One week back; April 25, 2011Original post can be found
here. So I’ve been back a week now. Still glad to be home (in Edinburgh), so much that I’m having trouble trying to get myself to plan the next adventure. (Which might be just as well, because I do have a few exams.)
Egypt is out, though. EAP (the program coordinating UC students’ study abroad) can’t stop me from going, but there’s still an advisory on the state department’s website and… god, I’m totally depressed and frustrated about it, but it just seems like a bad idea. I don’t want to go by myself.
(See? Experience really does help. I’m more sensible already.)
The next step, I suppose, is to see if I can make it over to Israel to meet a close writer friend. She’s an archaeology student, and she’s got a dig going on in June.
I haven’t finished uploading all the pictures from my camera to my computer, but once that happens, I’ll start posting my favorites. In the meantime, here are a few easy-to-share bullet points about my trip:
- Greek guys are skeevy, though less so on the islands. I’d be dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, completely non-provocative, and while walking around Athens middle-aged men in business suits—the kind that I’d always imagine have daughters about my age and should know better—would stare at me like I was a streetwalker.
- Being ogled pisses me off faster than stupidity.
- Don’t bother taking a Greek phrasebook to Greece. Everyone speaks English. Literally everyone. In almost two weeks there I learned two Greek words—there’s just no opportunity to learn.
- Don’t go to Greece by yourself. Not because it’s dangerous, because I don’t think I was ever in any danger even though I was alone so much, but because unless you can get to a beach (buses don’t run on the islands in the off season) and the weather is nice enough (it’s stormy in the off season) there’s really not much to do. Athens is overrated. The islands are pretty with some fantastic food, but they’re tiny. If you go by yourself (especially on the off season, when the islands are deserted), you won’t have anyone to talk to. Very, very boring.
- Delos, Naxos, and Delphi were the three redeeming places. Those were exactly what I was looking for. Ruins!
- Anyone with the faintest idea that you might have some money—whether it’s on your person or in a bank account twelve thousand miles away—will try to take it from you. Officials included. Travel agents on the average-sized and bigger islands not included.
- When leaving the Athenian airport by metro, you don’t need to buy a ticket. You DO for the ride to the airport. The fine—and they’re very careful about catching people—is about eighty euros, and I’m pretty certain they don’t check on the way out just to fine more people on the way in.
- Romania is way cooler than Greece. Even though Romanian airport security is a joke. A joke that results in a very, very long line. (Once I got to the front, though, and saw what was taking so long, it was actually kind of funny to watch seventy and eighty year old men and woman yell at the TSA people in Romanian.)
- Bran Castle is sadly unimpressive. And there is only one room devoted to Dracula. The rest is all about Queen Maria’s furniture collection from the interwar period.
- The palace at Sinai is as impressive as Bran is unimpressive. (But wear warm clothing when you go up. It’s in the mountains and snowed in mid-April.)
-The ruined fortress at Rasov is also wonderful with beautiful, beautiful views of both the forest and the town. It’s so easy to turn your back on the town and imagine a sentry keeping an eye out for hordes rushing down the nearest hillside to attack the fortress.
- Brasov is the place to stay for half-day trips to the above places. The main square is supposedly where the Pied Piper emerged with all his stolen German children, and the Saxon population in Romania is supposedly descended from them.
- Jugendstube is the best hostel ever. They cook their guests breakfast every morning, and the first morning I was there I was awake for maybe twenty minutes before running out the door, but the woman who works there made me an omlette before I left! And on two separate days, when I came in during the middle of the day soaked to the bone and needing a nap, she made me tea. She doesn’t speak English, but the other two guys do.
- I know there’s a terribly horrifying movie made in the nineties about the Romanian sex trade (haven’t seen it), but I felt safer in Romania than I did in Greece. Everyone I met was totally respectful (even the beggars). Go ahead and go to Romania by yourself. You’ll meet all sorts of people.
- The forests out there are incredible. And scary. The trees are immense and even when a train goes through instead of around, it’s instantly darker in the carriage. It’s pretty easy to imagine the wolves and bears that are out there—even easier to imagine little red riding hood getting her face ripped off.
- Three words: corvig cu chocolata. Deeeaaaar gawd, they were the warmest, tastiest, most orgasmic chocolate treat I’ve ever had. Kind of like circular pretzels with their insides stuffed with melted chocolate that got all over the inside of my mouth. They took forever to eat, but were perfect for the dreary and cold weather.
- I would love to go back to Romania.
- I would not go back to Greece. Except maybe Delphi. If I could have a private plane drop me off in Delphi and pick me up there—or maybe if I just didn’t go by myself?—I would go back to Delphi. And maybe Naxos. And I do wish I’d gotten to see the Knossos palace on Crete.
- But Romania, I would happily go back to. Just not Bucharest, maybe. Everywhere else was awesome.
