People keep talking to me about Urban Planning – a night in Athens

My flight from Istanbul to Barcelona has a planned layover in Athens. I've never been to Greece and had always wanted to, having majored in philosophy in college, and my long-standing fascination with the Greek language. When I was in college, one of my favorite classes was “Word Origins,” one of the few remaining linguistics courses in Binghamton. My high school friend Sarah and I took it together... we found great pleasure in geeking out over the words. We'd rush and fight to see who could answer the question first, hands up before the question was even finished- much like we did in the 11th grade, when precalculus turned out to be easy as hell, resulting in daily eye rolling from our teacher. I vaguely remember our college professor always looking surprised that anyone gave a shit. The other class I loved was “Medical Terminology,” where we had to learn the Greek alphabet, and to be able to transliterate from the Greek, and understand word roots. I found it fascinating that Greek language, for example, differentiated between “anesthesia” and “analgesia”; one means something that deadens the pain and one means you just don't really care about the pain. Or something like that. Anyway, I can still remember all of the Greek letters (backwards and forwards, thanks to the joys of sorority hazing) and an approximate pronunciation of them. I amazingly thought to ask if it was possible to have my huge bag go directly to BCN instead of having it be picked up in Athens, as I only had one evening to see Athens and didn't feel like wrestling with my shit. All I wanted to do was watch the sun set over the acropolis and eat some grilled fish with olive oil and lemon. I am seated next to Paras, a Greek guy who has spent the past year in Istanbul, and I ask him how to say “thank you” in Greek, and that after a week in Istanbul I still hadn't quite figured it out. “Efkary sto,” he says, telling me that it comes from the same root word as “Eucharist,” which was a lot more helpful of a mnemonic than one would think. (Oh- by the way, mnemonic comes from the Greek mother of the muses, Mnemosyne. See, mom, all that college time wasn't JUST spent drinking and mattress sliding after all.) He tells me it is unlikely that I will find good fish in Athens, that the places are a bit touristy, and that I'm more likely to find the Greek version of the same meat situation I had in Istanbul. “Gyro and Souvlaki?” I ask. I even pronounce it “hero.” He seems impressed. We talk a little bit about what it means to be a Greek in Turkey, how all anyone wants to talk to him about is the financial crisis, and how Greeks and Turks have a love/hate relationship with one another. As we fly over the coast, he says “you should open your eyes and take a good look at the brilliant lack of urban planning here in Athens.” I'm always a bit thrown when non-native speakers of English are as sarcastic as I am. The trip from the airport into town took a little less than an hour, and was clearly marked. Every sign in Athens is already transliterated into English, which took a little bit of the fun out of it for me. I check into Athens Backpackers studio. I generally fear and loathe any hostel with the word “backpackers” in it, for it usually indicates that there will be smelly 20-year olds, dirty surfers, all night screaming, and a bar that is named “BEER-SHOTS-PUB-WIFI” or something like that. Yourgos is very welcoming, and tells me that he can lock my laptop in the safe, where it will be, as named, safe. More sarcasm. He gives me a ticket for one free shot on the “ROOFTOPBAR.” Spectacular. The hostel room is clean, and spacious, with a balcony I never had the chance to sit on. The big room has a stove, which seems like a good idea, but do you really want people cooking in the room you're sleeping in? I can imagine how pissed I'd be if it were two in the morning and one of the stoner surfer dudes decided he's got the munchies and wants to cook himself a steak. Also, the bathroom is this weird thing that baffled me the first time I saw it in Uruguay- the shower isn't a stall, it's just a showerhead in the corner, right next to the toilet, right next to the sink, and the floor is tiled and sloped so that when you're done showering, you squeegee all of the water on the floor in the drain. By the time I got to the Acropolis (the hostel is at the same metro station), it and its adjacent museum were already closed. So I wandered around. Athens is dirty, full of artless graffitti, and a bit down-trodden. Tiny and easy to get around, there were a few ruins in the center, just like in Rome where you turn around and there you are... a small park of ruins... but a bit unremarkable. I just kept wandering...I got close to the acropolis, which is set on the very top of a hill. When you walk up, you are actually passing through pathways to people's homes, so at one point, I walked right between members of a family having drinks outside their home. They, and about 8 stray cats that had taken up residence there, strewn about. Just like in Turkey, there are cats EVERYWHERE, and these are better fed but a bit more skittish. It felt really good to be out of Turkey. No one bothered me, no “hellowhereareyoufrom,” and no one really looked in my direction. So when I opened up a map right in front of a metro station in broad daylight, and an old man came over to help me, I thought nothing of it, although I didn't need his help so I kind of ignored him. “You need help? I help you! You are here, and I live over here....” and with that, the old man pointed with his index finger, and on the way to the map he took a purposeful detour to my left nipple. “OK THAT'S ENOUGH OF THAT,” I huffed, and walked away unscathed. At least in Istanbul they never touched you! I wandered over to the recommended “Boulevard.” It is a park at the base of the acropolis. It's like the south street seaport, las ramblas in Barcelona... a pedestrian path with open air cafes, crappy jewelry for sale, cheap wallets. But almost all Greek people from what I could tell. I found a tango cafe, because despite my shitty sense of direction, I have an internal compass for all things latino, even in Greece. There was a tango lesson was going on. It would have been wonderful if the average age didn't appear to be 50. The sun is setting, and the acropolis just keeps shining brighter and brighter, and everyone in the cafe is sitting facing the glowing acropolis, high up on the hill. It was really beautiful, and much like my sitting in a park in Paris, next to the lit up Eiffel Tower, it's much more enchanting than this I-hate-going-where-the-tourists-go-often-nonplussed New Yorker wants to admit. There's a theater next to the acropolis, an old greek open-air theater with arches, and a chamber orchestra is singing. Gorgeous. I'm back at the acropolis station, and I ask the hostel guy for a recommendation, and he points me to a good, family-run restaurant around the corner where they serve a main dish and a beer for about 10 euro. There's no real menu, Jennifer explains (she's from Iowa, but married a Greek guy, and lives in Athens) because they cook whatever they feel like cooking that day and she tells you about it. “Would you like some chicken on the grill? Some steak? Some nice fish? We have sea bream. Do you like wild greens?” I order some white wine and the fish. After a week of pretty much only raki (think ouzo) beer on offer in Istanbul, it was nice to relax with a cold, crisp glass of wine, served in a teeny-tiny carafe. The fish arrives perfectly cooked, flecked with sea salt, and the greens are delicious, drowning a bit in olive oil (not really a bad thing, it it?) Absolutely delicious. I guess I got exactly what I came for. The acropolis, grilled fish, and a groping just to top it all off!! The wine is soporific, and I'm out like a light before midnight. In order to be kind to my roommates at the butt-crack of dawn, who I never so much as met, I stumble around in the dark, losing a contact lens, fuck, and I can't seem to figure out how to turn on the showerhead. So here I am, crouched under the shower faucet, trying to bathe myself. I pretended I was under a waterfall, but what a sight I must have been. That squeegee didn't do a damn thing, so apologies to my roommates who probably had to walk across a wet floor for their morning pee. I am glad I was so close to the metro, as I sleepily stumble, one-eyed, to the metro. I sit next to Yakob, a Danish guy who is on his way to Istanbul. He is involved in urban planning and urban affairs in Denmark. So we talk about urban planning, what it means to have a civic/government job, and how people shouldn't have to work in a highly stressful and overwhelming environment. He gets 6 weeks vacation- 5 really, and you get to decide if you'd like to work the 6th for extra money. The train stops a number of stops short of the airport. Everyone has to get off. The sign says “airport, 16 minutes” and another one says “terminal.” He says “I wonder what terminal means,” and tries to look it up. I say they probably mean to say that this is the last stop for this train, even though we are not at a “terminal.” I am right about something for the first time in about a week. He is impressed. That stupid linguistics class just keeps paying off. He offers me one of his extra contact lenses. And doesn't even try to fondle anything for it.