Athens Stories: Day I

Discovering the Neighborhood

Jason Lucas
Nov 1 · 8 min read

Here we finally are. Day I!

Despite everything, we’ve finally made it to the great capital of Greece!

Quite a challenging arrival, I must say. After a big, fat thirty hours of travel and some not-so-lovely customer service, and finally making it to the Eleftherios Venizelos Airport — stunningly superior to the Burlington airport we’ve departed — we met our next mission:

Finding our way to our Airbnb.

So after struggling our way, unfed and dirty, to the overcrowded metro station with our thousand bags, in the middle of rush hour, we FINALLY got out at the station Metaxourgeio, which was to be our beautiful but slightly dangerous neighbourhood for the next few days.

But at that point, we barely cared.

The metro ride, which started off great — beautiful scenery, change of air, greatly sophisticated transport, highly-anticipated Greek vibes, different environment (all I’ve wanted ever since even thinking about booking the flight) — ended up being almost as awful as said flight.

It was probably just the build up from all this journey that messed us up, but mess us up it sure did!

Rude individuals, cabin overfilled (that jet-lag and extreme tiredness made us forget we actually arrived in Athens right on morning rush hour, on a week day — which would also explain most of the rudeness), absolute uncertainty (even though divin’ into the Unknown was literally one of the reasons for this trip!), inability to read sh*t (having spent the past few months learning to speak basic Greek, I hadn’t got to the point to learn the alphabet yet), all blended together to make up for a nice mix of extreme sickofitosis (ever heard of that illness? It’s pretty common!)…

I have to say however, that I might be stretching it a bit. I mean, I do believe I have to be somewhat dramatic for literary purposes, right? In reality, most of what I mention still represents pretty accurately our state of mind at the moment…

BUT! I did omit to mention the amazement that I felt upon starting the ride. Actually, to be more accurate, I DID mention it but didn’t care to expand on it as much as the struggling part of our journey.

Did I just notice a negative pattern of myself upon writing this story? Guess it’s already serving its purpose!

So yeah, the part I’m actually referring to is the aspect of the beautiful scenery I’ve stated below. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is quite the understatement. Getting to the heart of Athens from the airport provides for some amazing visual fulfillment to which words can do no justice.

The mesmerizing landscape, the fresh and rejuvenating feeling that stems from this greenery goodness, really took a weight off my mind. The air was light and brought a certain sense of ease to my being, even through its scent, if that even makes any sense.

Despite being greatly overloaded, both mentally and physically, I truly was beginning to feel in my zone, contemplative, and appreciative of the moment. Until the train finally got underground, and started to get filled with a bunch grumpy people in a hurry to get to work…

I mean I get it, not everyone out there was on vacation.

But I digress!

So, FINALLY arriving to our station — after the quite painful process of switching lines with our collection of overstuffed bags — we managed to get out of the train by yelling a bunch of Signomi’s left and right.

For the record, ‘signomi’ is the Greek word for ‘excuse me’.

Please carefully engrave this word into your brain because it shall be referred to, very often.

Like, a LOT.

If there’s ANY word we’ve used more than any other word for the whole length of the trip, regardless of the language, it might very well be that one.

Anyway.

I never thought getting out of the metro could be so relieving. And know that I’ve lived in Montreal for all my 24 years of existence, so that says a lot.

And so we exited at station Metaxourghio.

Upon exiting, it was all about finding the street of our temporary residence.

Fortunately, right at the exit of the station Metaxourghio is a bus stop for the various tourist lines Athens has to offer. The first one, the City Sight Seeing Tour Bus, is often accompanied with a guide armed with tickets, and answers to many tourists questions.

There was my chance. Load up your word-gun, and fire some try-hard Greek on ‘em.

- “Signomi, kserete pou ine o dromos to Kolokinthous, para kalo?”

(Translation: Excuse-me, do you know how I can find the street Kolokinthous, please?”)

To which she responded:

- “Ne, ine…”

Instantly upon hearing her start replying, my head went:

“OH MY GOD! She’s responding! That must mean she understood what I meant! My classes are finally amounting to something! Long gone are the days of reciting sentences in my car listening to “Pimsleur’s Greek 1” audiobook! This is real life experience! I’ve managed to get myself understood! I must be Greek now!!”

- “Endaxi?” she asked, to make sure I’ve understood her directions.

- “Ne! Ine kala, efharisto poly!”

So yeah, that recaps most of my interactions in Greek:

- Me actually managing to express a short sentence in a coherent way

- Having my ego drown in pride from having articulated a brief sentence in Greek

- Realizing after this thought process that I’ve completely disregarded my interlocutor’s response

- Nodding awkwardly and thanking them before going on my way and turning around to my travel partner with a huge question mark on my face

But I still had understood quite a few key words, such as “aristeráand “dexiá”, meaning “left” and “right”. Even though I didn’t really pay attention to the order in which she said it…

Regardless, we still managed to find our way — not without questioning how long we would survive in such a neighbourhood — checked ourselves in by finding the key in the lock-box (not without some confusing explanation from our host, once again), and found a half-square meter elevator to try and fit ourselves in to avoid climbing our bags to the 4th floor.

Our host had informed us that one of her friends would later come to our place to inform us about how things work, and give us some pointers for our journey in Athens.

But we didn’t care about that.

At this point, we simply needed somewhere to drop off our sh*t.

I would love to describe the place, but the best I can do is describe the room, because that’s just what it was: a room.

After triple-unlocking the door (locks are serious over there), we stepped in, and were already in our “kitchen”. Which was a two-meter-long corridor with basic appliances on the right. Three steps further took us to our bedroom, which was spacious for a room — small for an apartment.

But we didn’t care about that either. On our right, we had our two meter square bathroom, and on the other end of the room was our balcony.

So we unburdened ourselves from all the damn heavyweight, front and back (yep, that’s how we wore our bags), our extra layers of Canadian-temperature clothing, and our bodies just crashed onto the bed, entirely depleted of energy.

- “Just a couple minutes though, to rest our muscles a bit, alright? We don’t want to sleep out our first day here…”

- “Of course, it would be stupid to fall asleep right after getting there!”

The crazy, incessant banging on the door is what woke us up.

The dear Airbnb host’s sidekick, right on time to provide us with quite pointless information, except some facts we were already aware of: the neighbourhood isn’t safe.

“Make sure you don’t go that way when leaving, only this street! Many drugs over there.”

Making quite the argument here, lady. Are you trying to keep us out of this area, or to send us right in it?

So after this quite brutal awakening, we were left with an intense hunger, and a bit of shame from having failed to stay awake upon our arrival.

Topped off with the need to explore, we took our now-less-heavy bags with only the necessary for survival and got out of the apartment for a little stroll in the neighbourhood.

Now that I had rested my body and mind a little bit, I was more attentive to our surroundings.

And I have to say, it just had such a familiar vibe. A vibe that reminded me of my childhood trips to Montevideo, Uruguay, birthplace of my dear mama. It’s a bit difficult for me to describe how, as I haven’t been there in over a decade, but the way the streets were built, the circulation, the little kiosks at every corner ready to fulfill all of your tourist needs…

This is far from an accurate description, and I hope that one day I’ll find the words to express more accurately how pleasant it was to recognize this foreign energy — which, in the end, wasn’t so foreign to me.

So after going around in circles for a little while and exploring a few blocks, our brief adventure brought us to a lovely little terrasse which we decided was to be our place to feast for the night.

Little did we know we’d make one of our best Athenian friend over there and would come back a few times during the week.

And that, my friends, was the Giotis’ lovely waitress. She was so sweet and caring, and wanted to make sure that we felt super safe, so the first thing she told us was this:

“Hide your bags under the table.”

It’s “very dangerous” here, apparently. Or so we’ve been told. Twice. Today…

But it’s all good, it’s not like it was super late and that we were miles away from home or something.

Regardless, food was exquisite.

We’ve had some highly anticipated Greek salad as an appetizer and a nice meal to fill up our crying bellies. Bacon-rolled grilled chicken for her — which I can’t advocate for, but have to admit it did look grilled to perfection — and some veggie pasta goodness for me. We’ve also had the chance to taste the best goddamn fries I’ve ever bit, I sh*t you not, and I’ve eaten a shipton of different types of fries in my life!

After a lovely conversation and a brief How-To-Survive-Athens tutorial from our new beloved friend, we kept exploring around the neighborhood for a bit to become familiar with our surroundings, found some CBD-selling vending machines, and eventually went back to the apartment to doze off and recharge for the next day.

What we found then was something that would greatly trouble us for the entire stay…

And we shall express our troubles… in tomorrow’s entry.

For now, kalispera!

Jason Lucas

Written by

Creator & Entrepreneur

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