What Happens in Krakow Stays in Krakow

…at least until I write about it on my blog.  So I know I’m breaking continuity here a little by writing about Krakow now and skipping over Vienna and Bratislava, but to be honest nothing major happened in either of those places, it’ll take forever to write about them and I’ve noted down what happened in both those places so will be able to remember.  On the other hand, Krakow’s activities are beginning to disappear into an alcohol-induced memory void, so I really need to get those written down.

Just a quick note that none of the images used here belong to me - they were all taken from the Greg & Tom's Party Hostel facebook page.  Further, reader discretion is advised - I would recommend skipping the entirety of day two for young readers and those who wish to avoid fairly unsavoury topics such as the Holocaust and french kissing.

DAY HALF

Well, ok.  So you have no way of knowing this, since I didn’t speak about Bratislava, but there was a slight change in my usual method of transportation in heading for Krakow.  Krakow actually isn’t on my eurail pass, which meant I had to find the cheapest alternative possible, which ended up being the bus.  It was a seven hour journey, getting into the city just after 3:30pm.

Krakow was once the capital of Poland, though that enviable honour now belongs to Warsaw.  I’d been told Warsaw was boring (and it was difficult to get to anyway, being a considerable distance north) but that Krakow was a must-see (which is why I went even though it wasn’t included on my train ticket).  On the bus in I thought it might be a good idea to check my bus ticket for the name of the bus station – I mean, I already had a map of Krakow with the main station marked on it, but it was probably worth making sure they were the same.

Of course, as soon as I actually paid attention to the ticket I noticed that the station’s name included the word ‘regionulska’ or something like that, provoking a moment of panicked staring out the window (at a series of industrial complexes) thinking we were going to stop any moment in the middle of nowhere.  But the bus kept going, entering the city centre and coming to a stop at the station I had thought it would originally.

I followed the crowd down into a tunnel and across to a large modern shopping centre.  I was on the lookout for an exchange office, but of course they offered very poor rates both at the bus station itself and in the shopping centre.  My hostel was not very far from the station, so I didn’t pass an exchange office, unfortunately.

I walked down the street, keeping a lookout for the hostel.  I got to the end of the street without having seen it.  Hmm…  Another sweep and no hostel.  On my third walk down I saw it – a small unassuming door in the main building with a piece of paper in a plastic sleeve reading “Greg & Tom Hostel”.  Not as much fanfare as one might be led to expect.

Anyway, I buzzed in and went up to the second floor.  I was greeted by the on-duty receptionist, Adam, who was very friendly and very easily distracted.  After being given the brief I was shown up to my room on the fourth floor.  I had gotten a four bed dorm because every other room had been full when I booked the previous week (I had specifically been recommended this hostel, so wanted to make sure I got it).  My room was pretty much empty – that is, I was the only one in it.  So I guess it was empty.  Until I got there.  Then it was empty except for me.

I had to get money at this point so that I could pay for the room, so I headed off into old town (which was just around the corner) and went to a street that Adam had recommended for good rates.  The town was fairly bustling for a Wednesday afternoon, and I got a fair glimpse of the beautiful old town.  I didn’t stay out long, though – I just wanted to get the money changed and get back.

So I went in to pay, but fate seemed to want to delay my payment for as long as it possibly could – the money drawer was jammed (they’d just had it repaired, and I guess the repairman wanted to get another job for himself ASAP) and Adam said he would take my payment once he had opened the drawer.  I left him standing over the drawer holding a saw down against the wood.

I hung out in the common room for a bit chatting with a group that had been there a while already – a British girl and some South Americans.  I think one was called Raphael.  Then it was dinner time – which was included in the price of the hostel (it was a really good recommendation).  Wednesday night was salad night, though Adam was all, “I didn’t think salads were enough, so I made some soup too!”  When the salads include pasta salads, potato salads, coleslaw, green salad and one with sausages, it kind of is enough, but I ate the soup anyway, and it was delicious.  Like a thick potato-y thing with sausages in it and stuff.

Dinner was a great social affair where everyone sat at the big central table in the kitchen (a no laptop zone) serving themselves from the buffet, chatting and eating.  I met another girl with a British accent, though she was apparently from Melbourne, two Americans who were travelling together and some others who clearly didn’t leave much of an impact on me.

Greg and Tom’s consists of two hostels – I had booked myself into the regular one, though they also had a party hostel.  The different types of hostels is probably a discussion for another time, but suffice it to say that a party hostel is exactly what it sounds like – a place that offers plenty of opportunity for socializing and alcohol.  Greg & Tom’s organized nights out every night, with different themes each night.  That night was a vodka tasting, which I attempted to rationalize as a cultural experience (PS as an interesting sidenote, the Polish for vodka is wòdka, which I think is hilarious since it’s basically written like vodka with a central European accent).

I managed to persuade one of the Americans to go with me (peer pressure for the win) though she still needed to get ready and said she’d follow behind me (the party was at the other Greg & Tom’s).  Apparently she got a better offer (live music… so I guess it kind of was a better offer) and didn’t end up showing up.

Christoph and Brent (who is hiding behind the logo)

The other hostel was set up with a bar and basement room with lounges, tables and a large TV.  I was joined by a Canadian guy called Brent as I was paying for the night at the bar.  He was doing a trip through places like Budapest and Prague (the big hitters) and was leaving for Budapest (I think…) on Friday.  Initially he had wanted to stay longer but it turned out both hostels had been completely booked out for the Friday evening.

Downstairs we met Christoph, an Argentinean that seemed to be drunk the whole time I saw him, even when he was sober (unless he was never sober… which is actually a possibility).  There was also a large group of girls, mostly from Australia – Angie, Brooke, Laura, Vanessa and Lauren (you wouldn’t believe how hard I had to work to remember all those names).

Michael was our guide.  He was a super charismatic fellow who would disappear for a couple of moments every now and again before returning with a massive tray filled with shots.  The shots were different flavoured vodkas.  There were three flavours, and I tried all of them.  Multiple times.  When, five minutes in, I had done three shots, I started to get a tad concerned that I was going way too quick, though I then noticed that the flavoured vodkas were only 21% alcohol, which was ok.

So, my assessment on the flavours.  There were three flavours: Pink Grapefruit, Lemon and Cherry.  Cherry tasted like cough syrup.  Pink Grapefruit tasted, for some reason, like watermelon (yes it was definitely pink grapefruit – I checked in case they looked similar), and Lemon tasted delicious.  We had a quick game of flip cup as well, though, unlike the games in Budapest, we actually had to down a whole cup of beer instead of just measuring a small amount per game.  Oh, and the game was three cups worth.  I’m starting to get a bit worried about how quickly I was able to down them.

The full gang

In a pleasantly tipsy state we started a game of singstar.  I started bitching about how I didn’t know any of the songs and that if there was a Queen song I’d smash everyone singing it, when Michael pulled out the Queen version of the game.  As penance (I guess) I had to play against him in Bohemian Rhapsody.  And I smashed him, which was fortunate, as I’d been talking myself up way too much just beforehand.

We went out to three clubs that night.  I can’t remember too much about them (shots were produced at each place) but I can tell you that all of them were packed.  On a Wednesday night.  From 10:30pm until I left at 4am.

Due to nothing terribly specific happening on that night it might be worth me giving a bit of an overview of the clubbing scene in Krakow.  It’s freaking amazing.  As I said before, everywhere we went was packed with people, all of them are dancing and it’s just a lot of fun. 

Wednesday night is a bit of a quiet one.

Polish guys have a lot of confidence and are excellent dancers (I’m talking ballroom dancing style, though adapted to work on the dance floor).  It’s actually more common to see a girl dancing alone looking for a partner than it is to see a guy (and most of the guys dancing alone are tourists who haven’t worked out that most girls will happily start dancing with you if you hold your hand out).  So you’re surrounded by people twirling, grinding, grooving and spinning, all set to a background of… pretty s*** music, to be honest (just your typical top of pop stuff), but the atmosphere wins out.

The only specific place I can remember the name of was the one we went to last, Coco’s.  It was kind of divided into three lounges, a bar and a dance floor.  Nothing terribly special to report here.  At some point around 4am I was dragged out by the American girl (whose name I can’t remember) and Christoph.  Stumbling around the streets we decided to go to another place, but couldn’t find one and decided that it was probably late enough to head back to the hostel(s).  “Why did we leave?” I asked.

“I don’t know – I just followed you guys.”

“What?  I was following you…” etc etc.  It was just one of those things that happened for no apparent reason.

Back to the hostel for me then.  I went to bed to an empty room (which was good for me as it meant I didn’t have to go to the toilet to change into my pajamas – you wouldn’t believe how comforting it is being able to get changed in a room that actually contains a bed).

I was able to get a nice couple of hours rest before entering into (I guess I was already kind of in)

DAY ONE

I could still feel the alcohol buzzing around me when I woke up at 8am.  I didn’t want to miss breakfast (or a shower) so raced around getting myself cleaned up and ready to get out and about.  You probably don’t need to read a blow-by-blow of my showering experience, so let’s get to breakfast.

It was probably one of the best breakfasts I’ve had so far – plenty of cereal, bacon (!) and these little stuffed polish sausage thingies.  I ate as much as I could because… food.

It was a nice day and there was a free walking tour (which, you may have noticed is pretty much the first thing I do in any new city) so after breakfast I made my way up and off to the lovely St Mary’s Church, where the walking tour was to leave from.  It was actually one of the largest groups I’ve ever seen on one of the tours, a good twenty or so people (previous largest was Bratislava with only eight).

The major take-away from the walking tour was: Polish people love making s*** up.  We would constantly be shown quaint little traditions or odd architectural details that had a completely made-up story behind them.  Examples include:

Difference in Height Between the Two Towers of St. Mary’s Church

MYTH: Two brothers designed a tower each – one was better than the other, and the worse one murdered his brother with a knife (which now hangs from an archway in the market square).  The brother, riddled with guilt, jumped from the shorter tower he had designed.

TRUTH: One of the towers was the watch tower, and is owned by the city rather than the church.  Of course, as a watch tower, it would struggle to function if it was right next to another tower just as high.  The knife hanging from the arch is a reminder of one of the punishments that existed in medieval Krakow (you can probably guess what it involves).

The Trumpet Playing Every Hour from the Watch Tower

MYTH: The myth attempts to explain why the trumpet song is cut off suddenly part way through.  The answer, it claims, is that, at a time when the Mongolian army was approaching, a watchman raised the alarm with his trumpet but was shot by an arrow, hence the song being cut off.

TRUTH: Actually not sure what the reason for the trumpeting being cut off is, but I have been told where the story above originated.  An American writer was touring Krakow in the 30s, and had a young girl as his guide.  He asked her why the song was cut off and, as she actually had no idea, she bulled her way through with the story above.  He liked the story so much he took it back with him and wrote a book that became kind of popular.  So there.

The Bonerewski Hotel

MYTH: This hotel used to be called ‘The Boner Hotel’, after its founder, but when Krakow became a popular destination amongst British stag parties they had problems with drunk guys coming into the 5-star hotel expecting a slightly different… erm… service.  So they added ‘-ewski’ to the end to try to stop the rather irritating (I’m sure) visits.

TRUTH:  Actually, this one’s apparently true.

Other cool things we saw included the dragon heads on the drains (set up so that when it rains the dragons spew water) – though in the university they also had the heads of different students as an analogy for a different kind of spewing.  Krakow’s castle is Wawel Castle, on the top of the hill near the river.  The cathedral on the hill is a bit of a mishmash of different styles from different time periods, including Italian renaissance, gothic, medieval and others.  You look up at it and it’s just a series of different coloured bricks and stone blocks seemingly randomly stacked into one another.

There’s also an Austrian military hospital (the Austrians seem to have managed to get everywhere) and a dragon statue.  The dragon statue breathes fire.  It’s in front of a small cave (the Dragon’s Den), the location described in a local myth about a dragon that would eat female virgins (as you do).  Eventually the only virgin left was the princess (I would imagine you would look to get laid ASAP knowing you risked a dragon eating you) and the king offered her hand in marriage to whoever killed the dragon.

After a lot of dashing young heroic men were killed in their quests for an arranged marriage, a cobbler (it’s always a cobbler) tricked the dragon into eating a sheepskin filled with sulphur (it’s possible that the guide said something other than sulphur since he then suggested that it was a very hot spice, but it sounded like he said sulphur).  The dragon gulped down water from the river to get rid of the spice in his mouth, but drank too much.  And exploded.  So he didn’t even win the Wii.

So, two celebrities from Krakow.  First, former Pope John Paul II was Bishop in Krakow.  They REALLY love him there – statues are everywhere, there’s a window with his face plastered over it where he stayed once while he was Pope, and you kind of get constant reminders that he was a local.

The other celebrity was Chopin (though of course he later moved to France).  Chopin has one statue commemorating him, an art sculpture that is supposed to represent the hammers and strings in a piano.

Finally, the Australian link.  Kosciuszko was a great Polish hero who fought in many battles for independence.  And we have a mountain named after him.

After the tour I decided I really needed to buy my train ticket for the trip back into my eurail zone, Prague.  I headed for the train station and paid a whopping 70 euro for a ticket, making me feel like perhaps the eurail ticket was better value than it seems.  I had to stand in line for what felt like forever.  Just as I got to the front of the queue, the lady at the service desk I was standing at was beckoned over to the other desk to help the lady there deal with a pair of… Austrians I think… who had somehow been issued a ticket for a train that didn’t exist or something.  That’s the kind of problem I wouldn’t want to have to deal with.

Well, I ended up spending a lot more money on the train ticket than I expected, so I needed to go straight from the train station back to the exchange office to get some more money changed over.  I was starting to plan out what tours and things I wanted to do, so went back to the hostel in order to get some bookings made.

My initial plan was to do Auschwitz in the morning, followed by the Wieliczka (freaking Polish) Salt Mines in the afternoon.  That would leave me in a good position to go out on Friday and Saturday night without having to worry about having to get up early or anything for a tour.

Thursday was sausage night, so we all sat around the table eating sausages.  Lots of sausages.  Big fat ones.  Sliced an soaked in a tomato stew.  In a salad.  Stuffed with cheese.

I kept going up and getting more because… well, I freaking love sausages.  My plan that evening was to do nothing, so I took my time, chatting with a couple of nice German girls who were doing medicine, and another pair of Germans, also studying medicine.  There was also a pair of primary school teachers from France on a week’s holiday.

Having made the decision to not go out, I was tragically waylaid by Adam’s offer to take us for a quiet night at the local watering hole.  I should mention something about Krakow – there are a lot of bars, pubs and clubs.  800 in the old town area, in fact, making it the highest concentration of bars of any city centre in the world.  As there are so many of them, obviously a lot of them are quite well hidden down small corridors (often you will come across a corridor that leads you along to two or three bar entrances), and it was one of these that we went to that night.  The place was small, though had quite a few people milling about, and very cheap beer.

We stayed there, chatting and drinking for a considerable length of time.  We met a local who decided to adopt our group – I think he was kind of drunk.  Poor old Adam saw that this guy was being a bit of a lout and tried to distract him with conversation.  We were assured by the guy that it was a Polish tradition to pour a little beer from a full glass into someone’s empty glass.  We were then assured by Adam that this was a load of garbage and this guy was clearly just trying to score some free alcohol (and get the ladies drunk, it seemed).

He wasn’t dangerous, though, and was very easily distracted by Adam, and was in many ways quite amusing (though I suppose I didn’t directly have to put up with him for that much time).  We stayed out at the bar until the nice and early time of… 2am.  So, yeah.  An early night.

DAY TWO

At breakfast the next morning I caught up with the two Germans, who also happened to be booked in to Auschwitz that day.  We headed off to the bus for the 9am departure on what turned out to be an extremely organized tour with an accompanying babysitter (a typical young Polish guy – they seem to be the ones with the market cornered when it comes to tourist-related activities) and a bus complete with TV screen that played a 50 minute documentary about footage taken by a member of the Soviet army that liberated Auschwitz.  It wasn’t terribly provoking or moving or anything to be honest.  I kind of wish they’d played Night and Fog instead – that would have been a far more appropriate introduction and mood setter.

I struggled to remain awake throughout the video having not had a great deal of sleep over the course of the previous few evenings.  When the video ended, I tried to get a nap in, but unfortunately we were just pulling in to the camp and I had to shake myself awake (until the freezing weather did it for me as I got off the bus).

For those who aren’t aware, Auschwitz is actually the name of the town (who on earth would want to liver there now?) where three camps were.  Of these, only Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II – Birkenau remain.  This is because, as the Nazis were leaving in the face of the arrival of the Soviets, they destroyed as much of the camps as they could in order to cover up the evidence of their war crimes.

Because of this fact, visiting with a tour group is actually preferable – you would perhaps struggle to get to both camps without a great deal of trouble.  My tour was to cover both the first and second camps.  We were starting at Auschwitz I, which is now a museum housed across numerous buildings.  At the entrance hall my immediate thought was, “Oh God, it’s one of those sites.”  There were tourists everywhere.  You couldn’t move but for tourists.  It was wall to wall.  Our babysitter told us we had a ten minute break (during which I went to the loo) before we were to meet our guides.

The Germans got a German-speaking guide, so I was split up with them for the duration of the tour.  We all received headsets so that we could hear the guide without her speaking too loudly (I assume – also, it’s possible that they do this so that you don’t get mixed up with the sounds of the many, many other guides showing groups around (seriously… so many guided tours).  And so we went into the camp.

It really was the perfect day to go see a death camp (oh God that sentence sounds so perverse).  There was a freezing fog dulling everything, the sky was grey and the wind was biting.  The guide, due to only needing to speak softly because she had a microphone, had a much less rousing, enthusiastic tone than other guides I’ve had (I guess that’s probably also down to the fact that instead of telling us stories about competing brothers and Mongolian invasions she was telling us about the extermination of a race).

What really gets you is the calculated, emotionless cruelty of the entire operation.  Hearing how organized it was, how carefully records were maintained, how everything was collected afterwards – it’s a far cry from the more barbaric massacres and wars of the past (as well as more recent things like terrorist attacks).  Somehow this was even more inhuman.  The scale, the planning, the organization, the cruelty, but at the same time the detachment, the lack of passion – somehow it makes it worse.

Just being there was a numbing experience, but there are a few points in the museum where it really hits home (and I have to admit that trying to remember these things has brought me close to tearing up as I write this).

One building contains some of the possessions of those who were murdered in the gas chambers.  It is especially harrowing to enter a room with an enormous pile of shoes (I’m talking maybe seven or eight large suitcases full) and realize, on closer inspection, that they are children’s shoes.  Then to enter another room, a room the size of six rooms, which is completely filled with shoes.  All representing a death in the gas chambers.

It’s shocking to enter another room and see a space behind a glass window that is of an equivalent size to the room you are in filled completely with human hair.

It’s horrifying to see a tin of pellets and have them explain that these were dropped into the gas chambers and that the gas therefore came from below, not above, leaving the dying crawling on top of one another to escape its reach.

It’s terrifying to enter a large stone bunker and see the holes in the ceiling through which the pellets were dropped before entering the next room and seeing the immense furnaces where they burned the bodies.

I won’t say too much more, but suffice it to say that, despite the crowds, despite the tour groups and cameras snapping and all that, the place retained its oppressive ambience.  After walking around the camp we got on the bus and made our way to Birkenau, about two minutes down the road.

Birkenau is free to just walk in and look around.  There is a large unmanned entrance gate with a train track that enters and goes straight through the centre of the camp.  Apparently this was a later addition when they decided that having the prisoners walk to the gas chambers was inefficient, so extended the line to reach the gas chambers.  These chambers are in ruins now, one was brought down by some of the prisoners when they realized that they had nothing to lose and would be killed anyway, and the fleeing Nazis demolished the other five.  They remain in a dilapidated state.

Birkenau was the largest of the three camps.  Nowadays it is basically just a few foundations, maybe sixty stone buildings and around the same wooden ones.  The stone ones are slowly beginning to fall apart – sloppy and rushed design means that they had brickwork too weak to support the excessively heavy roofing used.

I might just finish this by saying that one of the facts that stuck with me was that a number of Jews killed in the holocaust had sought asylum in the West in the early stages of the Third Reich’s rise to power.  The nations denied these applications.

I slept pretty much the whole way back.  It had been freezing in the camps and I needed to thaw out and catch up with my rest.  We got back around 3:30pm, and I went for a rest in the hostel before dinner.

Dinner was pasta, which was good because I was planning to go out that night on the organized hostel party it was Mad Dogz night.  What are Mad Dogz, I suspect you were not asking but now realize was a legitimate question to ask.  Well, let me tell you.

Mad Dogz are a kind of shot.  The reason they are called Mad Dogz, with the pluralisation embedded into the word itself, is that they come en masse – there is never just one.  Never.  And you will not do just one (unless you’re sensible – in which case you have no place doing Mad Dogz shots).  They consist of three very simple ingredients: vodka, grenadine and two drops of Tabasco sauce.  If that doesn’t get your tastebuds tingling then I guess you probably don’t like alcohol, sugar and spicy. 

We started in the basement again – the only people I remembered from the previous night were Lauren, Laura, Christoph, and the party leader.  We were later joined by a group of Brits (two couples) in maybe their early thirties (though let’s just say time… hadn’t exactly been kind to them, and I suspect their presence at the party probably wasn’t helping that fact).

There was a shisha pipe on the table that was being passed around, something that I’ve only really started noticing as quite a popular thing since being in Central Europe.  There are a lot of cafes that offer shishas.  I’d always just assumed they were illegal, but apparently it’s really no different than smoking (to be honest, I prefer it to smoking since the shisha doesn’t release its fumes into the surroundings).

Flip cup with shots.  Why?

Other than a game of flip cup using shots (which was really hard… shot glasses are not designed for flip cup) nothing of any real note happened that night.  As with the other night we all headed out to a club, a place called Mirrors.  It had a pretty cool design, the kind of design that would make me go crazy if I was drunk, but (un)fortunately I wasn’t (either the shots weren’t that strong or my alcohol tolerance is seriously getting worryingly high – probably both, actually).  It was this underground, cellar-like bar with mirrors (which is why I can remember the name) and one of the most awkward toilets ever.  Because it’s see-through.  From the inside.  Yes, it’s a one-way mirror, so while you’re sitting there s****ing, you can look out at all the people around you, safe in the knowledge that they can’t see you.

The only shot of Lauren and Laura with me I could find

Unfortunately, Mirrors was kind of dead before we arrived.  The only dead place I saw the entire time I was in Krakow.

All these nights kind of blur into one another, but I know that the next place we visited was one that we’d been to on Wednesday night.  We got a bit of dance on and moved on.

At the next place I was dancing on the dance floor, still perhaps not as drunk as I thought I needed to be, but drunk enough that I was enjoying myself enough not to go and actively make myself more drunk (effort and money – meh) when suddenly I was making out with another girl on the dance floor.

I'm not kidding about the trays of shots - not strong ones though

That is exactly how it happened.  There was no build-up, I don’t think I ever even really got a good look at her.  One second I’m bouncing around, next thing we’re swapping tongues.  I had a vague sense of it being a bit gross, but decided it was probably poor form to pull out, and to be honest I’d have probably struggled to manage to escape since she’d gotten me in a bit of a wrap.

I basically had no idea what I was doing, and mainly just let her lead with occasional flourishes of my own.  In the end she separated to rejoin her group (who had been standing right next to us the entire time – perving, I guess).  I went back to join Laura and Lauren (they were who I had been hanging out with most of the night) where they gave me a kind of cruel knowing look and I tried to convince them that I had no idea what had just happened.

I think I visited this place all three nights...

Then we were chaperoned to yet another place, actually the same place we had finished the night before.  We sat in the lounge area, more shots were produced, I did some and then had the tray spillage poured into my throat (seriously, half the things they do in clubs and bars here would be illegal in Australia).  And… that was a bad idea.

I got home without any problem, actually, mainly because the alcohol hadn’t quite begun to take effect.  But when I got back to the hostel… yeah, you know the drill.  I have a vague recollection of returning to my bed and seeing sunshine out the window, but I’m not sure how that’s possible unless it took me two hours to get changed into my pajamas.

Which, all things considered, is quite possible.

DAY THREE

I woke up about five minutes too late for breakfast.  This was a shame, since the breakfast was awesome, but I could survive.  While bumming around trying to decide what to do, I was approached by another guy in my room – a Polish guy, probably in his mid-twenties.  He was visiting Krakow from his town a small way away with a group who were all there for some kind of convention or something, though apparently they didn’t need to be actually at the convention.  Well, except for one of them.

Anyway, this guy, who I will call Redbeard because he had a red beard and I can’t remember his name, offered to show me a bit of Krakow.  I was like… sure!  Well, that was my day planned.

I should probably also mention that I was still a little bit drunk at this stage.

It was an interesting day.  First we met all his friends in one of the rooms around reception, though most of them were still in bed so that lasted only a couple of minutes.  Though long enough for them to exclaim their excitement at meeting an Australian (I’m constantly amazed at the number of people surprised at meeting an Australian – seriously, there are LOADS of us in Europe, and we’re not exactly quiet about it).

I went with Redbeard and another guy, who actually was attending the convention that day, in order to see him to the tram station.  I didn’t realize this was what we were doing at first – I was having a little trouble understanding exactly what I was taking part in, and for a moment it seemed as though we were all going to be taking a car trip to a neighbouring town.  Fortunately that was not the case, and after they bought me a little circle of bread (very popular and easily available from street vendors all across Central Europe) and saw him off, I began to make my way with Redbeard to the town centre.

We came to St Mary’s Church, you know, the one the tour guide on Thursday had suggested I visit?  Redbeard repeated the tour guide’s suggestion, saying it was very beautiful inside.  He then said, “Oh, but we don’t want to pay,” and took me to the entrance for those going to pray.

I was like… “Is this really appropriate,” but then again, I was only ripping off the Church, and they were clearly making plenty of tourist zloty, so I took off my hat and went in.

In my mildly tipsy state, I decided it would be a good idea to act very pious in order to maintain the illusion that I was just there to pray.  So as I approached the statue of the whateveritwas I got down on one knee and made the sign of the cross, though it ended up being more of a sign of the lopsided diamond than anything else.

The church’s interior was very beautiful, I suppose, though if I’m going to be completely honest with you I was more concerned with watching out for the Church Police that I was certain were watching out for faking tourists like me.  Apparently they weren’t, or I was doing a better job of faking it than I thought, because we got in and out without spending a dime.

Redbeard next wanted to take me to his favourite bar, because it was almost midday and CLEARLY ALCOHOL IS A GOOD IDEA.  It was just across the market square from the church so we went.  I was given the choice of light beer or dark beer.  I chose dark.

We chatted about stuff – Redbeard talked about Poland a bit, though I honestly don’t remember a word of it.  We finished with a decision to go to Wawel Castle, so I downed the rest of my beer, maintaining the buzz I had been cultivating, and we stumbled off.

Interestingly enough, Redbeard seemed to be even more drunk than I was.  We went up the castle and into the cathedral there – there was an entry fee that basically allowed you into the cathedral and up to see the bell (apparently the largest in Poland) and underground into the crypts.  It was pretty cool, and Redbeard would explain to me under his breath the relevance of each object – whose grave it was, what the relevance was etc.  Though he was basically just repeating what was written on the placards, I appreciated the gesture.

The bell was big.  What else can I say?  You’d hope the biggest bell in Poland would be big.  Though it’s telling that it’s not the biggest bell in the world.  The stairs up to the bell were clearly added to the tower afterwards, as they kind of wove awkwardly around older structures and beams.  I’m not sure how they used to repair the bell and stuff if the stairs are modern.

The crypts were a bit of a letdown.  I was hoping for piles of bones and stuff, but in the end there were just… well, big stone rectangles.  Hopefully there were bones inside the rectangles, otherwise what’s the point?

Next it was off to the Jewish Quarter, which I should mention is different to the Jewish Ghetto, which was on the other side of the river.  For some reason Jews were always segregated from everyone else, and as far as I understand this was not by choice.  Isn’t it great how we no longer create special regions for particular ethnic groups to live in?  Right guys?

…right?

We kind of saw a synagogue from the outside, but I’m guessing Redbeard was starting to feel the effects of alcohol wear off a bit because he now suggested we go find a Jewish restaurant that served a 70% alcohol shot (there seems to be one of these in almost every country I go to).  Well, he suggested we get some Thai food first, but once he got to the place where the Thai restaurant was supposed to be, it wasn’t, and so alcohol seemed like a fair substitute.

We found the Jewish restaurant without a problem.  I assumed we were also going to order food, but Redbeard said he was going to go meet some of his friends in a place that served good Polish food soon, so I should go with him there instead for food.  Instead we had a 50mL shot of the 70% alcohol concoction – I’m pretty sure it was Palinka (not as bad as it sounds – the less strong version I had in Athens was far more difficult to drink) and a 500mL beer.  For those who are into that sort of thing, that’s around five standard drinks.  But who’s counting?

It was time for the long walk to the traditional restaurant we were now supposed to be going to.  I have to admit, I really struggled with that walk.  Not because I was stumbling around (I wasn’t) but because I was really, really busting for the toilet.  It was one of those “Oh man I should have gone in the restaurant I really hope this next place isn’t too far away” moments.

Hmm…  Let’s just say it was a chilly walk.

Anyway, we reached the restaurant and went to meet Redbeard’s friends – a couple, one of whom was quite pregnant, both of whom seemed a little surprised to see me.  I had assumed Redbeard had explained that I would be tagging along, but as they spoke only limited English (Redbeard told me this was by choice – they could speak English but were embarrassed about getting it wrong) I couldn’t really tell.

They were already eating.  Redbeard ordered both of us another beer and we started looking at the menu.  The thing I really needed to try was pierogi, a kind of Polish dumpling with filling.  Actually, it’s pretty much ravioli dumplings.  I also got a soup, one Redbeard assured me was very Polish.  It was a kind of pork broth with a big lump of pork in it and bits of vegetable.  By vegetable, I pretty much just mean potato.  But that still counts.

Anyhoo, it tasted really good.  We were soon joined by the guy from that morning that we had seen to the tram.  They were all speaking Polish, and every now and then Redbeard would remember that I had no idea what was going on, would turn and slur in English a bit of an explanation, then get distracted by the conversation and keep on going.  I didn’t mind – the place felt like an authentic hangout, and it was nice to just soak up the ambience.

Suddenly Redbeard announced that we were moving on to another place for a bit of dessert, so we headed for an Italian restaurant for some tiramisu.  It was all right, though they’d used sponge instead of those coffee biscuits.

When another couple of people joined, I made my excuses and left.  I was keen to join the party again for my final night in Krakow, and I had begun to feel as though I was intruding as they were speaking Polish and my guide was completely off his face.

I arrived back at the hostel in time for more dinner.  Because food is better than alcohol, I stuffed my face.  It was Polish night, though I’m glad I had the pierogi while I was out because there wasn’t any to be had at the hostel.  Instead there were these cabbage-filled fried things (which were yummy) and some salads and stew (also yummy).

It was time for my final night out in Krakow.

I have to tell you, I find it really difficult to write about these nights.  They tend to be a blur, and they mix into one another and create a mess of random moments and vague recollections.  What I can tell you is that Saturday night was the only night where I officially took part in a pub crawl.  As in, the sole purpose was to crawl around pubs, not do Mad Dogz shots or taste vodka.

The South American girls, whose names I tragically forget

Funnily enough, it didn’t pan out too much differently from previous nights.  This time there were a group of three South American girls and two guys, though I honestly only remember the guys (and that’s only because I saw them the next day).  They were who I hung out with most.

It started with two hours of shots and flip cup and karaoke at the hostel before we moved along to the first club.  Oh yes, by ‘pub crawl’ they really meant ‘club crawl’.  Ah well.

We were joined by another group of pub crawlers and in that group was a bunch of British guys that I met.  One I will call Baldy, one I will call Glasses and one I will call Tom.  Not because that was his name, mind you.

At the first place (which was a place I hadn’t been before) nothing of too much note happened.  OH WAIT YES IT DID.

Look at all them cool people. Except the one in the hat.

Well, I was dancing and I went off to look for some others that I recognized – the place was a total maze and easy to get lost in, despite being quite small.  Well, I found the Brits and Glasses had had his face punched.  His glasses had broken, though they had all the pieces and he could technically still wear them, though only with difficulty.  Then, just as we were being called to move on to the next place, another guy (with his girlfriend) went up to Glasses and began to push him around.  This appeared to my blurry eyes to be completely unprovoked, but I wasn’t about to let this get in the way of more potential alcohol and dancing, so I got between them and kind of shuffled Glasses out of the club.  We weren’t followed – I think the girlfriend was holding back the aggressor.

We went to three more places, but none of them were particularly memorable.  I had a good time, got buzzed, Glasses (probably shaken after being attacked) drank too much and had a ‘tactical chunder’ on the side of the street (in Australia it’s called a ‘tactical vom’ – and I’ve only learned this since being in Europe – I learned about the tactical vom all the way back in Barcelona).

And, as happens, my hat got stolen

I can’t really remember much about the journey back to the hostel, though not because I blacked out (I’m fairly certain I didn’t black out once the whole time in Krakow, and unless you count the thing in Brasov, which I actually suspect was just me falling asleep in the toilet, I haven’t blacked out yet in Europe… which is as it should be) but because there was nothing particularly memorable about it, I was a bit drunk and I had done the trip countless times already (well… twice before).  I do remember getting to my room, though – Redbeard and the friend we had taken to the tram were there, and tram guy was snoring like a foghorn.  I’m not kidding – I’ve heard a lot of snorers on my travels so far, but this guy takes the cake.  It was mindboggling.  It was tremendous.  I’m surprised you didn’t hear it in Australia, or wherever you happen to be.

It didn’t worry me, though, cos I was wrecked.

DAY FOUR

I came so close to missing breakfast again, but fortunately the super-cool girl at reception whose name I very unfortunately can’t remember let me grab something before she started cleaning up.  I met up with the two South American (pretty sure they were Brazilians) guys from the night before.  They were heading into the city to have a look around, and I offered to show them a couple of things.  Basically we just retreaded the areas I had already been.  I took them up to Wawel Castle and they went into the cathedral.  I didn’t feel any real need to go inside the cathedral again (been there done that) so made my way back to the dragon statue as I hadn’t managed to get video of it breathing fire before and wanted a quick shot.

I stood there for eleven minutes recording.  There was no fire.  I don’t think I was the only disappointed one.  I went up and tried to find the Brazilians (we had planned to meet up again) but couldn’t see them so decided to spend the afternoon going to Schindler’s Factory.  It was quite a distance away (well… for Krakow) so I got my walk on and went looking for a bridge.

I found one – a pedestrian bridge.  It was covered with locks.  The kind that lovers put on things when they are in love in order to symbolize how they would always be together.  It made me feel a bit lonely to see all those locks – I’m talking multiple thousands of them, dense swarms of locks all the way along a huge pedestrian bridge.  I’m getting to the stage in my journey where I feel I am regularly craving company, and often find it difficult to motivate myself to do things without someone else going along as well.  Especially eating.

But then I thought that at least 50% of the couples who had locked these locks probably weren’t together anymore and that made me feel better.

The other side of the river was a lot more industrial and drab than the side I had been staying on, which I guess one ought to expect when the main attraction is a factory.  The factory itself was pretty plain, but I guess it was worth seeing.  Particularly since I had nothing better to do.

On my way back I thought I saw some kind of bizarre bear-like creature, but it turned out to be a large dog sitting on its haunches doing a poo.  That was a bit of a surreal experience.

I didn’t want to head straight back to the hostel since I was going to be waiting an awfully long time for my train (10pm) and I didn’t want to impose on the staff by sitting around in the reception area for six and a half hours.  Instead I went to the shopping centre opposite and OH MY GOD AM I EVER GLAD I DID.

There was some kind of insane chess competition going on, with huge rows of tables and seats prepared for the tournament.  A lady was running a competition with one of those games where you have to show how you can achieve checkmate in ‘x’ moves.  I watched that for a while, but to be honest couldn’t work out how the game worked – there were occasions when I couldn’t see how they worked out the opposition’s moves since they never seemed to force them into a particular action with check etc.

Anyway, it wasn’t long before the tournament began.  I watched from above as hundreds of people played one another in rapid-fire games.  I watched a couple of games end before noticing a six-year-old boy playing a very serious looking man.  Both had few pieces left, though to me it looked like the boy was losing.  A few minutes later the only pieces left were the man’s king and the boy’s king and single pawn.  Then the boy had a queen.  Then the boy won.  It was pretty epic.

After that I went back to the hostel.  The girl from that morning was there, so I chatted with her for a bit, then Adam showed up and explained that he had been to Prague that day – a 7 hour trip each way for maybe 2 hours actually in Prague.

“That seems kind of stupid,” I said.

“It was very stupid,” he said.

I hung out with the guests during their dinner and stuff, but I didn’t participate in conversation as enthusiastically as I had previously.  I was feeling a bit out of place now, as I didn’t really want to leave but knew I had to.

At 9pm I headed for the station (just across the road) and got on the waiting train.  The conductor came by and, upon realizing I spoke English, said he would be back to explain how everything worked.

I only shared the 6-bed couchette with one other person, a Czech who had been with his Polish girlfriend for the weekend, I guess, and had to go back to work in the hospital in Prague.  He spent a long time leaning out the window waving – it was cute.

The conductor was really nice – he told me which cabin he was in and told me to come get him if I needed anything.  He also instructed us to lock the cabin tightly – apparently that train was commonly occupied by thieves.

We had no problems, though, so I got my first proper night’s sleep in a week (AHAHAHAHAHA yeah right, I was on a train – I barely slept a wink).

And then I was in Prague, which is where I will be leaving tomorrow, and I can tell you all about it (or some other place, perhaps) when this story is

TO BE CONTINUED

In Athens it's All Greek to Me

As usual, I suggest scanning through to edit the following blog for young readers.  There are some minor references to drug use around day three/four, but other than that it’s pretty tame I think.

Greece was one of the first countries where I didn’t really know what to expect.  I had a vague idea of what to see, what it was famous for etc. but in terms of the feel of the place I was coming up blank.  Greece’s recent appearances in the news hadn’t been positive, so I was concerned I would find myself in a country slowly falling apart under the weight of its own financial woes, with public services difficult to impossible to manage.

I needn’t have worried.

DAY ONE

As usual we start where we left off, and this time we left off with me feeling mightily relieved to have managed to make it onto a boat heading for Patras, the Greek port that I needed to get to on my way to Athens.

As I mentioned before, it was a cargo ferry that happened to offer passage to tourists as well.  The majority of the passengers were grizzly Greek truck drivers, and they stayed up for a little while before heading to their company-bought cabin room.  Being the cheapskate that I am, I had just paid for deck passage, which was almost completely covered by my rail pass (I still had to pay port dues and a fuel surcharge).  Deck passage allowed me to sit on the deck for the entire overnight voyage.  Fortunately the deck was quite a pleasant area, with a bar, restaurant, lounge and baggage area.  There were also some airplane-style seats, though it was my impression that you had to book these in advance.

I spent the first few hours sitting in the corner worried that I would go into the wrong place or use something that my cheapskate deck passage ticket didn’t cover.  After a while it became pretty apparent that the staff didn’t give a toss what you did, so I dumped my bags and went to the restaurant.

An Australian girl and American guy who I had seen getting on the boat were already at the restaurant, so after collecting my food (oriental meatballs… though they weren’t ball-shaped) I went to join them.  Only they were already having a conversation, and as I approached and awkwardly stood behind the American guy, the Aussie girl glanced at me.  I got ready to make my introduction in the gap in conversation that was sure to follow, but she just continued.

I kind of stood there for a moment, knowing I had been pretty clear about my intentions to join them, but also recognizing that I had been snubbed.  Sensing that the opportunity was lost, I sat at the table beside theirs, back to them, and eavesdropped on their conversation.  I had assumed that they were a couple of some kind, and therefore wanted to be left alone, but a few minutes of listening in told me they had only recently met one another themselves.

As they began discussing their intentions to go and have a nap, I saw a final chance and got up, stood by their table and introduced myself.

The girl’s name was Athena, and the guy was Peter.  They were on their way to Athens as well – Athena had been planning to visit for a while, and Peter had met her at their previous hostel in Rome and been persuaded to join.

After only a short conversation the topic of how to reach Athens came up.  I told them that I was going to be taking the replacement bus service, since the train line from Patras was being repaired or renovated or something.  Then Athena dropped the bombshell.

She had heard on the grapevine that the Greek public transport union had organized a strike for the next five days.  I knew about the ferries, but ALL public transport?  This changed things.  I was a little dubious, as I didn’t think even the Greeks would initiate such a wide-spread and inconvenient strike without some kind of announcement, but I had to recognize the possibility that Athena was well-informed and that my journey in Greece would be even more stressful and challenging than the one in Italy.

I had some time to mull over this, though, since the ferry would not reach Patras until 1:30pm the next day.  We went and stole a few of the airline seats in order to sleep (no-one seemed to care, so I have to conclude that we weren’t breaking any rules by doing this).  I managed to catch some shut-eye serenaded by some Greek film that was playing on the room’s TV about an American kid who is kidnapped by some kind of Greek crime syndicate and has to overcome cultural boundaries to become some kind of leader for them.  Or something.  It was in Greek, so didn’t make a lot of sense, though I know it was called The Greek Godfather.

At around 6am we had a brief stopover at Igoumenitsa.  They made it very clear that we had arrived there, with numerous announcements over the PA system and ferry staff walking around ensuring that everyone who needed to get off did so.  This would have been very handy had I actually wanted to get off, but as it was I wanted to get some sleep.  For a good half hour period, though, sleep was basically an impossible prospect.

It wasn’t long before the sun was up after that, so I left the airplane seats, had a quick breakfast from the restaurant and went outside to watch the scenery.  The water was beautiful, and on either side of the boat great mountains rose up.  In order to reach Patras, the ferry had to travel along a stretch of sea that was bordered on the north and south by Greece, so it was a pretty good view.

I had taken advantage of the time on the ferry to have a bit of R&R and had been putting out of my mind the prospect of travel to Athens.  As the boat pulled into port, though, my lack of preparation hit me, particularly when I got off the boat and realized the port was, in fact, nowhere near the actual city of Patras.  Hell, I could barely work out how to get out of the port area (Athena and Peter went in one direction toward a car exit, but I noticed a building and went there instead).  In the end I saw a bus and walked to it, as did everyone else, assuming that it had to go into the city since… where else would it go?

Not only did it go to the city, it went to the main bus station.  Large signs proclaimed that buses to Athens would leave every fifteen minutes.  Perfect!  Only the bus I needed was the one organized by the train company, not the bus company.  And it was supposed to leave every two hours.  I couldn’t work out which buses fell under my pass, so approached the information booth to find out.

Upon seeing my pass, the lady at the info desk pointed at a blue bus and told me that it was the one I was after.  I thanked her and checked the bus.  It was the bus back to the port.  She had thought I wanted the bus for the ferry.  Bugger.

The bus station was a small, grubby building filled to the brim with people, particularly young soldiers for some reason.  A chaotic scrum led to the ticket desk.  The buses would pull up right beside the building, three at a time, so people kind of just spilled out all over the road with no clear indication of which bus was going where.

Also, everything was written in Greek.  Most languages you can get by.  Greek is not one of those.  Place names are vaguely recognizable if you’re lucky and you already know what it’s supposed to look like.  Good luck buying a ticket when you don’t even know how to pronounce the words displayed.

By this point we had kind of concluded that the bus on our pass probably left from the train station, seeing as it was a replacement service for the out-of-service train line.  Not really wanting to have to go through the hassle of finding the train station, we just bought the earliest ticket to Athens that we could find (fortunately all the ticket sellers spoke basic English, far superior to our Greek).

Other than the quite spectacular scenery, with mountains on one side and ocean on the other (unsurprisingly reminiscent of Greek mythology) the bus ride was fairly unexceptional.  I kept falling asleep and, since I had no idea how long the bus was supposed to take, I would wake up and think we weren’t even close.  Peering out the window at one point I assumed we must be in the Corinth area.  Then I saw a sign announcing our entry to Athens.

It wasn’t quite as I expected.  It was actually quite spacious – we were still driving along what appeared to be a motorway.  The street was lined mostly with industrial buildings, so it felt a bit like the outskirts of Brisbane or any Australian city for that matter.

It didn’t take long before it was revealed that we were, in fact, on the outskirts of the city.  Unfortunately this was revealed by the fact that we arrived at the bus station, which was basically a shed on the side of the road.

The hotel that Dad had booked for us (I did mention that Dad was visiting for the weekend, right?) was on Syntagma Square, which was in the same basic direction as Athena and Peter needed to go.  I wandered vaguely towards something that looked like an information desk, which unfortunately took me right up to the taxi rank.

“You need a taxi?”

“Oh… not really.  I’m just trying to work out where I am.”  Stupid thing to say.

“Where you trying to go?”

“Syntagma Square.”

“Oh, ok.  About seven kilometres away.” 

SEVEN KILOMETRES???

“You could catch bus, then other bus, maybe two euro, take about thirty, forty minutes.  Taxi, most it will cost is ten euro.”

I was very aware that it was starting to get dark at that point.  Catching buses at night is hard enough when you know where you’re going, but being in a new city, trying to figure out the correct stop when you can’t even sound out the letters on the signs – well, let’s just say that for the first time on this trip I was seriously considering just taking the taxi.

I went back to the others and filled them in.  They agreed that, between us, ten euro was not a bad price to ensure we made it safely before nightfall.

We headed back to the taxi driver, who waved us to the front of the queue.  At the front of the queue, the lead cabbie said, “Syntagma Square?  For three, twenty euro.”  We called bull, saying the other guy had said ten euro.

“For three?  Twenty.”

Seeing as a taxi service that increases in price as the number of passengers increases kind of defeats the purpose, we went over to the bus stop.  The list of stops for each bus was written in Greek, but luckily the guy at the counter could speak some English.  For 1,40 euro each he gave us a ticket for the bus and metro we would need to take.  He explained that the last stop of the bus would get us to a metro station, from which we could easily get to Syntagma Square.

On the bus, Athena was trying to figure something out.

“I was told it wasn’t safe to go on a particular square, especially at night.  I’m not sure, maybe it wasn’t Syntagma.  I think it started with ‘O’.”

The bus stopped on a narrow little street that looked pretty much the same as every other narrow little street.  Everyone got off.  The engines turned off.  Looked as though this was the end of the line.

We got out and had a look up the street.  Then a look down the street.  Then a look around the street.  No metro station.  Balls.

We approached the driver.  He couldn’t speak English, but I suspect ‘metro’ is universal, particularly when accompanied by a ‘vvvhwwwooooosh’ noise and a wriggling hand motion.  He directed us up the street and left, so we went that way.

The metro station appeared about two blocks down – Omonia Square.

“Oh, that’s the name of the square I was told to avoid,” Athena said.  It’s probably worth mentioning that it was most definitely night time by this point.

We made a quick dash to the metro station and I made sure not to look too much like a tourist by dawdling around the metro map, but then realized the backpack probably gave it away and ended up studying it carefully for a minute.  Syntagma Square was two stops away.

Athena and Peter parted ways with me at this point, as they were better served by reaching a different metro station.  I promised to join them later on and headed directly for the metro.

The Athens metro is actually very good.  Having said that, it’s small.  I’m pretty sure it was built specifically for the 2004 Olympics and is still slowly expanding.  Probably even slower now. 

I only went about two stops.  The metro works on a kind of honour system – unlike other metros where you have to insert a ticket to be allowed in, in Athens they trust you to validate a ticket at the entrance to the metro.  Not wanting to contribute further to Greece’s economic decline, I did the honourable thing (plus I’d already validated my ticket on the bus anyway).

Arriving at Syntagma Square (something like two stops – I later discovered it was about a five minute walk away) I went into seek-my-hotel mode.  I have become used to hostels being extremely difficult to find, often just a door in an alleyway with the only indication being a small business card on the doorbell.  Walking out of the metro I was greeted by a gigantic sign that took up half the skyscraper in front of me that stated, in big clear letters: HOTEL ARETHUSA.

Well, that was easy.

I was pretty tired by this point, so basically went straight to bed.  Oh, that’s a lie, I washed my underpants.  Soon the room was nicely decorated with my soggy undies.  THEN I went to sleep.

Wait, no, then I was hungry (hadn’t eaten all day), so decided to go out and find something Greek.  And by ‘something Greek’ I of course mean GYROS!  I kind of walked down a couple of streets, not wanting to go far, when I found a little place that had a lot of locals inside and advertised gyros.  So in I went.  Unfortunately I took one look at the menu and went… oh bugger.  All Greek.

But hell, that just means it’s authentic, right?  So I went up to the counter.  Or I would have done if there hadn’t been two counters, one in front of the spinning meaty chunks and one at the cash register.  Everyone seemed to be paying first, so I went to the register counter.

“Is this where you order?”

The guy said something, which may have been in English.  I asked him if he spoke English, and, in keeping with the trend, he indicated a basic knowledge of the language.

I wasn’t sure what they had, since the menu wasn’t particularly helpful on that account, but I was pretty sure they had gyros, since the Greek for gyros is gyros (rather helpful that – though note that I’m fairly certain the ‘g’ is pronounced like a ‘y’).

“Lamb gyros?”

He didn’t seem to understand my order, which was admittedly mumbled rather incoherently and phrased more as a question than an order.  He just started listing the menu.  Unfortunately, lamb wasn’t on it, but pork was, so I got a pork gyros.

“Two euro twenty.”

Awesome.  I paid and he told me to wait at the other counter for my order.  So I did.

One of the ladies behind the counter spoke to me in Greek.  I smiled and shook my head.  “Sorry!  English.”

“Bah!” she waved an arm and walked off.  There was one other guy behind this counter, and he now came up to me and spoke in Greek.  I kind of stood there, a little unsure how to approach this, when the customer beside me offered his assistance.  I took it gladly.  It turned out I was being asked to repeat my order (had I known the menu a bit better, I could probably have said I had ordered something more expensive, since there was clearly no communication between kitchen and register).

Long story short I ended up with a pork gyros with everything.  It was delicious.  THEN I went to bed.

At around 2am my phone started ringing.  I have it on good authority that before this, there was a great deal of knocking on the hotel door, but I was pretty deeply asleep.  Anyway, there was a brief period of me kind of lying there going, “I wish that arsehole would turn his alarm off – some of us are trying to sleep.”  Then I realized I was the only arsehole in the room.  Then I realized that Dad was still to arrive.  So I picked up my phone and let him into the room.

It wasn’t long before I was unconscious again.

DAY TWO

ARISE, screamed Helios, driving his chariot through the sky.  So I did.  Dad was already up.  After a quick Skype attempt to Australia that kind of failed partly due to poor internet in the hotel and partly due to the fact that Mum and Katrina weren’t actually home we went down to breakfast.  A hot breakfast.  After a month of stale cereal, jam and yoghurt (and a lot of coffee…) you wouldn’t believe how nice it was to have soggy bacon, greying eggs and unusually gritty chipolata things in a somewhat lukewarm state!

After eating probably way too much, but also much less than most of the Greek guests, we went out to find some ancient Greek ruins – specifically the Acropolis!

Dad had downloaded some walking directions, so we headed off down the street, aware that it could potentially be some distance from the hotel, and might not be that easy to- Oh wait, no, there it is, just around the corner.

Yes indeed, walking down the street we rounded a corner and were stunned to see a very dramatic Acropolis on top of a very dramatic hill rising very dramatically into a dramatic blue sky.  We took a few dramatic photos (the first of many) and dramatically continued on.  See, despite the fact that we could see the Acropolis just ahead of us, we couldn’t actually get there directly because there were buildings in the way.

On our way around the buildings we accidentally stumbled across some more ruins, this time Hadrian’s Library.  We weren’t quite jaded enough at this point to turn our noses up at something as recent as Roman ruins, and as the site sold a combined ticket that included the Acropolis we thought: “Eh, might as well.”  So we did.

An adult ticket to the Acropolis plus six other ancient sites around Athens (most worth seeing) is twelve euro, for international students the cost is six euro, and for EU students the cost is nothing.  That’s right, if you have a student card and an EU passport (or an identity card issued by an EU university… or you just lie to the ticket salesperson about where you attend university) you don’t pay anything to see any of Athens’ famous ruins.

I didn’t feel like taking advantage of a floundering economy, and Dad was paying anyway (hehehe…) so I let the salesperson know I was Australian.  We were given a sleeve of tearable tickets that could be used for any site, with the exception of one, which was specifically for the Acropolis.

I don’t know what to say about Hadrian’s Library.  Let’s be honest, if I detail every single ruin we saw we’ll be here all day.  It was a decent start to the weekend, but there was something better around each corner.

One thing we did notice was the presence of a very lazy and probably quite well-fed dog just hanging around on the ruins.  Actually, I’m pretty sure there were two dogs.  There were definitely two at the next site we visited, which happened to be just around the corner: the Roman Agora (thank goodness we got the Roman stuff out of the way early!)

Ok, they were nice, but the Acropolis was kind of just sitting up there on the hill, tantalizing us with its dramatic…ness.  We thought it was about time we stopped getting dramatic photos from below and started getting them up close.

After a couple more dramatic photos (they are not an easy thing to give up with any speed) we followed a sign that said ‘Acropolis’ and came to a dead end.  Backtracking, we discovered a staircase that kind of looked as though it was part of a café, filled with seats and tables, but actually also served as the main thoroughfare taking you up to the Acropolis.  Or, at least, taking you to the road that lead to the main thoroughfare taking you up to the Acropolis.

After sacrificing a few dramatic photos (there was a big rock that just screamed ‘climb me for a great view of the city’) we got to the Acropolis.  As we approached the entrance gate, a motorcade overtook us.  It kind of looked like something related to the Olympics – they had the rings on the side of the main car, anyway.  A bunch of important-looking people got out and kind of bummed about in the entrance.  Unfortunately, this is the kind of story strand that kind of goes nowhere, since we ended up having to go back down to the ticket office to get a fast entrance ticket since we had bought the ticket at another site, and by the time we got back up they were gone.

I’m not entirely sure what the point of getting the fast entry tickets was, as it would have been faster just to walk straight in.  Whatever.

The Acropolis is pretty cool, and is still dramatic up close.  Reading some of the informative signs, I was rather amused by the amount of restoration work going on that was made necessary by previous restoration work.  Unfortunately, a lot of the impact of seeing such an ancient site is lost when the ancient site is surrounded by scaffolding, though I’m sure what they are doing is very necessary.

The view was great, and it was a clear day so you could see Athens stretching out towards the sea, the mountains, and the horizon.  The whole city was white as far as the eye could see – actually, Athens is probably the brightest city I have been to so far.  It was also hot.

We kind of had a vague idea that we would head towards the Ancient Agora at this point, but we were sidetracked by the Theatre of Dionysus, which was just at the bottom of the Acropolis hill.  The ticket collector didn’t collect our ticket for the theatre for some reason, so we sneakily got in for free.

Unfortunately, our detour had taken us to the other side of the hill from the Ancient Agora.  On our way back around we thought it was high time we had some lunch, seeing as it was about 2pm.  Returning to the little staircase of cafes we had walked up previously (which turned out to be in a district called Plaka), we had the kind of lunch that I had been missing for nigh-on one month.  Dad had a look at the menu, decided he wanted a bit of everything (who was I to argue?) so we ended up with Greek Salad, fried cheese, meatballs, souvlaki, fried potatoes (for some reason this is what the Greeks call chips) and Mythos beer.  Oh yeah, and olives and bread.  It was a pretty comprehensive lunch, all things considered, and while Dad tended to think we could have done without the chips, and he was probably right, I left the table feeling very satisfied.

The restaurant seemed to have a cat that owned the place, going from lying in the sun to cooling off in the shade of the restaurant.  Every now and again a staff member would give it an affectionate kick, but that didn’t seem to discourage it.

We kind of took our time with lunch (well, we needed to) so it was close to 3:30pm by the time we stumbled out of our seats to go and find the Ancient Agora.  And find it we did!  But it had closed.  At 3pm.

This was my first experience of one of the most irritating aspects of Athens – ALL the attractions close at 3pm.  After that you’re basically left to just bum around or go eat or drink something (the restaurants don’t close, of course).  What with the enormous amount of food we had just guzzled down, neither of us was really up for more, so we opted for the bumming around.  From the Acropolis we had seen another hill (well, two actually, but we were closer to this one) with what appeared to be an impressive monument on the top.  So we went to have a look.

The walk was actually very nice – Athens has a great deal of green space, and this hill was kind of like a park or garden of some kind.  There were olive trees, too!  Unfortunately the monument itself, while certainly impressive, was a little more two-dimensional than it had appeared.  Somehow it had gone from looking like a building from a distance to looking like a big arch up close.  Well, at least it was close to 2000 years old.

The route back to the hotel took us along an enormous pedestrian (I say pedestrian, though you’d still see the occasional car) street lined with outdoor café spaces.  It was very busy, and for good reason – the view of the Acropolis was spectacular from that angle.

Well, we walked through a kind of market thing and eventually reached Monastiriki, where I noticed a sign advertising the famed Athens Flea Market!  Well… unfortunately a quick glance down the street revealed that the Athens Flea Market is just a bunch of chain stores selling shoes and jeans.  We could definitely give that a miss.

A bit of R&R at the hotel got us ready for going out once more.  Dad had decided that he wanted to return to Plaka that evening, as we had been promised by some of the street hecklers that there would be live music from 9pm.  Well, 9pm is a bit late (even after Spain I haven’t gotten used to that) so we definitely needed the brief rest in between.  9pm sharp, though, we headed out.

All along the way, waiters waited outside their restaurants, trying to entice us inside.  Dad had a rule – any place that spelled ‘taverna’ with a ‘v’ (the Greek uses a ‘b’ instead) would not receive our custom.  Dad made the mistake of telling one of the hecklers, “Maybe later,” which came back to haunt us briefly.

When we got to the staircase again, we started to consider the restaurants a little more seriously.  Well, the first one, at least, since the heckler for this one was really quite good.  In all fairness, he didn’t lie or cheat to get us into the place – he just saw we were looking, told us, “Very good food,” and half-dragged us in through the door.  Once you’re in, there’s no going back (unless you’re the group of American twenty-somethings who arrived a little after us, sat down for about a minute and suddenly marched out, much to the confusion of pretty much everyone).

Anyway, Dad wanted live music, and asked the door guy if there would be any.  He informed us that, yes, indeed, there would be.  At 10:30pm.  He saw we were a bit concerned by this (and also wary of being duped as tourists) so he basically just told us we should eat slowly and wait for all the locals who had reserved tables for that night to arrive.

He wasn’t lying about the reservations – the place slowly filled up while we were sitting there, sucking on our drinks.

Ah.  The drinks.  Dad was smart.  He got a beer.  I was dumb.  I went, “Hey, raki’s on the menu!  I’ve heard of that, it’s supposed to be a proper Greek spirit!”

Urgh.

UUUEEEEURUUUGUGUGGEHHRHEEHHHEUUEUHEUHEUEHG!

When I ordered it the guy was like, “Raki?  In a glass?”  Not taking the hint, I nodded.  He brought out a small, thin glass with about fifty milliliters of a clear liquid at the bottom.  He also brought a small metal bucket.

No, it’s not what you think.  The bucket was filled with ice and came with a set of ice tongs.  I dropped a couple of cubes in, wondering why they’d given me so much ice (the bucket was full).  One sip revealed the answer.  It tasted like I would imagine rubbing alcohol to taste.  Not quite as bad as tequila (what is?) but definitely in the vicinity of whiskey in the things-you-should-not-order-if-you-value-your-tastebuds hierarchy.

The next hour basically consisted of me constantly packing ice into the glass, waiting for it to melt, and then packing more in to try and get rid of the godawful taste of the drink I had ordered.  Once the mix was about 95% water, 5% raki, it started to taste a bit like liquid vegemite.

By the time I had finished my drink (I definitely took my time) the band was starting to set up.  We decided this was a good time to order mains (neither of us was prepared for a binge like the lunchtime one, so declined to have any starters, though some free nibbles including grilled octopus had been brought out with our drinks).

About thirty minutes after this, we managed to get the attention of the waiter.  The Greeks are very friendly, and the waiters are all eager to serve, but they certainly don’t push you.  It’s basically up to you to indicate when you are ready.  We made eye contact a few times, but this clearly wasn’t enough.  In a way, it’s nice not to be rushed into making a decision and getting out of the place to make way for more customers.  On the other hand… food.

It turned out that the thing I wanted (not sure what it was, but I bet it was meaty and delicious) was not actually available that day, as it was in the specials list.  Well, I could deal with that.  The waiter listed the specials for the day.  I understood, “Today we have…” but after that it kind of turned into a blur.  I just nodded and said, “Yeah, I’ll have that then.”

“Which one?”

“Which one?  Uh… the first one.”

The waiter nodded and left.

“What did you order?” Dad asked.  I shrugged.  First the raki, now some mystery dish – I was really playing Russian Roulette with the meal that night.

It turned out I had ordered some kind of chicken and cabbage and cheese (I think) stew thing.  It tasted pretty good, actually.

The music started a little before we got our food, and was, to our untrained ears, very Greek sounding.  I’d seen a walnut pie listed in the desserts menu, and, assuming they had just translated ‘baklava’ poorly, wanted to give it a shot.  They didn’t have any, so I had chocolate pie instead.  It was more of a chocolate fondue cake, actually, and was very tasty (but definitely did not beat the one in Lyon).

By this point it was pretty late – around 11:30pm.  Though the party’s just getting started at that time in Athens.  We left yawning, feeling quite satisfied, and foolishly headed back to the hotel the same way we had come.

Back past the restaurant hecklers.

Well, the guy that Dad had said, “Maybe later,” to was still there, even though it was two-and-a-half hours later.  And he eagerly approached us, saying, “Maybe now.”  I think I noted a hint of sarcasm in his tone.

“Oh, you’ve eaten already then?  Maybe tomorrow.”

Ha.

DAY THREE

As Dad was leaving the next day, we needed to basically do all those little things that we hadn’t been able to fit in the previous day.  We wanted to start with a small breakfast of a pastry and a frappe.  The pastry being baklava.  Unfortunately everywhere seemed to be closed.  We saw some people heading home after their night out.  It was 9am.

We ended up having breakfast at the hotel again.  After saying I only needed a small breakfast after all the food from yesterday, I made sure to cut myself down to only two courses.  Big courses, of course.

We made our way fairly lethargically to the Ancient Agora, which was the one site that we felt we really, really had to see of the ones left on our ticket.  The main reason we wanted to see it was for the temple that we had noticed from a distance, a temple that looked extremely well preserved.

For some reason entry was free that day, so once again we got into a site without using a ticket (we ended up with quite a few left over).  It was like the Greeks didn’t want to give us an opportunity to support their economy (though in all fairness we had already paid for entry).

The Agora was big, and we made sure to read every single placard in the place, though I can’t remember any of the information on any of the placards anymore.  The temple we had seen was actually one of the most complete ruins I saw in my whole time in Athens.  The reason for this?  It spent some time being used as a Christian place of worship.

I was pretty keen for a frappe, as this is a truly authentic part of Greek culture (no, really!)  The idea is to order one and just sit somewhere nice for a long time, sipping away and chatting with friends.  A Greek frappe is made with instant coffee, ice and water, with the option of including milk and sugar, which we went with.  They do something to froth it up so it has a nice thick foam on top.  It’s quite refreshing, and it was nice sitting in the big café space (the one we had passed by the previous day) and marveling at the Acropolis, watching the lady next to us continually lose control of her dog and perving on the young couple opposite me who were snuggling on one of the café lounges.

We spent about an hour there, just sipping away at our drinks, but still somehow managed to leave before any of the locals who had arrived before us (and ordered exactly what we had ordered).  The café culture seems to be good and strong in Athens.

We had some more ancient sites to see, though!  Up we got on our way to the Temple of Olympian Zeus.  Which was closed, because it was 3pm by the time we reached it.  There was a fairly nice garden next to the site, though, so we ended up wandering through there instead.

Dad planned to head back to the airport around 4pm, and so we just had enough time for a gyros at the place I had first visited (which turned out to have an English menu after all – thanks for letting me know, guys) before picking our bags back up from the hotel and saying our goodbyes.

In a move that has my budget (and stomach) singing praises to the highest heavens, Dad is planning to join me again in Budapest, which’ll be about a week away by the time I actually finish this blog entry.

But it was off to City Circus, the hostel that I had promised Athena and Peter I would meet them at, that I now headed.  It was much, much easier to find the hostel having been in Athens for some time already, though it was in a part of the city that was just outside the area I was most familiar with (that area being the area around the Acropolis).

Checked into the hostel, I met Alex, a Brit who was about eight and a half months into his round-the-world trip.  He had recently been in Egypt, which he said was fine apart from the violent insurrection going on outside his hotel room.  He got some good video of it, though, so at least he can keep the memories.

After a brief chat we got a new roommate.  The very, very first thing the large, middle-aged woman said to us upon entering the room was, “Either of you got any skunk?”

Both of us replied in the negative.

“What, do neither of you smoke then?”

Nope.

“Why not?”

Alex must have felt as though this question actually deserved an answer, because he gave one, explaining he had given it up some time ago when he gave up smoking.  I didn’t really feel the need to explain why I didn’t partake in the regular usage of illegal, addictive narcotics, though one of the reasons was so I didn’t end up becoming a grotty old person who went into hostels and introduced myself by looking to score.

Eventually I found out her name was Emily, that she was bipolar (I bet the marijuana did wonders for that) and lived off the disability benefits she received from the British government while squatting somewhere in Kent.  I mean, I’m not one to judge, but… No, actually, I think you can make up your own judgment from the provided information.

So Emily went off to score some skunk (feel for her – she hadn’t had any in almost a DAY!) and Alex and I quickly left the room, partly in order to avoid her when she got back, but also in order to hang out with two guys from Perth, Dave and Justin.  We all went out for a bite to eat.  The hostel was in a kind of youth/underground culture area, so there were some neat little places.  We found ourselves looking at one place before being dragged in by the owner.

It turned out that the place didn’t have an English menu, which made us fairly confident in our choice, so we had to go by what the waitress said was available.  I had a spinach pie and it was pretty good.

We were all kind of tired by this point (well, except for Dave, who ended up going out that night – not sure how he managed it) so off we went to bed.

Emily found her way back to the room once we were already in bed and kind of clambered around for a bit, then left again.  Huh.

DAY FOUR

Breakfast was actually really good at this hostel – they had a list of where all the different products came from (some guy’s mum made the yoghurt, the olives were from Crete, or was that the honey?) and I kind of just kept getting up for more.

If you remember, on the day Dad and I had scaled the Acropolis, we had spotted two hills, one in either direction.  We had scaled one to discover a Triumphant Arch from the Romans, and it was now time for me to scale the other, bigger one.  In the afternoon I planned to visit the National Archaeology Museum, which only opened from 1pm on Mondays for some reason.

Alex also planned to scale the hill, but he was going to go to the Museum of Cycladic Art first, so there wasn’t really an opportunity to go together.  Emily showed up and revealed that she had successfully found some skunk (“I asked the guy, and he said to head down the shady street behind the hostel where there were a bunch of Arab/Indian guys” – her words – “and he told me not to pay more than five euro for a matchbox, but I ended up paying ten because that’s a pretty damn good price” – she proceeded to show us the matchbox full of weed, which was hidden in her tobacco pouch.  I had to take her word on the price angle, since she was the expert having grown it for many years.  Did I mention that?)

Well, she seemed much more relaxed now, though was no less irritating, with a rather unusual habit of just butting into conversations with a completely irrelevant comment.  She also had a really weird laugh where she would throw her head back, make absolutely no noise, and her whole body would kind of shudder, mouth open to provide a stunning view of her rotting tonsils.  And she would just randomly do this whenever, even if nothing funny happened.  Probably because she was high.

Anyway, this is starting to turn into a blog about bashing on Emily, which could probably go on and on all day, but it’s starting to feel mean, and she is, to be honest, a very easy target.  So let’s move on!

I didn’t get lost trying to find the hill (it being the tallest thing in Athens helped on that account) so speedily found myself at the top, where I saw a bunch of cats.  And a café.  And a little church with an old woman wearing a headscarf sweeping, which is exactly the sort of thing I want to see around a tiny church on the top of a hill.  The view was unfortunately not great because for some reason I had decided to scale the hill on the one smoggy day I experienced my whole time in Athens.  I think the strong winds the day before had something to do with that.

At a distance I could make out the first modern Olympics stadium, and decided that it was high time I saw something that wasn’t two thousand years old, so I went and had a look.  On the way I (quite accidentally) passed parliament and the national palace, at which there were numerous military personnel and police, with a police van looking ready to start a raid.  Apparently there was no raid – there is always a police van there for some reason.

I also got to see the Greek National Guard, who guard the palace.  If you thought the British ones were silly looking… My God, these guys had pompoms on their shoes.  And the way they had to walk… it was like watching a crane.  They would raise one knee, then swing their lower leg out straight and bring it back so the foot was against the other knee, then swing forward and take a step.  It was the Ministry of Silly Walks before Monty Python ever existed.

I saw the Olympic stadium, nodded a bit with the appropriate amount of awe, and headed for the Archaeology Museum.

The National Archaeology Museum is interesting mainly for one key exhibit – the Mycenaean Treasure.  Basically, this is a treasure discovered inside a burial site in the Peloponnese within the ancient, mythical city of Mycenae.  Mycenae is where King Agamemnon supposedly ruled.  To give you an idea, this was ancient by the time Homer was writing about it; we’re talking 3000 years old.  The treasure basically consists of a lot of golden death masks (hence Homer’s description “Mycenae rich in gold”) and bracelets and things.

The museum also contains an impressive collection of Greek statues, which are displayed in such a way as to kind of reveal ancient Greek history, starting with Neolithic times and taking us through to the Roman conquest.  All the bits of ancient Greece started fitting together, and I realized that, actually, ancient Greek history was not quite as homogeneous as I had come to believe (when most of Greek mythology is based on civilisations that existed 1000 years before the ancient Greeks… well, that’s bloody old).

They also had a pretty good Egyptian section, though I only got a brief idea of how Egyptian history fit together (I had a similar impression of ancient Egypt as I had of ancient Greece in that it was one homogeneous period – wrong!)  Maybe a trip to Egypt is in order… though maybe I’ll wait a bit.

The museum was closing early for some kind of concert, so I left and returned to the hostel.  After a bit of time just kind of bumming around in my room, Alex arrived.

“Please don’t leave me with her again,” was the first thing he said.

Yes, he had spent the entire day dragging Emily around.  They had gone up the same hill I had, and Emily had apparently complained about how tough the hill was to climb the whole way (let’s put it this way – the climb up is an easy, paved slope).

We planned to head out with Dave and Justin again that night, so went up to meet them on the roof (oh yeah, the hostel had a rooftop with a view of the Acropolis) and also met some Taiwanese girls.  Dave had been conned that day, meeting a guy in the street who asked for the time, then invited him to his bar.  At the bar a hot Greek girl had joined him and ordered a drink.  Of course the girl was a plant from the bar who disappeared once the bill arrived, which turned out to be somewhere around 30 euro.  Dave refused to pay, tossed something like five euro at them and ran out.

Talking about scams, Alex had some of his own to contribute.  He’d known of one New Zealand girl in Thailand or Vietnam or similar who had been conned into somehow becoming involved in a card game and forcefully persuaded to go to an ATM to take as much money out as she could to continue playing.  She’d lost something like $13,000, which to give you an idea is considerably more than my budget for this entire trip, including airfares.

The saddest one, though, was in India.  It wasn’t nearly as much money, but it was a bit of an emotional con.  A friend of Alex’s had been in India and had been guided around by a local.  Over the course of the four days he was there, he got to know this guy, and very, very slowly a sad story about how the Indian man had used to be a shoe repairman, but his repair kit had been stolen and now he couldn’t support his family.  Well, the guy, before he was to head out of India, offered to buy the guy a new repair kit.

“I know just the place!” the man beamed.

By throwing numbers out and confusing the exchange rate, the guy ended up being duped for around $350.  The next day he saw the same man targeting a new tourist.

Emily joined us a little later and we all went out to the cool bar part of town for some food.

We had gyros.  What else were we going to have?

There was a short, embarrassing period during ordering where Emily struggled to say “souvlaki” and asked what it was, and asked one of the Taiwanese girls to order for her even though the waiter spoke perfect English, but we got the food eventually and it was delish.

The only thing of note that occurred during dinner was a lady came and tried to sell flowers to the girls.  She was fairly forceful, smilingly sticking the unwanted flowers into the collars of Emily and one of the Taiwanese girls.  Emily contemplated the flower for a while before, surprisingly tactfully I thought, handing it back and advising the woman to sell the flowers and make some money for herself.  Then she went and bought some tissues off the next little salesperson (a seven year old girl) that came up to us.  I got the feeling she had quite a bit of empathy for these supposed street urchins, but it’s difficult to feel sorry for them when they’re dressed better than you (this girl certainly didn’t have a massive tear in her jeans, I’ll tell you that).

Dave had an addiction for some kind of vanilla pastry coated in melted chocolate from a particular store, so we headed there next.  He promised we’d love it.  I got a nice big tray of it, and it was good.  Very, very filling though.

DAY FIVE

My final day in Athens got off to a fairly lethargic start.  I packed, had breakfast and checked out.  My train out of Athens to a city in the north called Thessaloniki was to leave at 23:55 that evening, so I left my bags in the hostel in order to avoid having to drag the around the entire day.  I have to admit to being a little nervous about this train trip – it was an overnighter, but not a sleeper (that is, it didn’t contain beds).  I had assumed it would be practically empty, but found a website that suggested that the train would be full of “vagrants, illegal immigrants, soldiers and other seedy characters.”  Not exactly comforting for a trip that would be taken from midnight until six in the morning.

Anyway, that was for later.  There were still two ancient sites I hadn’t seen yet, and I didn’t want to leave Athens having missed them.  The first was actually a great deal more interesting than it had any right to be – an ancient graveyard dating back to 3000BC or thereabouts that also happened to double as the ancient gate into Athens AND an old pottery site.  There were also a few tortoises, two large and one tiny.  Only one of the big ones left its shell to perform for me, and I got a good 15-20 minutes entertainment watching it slooooooowly plod from one end of a five metre strip of grass to the other.  I was a fan.

The other site that was a total necessity was the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which I had technically seen from the outside but wanted to get through the fence a bit.  It used to be an immense set of columns – a lot of columns – but only eight or so are still around.  One of them had collapsed a few decades ago in a massive storm.  Even the collapsed column was impressive, if decidedly… well… collapsed.

I went back to the park, saw a pile of turtles in a pond (they were all sitting on each others’ heads) and found the dirtiest toilet I had seen the whole time I had been in Greece.

I still had about ten hours to kill, so I went back to the hostel and tried to work on this blog entry.  Unfortunately it was not long before Emily returned from her day.  I was in a bit of a focused, selfish mood, so I responded to all her comments with rather terse, short statements.  She didn’t get the hint for around three hours, at which point I was too tired to keep writing.

I’d hoped to see Alex at the hostel again, but he didn’t show, having spent the day at the Archaeology Museum.  I left at about 9:30pm to head for the train station, planning to grab something to eat on the way.  I passed the pastry shop from the day before and bought some more of that pastry.  I mean, I hadn’t actually thought it was that good, but somehow I was craving it.  Being basically fat rolled up in dough and soaked in sugary fat, it was exceptionally rich and filling.

I still thought I ought to pick up something savoury, so went to grab a gyros from a place outside the Monastiriki metro station, from which I would catch the metro to Larissa train station.

I spotted a gyros place and headed for it, but was intercepted by a woman selling flowers.  Well… selling might not be the right word for it.  She kind of shoved a flower into my jacket and said, “Free for you, you are sexy young man.”  She was probably in her twenties, so I would have taken this as a compliment if it hadn’t immediately made me think that she was a prostitute (take note ladies, if you call me a sexy young man and give me a flower, I’m going to assume you want me to pay you for sex).  So I shoved past her, pushing the flower away, and headed into the metro station (“Free for you, free for you!” followed me the whole way).

As I was buying a ticket for the metro, a lady approached me nervously.  She was selling tissues for 0,50 euro, as well as a sob story about having lost her job.  When I declined, she looked extremely embarrassed, waving her hands and repeating, “Sorry, sorry!”  I kind of felt sorry for her – she was clearly new to the game and was probably in legitimate (recent) strife.  However, I am firm with regard to beggars, and my policy is that a) there are some who take advantage of the goodwill of others and fake it, and b) providing small amounts of money to individuals doesn’t solve the problem, and really just gives the local government an excuse not to enact some kind of decent social policy.  I did feel sorry for her though.

The metro was as simple as it had been on day one, and I soon found myself at Larissa station.  Which is basically just a small, dirty building with a few train tracks next to it.  The Greek train company is not doing so hot, as I think I mentioned previously, so a lot of services have been cut.

For the first time in my European train experience, other than on the fast train in Spain, tickets were checked BEFORE arriving on the platform.  This was kind of fortunate, as all the information I had seen previously had suggested I did not need a reservation for this train.  Turned out I did, which the (very friendly) ticket inspector indicated to me in the best English he could manage (I didn’t learn one word of Greek the whole time I was there).  The reservation was free anyway, so that hardly mattered.

The train journey was much nicer than I had expected.  Far from the train being filled with vagrants, I was accompanied in my cabin by three middle-aged, plump, wrinkly Greek men, all of whom sat in an amusing, serious row opposite me.  Unfortunately there is really no comfortable way of sitting in one of those tiny, cramped carriages for six and a half hours with four other people between midnight and six thirty (the train was late) while trying to sleep.  I was also feeling a bit weird – dehydrated and hungry, probably because I hadn’t eaten or drunk enough that day.

Some background information is required for the next part of the story.  See, I was trying to make my way to Bulgaria, the city of Plovdiv specifically.  Unfortunately, due to the Greek railway’s financial problems, all international trains had been canned.  This meant no train to get me to Bulgaria.  No worries, though!  There was a bus, and I was informed by the eurail website that the buses were organized by the railway company in tandem with a Bulgarian coach company, and that there was a ticket office somewhere in the Thessaloniki train station.  I had one-and-a-half hours to find it, buy a ticket and get on the bus.

Well.  If you’ve been following my journey from the beginning you’ll know that things have a habit of not going to plan on most of my train journeys (so far on two thirds of my transit periods something has gone wrong).  I searched all over the train station.  No ticket office for buses.  The information desk was closed, so I went and lined up at the train ticket desk and asked the guy there where the desk for international buses was.

“There are no international buses here.  Only the trains.”

Well, that didn’t help.  I walked outside the train station and saw a gigantic sign saying “International buses to Bulgaria!” on the other side of the road.

Oh, thank God, that must be it.

I got over and the office was closed.  Seeing as the one I was looking for was supposed to be open from 6am, and it was now 7am, it was clearly not the correct office.  I walked down the street, hoping for something else, but there was nothing else.

I went back across the street to a bus station directly beside the train station.  Maybe, I reasoned, the bus station will have the correct place, and it is considered part of the train station.

I went and asked the guy at the ticket desk.

“No buses here.  In the train station.”

“I asked in the train station, but they said it wasn’t in there.”

“I don’t know about tickets, I only know the buses, they come and they go.”
“Where do they go from?”

“Some go from the train station, some from the other side of the street.”

I thanked him and went for one last wander.  Worst came to worst, if I knew where the buses would be I could try and buy a ticket on the bus itself.  At this point, I happily noticed that the ticket office on the other side of the road had a light on now.  I went across and discovered that, while I had been wandering around, panicking, the office had opened.  I bought a ticket for the next bus (which ended up being cheaper and leaving at the same time anyway) and got on.  It wasn’t the one I had planned to catch, but it was good enough.

So off the bus headed towards Bulgaria, which is as good a time as any to state the fact that this story is

TO BE CONTINUED