γιατί όχι

The trip to Greece was a nightmare. I left my apartment at 3:50 (getting to bed at about two), and hurried towards Avenue Villiers, the closest main street. From there, I took a taxi to Gare du Nord, which was closed. So, I waited for twenty minutes at Gare du Nord until 4:30, when it opened, and I made my way to the RER. None of the ticket kiosks accepted bills, and the ticket counters don’t open until seven, so I snuck through the RER gate with a zone 2 metro ticket. Anyone who knows me probably realizes how anxious something like that makes me – but I was already worried I was going to miss my train, which was supposed to leave at five of five. In reality, of the four RER’s that were supposed to arrive at Gare du Nord in between 4:30 and 5:30, two of them did. Apparently the five AM RER just didn’t exist, and I had to wait until five thirty to catch the next one. By that time I was, as you can imagine, even more nervous – missing my plane to Greece would be a fine way to start my trip. When I arrived, I snuck through the exit (thankfully there were no controllers) and bolted to the ROISSYVAL and took the shuttle to terminal one – where there was no line at the SwissAir desk, and I got to the gate with plenty of time to spare. Then our plane left half an hour late – which seems to be the trend at CDG these days – and I was convinced I was going to miss my connecting flight. Thankfully, I realized I had my stopover times confused, and I slept all the way to Switzerland in relative comfort. My transferring gate was literally next door to my arrival, and so all I had to do was kill about an hour before boarding. Somehow I managed to convince myself that my plane had already boarded, or that I had missed it, so I was a nervous wreck walking up in down in front of the doors until we boarded, fifteen minutes late. I slept the entire two hours and forty-five minutes to Greece, and only woke up (feeling disgusting) when the plane touched down.

When I exited the airport and got my first glimpse of Greece, my initial thought was: This looks a lot like eastern Washington. And in a way it does; arid, stark, and desolate – this is, of course, before you begin the drive towards Athens. My taxi driver spoke two words of English – Yes and No. The only directions I had were written on a scrap of paper – an address, in Greek and Anglicized Greek – and when the driver began asking me questions, all I could do was stammer and point confusedly at “Fedrou 9. Pangrati.” I don’t think I’ve ever felt so helpless in another country before. It’s one thing not to speak the language, but another altogether to not be able to read the alphabet, which is made up of hieroglyphs so archetypically mysterious that putting them to use naming streets and bus stops seems almost sacrilegious. Thankfully, Lizzie’s friend Vladi was somehow nearby, and he managed to communicate the destination. I was under the impression that it was Lizzie speaking Greek with the grumpy cabbie and was incredibly impressed – and equally let down when I learned the truth. I met her and Julie in front of their apartment in Pangrati, which they tell me is some sort of immigrant neighborhood, and put my things down. Our first act was to order gyros, which are a uniform 1.90 here, as opposed to 4.50 in St.Michel. However, they’re far smaller, and don’t contain French fries. The verdict is still out on which sandwich rains supreme: The pitas and tzatziki in Greece are infinitely superior to pretenders in Paris, but the meat in both of the gyros I’ve had has been drier than and not as tender as the Parisian meats. I’m a huge proponent of the belief that food tastes better in the country of its origin – and I maintain that, at least subjectively. When Lizzie and Julie took me to their local taverna for dinner, I learned that the rule does indeed hold true with tzatziki, calamari, souvlaki, and whatever their word is for “fried cheese.” For fifteen euros, I got far more food than I could eat, and far more liquor than I could drink. It was satisfying to be that incredibly full after a day of nibbling on SwissAir’s miserable excuse for a brioche (Although you can’t really blame the Swiss, since they’re basically German – and they did give everyone a little piece of Swiss chocolate by way of apology).

The best-fitting description for Athens that I can come up with is “urban sprawl.” The city goes on for miles in all directions, flooding out over the landscape, dotted here and there by steep hills. The most famous, of course, is the acropolis – and I can assure you, it is just as impressive as you could ever hope it to be.
I got my first view of the Acropolis as we walked towards Plaka (the neighborhood where I’m now sitting, which is very nice and lively), towering above the faceless apartments like a miniature Olympus. It’s stunning in reality, the sheer walls of the retaining wall jutting up out of the rocky hillside, the marble columns glittering at the top – and the closer you get, the more impressive it becomes. We walked up a nearby hill (which is also capped by some sort of monument) where we drank wine and watched the sun set over the arid hills. At night, the whole Acropolis is lit up, shaming the Eiffel tower and creating an unavoidable reminder of the city’s history.

I explored further today, walking up to the top of the Acropolis and poking around among the marble ruins with a girl named Devon, who introduced herself to me at the ticket window (everything is free with a French student ID) after she heard me tell the lady at the window that I was from Paris. It turned out that she had just finished a semester in Bordeaux, and we spent an hour and a half at the Parthenon discussing France and Greece.

I can’t begin to describe the effect that the city has had on me. It’s almost the definition of my aesthetic – by which, you all know, I mean the Epic. There are ruins everywhere, crumbled pillars and exposed roads hidden in the waving grasses, all of which are grossly juxtaposed with the explosive growth of modern Athens around them. The city has certainly not forgotten its roots, and the people are proud, but the metropolis grows and grows with unbelievable speed, giving a sense of what I can only describe as “suspension” to the surroundings. The old Athens, or what’s left of it, is frozen, preserved, unchanging – while all around the ruins at the birth of civilization society grows and expands like an anthill. From the top of the hills, Athens, far below, spreads out for what seems like an eternity, up into the hills and all the way to the hazy Mediterranean, an unending sea of high-rise apartments and small, claustrophobic streets.
After cold shower (Greece is HOT) at the “Hotel Byron” (Byron’s a popular guy here for his involvement in the Greek revolution), I made my way back in the same direction, and toured the Theater of Dionysus, which is almost as incredible as the Acropolis. Here, I was treated to more of my favorite landscape; hidden columns and quarried stone grown over with dry scrub and thistles that pop out from behind cypress trees at every turn. There’s a small theater on the side of the hill, run down and crumbling, where I sat and stared at the city beyond the low fence of the archeological park. Then I walked up an old Grecian rode to the real theater, a gigantic thing that’s been completely renovated. There was a rehearsal happening, and I spent a good hour looking at the gigantic Egyptian props and costumed dancers before I walked back down to the Hotel. After a brief repose and a bite of chocolate, I went out again, getting myself lost in Plaka and the neighboring flea market. On my way back, I stopped for dinner - ouzo and Greek salad – and sat on the side of the busy walkway to people-watch. I dropped my bag off at the Byron, put on a pair of pants, and walked next door to the open-air rooftop cinema, where I took in an 8:30 showing of Angels and Demons, which is like National Treasure, only supposedly more meaningful, or something. It’s not. It’s just stupid. Well, it was better than the Da Vinci Code movie I suppose – but that’s hardly an accomplishment. Now I’m back in the sitting room of the hotel, writing. My ferry for Santorini leaves tomorrow morning at 7:30, so I’ve got to be up early to try to take the metro to Piraias, the port, to try to find my boat. The metro worries me. It’s the same system as in Paris, but with everything in Greek, and two changes to make, I’m going to leave on the early side to give myself time to correct any errors.

Traveling alone is going to be an interesting experience. I’m well-versed in keeping myself company for a day or two, but a week is going to be a much more telling experiment. You learn things about yourself; that much is apparent. Within a day I’ve learned that, despite all my Alpha-male posturing, I’m essentially scared of everything. What’s nice (and damning) about being alone is that you don’t really have a choice – you have to go take care of things, you have to get things done yourself – or else you can curl up and decide to go home. I’m excited to get to Santorini, almost excited by the inevitable chaos of the Grecian ferry system – I want to see if I can manage. If I can’t; well, that’s something I guess, but at the very least it will be interesting to find out.

Alice told me about γιατί όχι(Yati Ohi?), which basically means something like “why not” in Greek. Sucker as I am for meaning 9and all things Metanarrative and Greek), I’ve assigned far deeper meaning to it. “Why not” has become my motto for the trip; an excuse to act as I please and not worry so much about consequences. Ironically, this directly opposes my mantra of Concis-based Eleutheria, which propounds freedom but only in the recognition of consequences. I suppose the two aren’t mutually exclusive – I’ll just have to do a bit of considering. At any rate, despite the fact that I’d blown off dinner, when I passed a taverna and an old Greek man took me by the shoulder, pointed to his restaurant, and said “Why not?” all I could do was smile to myself and follow him to a table. I’m feeling a being-shift coming on. After two days, Greece has already begun to work its magic on me, forcing me to wax poetic under the shadow of the mountain where western civilization was born, in front of the crumbling pillars of the Temple of Zeus, and perched atop the Theater of Dionysus. Santorini calls like Prospero’s island, a storm of personal mystery swirling around its exploded caldera - no doubt with its own dark magician at the center. I have five days to learn all I can about myself; to see if my bloated ego has any reason for existence or if, like Nicholas Urfe, I’ll be blasted, torn apart by reality, and return to Paris a broken, but grown, man.