9/26 - 9/28

9/26/11
Non-Greek news, but important: my publication is finally finished and final! Observe: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231011008521. I suppose some of you may not have journal access so I will try to send out a pdf when I remember.

Greek news: this whole trip has just been really weird. Not sure I’ve detailed how Spyros is giving a talk at a conference in Paris now, and how he won’t be back until late Wednesday night, and especially how I haven’t actually met with him about my proposal yet and we’re flying out on Thursday. There was the opportunity the first Monday, but I wasn’t sure where to meet him or when, and then he came in at 4pm and said he was going home. So turns out that was my only chance, I guess. Ultimately I guess I came all this way to sit next to Spyros on the plane home and discuss my project? It’s an 8-hour flight, though, and if he doesn’t like what I’ve done so far (in my vacuum of instruction) I will have 6-7 hours left to sit next to a disappointed man.

It’s this kind of frustration that made this kind of a fail day. I worked on my proposal, then took a break for the local cookies ice cream (which is a favorite) and the last Patras sunset photo op (although I missed the full glory by a few minutes). I wandered around, collected some sea glass, and found myself accidentally in a drinks-only kind of place (no food!). Whoops..oh well, got a frappe as is customary and thought about life. I got a recommendation from Andrea and ate there, at a cute seaside place that was nicely insulated from the winds that were kicking about. They had a paper menu that I was able to draw all over (proposal ideas, lists of ideas to fix the apartment here, working on my greek, etc), which was nice, but the food was just okay – a chicken, tomato, cheese and spinach quesadilla really, but for 10E. Plus no nice free desserts or drinks at the end like they have in Crete. So that makes me kind of lukewarm on the places here – the first night I went to the busiest place and the food was, accordingly, pretty good, but I didn’t think I should go back to the same place again when there were so many other restaurants. I guess that was a mistake. Peter was saying that I’m having so much trouble because as one person you can’t order that much. I need to eat with someone else so my sample size increases! Ahh, food and math.

Before doing a bit of internetting, I returned home to do some laundry in the sink (very important underwear and socks!) since the washer is still inexplicably non-functional and, other than one phone call to the institute who owns the place (which of course was not returned) no one seems to want to help. So I’ll be a little smellier than intended, but whatever. Hopefully the underwear and socks dry before I have to leave tomorrow. Spin cycles are wonderful things after you have to do it yourself…

Fun take-home lessons I’ve been thinking about:
- have a bazillion plans and bring enough underwear and socks even if you think you’ll be able to do laundry
- strikes are super common here
- related to strikes: education shouldn’t be free (just like implementation in developing countries, a thing needs to cost at least 3-7% of average income for people to take it seriously)
- don’t expect people who measure air quality to be concerned about their own health (most of them are smokers!)

Thus ends my barrel of sunshine post.

9/27/11
Second-to-last packing day (for this trip, anyway)! My most useful recent purchase was plastic wrap last night (since they didn’t have tape); now the olive oil is secure, and I packed a bunch of baklava into my sandwich box and wrapped it up nicely too. I am the food smuggling master! As long as customs doesn’t catch me, that is. Any food I couldn’t finish, I brought into work. I will be leaving some ice cream in the freezer though, since it won’t go bad and I imagine whoever stays here after me will appreciate it.

After I did a bit of work, I cleaned up the apartment and got all ready to meet spyros’ wife, Angeliki, who is driving me to her family town Mati near Athens as a kind of staging for the flight later. Spyros said she plays the bouzouki, a traditionally male-only string instrument here, so I take that to mean she’s a badass and I’m kind of scared. But I had some time to kill, so I read a book outside to work on my tan. I also finally tried a fig from the tree outside and thought it was okay – funny how I’ve never really even thought about how popular figs aren’t in the US.

Anyway, eventually it was time to go, and we returned the apartment keys and were off! Fun conversation snippets: she and Spyros met in undergrad in Patras, married and then went to LA for grad school. She is in civil engineering teaching, and has always wanted to be a teacher. She learned bouzouki when she was younger, but then took up tennis in LA, met a lot of friends, and was competitive so hurt her arms and now bouzouki is more difficult. Her mother lives in Mati, where we’re going, in the family home that her father built. Angeliki likes sweets (we had some of her favorite kind at a rest stop on the way! Woot!), Spyros is trying some weird atkins diet or something and eats American chocolate for lower calories (and taste). She doesn’t like how often Spyros is away (“I’m taking dance lessons, but for what? To dance with whom?”) and how he doesn’t even leave the cell phone they got him in the car (which would have been useful one night when his car actually did break down) and how some days she isn’t sure where he is until he calls her. So she can’t travel as much as she’d like because someone has to take care of Nikos. Kind of sucks, but she seems happy enough to be in Greece and not Pittsburgh, and to be teaching.

So, not so scary after all! We also stopped and got some sweets for her mother in the biggest bakery I’ve seen here… we SO need one in Pittsburgh. If this PhD thing doesn’t pan out… well, anyway. I ate dinner with her at her mother’s house since there is apparently not much to eat around the hotel. It was chicken, sauce and noodles but very delicious. The mother knows no English but is a good cook. It was a kind of awkward evening, what with the translation barrier and all, but I tried! Then I got to Hotel Myrto totally exhausted and gave up for the day.

9/28/11
Almost there. Last full day in Greece! As is fitting, after breakfast I started a walking-around journey to seek my fortune in yet another new city. Well, town. I discovered that there is not much to Mati aside from a grocery, three restaurants, three hotels, and lots and lots of beaches. It’s a summer home kind of place, and they consider September strictly fall, so most people have left already. But the beaches – there seemed to be about one per person, lots of little coves with windy cement staircases that reminded me of the Myst games. One path (more or less) on the coast united all of these walks and I spent a good few hours walking up and down, hair blowing around in the fierce wind, going down to find some seaglass, trying desperately to get a tan to prove I was actually in a sunny country. It was pretty successful, really.

After a pizza lunch (the pizza shop is the largest of the three restaurants, and the most open) I headed back to finish my poster for next week’s Orlando conference. After a bit of this (and some disagreement with Spyros about sentence structures on posters, blah blah) I walked over to see the church where Angeliki and Spyros got married, which isn’t far from her mother’s house. A lot of the houses are beautiful here and the church was no exception. Although concrete building isn’t the cheapest or most sustainable, it looks striking with a new coat of paint and some sun. A little while after, I got a call from Angeliki asking if I wanted to go for a walk. The answer is always of course! It was more of a drive than a walk, though (too windy and cold for Greeks! And actually, for Americans too after the sun set), as she took me to some of her favorite beach places, drove me around the old American base that’s now a kind of cultural center, went through Nea Makri (the large city nearby with like 7 supermarkets), and on. We ended up at her mother’s place for a simple dinner, which was great – especially since I suspect the pizza place would have been my alternate option. I am very grateful to Angeliki and her mother for their wonderful hospitality -- even though I am, due to being in the states, partially the reason why her husband is away all the time.

Now for the final packing! Until I get home, and must pack for Orlando, of course…but then I won’t have any liquids to carefully arrange in my checked bags, so it’ll be easier.

9/23 - 9/25

9/23/11
Today was probably the weirdest day yet. I had packed a bag just in case I stayed in Plaka with Andrea, but I had already kind of decided that her coming in to Irakleio would be easier for everyone. Plus there was the detail that when we came in, we also lead in the electricians, who were trying to quickly diagnose and fix whichever instrument kept tripping the system. Unsurprisingly, that lead to no electricity and no internet for much of the day, which meant nobody was really doing much work. It was nice to sit around and talk up to a point, but a lot of it was conducted in greek so that was kind of difficult.

Also, the food issue. Hanna, a newly-anointed post-doc from Finland, had recently arrived and hadn’t eaten anything for the entire day – and everyone was still dragging their feet about lunch. So finally it was after 2pm (which is what they had told me) and I put my foot down (I hadn’t brought anything either, because they had promised lunch!). Spyros got Michael to drive us into Plaka to check Hanna into her room and get some food, but we had to be back by 5pm to go back to the city. Fine, I thought – it was 2:30 or so by then. Michael was like “we will have to get fast food” but then drove into Elounda, a neighboring town with more options than Plaka, and we sat down at a place. Whaaaatever. I got a crepe (although a strange one because the stuffing bits were in large chunks of cheese/sausage/tomato) and then we went to get calchunia (sp??) cookies since Michael seemed surprised we hadn’t tried them yet, and THEN we headed back. This is when I learned that Michael’s birthday was the previous day and he had stayed up super late, and navigating those back roads is really stressful just for the passenger so I can’t imagine driving it. But we did arrive at the site by 5:05 – except, there were no cars. Big WTFFFFF moment. I thought they had left without us, but it was weirder than that – they had left for lunch maybe an hour after we had. If they had TOLD me that was happening, I could have just waited instead of having Michael waste his time. BLARGH. Oh, Greeks.

We actually didn’t end up leaving until about 6:30, so…so much for that. But it did give us time to see some of the sunset, and a group of about eight huge gliding eagles. They circled once or twice, perhaps expecting some bodies to start piling up at the site? =D I also made plans for Andrea to meet me in Irakleio tomorrow night, and told her the hotel would put a cot in my room for 20E. Sounds like a steep price, but it’s pretty reasonable compared to booking another single room, which was ~50-60E. Shrug! Plus now it’ll be like a slumber party.

Since I got nothing done today, clearly, I decided not to stay in Finokalia on Saturday. I’d rather be somewhere I can procrastinate by sightseeing, at least, and also be free to get my own food and use a dedicated bathroom. Rustic living. Anyway the drive back into the city brought a crazy bit of info from Spyros – he discussed his Plans A through D regarding how the potential strikes on Sunday could really mess things up. I hadn’t realized that the conference in Paris he’s attending lasts until Wednesday. This is totally bizarre, because I haven’t actually met with him about proposal the whole time I’ve been here, and now he won’t be here for the rest of the week! What am I actually doing here, then?? Anyway, he mentioned that as it is, he would have to drive to Patra on Wednesday night, repack, then wake up ~6am and pick me up to go to the airport on Thursday (why you would schedule that for yourself, I do not know). So if there are strikes, we discussed whether I should (or can) really go back to Patra or not. I don’t particularly like the idea of him or one of the other students coming into the apartment and getting my stuff, which is kind of strewn around… he said he’d call on Sunday when he knows more. Iiiinteresting. By the time we got back, I had just about enough energy to have a gyro at ol’ Izmir Kebap and surf their free wireless before wandering a bit and going off to bed.

Speaking of Patra, if you’re curious about the bridge I’ve been talking about, I found http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmwIjpjcPv0&feature=player_embedded# today. It is all about the bridge, but with so. much. drama. I personally find it HILARIOUS – “this has never been done” dun dun DUN – with music like they’re voting someone off Survivor. I don’t know how the announcer kept his face straight.


9/24/11
Yay, morning in Irakleio! The weather was beautiful, much more like what I had expected versus the previous two days where I actually needed a long sleeved shirt after dusk. After getting some prerequisite pastries, I basically just wandered from shop to shop. It ended up being only successful food shopping, really, because like before I didn’t really see anything I wanted to buy that wasn’t super expensive. Maybe Andrea will be able to talk me into something when she gets here.

I mostly wandered some old haunts, seeing which cafés have changed and what’s new. There’s now a parking lot across from Irini Hotel, where I stayed with the 2007 study abroad – a big improvement from the huge hole that was there when Peter and I visited in ’09. The area on the whole is a bit nicer looking than I remember, actually, although that building by the Lion’s Square is STILL under construction, four years later. After satisfying my wandering curiousity, I went back to drop things off and rest a bit. Andrea’s cot is adorable and feels pretty comfortable, hooray! I did nap on my own bed, though. =)

Then it was walking to the port / Venetian castle time. On the way out I grabbed a double hot dog and cheese pastry topped with sesame seeds, which is so much classier than a plain hot dog on a bun. Around 6pm I met up with Kostas and we walked around, eventually settling at a waterfront café for some coffees (of course). He finished with the army a few months after we left last time, and has since worked at a water bottling facility and then an oil company before being recently laid off. Although Spyros has a generally optimistic outlook regarding his country’s crisis, Kostas is feeling some more dire effects. He said he did get an interview with a company that makes the sun-tracking bases for photovoltaics, which is pretty awesome, so hopefully that will work out! It was really nice to sit and chat as the sun set, and he brought me another 1.5L of olive oil! Wee! We left when it got surprisingly chilly, and anyway it was almost time for Andrea to show up. Before he left, Kostas helped pick a restaurant – Peri Orexeos, if you’re keeping track at home – and place a dinner reservation, which was great! I hope to see him again two years from now (!)…hehe. Unless this is a rule of threes thing and this will be my last trip…but I won’t think about that.

Unfortunately Andrea’s car was delayed in getting here so we didn’t end up eating until about 10:30pm (only a half hour late on the reservation, but the front desk in the hotel assured me that Greeks don’t worry about such things). The dinner itself took a good while, but it was really awesome. We had a fancy salad with manouri cheese (yum), a huge moussaka/salad/tzatziki combo plate, a roast chicken with pistachio crust and honey sauce, raki and watermelon, and finally a chocolate lava cake with ice cream. Freaking great, and Andrea got some leftovers for lunch tomorrow. =) And it was equally (if not more) excellent to have someone to TALK to during dinner, and also during my quick city walking tour afterwards. It’s okay once and a while, but especially as a traveler it’s infinitely better to have someone to share everything with. So glad I talked her into coming. We didn’t get back to the hotel until after 1am – and had decided to wake up early to see things before we both had to leave – but the lack of sleep was totally worth it.


9/25/11
Soooo…I should have known better, but I totally forgot that almost everything is closed on Sundays. I was super disappointed with myself, as I was hoping to get her to a grocery and do some shopping. =( Luckily I had thought to at least buy her some peanut butter (which I knew was at the top of her list) and Happy Hippos (of course) the previous day, and we were able to window shop and wander around in another lovely day. And of course we solidly crossed off having boughatsa and various greek coffees off our list, so hooray for that!

The visit came to a rather abrupt end, though – 10am was about when Giorgios was going to pick up Andrea to go to the site, and also when Spyros said he’d call me to update on the plans for the week. I was hoping they wouldn’t happen at exactly the same time, but of course they did, and I was half on the phone and half hugging Andrea when the time came. Aaack. Didn’t look like either one of us forgot anything, though, so I consider that a success. Also, Spyros has a new plan: his wife needs to drive into Athens on Tuesday night, so I might go with her and stay near her parents (?) so it’s close for Spyros to pick me up on Thursday. He said it was “non-optimal” – maybe his wife isn’t super thrilled to babysit one of her husband’s students? – but we’ll see what happens. I would at least be able to check off more of Greece at that rate. Also he mentioned that the strike today had been declared illegal, although to expect some delays.

I had a few more hours after I was done with the call, so I checked out (after carefully packing the water bottle full of oil and some other spillables) and wandered around one last time. There was some danger of premature I’m-traveling-oh-noes freakout, so I bought some souvenirs and gifts and tried to just relax, because hey – it’s nice out, and I’m in Crete! It worked pretty well. =)

Then began my odyssey back to Patra. The bus to the airport was 1.10E and absolutely painless. They have lighted signs now to say when each line is coming, which was neat. The flight was 45 minutes delayed, but that’s not bad at all considering what I had been expecting. In the meantime I heard about my 95-year-old great-grandfather’s death via text message, which made the trip even more surreal than it already was. I also talked to my seatmate about how he grows fish and makes extracts for some cosmetics company in Connecticut that has a new line coming out. Life is weird sometimes.

Taking the X93 bus from the airport to the inter-city bus depot was only 5E and also easy to find. The trip itself seemed pretty long, though, and I took some mininaps (no danger of missing my stop, as I wanted the end of the line). The depot is “part of Greece that isn’t in the European Union” according to the guy I sat next to on the plane, and it was indeed not very pretty, or in a good area. Plus the workers weren’t very helpful – the ticket guy gave me an express ticket when I said I wanted the slow (so I could stop in Rio) and then switched me to a seat that I later learned was already spoken for. Jeez. The farther away from the city center, the less English people seem to know, I think. Anyway, I got some nice sunset pictures on the ride, but soon realized it would be very dark by the time we got to Rio. The lady next to me said maybe a taxi would be easier, and called her preferred taxi company to check the rates for me (how nice is that!). The taxi would only be 12E, which is fine – Spyros is paying anyway, and it was quite dark. Made me feel a little foolish for switching to the slower bus, though. Oh well. After a bit of nail-biting about where to get off, I saw a stop with a bunch of taxis and indeed the fare was only 12E (including tip) to get home. Well, “home.” I really don’t trust that there aren’t secret wiggly creatures in this apt, although it does look like someone cleaned while I was away. Anyway, after starting out to the airport around 1:30pm, I arrived at 9:30pm. Ordinarily it should take only 4 or 5 hours… blargh. Anyway. Thank goodness for kind strangers and thank goodness I’m freaking done with strange, unexplained public transit for a while.

It looks like everything in my suitcase made it all right, although the baklava (collected for Peter as per his “Greek baklava can’t possibly be like Pittsburgh baklava” testing campaign) are now more like pancakes. Still delicious, I imagine. It was also long past dinnertime, although I had at least remembered to pack some snacks for the trip. I think tonight is the best night for cooking all that stuff I bought last week…. But, okay, everything is frozen, so that makes it hard to cut tomatoes…

Anyway. What do you make with two shallots, two tomatoes, a slice of leftover restaurant bread, a slice of lunch cheese, and two eggs? Surprisingly good mush! And because of the bread, you don’t necessarily have to wait for all the tomato juice to boil off. I could have also made a salad but let’s face it, A) I’m tired and B) it’s frozen. Instead I had apple-peach-orange juice as my fruit/vegetable. Mmm dinner of champions.

Man, I WAS going to go check my email tonight due to a bunch of reasons, but I am a zombie. Maybe I’ll stop in really quickly and hopefully there’s nothing my phone can’t handle, because I am not prepared to bring the whole laptop. Zzzz.

9/21-9/22

9/21/11
Today is the Crete flight day! I tried to pack up before leaving for the university so I’d be prepared. It was also cool enough to wear pants in the morning, but I soon realized that it wasn’t helping my bug bites from previous dinners outside – I now have 15 on the left leg and 5 on the right. Hardly balanced, and far from not itchy. Oh well, what did I expect.

The most eventful thing I learned while working today was that on Sunday the air traffic controllers are calling for a 24-hour strike, which would complicate matters significantly. Not that I’d be sad about another day in Heraklion, but it probably will be annoying to figure out. Although livingingreece.gr/strikes says “Wait for confirmation, as strikes of this type can be declared illegal. Airlines typically announce cancellations and rescheduled flights with less than 24 hours notice for this reason.”…what? I didn’t know you had to clear strikes with the government. So confusing. In learning about this, I also found that there is a strike today in one of the ATH terminals until 5pm (our flight is at 7pm!), and tomorrow all of the public transportation in Athens is on strike – yikes! Hopefully we will get lucky.

The drive back to Athens was pleasant, though. We discussed airline miles, and Spyros was telling me that Aegean airlines serves moussaka on their longer flights, which is awesome. He also told a few jokes (plus some history) about how Greeks don’t really work well in large groups before the infighting starts. Kind of interesting to hear it from a native. Otherwise, our flight was uneventful (probably the newest plane I’ve ever been on, actually!) and we were met by Nikos (statistically high that we meet a Greek named Nikos!) who works with the Crete university. He drove us in, but had to drop other people off. Spyros and I had dinner along the market street I’m familiar with (at “h agora”, which does indeed mean “the market”), which was good – and we avoided the rain! – but it started at 10pm and we didn’t get back until 12:30! The waiter took forever… couldn’t take the check because he hadn’t delivered dessert, and then appeared to forget about us for a while. Way to make it a very awkward advisor-student dinner, dude! There are only so many things you can talk about with your boss! Oh well – it turned out fine, we had brownies and ice cream, and the raki cleared out my nose.

The hotel is very nice, by the way. I meant to do a little more blogging but I fell asleep in my clothes… one glass of wine and some raki really knocked me out. Whoops!

9/22/11
Breakfast at the Marin Dream is a pretty impressive event… it takes place on the rooftop of the building, which has an excellent view of the port. While appearing more extensive than most breakfasts in Europe, I didn’t ultimately eat much differently – toast, jam, fruit and an egg. But hey, it’s ok. I was to meet Spyros at 11am (having foregone the opportunity to go to the university at 8am…) but the traffic was bad enough that they didn’t come until 11:30 or so. Too bad, because I could have explored a little! Anyway, we arrived at the Finokalia measurement site around 1pm, which isn’t too bad time-wise, but definitely reminded me of driving up in the Andes at times. Very full of small switchback roads. If you can see three lengths of the same road twisting toward you, you are in a questionable place to be driving. But that’s why they chose this for measurements, so they wouldn’t have any interfering local emissions to complicate the air quality.

As remote and hard to get to as it was, it did certainly have a great view. I mean, it’s basically on the side of a cliff, with the Mediterranean opening in all directions in front of you. I also understand the clouds were in rare form today because of last night’s rain, which was great as a photographer. It was also great to see Andrea, who had been semi-isolated from English speakers except for another American who was there. It’s not the jet lag that gets you, but the food lag (2pm lunch, 9pm dinner, my stomach!!) and the planning lag. Which is to say, the total lack of concrete directions regarding what time things are happening or where to go or anything. Spyros says this makes them relaxed, because they know they will figure it out when they need to and do it, but for someone used to considerable planning it is a very anxiety-inducing game of chicken. How long until we go back to Irakleio? Are we coming at the same time tomorrow? What’s the plan for the weekend? All of these questions are not relevant – if you are asking about sometime farther out than four hours, it is probably too early. This precludes things like plane tickets, but not bus tickets. So planning whether I’m staying with Andrea tomorrow so we can go exploring in the evening, or whether she should come to Irakleio on Friday or Saturday evening or not, is a little difficult. I’m sure it will work out, as they say, but it is difficult to wait to know!

At 9:15pm we met with Nikos, his wife Maria, and the two Japanese students to go to dinner at Erganos, which is a little out of the city. It was AWESOME. I may or may not have revealed my true glutton colors to everyone present, which is not necessarily a card you want your boss to be aware of, but too bad! We ordered tons of things – cooked veggies, a salad with greenery that didn’t have an English translation, several kinds of meats, an omelette and many more things. The most delicious – or at least the newest to me – was staka (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roux#Cretan_staka), which appears to basically be superfatty goat butter. It looks like hummus, though, which is very different than what it really is! Anyway it was a great dinner and it was nice to have a 3:3 english-greek ratio to have a bit more guarantee of English spoken. I was super super stuffed at the end for sure.

9/19 & 9/20

9/19/11
The apartment bed is not very comfortable! It looks like a queen so I might try and find a pad for it later. Anyway, my apple pie was a nice breakfast, and Spyros drove me to the university. They are having a student protest at the moment (of course), but Spyros’ group is in a new building that the undergrads presume is empty, so they are not affected. Spyros’ office, on the other hand, is on lockdown, so he cannot access it. Kind of hilarious. This time, he says, the government passed a bill that cuts down the maximum time to graduation to 10 years (instead of infinity), puts a maximum on the percentage of votes from students go towards a new dean, and other things that are considered commonplace in the US and much of Europe. This is the same theme as last time, more or less, except this time all three political parties agreed on it so it’s unlikely that it will be repealed. Spyros is worried this will mean a more serious protest – it’s the end of their exam period at the moment, and if they’re still protesting in two weeks there’s danger that the next semester will be cut altogether. I can’t really understand why you’d want to delay finishing your degree so long for what appears to be very little back on your protest. 10 years seems more than generous, as it’s double the time a normal undergraduate program needs here! Must be a very different mindset.

Anyway. The office is in the “blue building” and has a great view, and you can even see the bridge from there. I spent the day making a poster for the upcoming conference and meeting people in a kind of oblique “we’ll say hi but not much more” way, possibly because they were busy or maybe because their English isn’t so great. Very hard to make small talk when you don’t speak the language. One of the girls did give me a pastry and her guest lunch pass, which was nice. I thought I would finally walk back to the apartment at the end of the day (I missed the footpaths this morning) but it turned into a surprise oh-we’re-taking-the-motorbike last minute kind of conversation. So much for that. So much, also, for cooking myself dinner; the supermarket offered very little English labeling and so I was afraid to buy much, and also discovered a woefully understocked kitchen on my return (the suspicion of which had also put me off large purchases). There’s a Panini press but no cutting board or sharp knife (or any durable cookwear, really) so I gave up and just made a damn sandwich. I had also inadvertently let in a gecko, which is annoying since they’re so fast and creepy. Hopefully he will let himself out (ha).

But at least I had some fresh limes. And when life gives you a lime tree and a fridge stocked with some leftover vodka, make… lime simple syrup and vodka drinks? The proportions are probably terrible but it gets the job done. Plus Alice in Wonderland was preloaded on my phone, so I read that as well. This may be yet another night I don’t make it to the internet café out of laziness. Oh well.

9/20/11
This morning was successful for a few reasons. #1 – I remembered to turn on the water heater before I took a shower (can’t leave it on due to “danger of explosion”…!). #2 – I had a more-or-less-proper breakfast of yogurt, cereal, and honey from a pouch. #3 – I only experienced one shower. To explain that last one - up to now it’s been the dry season, says Spyros, but yesterday before he left he mentioned I’d want an umbrella today because they were expecting “the first rain.” Luckily it didn’t rain at all on my (slightly confusing) walk to school, but I was in the office not twenty minutes (most of which were spent looking at the crazy clouds) before the sky let rip. Good thing I packed my lunch. This does hamper my plans to do laundry, as there’s a washer but no dryer in the apartment, but maybe I’ll just do a few things tonight before the Crete trip and hang them in the bedroom with fingers crossed.

I did some work and then decided I couldn’t wait to watch the Castle premiere any longer. Problem is, hulu and their ilk restricts media access based on the location of your IP address, which is annoying and doesn’t appear to do much good for anyone. After fiddling around with my work VPN, which was glacially slow, I found a program called TunnelBear that is not only cute and well designed, but gives me a US IP for a certain number of MB downloaded. Woo! TV: check!

After watching the clouds with some consternation I decided I better head out to the Makro, which I had hoped would be a larger supermarket where I could buy a few things for myself and Andrea. It was a little out of the way but not much, and it was fairly hilarious once I was there. I suppose you could say it was basically a small greek costco, complete with 10 kg tubs of greek nutella (that’s 22 lb! a small child of hazelnut paste!), cooking equipment, two aisles of wine, and some other assorted things. Very little of it was in English, of course, and I spent enough time confused about why this country does not seem to stock tissues or Ziploc bags to escape another downpour. Terribly convenient! I also found a bottled mixed gin drink which I didn’t know existed, so we will try those out later.

Since my shopping trip was more or less successful I talked myself into eating dinner out again (it's a bit perilous to walk where everything is at night, since there are no sidewalks), and went to a place Spyros had mentioned he liked. I probably ordered the wrong thing, because it was not my favorite at all – I thought I was getting chicken souvlaki with bacon (awesome, right?) but it was actually a slab of fried chicken with canadian bacon and cheese all over it. It was the greasiest non-Greek thing on the menu, probably. Sadfaceeee. I did get a free dessert somehow, but I don’t really know what it was - something like a flan covered in some kind of bitter-ish honey? Oh well. Next time I’ll remember that bacon means different things in Europe and to choose something more traditional.

Since it was too early to turn in (really, too early for real Greeks to have finished eating, oops) I finally headed to the internet café, which is only around the corner from the apartment. And here I was lucky with rain for the third time – which, by the rule of threes, means I should get dumped on at some point soon, but I’ll take it for now. I also got a free drink (which, in turn, meant I paid nothing for my internet since there was no hourly charge) because I mentioned I was a friend of Erica’s, a previous coworker who had spent a lot of time there. I also found out I can get seven more classic books for free on my phone (had already finished Alice in wonderland) so I have downloaded them just in case. Wee. Pretty successful all in all! Even if the washer didn’t work when I got home…ah well, just will have to get creative with what I brought.

First three days

Pictures to come later, but for now, here's what I've been up to:

9/16/11
The adventure begins! Andrea and I rode a SuperShuttle in to PIT at 7am to make handling her bags full of equipment easier. Once there, we did a few last minute errands – electrical converters for the equipment, post office for her, gum and coffee and free Godiva club chocolate for both of us – and still had 3 hours left until our flight (as per airline recommendations for int’l flights, of course). I could’ve done with a bit more sleep, having slept little and fitfully the night before, but it was nice to be early and think we had that much control, at least. I also brought leftover vegan pineapple-coconut-banana bread plus a sandwich, so I didn’t need to buy much. It was probably best that I avoided greasy food as long as I could, because the JFK-ATH flight had really shiny pasta that made the plane into one big fart machine. I wouldn’t think it would be so hard to optimize long-haul airline food for certain desired characteristics – like, you know, not making everyone smell bad in close quarters – but that’s just me. We both did queue up Midnight in Paris to watch at the same time, which was cute but SUCH a Woody Allen movie. I read a bit, I tried to sleep a bit, but the airline got very cold by the end and everyone was just ready to get off. Another day in the life of an economy class traveler, I suppose.

9/17/11
We had one minor scare when Andrea’s bags didn’t appear after customs, but it turns out they had been checked on to Crete without anyone telling us. How nice that a screw-up actually made things MORE convenient! Also none of our debit cards appeared to work for a while, but it ended up being probably user error. A pretty uneventful beginning to our adventure, to be honest – nothing went drastically wrong!

After sticking around to make sure Andrea didn’t have any trouble with her flight to Heraklion, I struck out to get to the city center for the night. As often happens with international travel, I found another group doing the same thing – a family of five from Australia on a 2-week vacation! That was fun and we got to Syntagma square just fine. It was a bit of a haul to the hotel, but not too bad – I didn’t even get lost, thanks to the map I uploaded to my fancy new phone! It was a very small room, but it’s just me, so it worked out. The most hilarious part is the bathroom, which seems like basically an oversized shower stall with the toilet right in the corner. I took a shower and a short nap before setting out for what would ultimately be four hours of exploring, which surprised me, but once I got walking I felt good enough to keep on. Regardless, I had to hit the free parts of the Acropolis and definitely the aereopagos, where I sat for about an hour, just taking it all in. Otherwise I was mostly just wandering around with no particular aim in mind except not to get irreversibly lost, though. This included some chocolate baklava and a gyro with fries in (of course!). I thought I might try and go back up to watch the sunset, but I ended up too bushed (to no one’s surprise but my own, probably). Plus I needed to be up early to catch the metro back to the airport and meet Spyros and start Patras Part I of the trip. Woohoo!

PS - Aside from the AmEx “I don’t care just where you go, as long as you’re with me” song (which we heard approximately 50 times in JFK but I still like), I’ve been listening to Typhoon’s “A New Kind of House” and it is excellent. In case you were wondering, I suppose. =)


9/18/11
Slept soundly despite being on the first floor by both the road and reception (although sweaty because of whatever plasticy bed liner existed, even though the AC was on) – earplugs and wearing myself out worked well. Breakfast was about average for low-budget hotels (hardboiled egg, roll, pretoasted toast, butter, jam) but they did have a few weird fruits that I tried. One might have been a fig, but perhaps not ripe? Anyway it was enough to get me on the metro and to meet Spyros! We talked a lot about his childhood on a Peloponnese island, how to approach grad school, and a lot of other things on the way to Patra, which was nice! We then got the key to my apartment – which appears to be on the intersection of Kolokotroni and Somerset? Maybe? – and he showed me around a little.

The apartment has a good sized kitchen/dining room (fridge, clothes washer and oven most important) plus a double bed and a bathroom much larger than the one I just left (although that isn’t saying much). It doesn’t seem much smaller than my Pittsburgh apartment, which is surprising. It also has quite a few lime trees and one (what I think is a) fig tree. Plus, there’s leftover vodka in the fridge, so once the supermarket opens (any day that’s not a Sunday) I think I might try my hand at making some simple syrup and, thus, superlocal lime drinks. =)

After Spyros left, I took a nap and then set out to find my way around. There’s an internet café around the corner, and in the other direction is a road that runs all the way to the beach. There are only intermittent sidewalks, so it’s kind of precarious, but I made it down without incident (except sweating) and wandered the beach, the very beautiful bridge, and the mysterious Rion Fortress. I had initially walked all the way around it, finding some sea glass on my way (!) before figuring out what it was. It looked like some sort of party was happening as I showed up, but no one kicked me out and it was free so woo! For those interested, it was built in 1499 to control the west of the Corinthian Gulf, and was alternately owned by the Ottomans and the Venetians. This basically means it looked like a Myst game. =)

The wind really liked to push all my hair in front of my face, so I guess my recent haircut was a little too short. But I got mistaken for a German and someone who speaks Greek today, so pretty good for a bumbling American! I really tried to hold out on dinner so as to be more culturally appropriate, but by 7pm I just couldn’t wait any longer. Not many places were open, but I stopped by one that looked like a few people were in it (a good sign) and got “chicken in tomato sauce” (a whole leg&thigh stewed in what must have been very greasy tomatoes) and “potatoes” (fries). Oh, and red wine, which came out chilled (?). Whatever, it was good, gave me some time to rest, and was only 7.50E! I also stopped by a bakery to stock up on breakfast. The internet café might be next, or I might just sleep… work (or, at least, going to the University) starts tomorrow!