my immune system to hell. I had a sore throat and watery eyes by the time I got upstairs. My transfer from Athens to Madrid to Lima to Cuzco was going to span a gruelling thirty-six hours, after which I would have to ride a horse on a multi-day pack trip through the Andes to Machu Picchu. Now was not the time to be getting sick. I decided to dedicate the few days before my flight out to recovery, spending most of my time resting safe in my room and cleaning out my system with healthy meals - lots of fruits and vegetables and no alcohol. I had to be gentle with myself.
The bathroom in my room was clean and spacious, but the shower made me want to cry. The water pressure was so low I had to hold the shower head in my hair for several minutes before it was soaked through. Before I laid down for a nap, I went online and booked four nights at the Hilton in Old Town Scottsdale later in the month.
I couldn't sleep. I was too hungry. Annoyed, I got up and walked into the city centre. I took a garbage bag full of laundry with me while I was at it, because I was on my last pair of clean undies. I had a quick bite of homemade onion pie and eggplant salad at one of the pastoral side-street restaurants in Plaka, because it reminded me of the islands. Lemon juice with honey to drink. I went to a minimarket and bought conditioner, water and orange juice, then fruit because the strawberries at the stands in Monastiraki Square were so beautiful they almost looked fake, and I could smell them from twenty feet away, plus a handful has 100% of your Vitamin C requirement for the day.
When I got back to my room I put five drops of oregano oil (better than an antibiotic) under my tongue, per the instructions on the bottle, then gulped with orange juice until the spicy bitterness was washed away. Then, finally, I slept.
Oregano oil is a miracle elixir. By the next morning I felt fine. I went out early in search of food (I'd had strawberries for dinner the night before) and found the bougatsa shop where I'd seen a man hand-rolling phyllo dough through the window yesterday, stretching the pastry so thin you could read a newspaper through it. I got there just as the first batch was coming out of the oven. It was still hot when the baker handed me a portion in a cardboard take-out box, neatly cut up in bite-size squares and covered so liberally in cinnamon and powdered sugar you had to be careful when you inhaled. The bougatsa was good, better than most in Athens, but I'd had better on Crete. The shop did, however, make a mean freddo cappuccino.
I'd memorized the turns back to my hostel by now; left, middle fork, left again, slight curve right. I'd also learned it was better to map out a route BEFORE you set out to go somewhere. I got lost yesterday, and it wasn't pretty. I was fighting down panic by the time I came to yet another intersection of four or five zigzagging streets, all leading to more broken windows and dark alleyways littered with garbage and spare tires. I stared at my map, rotated it ninety degrees. I normally tried to at least look like I knew where I was going. The problem was if I walked purposefully in any direction I was likely to be going even further away from where I needed to be. I took a deep breath, told myself to stop. Look. Think.
Seeing me, a man in a white apron jogged out of the kabob shop across the street. "Miss!" He called. "Can I help you?"
"Yes," I turned to him. "I'm trying to get to Menandrou."
"Menandrou?" He pointed back the way I'd come. "First street on your left." He nodded to my map. "And please," he said, "put that away." I understood what he meant. Standing in the middle of an intersection looking lost and confused, I might as well have a bright red bullseye painted on my back.
The knife was back. In Croatia it had disappeared to the bottom of my bag, forgotten until I got to Crete and used it to cut up bread and apples. I'd all but given up on it after Antonio laughed at the puny blade and said the worst it could do was scratch a man and make him angry. I still didn't carry it at the ready like I did in the beginning, but having it made me feel better. At the very least it might scare someone, or distract them long enough for me to get away. Such precautions might sound melodramatic to those of you seated at your computer desks in the security of your homes. Put yourselves in my well-broken-in hiking shoes. My instincts blared like flashing red sirens every time I stepped out my door here.
Today was a better day. After breakfast I browsed the Monastiraki flea market for a while, doing mental calculations and debating whether or not I could afford to buy souvenirs. I stopped for lunch at Bairaktaris, a souvlaki taverna run by the same family since the 1870's. Their famous kabob platter cost seven euros and came with two big pitas, roasted tomatoes, onions and four of the juiciest, most tender and garlicky meat skewers I'd ever tasted (flavour that can only come from a quick, caramelizing sear on a well-seasoned grill), all topped with paprika. I ate half and packaged up the rest to take up Areopagus Hill tomorrow for a picnic. A pasty older couple eyed me over their wine glasses as I emptied the bread basket into my purse. "Don't judge me," I wanted to say. "I'm on a budget."
A budget that was holding up far better than expected. Finally deciding I had more than enough to spare, I went back to the market where I'd seen countless shops selling these sleeveless white dresses with gold waistbands that looked like they belonged on Olympian goddesses. I'd coveted them since I arrived in Greece, and they were near the top of my list of things to buy with excess funds. I also needed a new side bag/carry-on. Mine had been to hell and back with me, and looked it. I thought about it, and tried to decide which I needed more, the bag or the dress. I looked down at my sorry bag. The inner lining had detached back in Rome, the zipper was broken, the shoulder strap was stretched and coming loose, hanging by a thread on one side, and the outside was grimy with sea-salt residue, sand, dust and exhaust. The dress.
- comments
Dad that's my girl.....you shop like your Dad. haha
julie Hey, I'm enjoying your travels so much...glad you are recognizing people/places to be aware of and so happy the oregano oil is working out ...it's been a godsend to me. We went to London on the weekend to my Teachers' College 50th reunion. Here I thought I was only 50 yrs old so I think someone made a mistake...how did that happen!!!!?? I spent time with my friends from high school and we laughed about the fun we had and the silly things we did .So glad you don't do some of the same things LOL. I was amazed at how many of them didn't stay in teaching. Sam had a great time...met so many people who had friends in common with him. Stay safe, my sweet! love you Julie