Monday, July 10, 2006

Yesterday was so much fun.

We slept in until Mike and Brian came over at noon to wake us up for our day trip; they had been mis-informed about what time we were leaving so we were still asleep when they came over.  We got Alpin and left here around 1:30; we walked to the train station at Monastiraki, making a pit stop at Starbucks since we were walking right past it.  They were out of chocolate chips to make frappuccinos with so instead they substituted half a chocolate chip cookie; I must say it was quite delicious, I had ordered a chocolate chip cream frap, and since they had to substitute it ended up tasting like liquid cookie.  (Sonia-you should try this out, instead of putting chips in just throw half a cookie in the blender, it was amazing). 

The bus 'station' for Attica buses is about 4 blocks from the National Archeological museum, so we took the train from Monastiraki to Victoria and walked the few streets over to the street where the buses park.  We decided to take the coastal road bus down to Sounio to get a good tour of the Attic coast and then planned to take the inland road bus back because it is shorter and it would be dark outside so the view wouldn't matter.  The bus left at 2:30 and we did indeed get a wonderful view of the coast; the water and rocks here are like nothing you have ever seen, its absolutely breathtaking.  It made me realize how much I'm going to miss being here, the atmosphere and the landscape are so perfectly attuned to my personality-that is, I love the contrast of the city and the sea, the juxtaposition of sprawling development and sprawling untouched nature.  It is amazing.

Sounio really is one of the coolest little places we have been.  I loved it.  There were just 7 of us, our apartment and Mike, Brian, and Alpin; the group was really fun.  The bus dropped us off right at the base of the temple so we walked up and explored it first.  The Temple of Poseidon at Sounio was built in 444 BC and is relatively intact; 15 of the 34 orginal columns remain and its position on the cliffs overlooking Cape Sounion make it an incredibly breathtaking scene, especially at sunset.  We arrived around 4:15 and spent about an hour and a half at the temple site, the view is amazing and the breeze made the intense temperatures much more enjoyable.  We clambered down a little path cut into the hill side to the small village and beach below where we ate dinner at a taverna.   It was probably the most fun Greek meal we have had so far, the service and food were good and the conversation was excellent.  We stayed at the restaurant for easily two hours and then walked across the road to the small beach, where we sat for about 45 minutes.  The water was relatively warm, considering it was 7pm, but we didn't actually go swimming, just waded out about waist deep for awhile.  Laura and I walked down the small rickety dock, the song "Sitting on the dock of the bay" stuck in our heads, and took touristy pictures.  After we dried off, we hiked back up the cliff side path to the Temple to watch the sunset.  It is probably the most famous sunset in Greece, rivaling the views from Oia in Santorini and Lykavitos Hill in Athens.  Out of all the sunsets we have watched on this trip, Sounio was definitely the best-it was the only one unblocked by clouds-and the view was breathtaking.  It was an incredibly enjoyable afternoon and evening, one of the better ones. 

The bus ride back to Athens was a bit eventful; about halfway back to Athens a group of teenage boys migrated to the back of the bus and started talking to Alpin.  They were all 17 and under, so once they found out Laura and I were over 20 they left us alone, but for about half an hour we were treated to the typical Greek guy trying to pick up an American girl act.  It was harmless and would have been funny had we not been exhausted and had they not been so loud.  Their idea of trying to impress the girls was to serenade us with traditional greek love songs, the bus driver even let them get on the intercom system.  Of course, we had no idea what they were saying, so they were offended when we didn't return their attention.  The whole european way of thinking is rather amusing to me sometimes when it comes to situations like that; that would never happen at home and I don't think that idea is exactly understood over here.  They gave up when they realized that A) we were all a lot older than them and B) Alpin, Brian, and Mike were there with us.  At least now I can say that I have been serenaded on a bus full of strangers in a foreign language, always makes for a good story.

When we got back to Athens, some of Alpin's greek friends had invited us out to Karaoke so Laura, Maren, and I changed and headed down to Monastiraki with him and Brian.  We decided to go for a European look, and spent half an hour in the bathroom with two cans of hairspray trying to make my hair look even remotely cool-the faux-hawk we were attempting didn't quite turn out as planned so we gave up and just went with it, and I got to wear the shirt-dress that I bought at the H&M in Budapest, which was very exciting.  We walked through Monastiraki, past the Hephaestion to meet Alpin's friends, whom we had met briefly a few other times.  One of them is named Hector-which is so very exciting-I now have a Greek friend named Hector.   We went to a place called Mike's, which was free b/c we are foreigners.  Laura and I split a can of sprite and tried to figure out what song to sing, while our new friend Sandy tried to cheer up Maren who was in an odd mood.  We eventually decided on One Way or Another, by Blondie since we knew all the words, and we coerced Alpin and Sandy into singing with us.  Public humiliation does wonders for one's mood and self esteem-seriously, everyone should try it some time, its so much fun.  There was another group of Americans there (a couple of Marines stationed in Athens who were very nice), but the majority of the crowd was the group we were with, about 25 people.  They were all really friendly, when Mike's closed, we took taxis back to Syntagma, and were delighted to find that McDonalds is still open at 3:00 in the morning.  Laura and I split a large fry and the group decided to head up to the Acropolis walkway, which is much cooler if you are going to be sitting pointlessly outside.  We situated ourselves in a little secluded square off the main pedestrian walkway and sat around talking for almost two hours; I got to hear my first "Macedonia is Greek" conversation as well as my first Greece-Turkey-Cyprus debate, it was wonderful.  Mind you, we were hanging out with a group of 19 year old, fresh out of high school students and having a lengthy conversation about international politics, foreign languages, and the benefits of our respective educational systems.  At 4am.  By the Acropolis.

This is why I love this country.

Today I had class; the professor handed back our midterm papers and then discussed them for the remainder of class-normally this would bother me, but I got an 'A' and the prof. thought it was excellent. 

Tonight we are going to cook dinner at the apartment and then probably walk back to where we were last night in Monastiraki by the Hephaestion, it is really gorgeous all lit up at night and we haven't really been through there before.  Tomorrow we are going to get up early and head down to the beach, we found a cool one yesterday that is worth checking out and are going to do that instead of going to Spetses.  I feel like I said goodbye to the islands on Saturday, and I can't bear the thought of getting on another boat.

That's all for now.  I've got to go to the ATM and then walk over to Bazaar to get some bread, juice, and yoghurt (the staples of our greek diet) before the other two get out of class so that we can make dinner when they get done, and then I need to at least do a little work on my last Philosophy paper. 

Kali Spera.

~RLM

GotD:  malakas - greek curse word, taught to us by our greek friends, not generally good to use in public if you don't want to get the locals mad at you. Sounds very similar to malaga, which means bad.