First day in Greece was a big one! I left Tilburg in the morning to travel to Eindhoven airport, which Michelle tried to prank me by saying it was a “silent airport” whatever that means. It was very much not a silent airport, as it was actually very busy and loud. Despite this, it was still a good airport and very conveniently located close to Tilburg. After security I got to work, taking out the laptop to begin the endless writing of a paper that I may have lefts to the last minute. An hour or two and an interesting crème Brule Starbucks Frappuccino later it was time to board the plane. It was quite cold outside and obviously raining, which made the arrival in Athens seem that much crazier. Right before I left, I had gone to Michi’s in Utrecht to say goodbye, and Jochum had mentioned that there was a heatwave in the entirety of the Mediterranean… yikes. Therefore, when I arrived it was as if I was stepping out into an oven, as if I was a frozen strip of bacon cast into a hot pan. It was if I was Smeagol, cast into the fire of the raging mount doom. It was as if I was caught out in the zone of a Fortnite map, just slowly taking damage as I made my way to a cooler place.

Anyways I took a nice long train ride over the countryside to my hostel, which I found after aimlessly walking around the block unable to see it at first. It was around 9 when I arrived, and the super friendly owner helped get me sorted out. Now this was my fist proper hostel experience, meaning a small room shared with a whole bunch of other people. In my case these were two friendly Australians and a girl from Toronto! I made my bed before inevitably going downstairs with my laptop to do some more work on my essay due the next at 12pm. I put my head down, got some good work done while fending of an all too friendly stoned Turkish guy who wanted to tell everybody his stories. This went on for quite some time, until the common space closed nay I had to go upstairs. This led to me sitting outside the room with a guy from Asia, just typing away…. Until 02:30 when I finally finished and submitted my project. Bed time, I quietly sneaked into the room not wanting to wake anyone, only stumbling across several bags along the way. On the top bunk of a bed, I lay there, in the stifling heat and humidity, not being able to bask in the greatness of an ac. It was safe to say I didn’t get much sleep.

The day started at 7 in the morning after one of the people staying had an early flight to catch. In all other cases I would have stayed in bed for as long as possible given the checkout time. However, I wanted to do some exploring, and so I stayed awake. I got a quick breakfast at nearby café, some nice fried eggs and fresh pressed orange juice.  After that I decided to check out of the hostel early since I was meeting Aliza and Aubergine at a bus station out of the city in the afternoon. This meant that I had to lug around a very large and heavy backpack in 38-degree weather in the blazing morning sun, without sunscreen because I hadn’t found any reasonably priced ones yet.  This was not my smartest moment, but I did bring some good cold water. I stuck to the shade and walked to the first site on the list: the Panathenaic stadium where the first modern Olympic games were held. The hottest place I had ever been to was Death valley, and these days the temperatures are almost identical. So with that in mind, I walked up, took a photo and left, sticking to the shade. This process led me to move quickly through the monuments of Zappeion gardens and Zappeion hall where I took a very long break sitting on the cool marble steps. This is where I took the first picture with my disposable camera, starting the mission for Michi. After that it was on to Hadrian’s arch, which through it you could catch a glimpse of the Parthenon and acropolis sitting above the city.

The Greek weather was making the fat American tourists work for it, most of which gave up and settled for the restaurants with air conditioning along the way. I settled for some Greek cherry Ice cream, delicious, which also gave me some much-needed energy to complete the journey. I decided to leave early to the bus station thinking that It would take some time to get there and I didn’t want to be late. This was both a bad and good idea, since the bus ride took quite a while since google maps was playing games with me. It was a bad idea since the girls’ baggage had been delayed and therefore I had to wait an hour for them…. No biggie… I got myself some Amstel bier, a nice taste of home while sitting in the Greek grill academy. An hour later and they were there! Tired and hungry from the journey, nothing that couldn’t be fixed with some epic gyros. After the food is where things got a little bit rough, it turned out there was only two seats available on the bus we wanted to take, and there were three of us. This led us to wait around 4 hours for the next one in the bus station that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. However, this was not the end of our suffering, as we then had a three hours bus ride to Sparti. It seemed like the longest bit of traveling we had ever done, even though the bus driver seemed to be cutting every corner and passing every car in his way.

Athens is where the Greece trip started, and also where it ended. With Aliza and Aube now there as well, we found a Airbnb for a couple days almost in the exact center of the city. It was in fact very central to a square that was used for many protests, some even against tourists... This we found out after observing countless battalions of swat units patrolling the city block surrounding the small square (which was then being turned into a metro stop). No one seemed to be pleased about this change, however, the busy coffee shops on the edges, which were now looking at two-meter-high chain link fence, were still bustling. One of these coffee shops was called HBBH, no idea what it stood for, but they did make some excellent Frappuccino’s, or freddocinos as they called them there. The place also had a tv set up so we could watch the Euro soccer games, most importantly the Netherlands! Which one against turkey. As we escaped the heat those days, after exploring the beautiful historic sites, we became acquainted with one of the waiters. One day, after wanting to try some different food, we went to a different café on the same block…. It was not that different, in fact it had the same exact owner, and the waiter worked at both cafes ha-ha. Exact same menu as well. Well, back to exploring the city, the beautiful Parthenon on the hill, were if you look in any direction you will see the city sprawling as far as you can see. The effect is almost nauseating, to feel so small in a land of roof tiles and concrete.