Greek drama

I'm having a serious love-hate relationship with Greece. I honestly don't think I've ever had such powerfully different feelings about a place over the course of just four days of being there. Mostly I'm just excited to get out of here, and counting down the days until my next Starwood resort (two more days...)

It all started with the journey here. The trip to Greece was grueling. After staying up all night in Split, I had to take a bus to the airport at 5:30am, and caught the 7am shuttle flight to Zagreb. If I hadn't been so bleary eyed, I probably would have thought this was really cool -- seeing the business travellers of Croatia boarding the early morning flight to the capital with their suits, briefcases and take-away grande coffees, just like the Boston - DC shuttle I used to be so familiar with. It's always interesting to see a familiar sight, with a local interpretation, halfway around the world. But at that time, I couldn't care less. When we got to Zagreb I had a two hour layover, just long enough to charge up my phone and have an omelette at the (sole) airport restaurant. Then on to Budapest, a short flight on Malev Hungarian airlines that took me altogether out of the way on my journey to the Aegean, but was the cheapest option. In Budapest I had a quick lunch, then boarded another flight (the third of the day) for the three hour trip to Athens.

At this point I should make it clear just how little sleep I was operating on. Obviously, the night before I hadn't slept, and had in fact been out all night. But the night before that I had been bunked in a room with a horrendous snoring beast. And I'm going to take a moment to talk about that:

People who snore SUCK. They should be quanrantined, euthanized or shot. I am not saying that to be dramatic, I truly, genuinely believe that people who snore are a scourge to society. In particular, those individuals who snore and yet choose to stay in multi-bed dorm rooms in traveller's hostels, are as bad if not worse than war criminals. I cannot think of anything more rude, inconsiderate, selfish and intolerable as knowingly subjecting other people, people who presumably share your values of wanting economic accomodation and enjoying the adventure of traveling the world on a good night of sleep, to the sleeplessless and frustration of having to listen to you saw away all night, having the best sleep of your life. I have three major issues with this: A) There's really no way to not know that you snore -- someone, at some point in your life has told you, and if you chose to ignore them and pretend like it can't possibly be an issue for you, then you are an asshole. B) If you know you snore, YOU SHOULD GO HAVE SURGERY AND GET IT FIXED. Seriously. It's not that expensive, and it's an out-patient procedure. GET IT FIXED. C) If you have chosen to not get it fixed, for whatever reason (cough, asshole, cough), then you need to just front the extra cash and stay in a single room when you are at a youth hostel. For fuck's sake! Everyone else is paying to sleep, why should you be the only one who gets to? If anyone who is reading this is a snorer, and I find out that you have ever stayed in a dorm room in a hostel, I will personally come to wherever you are right now and punch you in the face.

I can't even express appropriately my anger at people who snore. And this isn't just something that has happened to me once on this trip. Literally EVERY TIME I have stayed in a multi-bed dorm room, there has been someone who snored. Every. Time. It is a plague. This is a large part of why I now try to exclusively stay in single rooms or in female only dorms, because, by and large, the primary culprits of the snoring are men. I don't know why this is -- they're less considerate? They're heavier sleepers? Or, as my general theory of life suggests: men are all assholes.

But single rooms are expensive (normally around fifty euro, as compared to about twenty euro in a dorm), and why should I be the one who has to pay more when it's the asshole snoring guy who really should be isolated and put into solitary confinement, for the rest of his life with only a floor mat and no pillow in a freezing cold prison cell with no food or water until he rots away slowly and is eaten piece by piece by the starving, disease-infested rats.

ANYWAY. This is all to say that I hadn't slept in two days when I boarded the plane for Zagreb, and other than those occasional couple-minute dozes that you get on a plane and that give you a miserable neck kink for the rest of the day, I had slept not at all for around 48 hours when I arrived in Athens. Anyone who knows me ought to have the inkling by now that this is the makings of a very, very bad situation. Indeed, my need for sleep, and lots of it, has been well documented over the years. It was the subject of many jokes in high school and college, when it became obvious that my level of functionality dropped precipitously with under eight hours of sleep. And the last manager I had at OW (also, clearly, the best) used to be sure to send me home before 10pm every night, and explain to the team that he recognized it as a necessary investment, because if he wanted to get anything at all out of me tomorrow he needed to make sure I got ten hours of sleep tonight. Maybe you've seen what happens to me when I'm working on less than that: it begins with irritability, over-emotionalness, irrationality, and then leads gradually to complete mania, hysteria, and often violence.

It was thus that I definitively concluded I would go straight to my hostel in Athens and fall asleep, and just sleep until the morning when I was due to catch the ferry to Paros. Getting off the bus, I felt happy with my choice of hostel location. I was right in the beautiful embassy district, passing large marble buildings with Canadian, American, British and French flags outside, and walked right into the cutest little neighborhood with sidewalk cafes and souvenir shops and quiet little churches. But the churches weren't that quiet. They were all ringing bells. And not in the beautiful, melodic, someone-just-got-married here sort of way, but in a weird, funereal sort of way. Ding. Dong. Once every twenty seconds or so, a melancholic tone would sound. As I walked it just grew louder, and when I arrived at my hostel I realized that one of the churches making this horrible din was right next door. I threw down my bags in my room, laid down for a couple minutes, and then irritably ran downstairs to talk to the manager on duty.

"Those awful bells, when are they going to stop?" I asked
"Oh the bells! They are going to go all night! Isn't it beautiful?" was his response.
"What?! What?! What's going on?!" I reacted.
"It is so beautiful, you should watch it. Soon they will all come down the street, with the coffin, and they will be singing. It really is beautiful."

I tried to sound less irritated, because at this point I was beginning to realize there was some sort of national day of mourning going on, and I was being disrespectful. But I was so fucking tired. I went upstairs to put on a jacket, and with the receptionist's assurances that it would all be much quieter at 9 o'clock, I went out to find some way to pass the next three hours. I got a gyro, at the only restaurant I could find in which I could sit and not hear the bells. One hour. I had a chocolate banana crepe, and hid inside the crepe shop. Half an hour. It was only 7:30. I thought maybe I could go sightseeing, since the Acropolis was nearby, so I started walking that direction. Got lost. On the way over, I passed by a guy sitting on a bench reading a book, who looked up at me conspicuously as I walked by, and then followed me with his eyes for like two blocks as I kept walking. My theory about people who stare is that a) they are assholes, and b) I don't fucking like to be stared at. So in response I whipped off my sunglasses, stared straight back at him trying to send daggers with my eyes, and came very close to flipping him off before I rounded the corner, thoroughly pissed off.

I was beginning to feel truly miserable. I stood beside a large gate that overlooked a park full of old Greek ruins, and all of a sudden just started to cry. For a few minutes I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. Why do I feel so bad right now? Am I lonely? Am I depressed? I just felt so bad. Maybe you've been here before, when you just feel like complete hell but you can't quite put your finger on why. Finally I realized that this was a symptom of being ridiculously over-tired, and that crying was probably a perfectly healthy way to deal with it. So I just stood there and cried. And felt sorry for myself. And cried some more.

Just then I felt a tap on my shoulder, and looked around to see the creepy staring guy standing next to me. Really creepy. He started to talk:

"Excuse me, I am sorry, but I have to tell you that you are more white than anyone I have ever seen."

I stared at him blankly. And blinked. My face covered in tears, I had absolutely no idea how to respond to this. In no mood to be polite to creepy stalkers, I said "And?"

"And you are beautiful. I have never seen anyone like you."

Okay, fine. I guess I can handle that. He went on, and his English was not very good:

"I see you walking, and I think you are not from here. You look very different. Where are you from?"

I decided I could afford to have a conversation with the creepy stalker guy, at least for a few minutes, so I responded monosyllabically as he asked me all the standard questions: where are you from, why are you here, are you by yourself, where were you before this, etc. But his English was really bad, and while normally I am pretty patient with people who are trying to speak my language, I was running out of patience quickly. I learned that his name was Brham (par-HAM) and he was from Egypt, was 23 years old, had lived in Greece for three years, and remarkably, had just started studying English two weeks ago. (All things considered, then, his English was pretty decent). I kept trying to politely excuse myself, until finally he said "Please, you will walk with me, and help me practice?"

Yeah, this is kind of a sleazy line. But he actually seemed genuine about it, and, I thought, it would be karmic payback for all those desperate French guys I had been leading on in Paris just so I could get French language practice. Besides, it was still broad daylight, and I was in a safe, touristy area, so I was confident he wasn't out to abduct me or something. We walked up to the Acropolis, speaking English but neither of us really understanding each other, and then just sat up on the rocks that overlook the city and watched the sunset. This probably sounds like it was pretty romantic, but it wasn't at all, just very perfunctory, and for me, a way to pass a couple hours until I could finally get some sleep. Brham asked me if I was married, and I considered it for a moment. Ordinarily while I'm traveling I just answer with a definitive yes, so as to avoid unwanted advances, but, for only the second time on this trip, I decided to just admit that I was single. (The first time it was genuine; this time it was really just a product of depression and over-tiredness.) He didn't seem to think anything of it, and didn't make any passes at me anyway, so we kept talking, still barely understanding each other.

Since I had been intending to go somewhere to get a drink before heading back to the hostel, in the hopes that some alcohol would help me sleep, I invited him to come with me, and he took me to a trendy, uspcale bar near the Temple of Artemis. I made a very important discovery at this bar, something I have been looking for for many years. I have long wanted to find some kind of hot dessert drink, something with a bit of kick that would be appropriate to drink after dinner. I do like hot toddies, and the occasional hot whiskey, but I wanted something sweeter, something weaker. Of course there's Irish Coffee, and I love the concept and the name, but I don't drink coffee at all, so it's not quite for me. In France they often offer tea and cognac, but bleh! Cognac is gross. It was here at this bar, called Idria, that I found what I was looking for: Cuba Chocolate. A steaming mug of hot chocolate with a delicious shot of rum. Perfect. I was sure I would sleep soundly all night.

I bid goodnight to Brham, at 9pm, with bells still ringing all around us, and he kindly offered to help me with my luggage in the morning if I needed it on the way to my 7am ferry. I told him I would call if I needed help (which of course, I didn't), and then walked up to my room. But the bells. Oh my god. The bells. They just wouldn't stop. And it was making me crazy. I think maybe I could sleep through bells if they were consistent, musical. But the fact that these just went every twenty seconds, so it just felt like a gun shot, making it impossible to relax enough to actually fall asleep, was torture.

Back down to the reception desk, I found a new guy working there, an American guy. I asked him when the bells would stop. "Oh... they're going to go on all night I'm afraid," was his reply.
"But I have to sleep! I have a ferry at 7am!"
"I'm really sorry, but there's nothing I can do about the bells."

Obviously there wasn't, I didn't know what I was expecting, but I was just so frustrated. Until he added:

"Unless... well, there is something I could do. I might get in trouble for it, but... there's a room downstairs. The Dungeon. It's a ten bed dorm, but it hasn't been opened for the season yet, and it's four floors underground. I can guarantee that you won't hear anything down there. But you'd be all alone --"

He didn't even have to get the sentence out of his mouth. "Yes! Yes! I'll take it!"

It was indeed a dungeon, completely underground, dark and perfectly quiet. It was heaven. I changed into my pajamas, put on some classical music, and slowly drifted off to sleep.

Then I heard something. A rattling, the sound of a door closing, whispered voices. Someone was coming into my room. Two girls, by the sound of it. Two American girls. They tossed their big backpacks onto two beds near mine, and then left the room again, probably to get showered and ready for bed. I looked at my watch: it was 12:30. Fuck. I have to be up in five hours. Now how am I going to sleep with two people coming in and out, and then sleeping here, making me all sorts of anxious that they will make noises in their sleep that will wake me up, and therefore preventing me from even falling asleep? I know I must sound really crazy. And, to be honest, when it comes to sleeping and unwanted noises, I am. Really crazy.

You are probably thinking that I should see someone about it. I have seen someone about it. I have discovered that the root cause of this ultra auditory sensitivty is the crazy NRA rep who fired a gun three inches from my ear five summers ago while working on Lisa's campaign, which caused me to be incredibly sensitive to unexpected, punctuated noises, especially while sleeping. Door slamming in particular, but snoring is a close runner up in the competition for "noises that make Moira act like a total crazy person." But there is nothing I can do about it. I am crazy about needing complete silence when I sleep, especially if I am already sleep deprived and developing that awful, manic anxiety that comes with the fear that you will never again be able to get to sleep.

At 2am, the girls came back. To be fair to them, they were very respectful and quiet. And actually, if you're going to have to share a room with someone, about the best you can hope for is to be with two American girls. (Brits, Canadians, and Aussies, too.) They are typically clean, fairly considerate, and, when they're not coming home from a night of partying, quiet as churchmice. Really. We American girls are extremely quiet. I know from my own experience that when I walk into a room of sleeping people, I am desperate not to be heard, for fear both of waking people up and just of being noticed in the first place. There's a deep self consciousness about disturbing people that I think is inherent in all American girls. And thank God for that.

But I was nevertheless all messed up with insomnia, and once I had been woken up, and once I knew there were other people in the room, I couldn't get back to sleep. There was no sleep for the weary that night. A few moments, here and there, but I kept waking up with the fear that one of the girls was getting up to go to the bathroom, or had just turned over in her bed. Of course they hadn't, they laid perfectly still, breathing silently, all night -- the perfect dorm companions -- but, as I've said, I'm crazy.

So at 6am I got up, quickly threw on some pants and a jacket, packed up and walked to the ferry dock. On board I found out that my ticket was in the "economic" class, which, regrettably, meant that my only seating options were in the Saloon (the smoky, crowded bar area) or on the outside deck (in the biting, cold wind). Deciding that neither of these were appealing options, I thought I would just try to cheat and sit in one of the Air Seats, near the window, in the not-quite-so-economic class. I threw my bags down in front of me, pulled out my pillow, sprawled out and attempted to fall asleep, hoping that if this was someone's seat, they would be too polite to disturb me and kick me out. But no one came. The entire cabin filled up with people, but no one ever asked me to move out. In the rows next to me and in front of me was a large Greek family, with kids and babies seemingly everywhere, but they all seemed perfectly content where they were. Granted the area I was in was noisy, but when I got up to go to the bathroom I saw that the people in the "economic" class were now sprawled out on the stairs, putting two chairs together in the bar to lie down, or actually curled up on the floor. Thank God I'm not one of them, I thought. I returned to my seat, this time noticing that the father in the big Greek family was sitting on the arm rest of one of the chairs, trying to make himself comfortable, but quite obviously without a seat. I realized then that I had taken this poor guy's seat -- this guy who was weighed down with babies, his wife and (what I'm assuming were) her three sisters, had decided to let me stay there rather than ask me to leave.

Well, that was very nice of him.

Yes, that's right. I'm that girl. The girl who only pays for a cheap ferry seat, and then steals a nice seat from a decent, good dad, and takes advantage of his decentness by continuing to sit there and not giving up the seat. Yup, that's me.

I fell asleep. I woke up a couple of times, hot and uncomfortable, and kicked off my shoes in order to get more comfortable. Oh God. My feet smelled awful. Awful. I had been walking around barefoot in my sneakers for the last two days, and, now that I thought about it, I hadn't showered since... Dubrovnik. Oh my God. I haven't showered in two days. I opened my eyes just a crack and looked over, to see that the Good Dad had taken the seat next to me to sit for a little while. He was speaking very animatedly to his wife across the aisle, in Greek, and subtly pointing at my feet. I went back to sleep.

Yeah, that's right. I'm that girl. The girl who has been backpacking around Europe for so long she no longer keeps track of how long it has been since she's had a shower. The girl whose feet now smell like a mens' locker room yet she unabashedly uncovers them in close confinement of strangers and lets them talk about her dirty feet without particularly caring. The girl who shows up in the first class section of the ferry wearing faded Dartmouth sweatpants, a completely threadbare nightshirt, and a fleece jacket that (oh my God) hasn't been washed in months, looking like someone that just washed up from a shipwreck. The girl who sprawls out on the seat, taking up almost half of the next one, legs wide, probably sort of drooling, with a big dingy pillow that's covered in mysterious red and purple stains and is also overflowing into the seat next door. Yup. That's me.

Eventually I did feel kind of bad about this, so I went to the bathroom to wash my feet in the sink, and then tried to dry them using the wall mounted hand dryers. (Yeah, I got some looks.) I also changed my clothes, and put on some makeup, so that maybe I wouldn't look like such a vagabond. Then I went out on the deck to try to air out my feet, hoping that when I returned I would smell fresh like the ocean. But when I got back the guy had gone, and I had the seat all to myself for the next two hours of the ride into Paros.

And I started to pray that maybe, just maybe, my luck would start to change once I got there.