15:17, 04 July 2007. Waiting for the slow boat to arrive.
18:34, 04 July 2007. On the slow boat back to Athens.
20:00, 04 July 2007. Still on the slow boat back to Athens.
03:14, 05 July 2007. Sleeping at Athens airport.
09:35, 05 July 2007. On the plane leaving Athens.
11:26, 05 July 2007. Wandering around Milan's airport.
13:16, 05 July 2007. Still wandering around Milan's airport.
16:34, 05 July 2007. Finally, made it to Madrid. And it only took us 25 hours to get here.
Some thoughts running through my head as I sit guarding a prime piece of real estate on the island's mountainside waiting for the sun to set:
An older Greek gentleman sat next to me on the train from the airport to the city. He noticed that I kept staring at the map off to the side. "Do you want a subway map of Athens?" he asked and then grabbed his copy from his pocket and gave it to me. Wanting to be that tourist who tries to learn about local language, I asked him to teach me how to say thank you in Greek. "Efharisto." "Huh? One more time please." "Efharisto," he said with ease. I tried repeating but my "thank you" sounded more like me trying to cough up snot. He laughed, then for the next 5 minutes, I got a lesson on pronunciation. Wong and a few others around snickered in my feeble attempts. (I probably would've done the same thing if I had to hear me try to speak in Greek.)
Do I like Athens? Not really. But it's probably because I was also eaten alive on my first night by some very hungry bedbugs. I woke up with over 50 red spots and a breakout of hives. (I would thank that one special bug who got me on my right eyelid. Now, I'm a pirate and I don't need an eye patch. ARGGGGH!!!)
Everyone knows Berlin. It's the capital of Germany, second most populous city in the European Union, major center of European politics, culture, media and science and oh yeah, there's a lot of history here too. While I had a great time here despite the crap weather. However, I couldn't help but feel depressed. (A word of advice... Limit yourself to only one museum devoted to either the Wall or the Holocaust per visit.)
And of course, on our last day, the weather cleared up. Naturally...
Now, since this is the end of June, one would expect sunny skies with warm shorts and a singlet type weather, right? Instead, London followed us and landed in Hamburg shivering. After some light shopping, we headed up north to Kiel to see some of Wong's old friends. Upon our arrival, the clouds thought it would be funny to dump buckets of water on us and threw in some hurricane-like winds for good measure.
For those of you who don't know your German geography, Kiel is located to the north off the south-east corner of the Baltic Sea and is known for its sailing events. Although not much sailing was to be seen (missed that by a week along with perfect weather), it was a nice change not having to deal with all the tourist pedal-pushing that I've growing to love. Would I come back here? Probably not but at least I can say I was here. And that's all that matters.
