Ferries, trains, airplanes, Athens, Ios, Santorini and Amsterdam: Part 2 - Ios

Obtaining a ferry to Santorini was not difficult, and after riding the newly renovated underground (redone for the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics) to the port of Piraeus, I had my reservations ready on another overnighter. After scouting out my gate, I headed back to Hotel Lozanni for my last night.

Waiting at the gate for the ferry to begin boarding I met a few people; the one who turned out to be consequential enough for me to remember was an Irishman named J. who was flirting with another passenger in a sickeningly sentimental and capricious manner with a hint of what may have been despondency but I did not quite identify.

I mentioned that I was going to get some food during this episode of flirting, where he semi-goodnaturedly accused me of trying to get in her pants myself (I really wasn't; she was a bit too old and not terribly attractive, although younger than J. and not unattractive either, to be fair. Since he bought me dinner, I offered to get him something from the nearby kiosk (Athens is filled with snack, news and cigarette kiosks, where indeed I did the bulk of my shopping), and he asked me to get him a few beers, which surprised me but I did it anyway, figuring it was about as much as he spent on me.

That proved to be the first of a few beer runs I engaged upon on his behalf.

The second was on the boat, and he gave me money this time. We got to talking, and he told me a bit about himself, and the conversation seemed pretty normal until he invited me to his restaurant on Ios (an Island near Santorini), and assured me that he never told a lie and that I would get to meet "my heroes" like Shane Macgowan of the Pogues and Bono. While I never actually mentioned either of these men as being my heroes, he seemed together that they were after I mentioned that I loved Irish music (although I was specifically talking about the kind of traditional Irish music that Irish bands play in Irish bars, which as much as I do indeed like I know very little about). he mad increasingly extravagant claims such as this one that I had trouble fully believing, but he was an interesting fellow and didn't seem to have any ulterior motives; indeed his only motive seemed to be to keep a steady flow of alcohol going through his system; so I figured what the hell and went to his restaurant with him.

Due to the fact that I did not sleep more than a half hour and other factors which I will not mention here, I was red-eyed and a little stressed the next day. After being slightly embarrassing for asking a group of girls at the Ios port bus-stop where the nearest toilet was (they erupted into a storm of giggles as if it was the quaintest thing they had ever heard, a man asking after a toilet), I found a low wall where I could duck behind and relieve my bladder nearby then sat down at the bus stop and read a bit more of my Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus Edition.

The bus ride was as beautiful as the small island itself, surrounded by the sparkling blue Aegean (within the Mediterranean) Sea. There was only one road connecting the port side of the Island to the "strip" where J.'s Restaurant along with many others and places of lodging competed for the attention of the mostly young tourists.

When we arrived at the restaurant I met a few other characters, one of which was a girl a few years older than I that I had alternately been warned "not to touch!" and "not to hurt," although I could "have her." I resolved to make no attempt at pursuing anything of the sort with her, especially after I met her and discovered that she was already in a relationship with somebody else, in addition to being pregnant.

After I watched with some surprise as she drank a little bit of beer, convinced that this is apparently okay to do in moderation in the first trimester (my words weren't able to disincline her of this notion), I was happy to see she did not drink a full beer, only a little.

The other character I met was a Greek who J. and his female friend both referred to as "Uncle," although I saw no evidence of a familial connection, they certainly treated each other like family. "Uncle" was the primary owner and chef of the restaurant where J. and I lounged in hammocks during the hottest part of the day and I slept the night on a lounge chair in a sleeping bag. It seemed more like a messy front porch where people paid for food and occasionally to get ferries booked, as he also acted as a travel agent for people looking to get around the Islands and other nearby areas (he indeed bought my ticket to get to Santorini the next day, where I was happy to be off to due to some strange conversation with J. that I will get to momentarily and because I had a hostel booked for me there).

The morning was spent napping and then going to lounge in the sun on a nearby cliff. I took some pictures with the €5 disposable camera I bought because Unicorn had mine and after being satisfied with a few great shots, carelessly tossed the camera aside.

I then watched it inevitably bounce down the cliff, landing instead of in the cranny which I had tossed it at into the water below the nearly vertical cliff we sat upon.

Despite admonishments warning me to stay where I was, I was feeling adventurous so I made my way down the cliff to where I thought the camera might be. It was a slightly fearful expedition, but left me feeling accomplished with myself when I was standing at the bottom. While I did not se what I recognized as my camera, just when I was turning back I saw something that looked like my camera with some of the casing stripped, and grabbed it.

After making my way back up, They expressed some admiration at my nimbleness then poked fun at me for going all the way down to get a camera that wasn't mine. I wasn't so sure and though it could have been mine, but I will never know unless J. Happens to send me the camera or develop the pictures and send them to me, if that is even possible since it was recovered from an area in the rocks where water washed back in forth.

After sitting there a bit, J.'s female friend had to go to the bathroom, so we moved to higher ground, but had some trouble getting there. J. Left his pack and beer behind, and asked me to bring the former up. As he stood watching me mke my way up the sheer cliff, which he and the girl had slipped on several times, leading me to take a different route, he told me to forget about the beer, which I was also attempting to bring. I was feeling stubborn for some reason, and managed to get the beer and pack up to him, where he was waiting at the top and refused to take the beer but instead took the wrist holding it and dragged me up, saying it was me he cared about, not the beer.


J. apparently took it into his head after we sat some more that I was looking depressed and angrily told me repeatedly just to cheer up. I wasn't feeling particularly depressed, but apparently I wasn't smiling enough to satisfy him, so he increasingly repeated that I needed to just smile until he sounded like he was frothing at the mouth with his anger at my lack of displaying enough smiles. I was feeling at the moment not so much depressed but more like a stone with no emotion to display at all, and didn't see any particular reason to change from that frame of mind.

After some silence, he asked me if I knew any good stories or jokes, and none came to mind, except some dead baby jokes. I started to tell one, and then realized that Jimmy's friend, who was still sitting with us, was pregnant and it might be a bit insensitive so I stopped. When I explained I could only think of dead baby jokes, which probably weren't appropriate, J. got infuriated and asked me if I I wanted to be "thrown off the cliff" for making suggestions like that. I said as patiently as I could, for by this time I was growing quite impatient with his drunken egotistical tirades, that this is why I abstained, and was merely explaining. Then I flashed a toothy grin at him, so he could have the smile he kept complaining about, and a bit of ugly energy and dialogue ensued which resulted in the two of them taking a walk and me staying where I was.

Later, J. Took a nap, and I got to know the girl a little better, who had told me earlier "you really had no idea what you were getting into with him, did you?" which of course, I didn't other than he seemed like an alright fellow.

I still think he is a fine guy, our energies just didn't mix pleasantly that morning, and I am not sure if they could be relied upon to mix pleasantly in the future.

Next time I saw him awake, we played a game of chess, which I was happier than I should have been to beat him handily at. After a bit more awkward conversation, he suggested a walk on the beach with the girl and I, and things were alright from there.

°°°

That evening, we watched a South American gentleman play songs in Spanish as well as a few English classics and a couple other languages (notable was his two word song with not many more chords that somehow lasted a good ten minutes and was definitely beneath his admirable skills but awesomely delivered "Welcome to Tijuana-would you like to have sex with my Iguana" sung in Spanglish). There were more girls met there, and more interesting conversation, and J. very surprised that I didn't take what he saw as a golden opportunity to hit on a Canadian girl and try and get some perhaps, but I just didn't care. Besides, as fun as she would have been to fuck, as I explained to J. and his female friend later, I wasn't in any way desperate to get laid.

This eventually prompted the question: when was the last time you got laid? I told him: ten days. I did not tell him that it would have been sooner had the person I was with not been on her period. He seemed surprised, and this drew me into a conversation about my entire relationship, the second intimate conversation that I somehow got engaged with that day, and this one a longer one that found me revealing way more than I ever thought I would to anyone, let alone a random Irishman at a restaurant he claimed as his own along with his young female friend.

One might say this conversation changed the course of my entire trip, as well as well as my life.

Ferries, trains, airplanes, Athens, Ios, Santorini and Amsterdam: Part 1 - Athens

...And Now I am in Frankfurt, chilling here for five days before going home from here.

My friends, so much has happened again that a simple blog is inadequate.

The last thing worth mentioning that I did before leaving Rome was breaking up with Justine, thinking this is my time to be single, alone, independent, and so on and so forth.

Brindisi-Patras Ferry

I met women almost immediately on the Ferry the next day, notably a fifteen year-old pretending to be 18 that wrote romantic song lyrics in my journal when I was acquiring e-mails (this habit of collecting contact information has since left my journal filled with e-mails and Facebook information from a large cross section of people).

I also met two awesome Turkish guys named Levent and Sevar whom I played Scrabble and cards with (the highligh of the latter being a game of bullshit with the 15 year-old and her friends, which I won handily) and hung out with throughout the ferry ride. The last I heard they saw a Metallica concert in Istanbul and it rocked.

I met a number of other people on the ride whose names I have forgot, but one interesting person was an American a bit younger than me who played blackjack at the casino and won a bit of money at it. I later hung out with his dad, a musician who exchanged Myspace music pages with me, and his sister, an aspiring special needs teacher (very attractive girl).

These are just a few of the many people I met.

When I awoke the next day after sleeping about two hours in a makeshift fort I made using chairs (I slept on the floor while the chairs blocked the hallway) it was time to get up. For breakfast I had some cold fried eggs and loads of bread because it was free and played another game of cards with the people from the night before.

I was quite happy to win at a game of speed, which my adversary was extremely good at and had previously beat me at a good five times.

---

Athens

After the ferry I arrived in Greece at Patras, and took two trains to get to Athens. These are probably the jankiest trains I have ridden yet. A notable observation I made was the final resting place of one's bodily waste: as I looked into the toilet bowl, I saw something speeding by at the same rate as the train, and was slightly amused to to realize that my urine was going straight to the tracks beneath the train.

I fortunately met people on the train to help me make sense of which trains to take, and was again indebted to the help of travellers.

It really makes me want to pay it forward and do the same for as many people as possible, at home and abroad.

I got a cab to Hotel Lozanni, and told the driver I didn't have enough for the journey upon arrival (I tried to discuss the amount of funds I had on me before we went anywhere, but the language barrier aside from the fact it was brushed aside in a very Greek way of worrying about payment after the service has been rendered made my previous comments obsolete), but he accepted what I had. After issuing a grateful "Epharisto!" I got out and went to my hostel.

Hotel Lozanni was a good, inexpensive place to stay and three nights was about all I could handle in Athens, a polluted, dirty and crowded city. I made a lot more friends at Lozanni, notably including a French Canadian girl who looked almost like she was cut from the cast of a typical attractive party girl with too-perfect breasts and a beautiful face and body, although not skinny. She helped me with my French a bit before going on to play dealer in a drinking game behind the hostel bar.

The bar was a great place to meet travellers and be blasted by American Rock standards like "Hotel California," "Save Tonight," "Highway to Hell," and other popular rock from the 70's to the late 90's plus the indispensable Bob Marley. They occasionally played Greek muisic, but usually only after it was requested by somebody.

I met a few other interesting folks whose e-mails and signatures now adorn my journal, including a Dutchman that looks like Robert Downey Junior and works in the bar, some fellow Americans who chilled with me while one played my guitar, a gaggle of Irish women, a girl whose country of origin escapes me (it's in the journal, which isn't near me at the moment) but I was slightly disappointed to learn had a boyfriend because of her attractiveness and our connection over politics (a connection that comes easily for me here, to be sure) and she seemed disappointed in me for breaking up with Unicorn when I told ter the whole story, and an Irish guy who forever immortalized himself writing these four words in my journal "Fuck you rich boy!"

The first sight I saw on my first night was the outside of the Acropolis, which was closed by the time I got there so I did not see the whole thing. Afterwards I wondered about until I was completely by coincedence in front of the remains of some old pillars, many of which lay on the ground. This area was also closed but visible through a fence. I later learned it was the Temple of Olympian Zeus.

I decided at that point to rest a bit, so I lay on the ground attempting unsuccessfully to make my backpack a comfortable pillow, and was almost asleep before I met a Greek man who was dressed in a business suit and emanated an aura of misery. He told me that he worked in the petrol-chemical business, and asked me about where I was from, what did my parents do, etcetera. Somehow the conversation switched to women, and he said something to the effect of no woman would have him. As the conversation went on, I felt a very deep urge not to trust him, although I did not have a logical reason to think that. Since I trust my feelings, I declined as politely as I could when he invited me to go to a club with him with "drinks" and "women," saying I had business back at the hotel.

In all lielihood he was just a lonely middle-aged guy looking to shoot the shit with a traveller, but I'll never know.

The next day I headed to the Acropolis, but decided this time to walk all the way there so I could pass through the marketplace to get some food. I bought a motley but tasty collection of nuts and a hunk of cheese, which I snacked on for the next few days

(at this point I should mention I decided to become a vegetarian on the train to Barcelona, and had eaten my last piece of meat in Barcelona).

Eventually I made my way up what was apprently a back way towards the Acropolis, and met some Californians whom I shared some nuts and water with. I also came to a small rock which was apparently where Ancient Athenians came to discuss the administration of justice on murderers and others, and got a great but unshaded from the hot sun view of the city.

I got my next great view from the Acropolis itself, which is situated on a plateau surrounded in all directions by the city, which is bordered by hills all around except for the Mediterranean, which is also visible from there.

Definitely a postcard view, almost as good as I got from Lekkivitos the next day.

T the Acropolis I met one of the guys I met in Brindisi who also rode the ferry to Athens, who was honeymooning with his wife and reminded me very much of Ray Liotta in the Untouchables. I also met an exotically beautiful Brazillian woman who told me of Brazil and recommeded a few places for me to see there. While talking ot her, I had the hill of Lekkivitos in my sights, and was thinking it might be a fun climb.

The next and final day in Athens found me making that climb. It was just as hard getting to the foot of the trail by scaling the steep streets surrounding the lower section of the hill, and the many steps it took just to get there. When I went to the office for the air tram, I decided I did not want to pay for the tram when the woman behind the counter said was a twenty minute hike, so I headed up the paved trail.

On my way to the trail, I met a pregnant woman whom I briefly converesed with, learning the name of her unborn child (I predictably forgot) before coninuing the hike.

Shortly after starting, an image of a poster I used to have showing a path through woods with Robert Frost's "The Road Less Travelled" superimposed on it (my mom bought it for me when I was a young teenager), I decided to make my own trail. Taking me through thickets of cacti and dead bushes which left numerous slivers in hands arms and legs, it also took me near some interesting life, including birds, some sort of cricket-like creatures that apparently lived there in swarms and made a lot of noise, a homeless-appearing man sleeping on a pallet propped between sections of a rock cliff's bottom littered with trash, and a big yellow spider (like the size of a tarantula) hanging out and waiting for something to pierce his web. I walked through a part of it, but luckily it was a big web and I only walked through a connecting thread from the main part oto a nearby bush.

I would not have been happy to find her crawling on me.

The most noteworthy part of the climb ius when I came to a rock wall barring the way to the trail, which was near the summit. Instead of going around, I decided to climb it, and felt like a pure badass when I made it to the top and climbed over the fence. Again faced with the choice of taking the paved trail to the top, I decided to again make my own trail, and earned more slivers for my choice. I also earned a spot atop a rock at the top of the hill which had a deserted and beaurtiful view of the city. I took off my shirt, drank some water and ate some cheese, and attempted unsuccessfully to meditate.

***

I was eventually joined by a cat, whom I tried to make friends with but did not succeed in doing so. As I walked towards him, I came upon some pretty unnecessary barbed wire blocking the point where I was at from what looked like a service building near the restaraunts and landmark church which you will see if you look at postcards of Lekkivitos. Faced with going through the barbed wire to get to the church area to watch the rest of the sunset or going back down then going back up the normal way, I went through the wire very carefully and thankfully drew no blood.

I felt the effect of entering normal touristy life again as I came upon the crowded patio veranda where groups of people were watching the sunset.