Finding my way there

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Well I am safe and sound in Athens.

The last leg of the journey was a flight from Frankfurt to Athens. There were about a dozen or so students from my program on this flight and I was able to get the chance to get to know a few of them prior to take off. (Incidentally they were also on my flight to Frankfurt.) I was lucky enough to have a window seat on the last flight and I felt just like I was seven again. At least half of the flight I spent with my nose practically glued to the window watching the European countryside and especially the Alps pass below me. Once we neared Athens I was awed by the beauty of the islands from above. The water looked the same color as the sky and I saw no movement in it, if there hadn't been a few scattered islands and the white of the horizon it would have been never ending blue.

When I arrived at my apartment, I opted to take the elevator up to the third floor as I had two suitcases and my backpack. The elevator was unlike any I have used before. It was about the size of a closet and you have to pull two sets of doors open, then pull them back shut, before the elevator will move. I hit the right button and I was off. And then I stopped. The inner doors that I had come through led me only to a wall, and the other side of the elevator appeared to just be a wall as well. For a minute I though I was stuck in a very small elevator on my first day in Athens. All the informational signs in the elevator were in Greek so I didn't know what any of it meant. I thought maybe I needed to push a button before I could exit, so I pushed a couple of buttons that didn't seem to be floor levels. Nothing happened expect some loud noises. Finally I came to the sense that I knew how to get out of the elevator on the bottom level, and if I could get back there clearly the elevator wasn't broken. I tried going back down, which worked just fine. I decided to try one more time to go up the elevator and this time I realized that the wall behind me did not exist. It was merely an open wall through which I could push the door when I came to the right level. Crisis averted. Though finding the lights in the hallway and getting my door unlocked both proved to be a bit more challenging that I am used to.

I got my stuff put down, freshened up, and headed back out to find my way to the academic center. On my way there I ran into a couple of other CYA girls and we wondered together, taking a few wrong turns, which were not so much out of the way as they were unusable passages to where we wanted to go. But in wandering we were able to walk around the top of part of an ancient stadium which was absolutely gorgeous. In fact when the Olympics were held in Athens in 2004 the marathon run ended in this stadium! As we walked around the rim of the stadium we saw our first view of the Acropolis. It was so surreal to see it just across the way. I can't wait to get up to it and explore more properly.

After finding the academic center I took care of some business for my program, checked out the view (it was perfect, just as the sun was starting to go down and the sky was lit with more colors than normal I looked for the second time at the Acropolis through the window of the academic building.

The adventures of the first day didn't quite end there though. As some of my roommates and some new friends got going on a simple dinner, we managed to burn our stove. Yes. We burned the stove. There was this piece of the stove that folds down to cover the stove and one of the girls who spent her early afternoon with her Greek Aunt insisted that we were supposed to put the cover down and the burners were supposed to heat through it. It seemed like a reasonable idea and we all agreed to try it that way. Unfortunately we managed to burn off the paint from the cover of the stove (which smelled terrible) and made the cover warp a little and bubble a tad (though the bubbles may be from the burning of the paint). Nevertheless, we managed to make dinner without burning the apartment down.

I am now mostly settled in to my new home and I look forward to what tomorrow brings. 😊

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Comments

[Sarah]

hahahahaha
Great entry, Denz. I love to hear about your adventures. Bet that girls feels silly, though.