Meanwhile, at an internet cafe in central Athens...

[Kalispera! Rather than work up a coherently written account of the trip so far (stop making me go on holiday, Patsy!), I think it's Vignettes of Athens time...]

[HOT! Instead of the dreck they're playing in this internet cafe, why aren't they playing Hot Hot Heat, who should be Greece's national music. Hang the blessed DJ...and find me some shade...]

[(Kylie Minogue's sister Dannii's new tune, in which she bleats some inconsequential lyrics over the evergreen handclaps-cowbells-and shimmering-synths of Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round" just came on the speakers. John should so be here...)]

[As I keep telling everyone, Athens combines the fashions of Paris with the tackiness of Tijuana, with both cities' narrow streets and various aromas (food, poverty, cologne) and crowds...]

[Reading passages from The Last Days of Socrates where it happened was quite moving, especially when a strong, hot wind came up to try to drown us out. Some angry spirits have yet to leave the Agora for the Underworld, but whose?]

[As much as I love it, I've grown a leetle weary of Greek salad and grilled meat en pita...]

[Today was Delphi, a three-hour tour into the mountains aboard a minibus I secretly dubbed the Minnow. (We even had our Professor and a couple of Mary Anns.) Drank water from the springs of Mt. Parnassus, climbed to the Temple of Apollo, and asked for...well, shade, mostly. The oracle was noncommittal...]

[All this on not enough sleep, even though I've enthusiastically adopted the de rigueur afternoon nap. Due, I guess, to Terry's and my insistence on squeezing the middling juice two nights in a row from the city's gay nightlife. Fun, but nothing I haven't seen in any big city. (Or, especially, heard; did I come to Greece to be bombarded with Jewel's new sexy look on a big video screen in a nevertheless fun bar in Athens' industrial Gazi district?)]

[Lotsa construction for the Olympics next year. The general consensus is they'll never be ready...]

[The only Greek word I use on a regular basis is efharisto, thank you, but I say it like a native. Athens is a bilingual city: street signs, subway stations, most storefronts, everything's in English and Greek...]

[Altogether, a great time so far. Early tomorrow, we catch the ferry from Piraeus (Athens' harbor for 2,500 years) to Hydra, where things will slow down quite a bit...]

Previously Next