The first day, always taxing

Our first day was, even if all went accordingly to plan, going to be a rather long one. First to Memphis, whose airport looked exactly like a the inside of a chemistry building, as Emily put it (I was feeling more towards the geophysical sciences, but I agreed nonetheless). Then we flew to Norway from Memphis with a bunch of Norwegians. Emily was seated next to a rather unhappy-looking young woman who declined my request to swap for my window seat two rows up, so Emily and I rode apart. (Apparently this girl spent her 8 hours doing absolutely nothing, so I don't really see what the big deal was, but hey.) But let's take a moment to reflect on just how bizarre flying (esp. transatlantic-ly) is. Herded into our tiny pens, strapped to seats like calves waiting to become veal, we are fed and watered one by one, and are wracked with guilt even to request to step past the attendant's cart to go to the bathroom. In a large communal space we all attempt to fall asleep in chairs, despite having no room to recline nor anything to lean against (save a likely disgruntled neighbor, though if having someone be angry at you in English blows, having someone be angry at you in Norwegian could very well be hilarious, come to think of it). Then, a relatively arbitrary amount of time later, the sun has surrounded us and we stumble out of the plane, plucked from one time and place and tossed into another. I can't say I much care for it.

Our last leg to Athens was filled mostly with an Asian student tour group quite full of energy--videotaping the take off and then their own (amusing, I'm sure) shenanegans, and bursting into applause upon a bumpy landing--but we sat in the exit row (roomy!) with a friendly British gent (I wanted to say 'bloke' but figured I couldn't pull it off) who works out of St. Louis and travels all over. He assured us that traveling quickly loses its glamour, which I had to admit was easily believable. And as if to make certain we took his words to heart, we land, ready to make our speedy commute to Pireaus to catch our ferry, only to rather wearily discover that while we had make our tight connection in Amsterdam (even with a passport briefly left at customs--where, by the way, they apparently give you a thumbs up for bringing a small plant in a burlap pouch filled with soil, no joke), our bags had not been so fortunate. After many rounds of tedious navigation, communication and negotiation involving 3 information desks, a lesson in Greek payphones (lesson learned: I cannot follow directions in Greek.), 4 hours in the Athens airport, and a rather surly store attendant (apparently in Greece it is not kosher to buy a pack of gum with a 50 Euro bill), we got our bags and got on the metro for our evening's back-up plan--a hostel in central Athens. Props to Emily Moss for telling me to book that one, though I should probably be mad for you jinxing us. After waiting on the empty metro that looked fit for deep space travel, it finally got moving and dropped us off a few blocks from the hostel.

At this rather late hour in the evening (Dear Mom: it was still daylight, I swear.), I can not report that we got the warmerst welcome to Athens. We found our hostel alright, dropped our things and asked where to find some food. On this mini-adventure, Emily and I were struck by a few things (metaphorically? physically? you'll see!). One, Athens is not very clean--but for this, I think we can forgive Europe's oldest city. Two, Athens is populated with mangy stray dogs. Everywhere. Not cats,dogs. Big ones. What the hell. Lastly, Athens is home to some sketchy teenagers. On this particular evening some took the liberty of informing us that we looked 14 years old (and boy was he a looker himself), while others thoughtfully threw jelly beans at us as we ate our "parisienne crepe". But perhaps most memorably of all, we at one point turned a corner only to find a rather large group of sexily dressed teenaged girls.
"Why Emily," I remarked. "It almost looks as if that girl is wearing just a shirt and a thong. How odd!"
And indeed 5 or so were proudly displaying their butts ("Such beautiful butts," Emily later recounted wistfully) while another half dozen or so were in the process of pulling on their pants. We were stuck (fortunately not by a physical object this time) with shock, awe, and earnest confusion as we attempted to casually thread through this group, assembled on the sidewalk as if waiting for a play to start. I think the best part of this introductory experience in Athens was the jaw-dropped expression of horror on the face of a European tourist mother ahead of us, her head turned away from the girls, as if to confirm with us that the experience was indeed out of the ordinary. We smirked and shrugged at her, after all, for all we knew this was just another night in Athens.

[End Day One]