So far, the only thing I forgot to bring is a mattress.

Hercules picked me up at the airport with his small sign written in tiny ballpoint using mainly greek letters. I recognized Kaffy so I figured it must be Herc. Hercules is about 5'5" and wears very tight disco pants with his hair slicked back. He is not bad looking. If it was 1983. He takes me to the apartment where I will be staying which is apparently nowhere near anything of interest in Athens, namely the Olympics. I almost feel like I'm in Mexico, in fact, this would be the Mexico of Europe. Stray dogs everywhere, constant construction and unfinished works in progress but no one actually working on them. My apartment is on the 3rd floor of what he claims is a new building and I think he is probably right as the building is surrounded by shells of unfinished apartments. The view out my window is into a lovely construction site next door. I am introduced to Angelo, one of the roommates, who speaks no english. He told me Angelo was staying there but he also told me 2 spanish girls were staying there and there's only 2 bedrooms, so I don't know where Angelo is going to sleep but I doubt it's on the clearance Ikea couch in the unairconditioned living area. The place is clean (unless you walk around barefoot and then it looks like they haven't mopped the floors since it was built) and white. ish. My room has a single twin bed, correction, box spring with brand new crisp 150 thread count sheets that are so stiff when I throw the cover off, it actually stands up on its own. I check all the closets for a mattress, but it looks like they did not purchase a mattress. I guess I got the budget room, although the second bedroom is not much better. The bathroom is big but that's where the washing machine is. Which is small. about the size of a microwave. And of course no dryer. You have to hang your chones out on the line to dry in front of everyone. Shower? no. It's a bath tub with a hose attached to the wall, which I recall seeing on a few occasions in France, where they don't spend much time bathing. I never figured out-do you sit or stand? I brought shower shoes at the urging of my sister so I didn't get some kind of fungus on my feet but it looks like I'm going to need some kind of butt tarp because the only way to reasonably wash my hair without getting water all over the bathroom is to sit down and use the hose. There are a number of cleaning products (nothing like 409 Libby) but none of them seems like it will be strong enough to disinfect that surface. So I spray Windex, or at least a clear blue substance that looks like Windex on the tub the next time I use it.

So I spent most of today sitting at the apartment waiting for my luggage. Oh, I bet I forgot to mention that my luggage took a side trip to Saloniki and didn't really want to come back. They promised it would be here between 10 and 11 so I waited until I was about to pass out from hunger (no food in the house, no working phone) and ventured out in my sweats to get some food and call and bitch at someone. Hercules and various other experienced greeks swore everyone in Greece speaks English. But that would probably be in the area around downtown, and I was about 10km from there so not only was no english spoken, no english was written and they really didn't seem to want to see my white face at all. I couldn't find a working phone to call KLM, almost got in a shoving match at the bank (I think I was at the bank), went to a bakery that Hercules said was "really good" which I guess would be good if you like flies on your pastry. Nothing was recognizable and marked-I guess what good would that do? So, I bought 2 little round things with sugar that looked like donuts and had the least number of flies on it (perhaps not a good sign if the flies don't even like it) but tasted liked a hard chewy round thing with sugar but no flavor. Then I went to the grocery store and bought, what I believe to be, milk, yogurt with possibly peaches or some yellow fruit, a loaf of bread that looks to have been formed by someone with only one hand and some cereal. No english spoken there I might add. Hauled my groceries up the hill back to my room to sit and wait for my luggage. There's not a ton of stuff to do in the apartment when you're looking to kill time. I could read but I wore out the Ikea couch in short order. The bed was out of the question as I still had spring marks on my back from the night's sleep. So I went into the closet, where he said all the linens were and loaded them up on the bed like a mattress. Turns out they're not linens in the sense of a bed, but tablecloths, which is what I had dragged out in the middle of the night when I was freezing because I had accidentally set the window unit at 12C, which I think is real low in Fahrenheit. Anyway, I couldn't take it any more and ventured out again to call Herc and ask him what the deal was. I found a working phone, called him and he finally brought my waylaid bag a couple hours later. So I set out to go get my accreditation and uniform.

More later when I find a cheaper internet cafe. I'm about out of time and nickels here.