Hellooo
How you doing?
Coming to the end of a corker of a week. I’ve been on a lovely little camping trip with my bike and seen the sights of Athens. Also put a lot of time into careery stuff, been writing a load of stuff to make a little portfolio of work so I can try and land myself a job at the end of the summer, fingers crossed eh.
I headed to Kefalonia with my camping gear and my bike for a couple of days of exploring. Don’t think I’ve ever spent such a long time by myself without saying a word to anyone other than ‘one frappe please’. It’s a very beautiful island, lots of history and nice views.
I was interested to go because, well, it’s very close to Vasiliki, but also because Lord Byron lived there for a bit, and there’s a boulder in a little village that, apparently, he liked to sit on and think about nature and so on. But when I rocked up 😉 it was a bit of a let down – it was in the back alley of the village, in a car park. And the view that he used to stare at is now a view of an airport. Ah well.
But aside from that it was a swell trip. Written a little travelogue of my trip which I’m going to use as a portfolio piece once it’s done.
I returned to Vasiliki for a night before heading off early to Athens on the bus.
Athens isn’t a very beautiful city: it’s a huge sprawl of concrete apartment blocks. But when you catch a glimpse of the acropolis through the streets, it’s quite exciting. The acropolis hill is in the centre, and there are some quite cute old districts built on the hill surrounding it. Twice I had dinner on the rooftops of the tavernas, where the view is quite incredible, especially at sunset. Saw the parthenon, and the surviving statues from it, which now live in the acropolis museum next door. Makes you ashamed to be british: every audio guide and information board is banging on about Elgin, who took the best of the parthenon marbles to England. Crazy we haven’t given them back. They’re displaying replicas here, which is a bit of a shame.
I ended up doing a bit of socialising while I was there. I was sitting in the hostel bar on the second evening attempting to read while two loud americans had a stupid debate about libertarianism. They were being so patronising and sarcastic to each other, and talking in that loud, inconsiderate way that americans tend to do. To give you a sense of the tone, at one point, one of them said to the other while explaining his point, ‘bear with me, I know this is haarrdd’ with a condescending grin.
Anyway eventually the pro-libertarian guy got up and left, and the other one (Bryan) was sitting there performatively shaking his head and saying things like ‘this generation… oh my…’. Who was he talking to… the room? Or, was it… to me? Oh god. He’d seen me putting down my book in exasperation as they were talking and decided I was interested. He came over and started bitching about the guy he was chatting with. I made the appropriate noises. ‘Hmm, I know’. ‘Yes, indeed’. Shit, what’s my escape from this? That’s when David rocked up.
‘Hey, mind if I join you guys?’
Thank god, a normal sounding human. David and I attempted to have a normal bit of small talk while Bryan cut in momentarily with inane comments about the right wing guy he’d been talking with.
David: ‘You guys wanna go and get a drink?’
Why not, eh. At that moment, Bryan got a call and said he’d catch us up later. Phew. We headed to a bar. Once you leave the touristy bit, athens is quite a cool, alternative feeling city. Graffiti everywhere, young people sitting out drinking cocktails. David, a masters student from California, was fresh from a stint volunteering at a refugee centre in Cyprus, and was full of stories. But he was very keen to talk at length about a Japanese girl he’d met and fallen for while working there. He told me about the customs of dating for Asian people: you hang out purely platonically, then at a certain point, you make a ‘confession’, where you lay it all on the table and basically ask them to be your girlfriend. (Very) long story short, he was getting good vibrations from her, but the confession tanked, and he was hurtin’.
Eventually Bryan showed up, and was honestly pretty savage to David about his situation. He had lived in Japan for a few years so was making sweeping stereotypes about what kind of behaviour he should expect from the girls there. Was strange. Both of them had Asian heritage and eventually there was some consensus reached about norms, and I did end up learning a fair bit about Asian culture, which I didn’t expect to get out of a trip to Athens.
I went solo during the days, but it was nice catching up with them in the evenings over dinner and drinks. Bryan calmed down as the days went by and by the end I actually quite enjoyed talking to him. They roped in more and more hostel people by the day, and on my final night 7 of us went out to dinner at a rooftop taverna. Was quite nice.
On Friday I got back to Vasiliki for one more weekend before I was back to work. Luckily, it’s been super windy, so I’m currently enjoying a weekend of windsurfing.
Hope ya’ll are swell.
Love
James
