Greece - the rest of the trip

Never finished writing about my Greece trip. Here's the rest of it.

Day 3. We all got up at the last minute possible to eat breakfast. We were served bread, cake, tea, coffee, a hard boiled egg (with orange yoke, it was really good), cookies, along with butter and jam. After eating and checking our emails, Xiumin and I decided to check out the pool. Jingwen can't really swim so she stayed in our room to work on her pictures and facebook.

The water was freezing. The weather is still nice but cooler than the day before. And it wasn't quite the middle of the day yet. It was very difficult getting into the water. Xiumin was brave and started swimming after about 10 minutes of slowly stepping into deeper water. It took me like 20 minutes. It was okay after we started swimming. At some point, these 2 ladies came too. We think they're French. They hardly cared about the cold water and just walked in and started swimming. We were really amazed. Most of the time, it was just the two of us there. We swam, then sunbathed on the beach chairs, swam again, and tanned some more. It was great.

We finally decided to go back at some point and the three of us headed to Mykonos Town. We walked around there for a while, trying to find new streets to explore, and getting lost. We ate lunch, took some more pictures, got some souvenirs, and found our way back to the buses. Towards late afternoon, we finally got on a bus to go to Paradise Beach, the most famous beach on Mykonos.

Paradise Beach is a paradise alright, if you want to go clubbing. There is a long strip of clubs along the beach. The beach itself was the same as the one by our hotel. We found a quiet spot and I started picking up pretty stones and building castles again. Xiumin skipped some rocks. She got pretty good.

Towards sunset, these two guys came down to the beach from the clubs and talked to us. One of them is Greek and the other Australian. Appearantly, they had met in Mykonos during one of the Australian's earlier trips. Greece is a big vacation spot for Australians. The Greek guy has a cousin in Boston and he started naming off famous Boston things

Guy: Yankees (we corrected him of course), Commonwealth, uh,
Me: MIT?
Guy: MIT!! Yes! *blinks twice* You're from MIT?

At this point he gets really, really excited and started bowing to us. It was hilarious. I think Xiumin was a little freaked out. haha. He was really impressed. Some of his other friends came and he told them that we're from MIT. I'm not sure they've heard of MIT though. That was a fun encounter.

Before he left he told us that the last bus was at 9:15pm and we had better leave soon to catch it (it was 9:00pm). Jingwen had said that she saw the sign and it said 9:45pm. So we were really glad that he told us otherwise. We rushed to the bus station but the bus was late.

We took this bus back to Mykonos Town and walked around some more. The last bus to our hotel wasn't until midnight. The town was still very lively as it was filled with tourists. We saw one of those tall sailing ships and took pictures of it.

When we got back to the beach by our hotel, we sat on a rock by the water. It was really nice. It was dark by then and we just watched the ocean and chatted for probably another hour.

Day 4. This was my last morning on Mykonos. I got up to eat breakfast and finished packing away my things. The driver arrived early and I had to rush out to meet him. There were already 2 other people in the van. He then went on to pick up more people. He wasn't as friendly as any of our other drivers and seemed to be in a big rush. I've found that all our drivers in Greece tend to arrive a bit earlier than when they're supposed to come. After we got to the ferry terminal, he just dropped us off and sped off.

I was confused. I asked some of the other passengers if they were going on the same ferry as I was and they had said yes. But they seemed kind of confused too. The terminal was a shack and there were hardly any signs at all. We waited there forever and finally the ship came. It took a while for all the passengers to unload. So we were late departing.

I went up the stairs with everyone else. They checked tickets and pointed people to where they're supposed to sit. This was a High Speed boat and they had assigned seats. When it was my turn, I expected to be pointed towards the Economy passengers compartment. Instead, the lady said, "Business Class, all the way to the end and left." I was really surprised. I went and was shown my seat. It was a really nice compartment. There were actual tables and my seat was at a table. But the other two people were smokers and I didn't like that. So I moved to a seat that was facing the window. There were stretch of seats that had beautiful views of the sea. I took a seat and enjoyed the view. I slept through most of the trip though. The chair and the ride was really comfortable.

When I got to Athens, it was blazing hot. I was so glad that I got a hat in Mykonos. I made my way to the hotel, checked in, and took a short nap. The hotel was okay. It was in a very good location and I was on the 8th floor with a view of the busy intersection below. I even had a balcony. I walked around the city a bit that afternoon, mostly around the flea market. I got some food and wandered around some more. At some point before sunset, I realized I was really tired and went back to the hotel. I took a shower and watched some TV. They even had English channels. There was something about Japanese Emperors and Endo. I fell asleep pretty quickly.

I got up the next morning for breakfast at the hotel. The breakfast was horrible! Everything tasted like cardboard. The orange juice was so bitter. The sausages were greasy. I ate a little bit and just left. I checked out of the hotel and wanted to find the tourist bus that's supposed to go to all the major sites. But after walking around for about half an hour and failing to find it, I gave up. There was an advertisement at the hotel for The Mall. Yeah, that's the name of the mall - The Mall. It seemed cool and things were cheaper in Greece than Germany so I went. I took the train there and passed by the Olympic stadium on the way.

The Mall was huge. There were 4 floors and all the stores were so big. The walkway between the stores were really wide too. There were really interesting benches everywhere. I walked around some stores but didn't find anything I liked. I walked all the electronic stores trying to find a plug adapter but failed too. I got some food at the supermarket in the basement for lunch and dinner.

After walking through the whole thing and watching a beach vollyball game outside sponsored by Nestle Ice Tea (we got free drinks), I went back into Athens. I walked around some more and saw some government buildings that was on my map. They weren't very interesting. Finally I found a nice bookstore that had comfy chairs and read comic books there. They had Calvin and Hobbes! In English!

I went back to the hotel and was picked up by my driver. He was really nice and we talked a little bit. I got to the Athens airport with plenty of time to spare. I managed to buy some stamps for postcards and mailed some postcards off. I checked in and ate my dinner. Then came the franic rush to find 1 Euro coins. Greece has these really cool 1 Euro coins. I wanted to save 3. One for Yalu, Mike, and myself. I asked a lady at a store for 1 dollar coins and she gave me a weird look and told me that no one has any 1 dollar coins. I realized my mistake after walking out of the store and got the correct coins at an exchange booth. But the lady there only gave me one 1 Euro coin and 2 two Euro coins. Perhaps I shouldn't have said 1 so many times? Anyway, I was about to give up when I realized I could use some gum. After buying some gum and jingling 3 Greek 1 Euro coins in my pocket, I headed to my terminal.

I flew EasyJet back to Berlin. When I got back, it was around 11pm. I was hoping to be able to catch the last bus that leaves at Wannsee for my student dorm at 12:30am. But checking into customs took a while so I was really disappointed. I got on to a train and was expecting to stay there the long ride across the city.

After two stops, the 4 other people that were on my car left and the train stayed at the station for a while. A guy got in and spoke to me in German. I asked if he spoke English and he told me that the train that we were on was going back to the airport. I have to get on the opposite train and then take a bus because they were fixing the tracks. I thanked him and rushed across the platform. I had saw signs at the airport station but didn't know what they meant. After I got on, I asked the only other person on the train what was going on. Her English wasn't very good but we got by pointing to the train map.

So I ended up taking that train for one stop, changing to a bus, and then getting on another train. I wasn't even sure what train I was getting on but it was nearly 12:30am at this point. The S-Bahn isn't 24 hours and I was really worried that I would be stuck at a train station somewhere. So I just got on the train that everyone else from the bus got on. Luckily, it was going in the right direction. I had to change to another train though. I probably caught the last S-Bahn that went to Wannsee that night. From Wannsee, I took a cab back. It's about a mile and a half to the student dorm and I didn't want to walk 30 minutes in the dark in the middle of a highway.

When I finally got into my apartment, I was greeted by a guy and a girl. I was surprised that they were still up since it was nearly 2am. They were moving out the next day. They told me that there is another girl who is going to stay with me. I was really tired. I took a shower and went to sleep. This concludes my trip to Greece.

Long post, yes. Worth it, no?