greece, the vacation

this is not another unexplainable absence from updating my blog.  my reason for not writing is solid this time.  i spent the 8 days immediately following my last post daydreaming about leave, and the next four days traveling to Athens, Greece, where i now find myself, sitting in a rented apartment, plowing through random bottles of greek wine, and listening to a supermix of miles davis, belly and moby.  kind of strange how music you never thought would mix merely needed the opportunity…

i am here with melissa, who i first met when she was handing out room keys at santa clara soccer camps in 2005.  she did such a fine job of ensuring all of the coaches had uncomfortable, painfully spartan rooms that i knew she would be an important person to befriend. 

after arriving last night, and while waiting for melissa to arrive and open the apartment, i found a bar called, simply, “handcrafted beer”.  obviously, i went in.  after some initial difficulty communicating with the bartender, she gave me a beer, and i sat down to wait.

just as i was finishing the first beer, another appeared, and the waitress assured me, “no money”… apparently i had impressed her with my huge backpack and inability to speak a single word of greek.  when i headed to the bar for a third beer, she asked me where i was from.  i answered “california”, which excited her, and she said, “ah! california!”  so i asked her if she had ever been to california, and she said, “no, it’s very nice!” 

i was confused, but impressed by her tight jeans and lip ring, so i smiled and went back to my table. 

for dinner, melissa and i headed to an italian restaurant called Ciao, and split a pizza.  ordering a beer proved complicated:

me: oh, you don’t have mythos, that’s ok, what kind of beer is aeschius: light, dark, etc?

waiter guy: i don’t know…it’s green.

me: ok, i’ll take one. 

turns out only the bottle was green, not the beer, which was a slight disappointment.  i thought maybe st. patrick’s came early in greece.  additionally, we were treated to the waiter’s opinion of america (you start wars everywhere, the balkans, etc..) and his opinion of us (you’re ok, though…)

point of order…if the balkans had been able to keep slobodan milosevic from massacring people, the US wouldn’t have cared.  plus, it was a NATO/UN mission.  but that seems to escape a lot of people, especially given recent US actions.  blaming the US is easy.

more to follow.  greece promises much to discuss.   

cheers.