The night before I left Israel I hung out with some old friends at their Hebrew U apartment. While there I ordered a sheirut (communal cab) for 9:45 the next morning. After saying goodbye I shared a cab back to the city center with Hayley Schwartzman and after we got to the hotel she was staying at I went on back to the apartment. I did some laundry and got in bed and set my alarm for 9:00.
I woke up at 9:00 and adjusted to the waking world for about five minutes before I received a call. It was from the sheirut driver, saying he’d be there in ten minutes. I told him that that made no sense and that I ordered the sheirut for 9:45. He tried explaining that he had a lot of pickups and that he had to get me early. I told him that he couldn’t expect me to be ready a half hour early. He didn’t really understand English, which made this more frustrating, but ten minutes later I was ready to go. He called again saying he’d be there in 15 minutes, and I got even angrier and told him I was ready to go. We hung up and I stood in my apartment and waited. 9:45 came around and I went to the front of the building. He was sitting there in the sheirut and waved for me to hurry. When I got to the door of the cab he pointed to his watch and gave me a facial expression that was pure desperation combined with a look that I interpreted as, “my children will starve because of you.” I raised my voice and asked him why he didn’t call me when he got there. “Okay, okay, just sit down and we’ll go.” I was pretty upset about this whole ordeal and continued to be for the next ten minutes. But when we got to the next stop the other people were taking longer than me and he kept yelling out to them, “c’mon we need to go. We need to go!” He had to pick up three more groups after this one, and staring out the window I then burst out laughing to myself, because I realized that this man was approaching potential blood clot and that he has the most stressful job in Israel.
Getting to the airport after that and going through security was a breeze, and in no time I was on a flight headed toward Athens. Thus began my six day solo journey through Greece. I got to the Fivos hostel and put my stuff down. If you go to Athens, I recommend staying here. It’s cheap and the staff are extremely friendly and will book trips for you. I told them I was planning on going around the country via the bus, but they quickly convinced me that I should just take a car. In about 10 minutes of the travel agent yelling over the phone at some guy in Greek I had myself a booked Hyundai. Here's a nice picture:
The next day, after the guy showed me to the car, I saw that the GPS didn’t work right, and refused to pay him until he got me one that worked. I would not have been able to do this trip without that GPS, and the guy spent the next four hours running around Athens to find one that worked. I lost half a day of the road, but I got to see more of the acropolis and the agora, so it wasn’t too bad. When the GPS finally arrived I took off. And by take off I mean I was stuck in pre-Good Friday traffic for about 45 minutes. I was so anxious to get out of the city at that point I was going nuts in my Hyundai. In my Shakespeare class we watched The Merchant of Venice where Al Pacino plays Shylock. In an interview he was asked how he was able to build the tension in the court scene when Shylock is about to cut the pound of flesh from Antonio’s chest. Pacino’s response was that he funneled the anger from road rage. Sitting in that car in Athens I was about willing to cut a pound of flesh from someone myself.
I got gas before I left, because the gage read zero, but then realized that the gage was broken. Discouraged, I decided that if I tried trading cars I would lose another day of the road trip, and I wasn’t willing to do that so I just left and planned on filling up the tank each morning.
Driving out of Athens I felt unbelievable. Open road in a country I didn’t know at all about to go on a five day adventure, this was freedom.
I got to Corinth and the person in charge told me they were closing in 10 minutes. I was annoyed but looked around as best I could. The main attraction there is the temple of Apollo.
I also discovered that the first five letters in “Korinthos” in Greek are KOPIN.
Corinth’s history with Jews goes back to the 4th century C.E. so maybe there is some obscure connection there.
The site closed so I went to the town and found a café to use the internet. I think I walked into the haven where the senior members of the Greek mafia hang out. When I walked in all these finely dressed old men looked up at me and held scowling expressions as I walked past them and to the back of the bar. I sat down and some of them were still staring, mostly silent, and a poker game was going on in back. I stayed for an hour. I then went across the street to get some food. I ordered a spinach pie and as I was eating it a very sad looking cat came right up to me, giving me these sad hungry eyes, so I threw it half my crust from the pie. It sniffed the crust and without touching it looked at me again with sad eyes. I was pissed because I had thrown food on the ground it didn't want, and then I ignored the sad cat. After that I decided to save time and drive to Mycenae (Mikenes). And this is where my adventure begins to get very interesting.
As I was driving I saw in front of me the most ominous fog moving in my direction.
My route cut right into the fog and I didn’t think much of it. Inside the fog I couldn’t see more than 20 feet in front of the car and the roads were on mountainsides and curved relentlessly. I just focused on my GPS and hoped that the fog would soon end. At this point it was around 6:00 PM. The GPS then led me to a village and I pushed up very steep and narrow streets until the point where my GPS betrayed me and wanted me to go over a dirt path covered with sharp rocks. I was not going to make the car go up that way, so I tried going a different direction. I went down another very narrow street and about 50 meters in front of me were two trucks trading goods. They were blocking the street and in front of them I could see it dead ended. I started panicking a little because it was getting dark out and I was stuck in a street too narrow to turn around in and in a random village my GPS couldn't navigate. I put the car in reverse and worked it back up the hill, and realizing that my GPS was going to want me to go back toward that dirt road, I put the car in park and starting thinking about how I was a complete idiot, stuck in a village I didn’t know in the middle of wilderness Greece alone and surrounded by people who didn’t know English. In addition to this, my cell phone ran out of credit, not to mention the gas gage that consistently pointed to zero.
After backing up I was able to turn the car around and parked in front of a friendly looking house with flower pots in the front. A man peaked his head out of the front door and I called to him, “Do you know English?” He said he did and invited me into his house. So I went into his house. His name is George, a 32 year old guy living with his parents who works in a casino. The way he talked and carried himself I inferred he was gay also. He gave me water and some snack and I was very grateful. He told me I was in the village Lemnos and that I could make my way down to Nafplio which was an hour and a half away. The sun was down at this point and I was sort of hoping he’d invite me to stay for the night. That didn’t happen and I got back into my car. He offered to make me an omelette, or to at least take eggs with me to make at my hotel, but I told him he was very nice and not to worry about it. I was really fortunate to find George in this place, and after going down some winding streets per his advice, I was back on the main highway headed for Nafplia. By this point I was very shaken up by all of this, being lost, confused and alone, no sunlight, and the worst thoughts were passing through my head: what if the gas runs out, or a tire pops? I wasn’t a fan of the Greek radio so I put in my iPod headphones and listened to some calm music. But the fear never subsided and soon I was driving on dirt roads in the middle of this Peloponnese wilderness. I passed by some stray dogs that looked more lost and hopeless than I did, and I was sorry I couldn’t give them a ride. George told me I would hit two more villages before Nafplia, and I remained on edge until the next village, praying that someone there would know English also.
Part of me thought I wasn’t going to make it to Nafplia, and I never get that nervous about anything, so this was unusual. To distract myself from that, I focused on the fear emotion and tried to describe it to myself. I was thinking how similar fear felt to sadness—that same involuntary grinding of the stomach muscles, the feeling of hopelessness. I think fear and sadness all bottle down to the feeling that for a moment in time you are not the captain of your own ship. You just fumble around in obscurity until the darkness clears. But I'm risking being overdramatic now.
I made it to the next village and asked some old people where I was, but they didn’t understand a single word of English. Up ahead in the village a religious procession was going on for the approaching Easter. Older people were carrying ritual objects that swung on small chains and wafted incense through the crowd. Others carried burning candles. Luckily, three people roughly my age were in the back of the procession and I got out of the car and joined them. I asked one of the guys where I was and he said I was only a half hour from Nafplia. Out of habit I tried striking up a conversation with him, asking how long he’d lived there, then stopped myself and said goodbye. I needed to get to where I was going. I got back in the car and drove on. I remained tense the whole ride, and in the distance in a valley I finally saw thousands of city lights set in a grid pattern. I had to drive the car down a mountain with narrow streets with turn radii not large enough for my car. After getting to my GPS destination, which turned out not to be Nafplia, but a creepy farmhouse surrounded by dogs and cats, I had enough and typed in a location for a four star hotel, called Hotel Nafplia, which I assumed had to be in the city center. When I arrived in Nafplia and saw the city sign, I stopped my car and put my face in my hands. I had never been so relieved to be in a city, and planned on going back to Athens the next day because I couldn’t do this alone. I got to the hotel and checked in and got onto my computer in the lobby to figure out my cell phone situation.
A great couple from Athens who were on a biking trip asked if they could use my computer to book their next hotel. I started talking to them (they knew English perfectly) and the husband told me he is a columnist for one of the major great newspapers “ETHNOS.” He showed me his page. He is a travel writer. I told him about my experience that night and told him I was planning on turning around back to Athens the next day. Then in a very straightforward way he looked at me and shook his head: “No, keep going. You have a car, you’ve come this far. Don’t turn around.” Well, I thought, if you put it that way I guess I should keep going. No need to go back to Athens with my head bowed to Greece. I survived a scary situation and actually began to feel really good about it. We talked a little longer and they wished me a good trip. It was 12:45AM and I walked around the city, happy to be surrounded by people. Nafplia reminds me of a 1980’s Barbie town, and has a great nightlife with a lot going on. I walked around for a while and eventually went to bed. After all that nothing beats the comfort of a bed. The end of day one.
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