Greece After Thoughts

Preface: I took a lot of notes and such about things I wanted to remember from Greece, and they are written much in the same manner as Berlin. However, there are way too many for me to write them verbatim. So what you will read will be mostly summaries and some excerpts.

"This particular trip already has an air of sadness for me, because I will not be in the Good Ol' US of A on Independance Day. So on the note I'm going to make a couple of lists. Things I miss: 1. my family, 2. my car and driving it, 3. my cell phone, 4. BEEF 5. real showers, 6. dryers with lint traps, 7. my peeps at work, 8. mexican food, 9. ice, 10. free refills, 11. (sad to say) Walmart Things I'm looking forward to: 1. Seafood in Greece, 2. Greece period, 3. Amsterdam, 4. Being back in the homeland."
The 4th of July was spent on a bus. The seafood was extremely dissappointing. 13 euros for 6 shrimp sitting on the beach. I could see the dadgum fishing boats daily and that's the price of fresh seafood. And Greece.......


"Vern and I have just spent the day on the beach. We woke up aroung 7:30 am for breakfast, went back to sleep til about 11am then went to the beach. The day was absolutely beautiful. Hot but very breezy. The sea was freezing but clear. Because it's rocks and not sand on the beach or in the sea there is noe seaweed. Around 1:30pm Vern got a text from her friend Nikolas. She's known him about as long as she's known me give or take a summer. He said he was bored at the restaurant and asked if we wanted a coffee. So we went to his restaurant, got a free frappe and sat aroung on the beach under straw umbrellas watching him and Dimitris play backgammon. It was quite a lovely afternoon. After chillaxin with them we went back to lay down on the beach. I'm not one for just laying and tanning. I always gotta do something. But today was different. It was nice."

Greece was beautiful. But I spent more time on a bus than I did on the beach. I was told I was going to all these little places because "You'll love it." And I did like some of it. But I've been waiting for 3 years to be in Greece with Vern. It was more like just me in Greece and not on my own terms. I went to a Greek Night. I was entertained by traditional dances, food, and wine. All were good. The wine was the best. I learned a few dances and am probably married to one of the dancers after one of them. I saw a Greek Orthodox monastary that provided a pilgramige of sorts for me. That was cool. But it took a day away from the beach. I hiked Mt. Olympus. The hike was cool. The little other stops we kept making were not. I didn't understand the importance of any of them seeing as how the tour was in Polish. We went to Athens. Again the tour was in Polish so I didn't understand. Veronika didn't want to translate everything for me. She only translated what she thought was interesting, which kinda perturbed me. I like history and such. I wanna know the stories of the places we're stopping at in Athens. Turns out the tour guide just wasn't a good story teller. So I had a bad source and a screen. We spent a grand total of 6 hours in Athens because "there's not much to see in Athens." Yep you read right. There's so much to see in Athens, so much history, so many stories. But didn't get to see or hear them. We stopped in Thessalonia on the way back to Poland. Same thing happened there. We only stayed for 2 hours "because there's really nothing to see." I know!!!

I have seen so many places on the drive to Greece. We went through Slavakia, Hungary(Budapest), Serbia, New Yugslavia, and Bulgaria. I must say these are absolutely beautiful countries. Bulgaria reminded me of home. Flat and full of corn fields, but green. Everything is so green. The rest stops left a lot to be desired. Like toilets. Some places were just holes in the ground with a string hanging from the ceiling. Ladies this was difficult. Squatting over this whole trying to to get your pants wet with urine or whatever else was the liquid on the floor. and then you have to open the door and get ready to run out before you can flush, because all that hard work will mean nothing if ya don't. And you had to pay ,50 euro to use this hole. Yeah. I am no longer afraid of whatever diseases are in Walmart's bathroom after this trip. Whatever they are are minor to whatever can be contracted in these toilets.

"I've come to realize that I'm feeling the exact same way I did this time last year. I was looking back at my reactions and feelings of the last month or so and it is the exact same mood/aura/melancholiness as last year. I feel like I need to cry. Last year though, my panic/anxiety attacks were like 2 or 3 every other day. Now I've only had 2 or 3 total."
I did cry. On the streets of Athens. I was feeling so completely left out and uninformed. It felt like a waste of a day. When you're in a place like that, nothing should feel wasted.

I spent a total of 5 days in Greece. 3 trips I was sort of pushed into. 2 languages I didn't understand. And a grand total of 90 hours on a bus. It's a good thing Greece was so completely and utterly beautiful. I don't know if I could count it as a good trip otherwise. It is definately a must see for everyone.