All Of Monday’s Reasons - 10
10. Greece
Map
After twenty hours of sailing, we arrived in Patra. It would be unfair to describe the town as identical to Brindisi. It would also be untrue. Patras had more to offer. Whereas Brindisi was shady, Patras was shady and dusty. Both towns’ incomes were based around tourism, and hotels and shipping line offices cluttered their crooked streets.
I walked with Adriana to the train station from the dock. On the four-minute walk there, five taxis pulled up alongside use offering to take us there for the equivalent of two pounds. Knowing two pounds could feed me for a whole day, I smiled at them and cursed under my breath.
When got to the small station and I looked at the postcards on the carousel by the snack bar. This can give a stranger a good idea of what the town has to offer. Most were of a garden whic featured a working clock, a least five feet across, the face of which was made entirely of flowers. Some were of the sun setting over the oil tankers and cranes in the shipyard and a couple were shots of reclining Greek bimbos trying to look seductive in unflattering swim suits and anklets.
No Greek official, I learned, is fully a Greek official without his whistle. This is blown at every occasion with little response from the locals.
In the rush to the platform’s edge as the train approached, I lost sight of Adriana. I was eager to find a seat, so I got on and found a place without her. When the seats and the eisles filled up, the train moved slowly away. I looked for her in our car, but she must have boarded another another carriage. I figured she was alone before she met me and from her conversations she liked travelling that way. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t, so I made a note to keep and eye out for her when we got to Athens.
Even though it would appear on a map that this was a major railway line, the train and the tracks suggested otherwise. The train consisted of three seated cars, packed to their full capacity. The individual metal tracks were two feet away from each other and were three inches thick. They were like the children’s train rides I had been on years ago at fairgrounds. As we moved away from the station, I was expecting to travel in a small circle and see my parents waving to me with each circuit from the side of the tracks.
The driver blew the train’s whistle every two minutes to scare away the flocks of pigeons resting on the tracks. A bird, if run over, would easily have derailed the engine.
A man came through the car selling souvlaki which smelt really good. Another came through selling beer, which reminded me that I had a beer left over from Rome. I drank the half litre looking out the window. The countryside was rugged and mountainous and seemingly unproductive, but vines grew in small patches alongside the tracks. I heard a Swede seated opposite talking to someone.
“The fiesta was incredible. I’ve got to read some Hemingway when I get home. He wrote something about that.”
I caught his eye and held up the book.
“Oh,” he said, “I’ll buy it off you. Yes?”
“It’s not for sale, sorry.” I said.
The beer and the darkening sky had made me tired and I drifted off to sleep wondering if a traveller could roam around Europe on nothing but a rucksack of Hemingways.
I was woken up by an English girl in her early twenties. She shook me gently and said, “We’re almost in Athens.”
“Thanks.”
“Are you travelling alone?”
“By myself.” I preferred the term to the point of making the distinction.
“Looking for somewhere to stay?”
“Yeah.”
“Then allow me to suggest the Reni Hostel.”
She went on to tell me about the price and quality of the rooms and provided me with ten well-prepared reasons why theirs was the best hostel in town.
She put a leaflet on my lap. I looked down and saw seven other hostel brochures left there by people who had been polite enough not to wake me. The carriage was buzzing with hostel representatives approaching anyone with a rucksack in an effort to make a sale. They must have joined the train at the station before just before Athens.
When the train stopped in Athens, I scanned the platform briefly for Adriana, but I didn’t see her, so I followed a handful of people behind a sales rep heading towards his particular hostel. He warned us about crossing the streets by telling us that the taxi drivers didn’t stop for anyone except customers.
Half a dozen weary young adventurers carted their luggage through the dark back streets of Athens sometime around midnight.
We passed countless cats and drunks and the stench of rubbish and Ouzo , the diet of the misfortunates creatures. The streets were wet, even though it probably hadn’t rained in months.
“I had no idea Athens was so beautiful,” said a Canadian walking next to me.
We reached the hostel and with the apologies of the staff, we were informed they were full. We were offered places on the roof, which I accepted with only enought hesitation to earn me a sizeable discount.
It was illegal for hostels to allow guests to sleep on the roof. The law was introduced following pressure on the Greek government from the larger hotels on account of this cheaper alternative was stealing customers, because it meant that the rooming houses would never fill up. The government responded by making it illegal to be on a hostel roof from eleven at night to six thirty in the morning and they introduced random police checks.
The space cost me two pounds and included the use of the showers and washrooms. I climbed the stairs to the roof where there were already ten other young people sleeping or talking in small groups. I spread out my bed-roll, pinning one end down with my boots and the other with my rucksack. I wondered what time it was. Not surprisingly, my cheap watch from Barcelona had broken.
I washed my dirty clothes in the sink and hung them out to dry on a line I improvised with some string from my bag before crawling into my sleeping bag while a German group played cards and drank wine nearby. I fell asleep to the rocking of the boat earlier, with only the sound of cars hissing below to remind me I was on dry land again.
February 2nd, 2007 at 7:33 pm
ADdriana’s probably gonna be ticked;)