Days 1 & 2 – Transatlantic Flight, Athens

Transatlantic flights can be very confusing and disorienting. Zaira and I left Denver at around 2:00 pm and arrive in Munich at 8:00 am. There was an 8 hour time difference so I basically lost a night of sleep. It is very hard for me to sleep on moving vehicles so I really lost that night. And because of the ear-popping fun I was pseudo-deaf upon landing in Europe. I usually enjoy flying but after hours of it, I am sick of it. Athens is very nice and surprising. There were no customs for us, unlike in Munich, and they use Mercedes as taxis. It’s quite strange because when you think about coming to Europe, you fear that you will get lost in a language but in reality, Europe is very multilingual in most aspects. Everything pertinent is written first in the native language followed by English. Primarily everything in Greece is Greek, naturally, but English is well known here. It makes me wonder about those English-only programs in the United States. It seems so backwards as Europe deals with multilinguism on a constant basis. When we arrived we checked into the hotel and I met my roommates. I am with Shea from WSC and Lance and Jared from Kansas. As a group we took the metro to Syntagma Square where we saw the shops of the plaka. The metro is very nice because of the Olympics in 2004. The tour director, John, told us about the evil eye charm that keeps away evil spirits and worry bead that Greek men use to pass boredom. We then checked out the Roman Forum before splitting for free time. I picked up some postcards but mainly window shopped. Greeks are very friendly. We had a three-course Greek meal as a group which was very good. I am surprised by the number of stray dogs throughout the city. It’s also strange to see the streets paved in marble. The footsteps continually polish the stone and it is so common. It is so expensive to have a marble bathroom in the states but here, it is pavement. Our weather was unusual in the fact that it was raining which is very uncommon but welcome in Greece. After the introductory tour we returned to hotel allowing me to catch up on 32 hours of lost sleep.