I escape from Greece (with something less than dignity)

I decided to stay at a "party hostel" on the Greek island of Corfu. It's called the Pink Palace and it's completely insane. It has its own bay. Apparently it's the biggest hostel in the world, it has its own private beach and three bars. The point of the Pink Palace is to get you as drunk as they possibly can and stay that way so you miss your check-out time and have to pay for another night. No one I met there had only stayed for one night, and everyone says they're leaving tomorrow. The shots are 1€. There's wasted cliff diving (this is an actual activity) and I can't imagine how no one has died there. They made me take a shot before they gave my my room number and it pretty much went downhill from there.

The Pink Palace is an interesting place. Initially I thought it was great but I began to realize it exists to take as much money from you as possible. They offer a free shuttle from the port to the hostel, but the shuttle back to the port costs money. They give you free drinks... if you buy more alcohol after that. They have lots of pretty people working there who seem to exist to make everyone incredibly drunk. And the check out time is 9am, earlier than any hostel I had ever stayed in. If you miss your check out time you stay another night.
 
Of that night at the hostel the less said the better. I made some wonderful new friends and lots of questionable decisions. It started with a game called Power Hour (60 shots of beer in 60 minutes- actually a LOT of beer I found out). After that it's kind of a blur. I cut off a guys dreadlocks and cut open my foot while breaking into someones house and actually tried to give myself stitches. And lost half of my clothes. I made a pact with Jason, my Canadian partner in crime, to leave the next day at all costs so we dragged ourselves out of bed at 8 am, about 45 minutes after going to sleep and checked out of the hostel. We were still drunk, bruised and sore but we escaped the Pink Palace. Then I hopped on the next ferrie to Italy, a night boat where I slept on the floor.


I spend a exhausted and hungover day in Bari, Italy. It's beautiful city on the sea, filled with Italian men who want to marry me apparently.



After that I took a train to Milan in the hopes of getting a connecting train to Lyon, France but there were no more trains that night. I slept on a pile of sheet rock in a construction site and woke up with an Italian police nightstick in my face. I asked the officer in question if I was in trouble and he yelled (gesturing emphatically with his arms) "no no you bellissima, you want coffee bella?" He went on to let me know in Italian that he was my knight in shining armor and he would fend off all Italian rapists from me until I caught my train for Lyon. I told him I appreciated his chivalry and he took right up to the door of the train before kissing me on the hand like I was a princess  instead of a filthy worn out hippy chick.


My mother was thrilled to see me, she burst into tears and gave me food, which is totally the way to my heart. I will be helping them work on their house and do battle with the evil neighbor. Also I get to hang a rope from the  ceiling of the barn and get back into shape for aerials when I go back to the states. My mother and father fight like an old married couple, (by some miracle of tolerance they still ARE an old married couple),  and this is the first time I will be staying with both of them since I was about 15. Hopefully Burble shows up soon to cook because while my mother has lots of wonderful talents, her cooking is terrifying. It's really nice to see her though and I'm making a valiant effort to get along with my father for the first time in years. There is some stuff he and I should probably get talk about but for the meantime we have forged a sort of truce. Also I got him a fez in Istanbul as a peace offering.

I am out of money, hung over (still) and there is a massive bruise on the small of my back (I think I might have gotten in a fight at the hostel and I didn't even know it was possibly to bruise there.) I would like to see Italy but I was pretty sure I just needed to get to France so I took six trains to Geneva and hitched to my parents house in Cluny. The hospital job I lined up here (and one of the reasons I was traveling in the first place) has totally fallen through. I have no idea what I should do now and I have almost no money and I needed to talk my Italian police friend into buying me food on the way to France. (Not difficult actually). However I have a great tan for the first time ever and I regret nothing, I climbed a mountain and visited 11 countries (Holland, Germany, Czech, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, France). I can do as well alone as with a travel buddy and I have a LOT of interesting photos. I need a rest so I'm going to chill at my parents' house for a month until my friend Natalee comes to visit at which point we will resume the adventures in Spain and Portugal. So this blog is going to take a little break for a few weeks while I recuperate from three months of insanity.  Thanks everyone who has become attached to this blog. I'll post about the insanity that is the Mcalpine farm in a couple of weeks. By then I'll probably be ready for the next adventure. 

Meteora, (or Our New Zombie Refuge)

We celebrated our mountain back in Thessaloniki. We drank Champagne in a water themed bar on the beach with Nizar while Ginette flashed flirty looks at all the attractive men. After that we spent several days recuperating by lying on the beach. Ginette said we both needed to work on our tans but I don't understand how anyone can just lie there while there is so much interesting sea life to examine.
The storm had washed up sponges on the beach and I needed to examine them.
Also there was lots of little black pods that I thought might be seaweed. In the name of science I cut one open with my knife and to my shock a fully formed baby cuttlefish fell out onto my hand. I was horrified, because I didn't know if it had been ready to come out of its egg case and the idea that I had been responsible for the death of a cuttlefish is awful. I took it back to the sea but I don't know if it made it and I spent the rest of the afternoon picking up cuttlefish egg cases from the waves and swimming them far out to sea to try to make up for what I had done.

We had planned to head for Meteora, a town with huge cliffs where there are monasteries built on the tops of the cliffs.
It took us three days to get there because to catch the train we had to get up at 6 am and we couldn't do that because we were exhausted from staying up all night battling with mosquitoes. It's apparently a bad year for them, Nizar has a couple of bites but Ginette and I have hundreds. There are little blood smears all over the walls of Nizar's apartment from killing the little bastards. It's pretty gross.

After a couple of days practice we managed to get up and catch the three hour train to Meteora.

An odd thing happened to us at the train station. We were sitting waiting for the train. The waiting room was filled with people and there were three African guys sitting across from us. Suddenly for no apparent reason two Greek men showed up (no uniforms) and asked the African guys for their passports. The guys showed their documents, then the Greek men turned to us. The asked Nizar for his passport and he showed it  to them and then they walked out. The asked NONE of the white people in the station, including me and Ginette who were sitting next to Nizar. He says this happens all the time here even on the street. Ginette and I were shocked that these guys had just picked out the dark skinned people in the room. We didn't even know who they were, they didn't have badges of anything. Apparently if you have dark skin in this country you have to keep your passport on you at all times, and when Nizar forgot his last year they took him to the police department. It's insane. I know their economy is terrible right now but that was unbelievable. Anyway. It really annoyed me.

So we arrived in Meteora around 3 pm. It was easily 40 degrees there and we thought we were going to die. (40 is 105 F). We had planned to walk up to the top of the cliff to go to one of the monasteries but we only made it about 30 meters before we collapsed in a fountain instead and looked up defeated at the cliffs.
In the intense heat we couldn't even think so we lay around asking each other what we should do now and if we should try to get up the train in the blazing sun. After that we went to get ice cream and lay around some more. By the time someone suggested we take a taxi up there (duuuh), the monasteries had closed and we had wasted an entire day and 50 euros on train tickets. However a cab driver told us there was one monastery open, (the one for lazy tourists) so we drove up there and climbed the steps to the top.

These places are really amazing. They're built (somehow) on the tops of these precipices that come out of nowhere. The scale is hard to describe because these rocks are just so HUGE. The monasteries at the top are probably the best places in the world to be when the zombie Apocalypse happens. They have their own gardens and beehives and are pretty self sufficient. As well as being totally unassailable at the top of thousands of feet of sheer rock face.
The view from the top is epic, you can see across the whole valley (and see the zombies coming).

I loved the monastery, it's so peaceful and quiet. This must be why they put it up there in the first place. I have come to value peace and quiet a lot more while traveling, I didn't realize it until recently but I like best the places where I can sit and think without the chaos of the world bashing me over the head. The nuns here have beautiful little gardens built into the rocks and all they seem to do is walk around the gardens and pray and look out at the nice scenery. It's a pretty chill life.

Oddly enough the church in the monastery isn't chill at all. It has really old religious art on the walls, (I don't know how old but it looks to be centuries) and it's unlike any church I have ever been in. Every painting shows a different saint dying and they're incredibly violent. There are people getting beheaded, limbs chopped off, torn apart by horses, squished in giant presses, burned alive, bleed to death hanging upside down. Each one has bright red blood coming from all their wounds. It's incredibly violent.

Tomorrow I leave Thessaloniki for Corfu, an island on the west coast of Greece. I'm splurging on a hostel there even tough my money is low. I spent me last day here snorkeling around a reef off the coast and swimming with a million different kinds of fish. My friends stayed on the beach. People have no appreciation for fish these days. Nizar hung out for a little while but when I started telling him about the evisceration habits of sea slugs he left to work on his tan. Lame.

The Mountain of the Gods

Yesterday I stood on top of a mountain. Today I feel like I was hit by a freight train.

Almost a week ago Ginette and I left to comfort of Nizar's apartment and headed for the tiny town of Litohoro, the closest town to the epic Mount Olympus.

We had enjoyed the comfort of the Greek beaches for days. (By this I mean I crawled around in the sea trying to catch interesting sea life and Ginette and Nizar tanned on the beach).

We arrived in town late at night and headed to the bar where our Litohoro host, Nikos, was working. Nikos is something like a Greek hippie, he actually told me he is searching for inner peace. He has long hair and is ridiculously beautiful. Unfortunately he also seems to exist to give me grief and tease me, mostly about being an American which to him is unforgivable. I can't seem to hold my own in an argument with him which is incredible infuriating. He gave us free drinks at his bar and then devoted himself to making me as pissed off as possible, despite the fact that I had just met him. Greeks do NOT like Americans and this has pretty much killed my game here. I can't believe how many people judge me before they even know me just because of the country I come from.
Also Lotohoro is a small town so within minutes the entire town seemed to know we were here to climb the mountain and everyone had advice for us, most of which came from older men who were trying to hit on us. However after an hour or so of getting mauled by men offering advice, Nikos quit the bar early and rescued us to go to the house of his friends, where Ginette went to sleep and I stayed up to watch the sunrise and try to convince Nikos that America actually isn't a bad place. (I still believe it is a bad place but when someone else insults your country then you suddenly get all defensive about it, even if you were saying the exact same thing earlier). That morning Nikos showed me my first real look at the mountain we were about to climb, rising up almost endlessly into the sky. I had a thought that for the first time that I had bitten off more than I could chew. There is snow on the top year round. Nikos pointed out the little dip in the snow impossibly high up on the mountain and told me that is Refuge A, which we would be using as a base camp. We would be heading up there when the sun came up. I didn't tell Ginette (who had never climbed a mountain) that we were going to be over our heads. The point Nikos was showing me was above the tree line, thousands of meters above our heads. 

There are two ways to get to Refuge A, you can leave from Litohoro and walk the extra 6 miles up the valley to Prionia, the last point cars can reach. However Nikos said that would take us days so we hitchhiked to Prionia and started from there which is what most people do.
The hike up to Refuge A is pretty much a steep climb that took us 4 hours. After hanging out at sea level and lying on the beach for a week, the altitude hit us like a ton of bricks. After hours of forcing ourselves to take a hundred steps then rest for 5 minutes, we began to reach the top of the tree line. It's a really nice path but I am in incredibly terrible shape and it felt like we needed two breaths to get one breath worth of air.


The path is well marked and easy to follow, you just keep going up and up and up for what seems like an eternity. At first we talked, but after a while the only air we had left was to breath.
This path goes through the valley leading up to the summit so most of the time we could see the peak we were trying to reach towering a million miles above our heads. Also most of the people we met on the trail were carrying climbing equipment and ice axes. We were in jeans and I felt very out of place in my EMS boots.
We only made it by telling each other we would walk to the next point, the next big rock, the tree that looks like a penis, etc. By the way, when you reach the Penis Tree you know you're only a quarter of the way.

However after hours of walking we saw the Refuge high over our heads and not so long after we were staggering into the courtyard. We were prepared to sleep on the floor but the woman there told me they had two beds left. The refuge is on the top of a cliff at the top of the tree line. The food is hot but the showers come from the snow above and are ice cold. We didn't care. We ate and took a picture and fell into bed, sore but triumphant.

The first casualty of the voyage was my crappy Turkish sunglasses. I had the foresight to keep them with me and tape them up because we were heading for the snow and I didn't want to damage my eyes. Plus Harry Potter has taped glasses so they're cool enough for me.
Also there are a lot of interesting creatures on the trail. Ginette is a little offended by bugs and crawly things but she was more than willing to let me stop and take pictures of the huge bugs and black slugs that populate the mountain. 

The next morning we woke up at the awful crack of dawn... OK actually it was about 9 am but it felt like the crack of dawn. We loaded up on water and headed up the mountain towards the still distant summit. The trees end after the refuge and you're walking pretty much entirely on rock. As we left the trees (and fortunately most of the flies) behind we were no longer able to see the summit through the clouds.


We trudged around snow banks and ice in an alien landscape looking a lot like Mordor. When you enter the clouds everything else disappears and all you see is the rock in front and behind you.  All that grows there is this depressed tufty yellowish grass. It was so depressing that we stopped to make a Blare Witch-style video of our last wishes.
A funny thing happens when you're climbing a mountain. After a while you forget what you're doing there and all that matters is the top. You have to get there because it's there and nothing else matters. You get quiet and can't think of anything else but that next step. I need to climb more mountains, it's addictive.

After three hours we reached the rocky top of the lowest of three summits. It's called Scala. There were a lot of people there, apparently this is the place to hang out. We collapsed on the rock and ate our well-earned summit chocolate while we decided if we wanted to try for Myticas, the top of the mountain or Scolio, only 5 meters below Myticas but a little safer. Both the higher summits were invisible in the clouds but when we checked out the path to Myticas it was a steep climb along a sheer snow covered face. I wanted so badly to make it to the top of the mountain but the path was just too treacherous and we forced ourselves to head for the second highest summit. I am still a little frustrated that we couldn't make it all the way but I think the hardest part of climbing a mountain is to know where to stop and the people coming back from the summit told us it was tough going. We gave up the summit in favor of our safety and headed for Skolio, 5 meters below the top and only slightly safer. Boosted by our chocolate and the thrill of reaching the top of Ginette's first mountain we arrived at the second highest peak at 3 pm in the afternoon and stood looking into the mist and pretending to stare off at the view. We could see nothing and the picture we took was in no way proof that we were standing at the top of a mountain but we were thrilled to be there. 
We stayed on the summit for only about 5 minutes, long enough to write our names in the book. On out right side was a sheer drop off a cliff into the clouds. On our left an almost vertical drop down a snow filled valley curving almost all the way back to the refuge a thousand meters below us.

At least we thought it went back to the refuge but we could see nothing in the mist. Ginette wanted to launch ourselves into midair and slide down the snow into the valley. She is Canadian after all and they are used to a little more snow than us wimpy Californians but it didn't seem like a good idea to me.

We did it anyway.

We made it down the mountain that had taken us 4 hours to climb in about 10 minutes. There are no pictures of our insane 1000 meter slide down a snowy cliff because within minutes we were soaked head to feet and covered with snow. It was totally worth the climb to the top of the mountain and the next time I climb it I need to bring a plastic bag and waterproof clothes. Apparently us sliding down the mountain caused quite a sensation, because when we got back to the refuge everyone had video and said they had seen the crazy English speaking girls leap off the snowy cliff and run, slide and roll screaming off the edge of a precipice.

We stayed at the refuge another night because the lady there said there was no way we could make it the 10 miles of steep downhill to Litohoro starting at 4 in the afternoon. We prepared for the long hike the next day. As a final addition to the success of our climb, the manager of the refuge told me to call her in a month for a possible job. I would be working at the refuge August, September and October. It's not for sure yet but I might consider it. It means backing out of my commitments for Burning Man which I have to think about but the money is very good.

By the way downhill is just as hard as uphill. The path down the mountain almost killed my knees and after not so long even though we could breath easier I felt like every step was breaking my legs. Especially when we decided not to hitch from the trail head at Prionia but to take the extra 6 miles of trail to Litohoro.
The Prionia-Litohoro path is beautiful, it passes a monastery and caves and a beautiful river. When we headed out I was fascinated by the beauty of the trail and the huge green lizards that live on it. I spend a lot of time trying to catch them but had to settle for a picture, they were too fast. The monastery was amazing too, despite being pretty much destroyed by Nazis in the second World War. It has a clear spring and the water is good to drink. 
The path weaves back and forth across a dozen bridges over the clearest water I've ever seen. It's well maintained but it still feels wild, at one point we passed an abandoned car that had drove off a cliff high above. It was a long way up to the road and I'd hate to see the driver after a fall like that. 

Along the way we met an English man who called himself an amature botanist. He reminded me of my dad because he got really excited about plants and kept whipping out his binoculars to look at something interesting. We had lots of interesting talk about the wildlife on the mountain, some of which is found nowhere else. And also he had a lot of advice  about life and marriage. Travelers have the greatest insight into the world.

On the path after about an hour you pass the Holy Cave. This is a huge cave that an old monk built a shrine into. It's quiet and cold and the stream falls over the rocks in just the right way to shine in the light. It was so amazing and as we sat there it seemed like the most peaceful place in the world. When I'm in a place like that I get the sense I have the whole world figured out. The key to my understanding of the world is just for me to have less noise and chaos in my life. Maybe I should meditate more. I guess as an EMT I handle more  stress  than a lot of other people and it's such a relief to relax in a quiet place every now and again. I can see why the hermit/ monk dude liked this spot. You can't hear anything but the water, no cars, people, nothing of the outside world.

The trail was worth it just to see the monastery and the Holy Cave but after that it dragged on and on until we felt like our feet were falling off. Also it was getting dark and we needed to get out of the woods so we had to pick up the pace to avoid hiking in the dark. However after hours we reached the top a a ridge and saw down the valley to Litohoro and beyond to the sea. Not long later we were staggering into the town as dark fell. As we headed into the village we passed the graveyard where someone had put a lighted candle on each of the graves. This must be the best place to be buried in the entire world.

So I climbed the mountain that 6 months ago I pointed to on a map at Greg's house and said, "hey, I could climb that!"

Maybe I can do anything I want in the world.

The Toad and the Llama

First thanks for the well wishing about my spaghetti sauce injury in Turkey. It has healed nicely and without stitches and I don't think it will scar. (Only mentally maybe).

So. I went to Asia for a day.
Seriously, when you cross the bridge you pass a sign that says welcome to Asia. There we met some couchsurfers for a picnic by the sea. Honestly I can't say enough about how wonderful the Couchsurfing system has been for me. Nearly everyone I have met has been incredible, interesting, passionate or strange in the greatest ways. Sometimes I find myself feeling depressed at the state of the world but this community of people has restored my faith in humanity.

Ravi hosts the most amazing people and there are always people coming and going through the house, and each of them has epic travel tales to tell. Lots of nights in Istanbul we all just sat and drank beers and talked about our adventures.

Ravi calls me The Toad. The reason for this mystifies me. I don't think I look like a toad. He says it with an Indian accent too, so it's the Toooooooad. I have retaliated by calling him the Llama and when he calls me a toad I pretend to chew like a llama to annoy him. I think he does this in the same mentality that kindergarten boys tease girls, any attention is better than no attention. I told him this but he was already on to the next topic he wanted to talk about at a million miles an hour. I have developed a sort of aggravated affection for him, his endless energy overwhelms me but his intentions are nothing but good.

Istanbul was the first city I really didn't want to leave. Every night I have new adventures. There are secret bars on the roofs of buildings that you can only go to if you know where they are. On my last night there Ravi took me and some friends to one of the secret bars where they were playing incredible live Balkin music.
We danced and then I sat in the window and watched an incredible thunderstorm tear across the city. I could see every lightning bolt until it began poring rain, but still warm enough to sit outside. It was like an epic battle in the sky raining down destruction on us mere mortals.

Istanbul is as far East as I get this trip and now I'm headed back on the long journey to western Europe. I have finally found the sense that I know what I came here for and I feel like I can do anything and go anywhere. I feel this incredible power when I can find my way through a strange city on the other side of the world and survive. Everything I wanted to prove to myself I have found that I had in the first place, like Dorothy and the shoes. (Cooler though, because Dorothy was really whiny and annoying.) When I arrived in Thessaloniki alone in a city where I didn't even understand the alphabet I felt this overwhelming sense of calm that I could handle this and any situation. I find that in this blog I talk mostly about the good stuff that has happened but the bad has also helped me build a strong sense of self that I can rely on to face anything.

Not that I'm getting more mature or anything.

 My last day I went to see the Blue Mosque. It's in the middle of the city center and surrounded with tourists. Non-Muslims aren't allowed to go in during prayers but I went with a Muslim friend and the guards let me go in with him. It was the most incredible experience, the building is HUGE and every inch is painted with the most beautiful designs. It was as though everything in the outside world was shut out in that space, and nothing could interrupt the peoples' worship. I'm not religious, I generally feel that religion does a lot more harm than good, but in that space I could understand someones devotion to a God, (whatever you call him/her/it), it was so peaceful. The building was so beautiful and I could feel the devotion that the architect put into it. I was so thankful for them letting me in to see, and even take a picture, which doesn't do the incredible architecture justice.

I had to take a couple buses in the city of Thessaloniki to get to where I was meeting my host and during this trip I noticed something about Greeks.
Everything is interesting to them. When I asked some lady if this was the right bus she didn't immediately tell me but first involved each and every old lady on the bus in a huge debate about me. I was clearly the most interesting thing that had happened to them all day and instead of telling me where the bus was, they wanted to know where I was going and where I came from and who I was meeting and why my backpack was so big, what on earth did I have in there? This was all in Greek, translated by a little girl who was clearly thrilled to be in the spotlight. The each made it their personal mission in life to get me where I was going but they all disagreed about how the get it done. Finally I sneaked away while they were still debating.

And they debate about everything.

The house across the street from the place I'm staying caught fire this afternoon and three fire trucks screamed up but as I watched fascinated and smoke billowed from several places in the roof they stood around and discussed what should be done with the totally calm inhabitants of the house and then with the neighbors and then with some other random people. As of the time of this writing I don't know the fate of the house because I left to work at in Internet cafe.

I love Nizar, my Greek host. He has another girl staying at his place and I automatically clicked with both of them. And then Nizar told us that he has his pilot's licence and that we were going up in a plane to fly along the coast. And by that I mean I got to fly along the coast. As we were checking out the incredibly ridiculously blue water down below he handed over the controls of the plane to me and I had my first flying lesson.
From the air you can see the currents in the water. I need a plane

 And now I understand why Nizar says he doesn't want to be a pilot for the hot stewardesses but for the flying itself. It was so incredible having no roads and no markers and to be able to go not just right and left but up and down where ever we wanted. The country of Greece was spread out before us like a blanket and as we followed the coast I could see into the clear water all the way down to the patches of sea grass on the bottom. I have never seen anything like it. In the distance was the silhouette of Mt. Olympus which I will climb in two days time. It's 2,900 meters, (roughly 9,500 feet). It's one of the highest peaks in Europe. It takes a couple of days to climb, and I'm trying to enlist Genette, Nizar's other couchsurfer to join me on the hike. It's not a HUGE mountain but honestly I'm already on top of the world.

We are living lazily in preparation for our climb. We have dinner on the water then then drinks in one of the bars on the beach. I am so thrilled that the sea is this warm, it's like a giant swimming pool, and it has no waves. It's clear and flat for as far as the eye can see. I jumped in as soon as I could and when I came out my legs were horribly itchy. Nizar suspected a jellyfish at which point I plunged back in to attempt to identify the species of my attacker. However being 99% water jellies are incredibly hard to see so it eluded me but made me regret my rash decision to go back in the water that night when I lay tossing and turning and trying not to touch the painful and itchy red welts on my legs and ankles.

There are also crabs in the sand and when you go in the water they all stand up and assume a defensive position with their claws raised towards your feet. When they line up in rows like this it's like they're doing the YMCA dance which is adorable but they pack a pretty painful pinch if they get you.

None of this has stopped me from going in the water, and early this morning Genette and I enlisted the cute bartender to come skinnydipping with us as the sun rose. We swam out and watched the sun rise on the sea and talked about how much our lives suck. I want to live here forever but there are no sharks in the Aegean Sea so I might get bored.