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Greetings from gloomy eastern Europe! It turns out being post-communist means that buildings come in many different colors which are all shades of grey. The light drizzle didn't help matters, but the Hotel that I am staying in is pure luxury -- we have a shower door, a dresser and carpeting, which are three firsts for this trip. I'm very excited about sleeping there tonight, I'm hoping the positive atmosphere will stop Richard's ear-splitting snoring, which could wake the dead. He must be stopped if I am going to get a good night's sleep on this trip.
I will start with some closing comments on Athens. I am convinced, after visiting, that every cabbie in that city is selling women on the side. I still don't understand how, but every single one offered us a wonderful night with a lovely lady. One wouldn't even take us back to the hotel unless we'd stop first and look at some of his girls (we took another cab, that guy was a dirtball). The guy who drove us from the airport went on and on about some of his experiences with women of the night, but in a bizarre marriage of faith and hypocrisy, he crossed himself every time he mentioned a word that referred to a forbidden concept. His hands were barely on the wheel and I was afraid that we'd swerve off the road, but he somehow kept us on pace to be ripped off while confessing the sins he kept committing. It was a constant stream of boasting and crossing himself.
The fact that you are reading this means that I made it out of the ghetto in Athens with my wallet and life. In retrospect, we thought we were being tough "backpackers" by staying in that filthy hole, but we should have moved somewhere else, even at the cost of exhausting my budget and eating french fry sandwiches the entire trip. My Mom says I whine too much in this travel blog, but I think she secretly enjoyed the fact that I was staying in such a dangerous area, since one poor turn on my part would've cut me out of the family budget for good. Unfortunently, the hair raising fear of coming home every night really ruined what was a beautiful Mediterranean city. On the plus side, it really validated my decision not to go to UChicago and live in Hyde Park, which is better than Omonia Square, but not by much.
We visited the museum of Greek-Jewish history, which was incredibly depressing. I can sum up Greek Jewish history for the most part in a single sentence: In 1492, Jews were expelled from Spain and settled in Greece, chiefly in Thessaloniki, where they lived well until 1942 when they were all deported to Auschwitz where they all died. The community itself lost 87% of its prewar members, one of the worst percentages outside of Poland or Lithuania. The museum was a living memorial to those people, and full of artifacts like Ladino (Judeo-Spanish, a pigeon of Hebrew and Spanish spoken by Sephardic Jews with origins in Medieval Spain) instructions on how to comply with deportation orders, and remnants of synagogues which were destroyed by the Nazis or have been left abandoned by the fact that there are just no Jews left. Salonica, the main community, had something like 50,000 Jews, 97% of whom were killed, and after they were deported the Nazis demolished all the synagogues, institutions and grave yards, so there is not much proof left that anyone ever lived there. It was a very depressing place, but a nice museum in a nice building, and I am glad we visited.
We also saw a lot of columns. Plenty of columns. They are like mosques in Turkey -- you have to see them while you are there, but they all look the same to someone with no background in the subject. The Blue Mosque looked a lot like the Mosque of Suleiman the Magnificient, gorgeous but tough to distinguish from one another. We all visited some ancient temples which were fairly nice to look at for a minute. It might be a sign of having attention deficit disorder, but I kept waiting for the statues to do something, like a figure at a Wax Museum. We ate at lots of nice resturants, usually outside and surrounded by many of Athens' stray dogs and cats. I personally find it disgusting to eat meat while dogs and cats walk around you (since you are probably eating their brothers & sisters), which made eating hard since all Greek people seem to eat is meat.
Alice from my thesis class is interning for the State Department at the consulate in Salonica and she was unable to meet us because of work demands but offered some suggestions on what to do. At her advice, we went to an island -- something called Aedina, which was very underwhelming. I was looking forward to seeing a Greek Island like in cruise ship commercials, but what I saw was very unimpressive. It still compared favorably to that awful square I returned to every night to sleep, but the beach left a lot to be desired. Alice, if you read this, I'm sure I flubbed the instructions from you -- I bet the most beautiful beach I'd ever see is still waiting for me on the other side of that island. I really liked the ferry ride, though, which made the experience worthwhile. I also can now say I went to Athens, the Acropolous and a Greek Island, which probably means I never have to go to Greece again.
We spent most of the day today travelling, having to leave Greece early after the Hotel Owner/Front Desk Clerk/Slumlord insisted that we'd owe him 40 euro if we stayed any longer, and we finally made it to Budapest well into the evening. We took the metro to the airport so a cabbie couldn't rip us off while begging us to meet some of his women before we left Greece. I had a nice dinner at a touristy resturant in Budapest. So far this is a really nice city, despite being cast in shades of grey, and it reminds me a lot of a 1920's movie -- although again, maybe the grey makes me think of black and white films. People seem to speak better English here, and the keyboard is fairly standard, which is a good sign as they recover from communism. The keyboard in Greece was fairly standard but it is absolutely impossible to read the Greek alphabet or pronounce a Greek word.
I've spent most of the past three days traveling, either on a ferry or a plane, so this was a light entry. I'll spice it up with an anecdote from the three weeks I spent in Israel. We were there over Lag B'Omer, which is the 33rd day of the Omer, which is the period between Passover and Shavout. It is also the day on which a great Kabbalistic rabbi died. To honor him, religious children in Israel spend the first 32 days of the Omer collecting fire wood, and on Lag B'omer set massive bonfires everywhere. In Jerusalem, you saw fires everywhere you looked. It was a bizarre experience since I had never heard of this ritual before, nor had anyone else on my trip. Some of the people on my trip went up North, to Meiron, a pilgrimmage site for the holiday, where hundreds of thousands of religious people were lighting fires, camping out and partying. One of the guys on my trip watched a ritual slaughterer kill a goat, which was for some reason done in public in the festive mood.
Also, one other thing. In Israel and in Turkey, people don't believe in lines (this was much worse in Israel). I'd be waiting in line at a pharmacy in a mall near Jerusalem only to have middle aged women, grandmothers, and guys all try cutting in front of me. This happened in Turkey too, but to a lesser extent. I don't know if, as a Midwesterner, I'm too nice to play along, but I thought this was a terrible cultural norm. An Israeli explained to me that they just aren't a refined people, but I don't think common courtesy is too hard to learn, even in the desert. I'm happy to be in Budapest, because people here seem to believe in lines again. They still smoke too much, but not nearly as bad as Turkey, and it seems better than Greece. Thank you for reading this far, and thank you for all of your comments, and I'll try to make the next entry more interesting as I actually get to see this city and move on to Prague. Keep commenting and I'll try to serve more. We're about to leave to experience the night life around here, and tomorrow night we are going to try to go to a Green Day concert somewhere in this city. I'll let you all know how it goes, my faithful readers!
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You'll still be telling the Athens stories 50 years from now, so it was all worth it. Enjoy! - Lisa