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Published: April 26th 2009
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Last night, one of my roommates convinced me to come out with her and a couple of her friends. It was the first time I really have gone out all semester. It isn't exactly easy to do so in Athens (or Greece in general). First there is the time thing. Don't get me wrong, I love staying up late. But even for me it can be difficult to wait until midnight or 1am before even leaving the apartment. At that point I like to be cozily awake doing something in my pjs (unless I am already out and about). Then there is the other issue. It is really hard to find a place to go where people actually dance.
Anyway, we decided to go out. So we got all dolled up and left the apartment a little after 12. We walked down to Monastiraki, a neighborhood that has a lot of nightlife. My roommate knew of a few clubs in the area, one of which supposedly is frequented by foreigners and thus actually has people dancing in it. We ran into some Greek guys while we were out, and we stopped to chat for a few minutes. We asked them
where they recommended we go, and they told us to go Spirit (the club we were thinking of checking out anyway). They said that very few people would be there until at least half an hour from then (it was already 12:30 or 12:45).
We decided to go on down and get some drinks and hang out a bit just sitting until more people came. The club was nice, and thankfully not empty. The four of us had a really good time hanging out for an hour or so. The Greek guys we had seen came into the club after 45 minutes or an hour and were happy to see us there. Finally, we decided it was time to get up and dance!
My roommate, Tori, had broken the heel of her boot on the walk down to the club. So she had slipped her shoes off for while we were dancing. It couldn't have been more than a minute after we got up to dance (literally, I kid you not!) before some idiot on the dance floor dropped their glass, which broke. Since she wasn't wearing shoes, Tori started to make her way away from the glass.
While she did so (mere moments after the first guy dropped his cup), someone else dropped a glass as well. The second glass cut the side of Tori's foot as/after it fell. At first we thought it was just a bit of a scratch. She went to sit down and I went to see if I could find a Band-Aid or something for her. I came back (again couldn't have been more than a minute or two) and Tori pointed down to the floor, where a fairly good sized pool of blood had formed from the cut on her foot.
After a minute or two in which Gina and Maya went in search of a first aid kit with actual bandages (I had only managed to procure some napkins, since I wanted Tori to be able to clean up her foot a bit), we decided to take Tori down to the bathroom to see if we could see how bad the cut was and if there was any glass actually in her foot. We got down to the light, and it was very clear to all of us that the best decision would be to take her to an
ER where someone who actually knew what they were doing could look at it. I thought, based on the amount it was bleeding, that she might need stitches.
So Maya ran ahead to flag down a cab that would take us to the ER. (Another great thing about Greece... unlike some places, the cab drives will only pick you up if you flag down a cab that is already heading in the direction you want to move in and if the cab driver feels like going to where you need to get.) As Maya went ahead to do that, Gina and I helped Tori back up the stairs, insisting that she hop so as to put as little pressure on her foot as possible. Maya got us a cab, and as we got in, I took Tori's phone (I hadn't brought mine) to make the necessary calls to get in contact with someone from the program. I called one of our other roommates who gave me the emergency contact number for the weekend.
Alex (the VP of CYA) told us which hospital we should go to. Unfortunately, the cab driver we had refused to take us there and insisted on taking us to the closer, public ER. Alex even tried talking directly to the cab driver (who spoke very little English), but to no avail. We got out and Maya went into the ER to see if she could find someone who spoke English and could help Tori. Meanwhile, Alex explained to me that Tori would get in to be treated more quickly at a private hospital, where they would also be much more likely to speak English. Tori made the executive decision that her foot was okay enough to wait an addition 15 to 20 minutes to get to the private hospital. So we got another cab (again Alex spoke to the driver to help speed along the process of communication).
We finally got to the ER, where Alex met us after a few minutes to help make sure everything would be okay. They wouldn't let us stay with Tori, so we waited in the waiting room for quite a while as she got stitches. She doesn't know how many it took (she lost count) but it was well over 10.
Finally, with a newly bandaged foot, we made our way back home. By the time we got home it was 4:30 (we left for the hospital sometime around 2:20 or 2:30). The night was adventurous, and despite the drama, we had a fairly good time (lots of laughs). But it certainly did serve to show us just how difficult it is to go out in Athens. At least the fact that Athenians don't go out until at least 1 and then stay out until at least 5 or 6 meant that it was incredibly easy for us to find taxi transportation all over the city!
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