This past week and half was Semana Santa for us students here in Spain and that meant 16 days of freedom and traveling. Two of my friends and I took a trip to the Greek island of Mykonos, then up to Athens, Greece, and finally over to Venice, Italy—all places on my bucket list.
The first couple days in Mykonos was relaxing, beautiful, and full of interesting encounters and getting lost in the maze of tiny, winding, labyrinth-like streets of the island. The view from our hotel overlooking the other side of the island and the ocean and the lights of the white and blue painted buildings was breathtaking during all times of day—the sunrise, the sunset, and the night through the early morning hours. There, we met some of the coolest and kindest people (Greek, American, Saudi Arabian, Israeli) and by the time it was time to leave after a short two and a half days, we felt like we were leaving a home, family, many new stories, and an island that had become ours.
After a 5 hour delay for our 45 minute flight from the island of Mykonos to Greek mainland, we made it to the Acropolis in Athens. This day though, would be full of many struggles after visiting this incredible monument which can only be described by the pictures below.
(Yes, there was a cat just chilling on the steps of the Parthenon living the life.)
The story of our struggle to get food in Athens began with our exhaustion after seeing the Acropolis. We arrived at our Airbnb apartment around 9 at night and then dealt with a series of issues including the power completely shutting down, the wi-fi not functioning, trying to heat the rooms while simultaneously treading on fears of shutting down the power accidentally again, and a series of calls that probably drove our Airbnb owner insane.
Finally, after that series of struggles, we were exhausted and had no idea how to navigate the city so we decided upon ordering food in. While putting our faith in the weak wi-fi that existed on 2 of 3 of our phones, we began searching for good Greek food from the series of business cards our host had left us.
We began calling places but began to see that many places didn’t speak much English.
After calling a few places and not being able to get them to understand us, I became the communicator between us and the restaurants over the phone.
However, it soon became a living hell trying to get food. With one place we called, we gave them our order and they asked where we were located and after my terrible butchering of our street name, they hung up saying they couldn’t deliver that far away.
The next place, we got our order taken and then the trouble came in trying to give our phone number for the order.
“What’s the phone number?”
“1 234…”
“1 234…wait where is this? This is not Greek number?”
“No, this is an American number.”
“Ok, ok. 1 234…”
“Yes, 1 234 567…”
“Wait, 1 435 748?”
“No, 1 234...
"...567”
And this continued for another 5 to 10 minutes as I spoke as loudly and clearly as I possibly could. Eventually, we got to the street name and they hung up saying we were again, too far.
By now, my friends were getting so hangry (hungry/angry) because of the exhaustion and hunger and they started saying they just simply wouldn’t eat tonight even though we had skipped lunch and that they didn’t care anymore and I knew then that I would have to stay calm enough to get food into them because we had another flight to Venice in the early morning and there was no way I was going to deal with them like this (times ten) in the morning.
The next place, we got all the way to giving them our address again, but this time they couldn’t understand. So I told them I would spell it slowly.
“We are at Szopoleous.”
“You’re at what?”
“OK, I am going to spell it. I am going to spell the street name.”
“OK, ready.”
“S”
“Z?”
“No, S like snake”
“Ok S”
“Z”
“C?”
“No, Z like…”
“Like zed?”
“Um…” (Looking at my friends as they nod yes through fits of laughter) “Yes?”
By now we were all so tired and our situation was getting so ridiculous that my friends were laughing at me while I tried to maintain my patience and sanity on the phone and I was laughing at the entire struggle itself and my issues trying to scream our orders and phone number desperately into the phone.
And that continued for another 10 minutes. When they finally understood, we celebrated silently on our end of the phone. Until they said it was too far.
“No, please you don’t understand. You’re the only place that can understand us please don’t hang up on us. We need food.”
Yes, I started begging this place to not let us starve. And as they hung up on us, we were a mess of emotions—exhaustion, hunger, and incredulousness at our hopelessly hilarious struggle.
Finally, after realizing we had no other option, we ordered Dominos online (because then we wouldn’t have to talk to anyone) even though my phone decided to translate the whole website into Greek and subsequently anything I typed into the spaces but when that food finally came (by some miracle), we rejoiced because it was a hard battle won.
The rest of our trip to Venice was beautiful between seeing the amazing Piazza San Marco, Basicila di San Marco, Palazzo Ducale, Ponte di Rialto, riding a Gondola through the night waters of the city, eating too much pizza, pasta, and gelato, and getting lost in the streets which were all incredibly stunning.
After all this, it was time for me to return to Spain as my friends continued onto the Netherlands and Croatia. And it was strange thinking, “I don’t want to go back to Spain,” and very ironic because all my life I’ve been saying the opposite. But now, after this crazy week of adventures, we’ve created homes in two other countries and that feels pretty amazing.
