Nov 5, 2008
Acknowledgements from my Masters Thesis
Here is a sort of autobiography that I put as Acknowledgements in my Masters Degree Thesis (titled: "A Framework for the Long-Term Operation of a Mobile Robot via the Internet"):
I would like to thank my supervisor (Gordon Wyeth) for providing me with the opportunity and financial support to obtain my Masters. Thanks to my university colleagues (Michael Milford and David Prasser) for helping me transition so quickly from a working class kid to a working class scholar. Thanks to Jon Kloske for his excellent help in configuring the robot web server. And thanks to my boss in Florida (Jerry Pratt) for showing me what a perfect mentor is.
Thanks to my best friends in Sydney (Ari Rintala, Chris Shortt, Luke Davidson, Al Monjehd, Rob Monjehd, Shane Emami and Craig Oliver) for allowing me to realise who I wanted to be, and my best friends in Florida (John Rebula, Victor Ragusila, Matt Missel, Jerryll Noorden, Will Taysom, Brooke Layton and Dawn Miller) for allowing me to be who I wanted to be. Thanks to my friends at Jaycar Electronics (Paul Ballard and Isaac Mendez) for rekindling my appreciation of electronics. Thanks to my best friends in QLD (Rob Mitchell and Timo) for showing me that Engineering can be fun. Thanks to my best friends from Germany (Alex Kanne and Christine Oellig) for making me proud of who I am, and my best friend from Iran (Shervin Adibi) for making me proud of who I’m not.
Thanks to my previous girlfriends (Danni and Bomi) for helping me find the things that matter to me the most, and my wife Gay and Dawn for making me so proud of who I am.
Thanks to Amir Houssein and his family in Iran for showing me that even the family that struggles the most can still be the most genuine and honourable people I’ve met in my life. They let me realize from an early age that there is no God watching over me, but that I should use this wisdom to my advantage because anything is possible if I try hard enough. Thanks to my Grandmother (Iran Abolmoali) for raising me as a toddler and always being a part of me, and my Grandfather (Abbas Emami) for showing me what it means to be respected for your wisdom.
Thanks to my Brother (Shane Emami) for being my best friend since birth and showing me how to be normal. Thanks to my Sister (Sharlin Emami) for showing me how to be myself. Thanks to my Father (Shahpoor Emami) for always believing in me even if he doesn’t know what I do, and thanks to my Step-Father (Robert Stewart) for allowing me to always use his computers as a teenager. Thanks to my Mother (Azar Stewart) for doing as much as humanly possible to support my family and take us all the way from the bottom to the top by herself.
Thankyou to my Mother for giving me the freedom to be who we want to be, and for having complete trust in me and my decisions. But also thankyou to my Mother for constantly telling me as a teenager that I shouldn’t spend all my time learning about electronics and computers, because they have no future and are unsocial, and then that doing post-graduate research is a waste of time because I could be earning money in a job like normal people. These things helped strengthen my belief in myself, since I knew what I was doing was the right decision no matter what others told me. As a teenager I spent everyday teaching myself about electronics and computers because they were the only thing that made sense in my life, and now at 27 my whole life finally makes sense thanks to these.
Deciding to return to university for post-grad research was the best decision I have ever made, and yet it took many physical, mental and spiritual journeys for me to get here. It wasn’t until I was separated from technology for 1 month when I realised that learning about and working with science and technology has become part of who I am, and no matter how much I try to ignore it, I will always have the desire to build new things and learn more about nature and science. I was never in the smartest classes in my schools or the smartest schools in my area, since I’m not particularly smarter than the average person, however I have always used my brain to its fullest potential and am extremely self-motivated, to the extent that I can now be viewed as an academic. It was my keen interest in science and technology that brought me here, despite the many obstacles:
I’ve lived in the 2 opposite worlds (East and the West), and I’ve lived in the 2 opposite ways of life (in poverty, war and expensive mansions). I’ve slept on the streets, and been in gangs, drugs & alcohol, and 7 punk bands. I’ve narrowly escaped: being kidnapped, stabbed, drowning several times, a drug overdose, being sent to an orphanage, 2 years military service and burning to death. Obtaining my Masters degree means a lot more to me than simply an extra qualification for getting a job. It allowed me to look at all the qualities in the person that I wanted to become, and to finally be that person. Now that I have finally become who I always wanted to be, I know that for the rest of my life, I will be a happy person.
Oct 18, 2008
Trip to Europe for 25 days
I had a 4 week trip from Dubai to Turkey for 2 days, Greece for 11 days, Germany for 4 days, and Spain for 7 days. To cut the stories short, here is a list of the places I slept in along the trip:
- 1 night sleeping on the streets on a hard marble floor during cold windy rain, in Istanbul, Turkey.
- 1 night sleeping on a sleeper train from Turkey to Greece, which felt like heaven compared to sleeping on the streets the previous night!
- 9 nights in a backpacker hostel next to a strip club in Thessaloniki, Greece
- 1 night sleeping on the couch at a new friend's house in Greece
- 1 night sleeping at an underwear party, and waking up in my undies next to a guy in his undies, not being able to remember where I was for several seconds.
- 1 night sleeping while sitting up in a packed commuter train in Greece full of old angry Greek men arguing with each other for 10 cold hours.
- 2 nights sleeping in a cold car in Germany.
- 1 night walking blind drunk after OktoberFest, trying to find a backpacker hostel to stay in, and eventually finding my friend's car to sleep in after several hours of wandering in the freezing cold.
- 1 night sleeping in a nice house surrounded by the forests of Heidelberg, Germany.
- 3 nights sleeping on a matress in a new friend's art studio in the dodgy section of Barcelona, Spain.
- 3 nights sleeping in a backpacker hostel in Barcelona, Spain, of which most people in my room were badly stung by bed-bugs, whereas I wasn't bitten cos I only spent a few hours a night in bed!
- 1 night crashing on the couch of a new friend I met on the way home from an Erasmus international student party in Barcelona, Spain.
- 1 night sleeping in Luton airport in London, UK.
It was obviously a great trip, I had an awesome time and met so many cool people and did so many cool things. Here are the details of each place I visited, if you're interested in reading:
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Day 1: (Wednesday 17/9/08)
Flight to Turkey
As usual I arrived late for the flight from Sharjah (30 mins drive from Dubai) to Istanbul (West Turkey). But this time it was cos I tried to fix a bug in our robot before I left work, and ended up leaving a bit late. But then the taxi driver got us lost so we wasted another 40 mins backtracking! So I got to the airport just 1hr before the flight, and they'd just closed the flight checkin. When I showed that I only have carry-on luggage, and they saw I'm from Australia, they managed to open up the flight for me if I promised to run to the boarding gate as fast as possible. But then then problem was I also had to pay $15 fee since I moved my flight 3 days back due to my work.
They said to run upstairs as fast as possible and pay the $15 then race back down while they process my passport, and they'll let me board the flight. So I ran upstairs, but it was actually the wrong set of stairs, and since I was in such a rush and honestly thought I was supposed to be there, I ended up getting past police security, passport control and the metal detector, even though I didn't have my passport or boarding pass, which you normally need to show at each of the 3 checks! The people downstairs with my passport had called the people upstairs at the boarding gate, telling them to hold the whole flight for me and look for me to rush me through quickly. So after getting past all 3 security checks even though I didn't have any ID and did have a pocket knife, the people from the boarding gate found me and tried to rush me onto the plane. I could have gotten onto the flight without any ID at all, with a pocket knife, and without being checked if I am legally allowed to leave the country! Considering I was born in Iran, its pretty funny. But since the guys downstairs still had my passport I didn't want to board the flight yet so I kept saying that I still need to pay my $15 fee and go back downstairs for my passport & boarding pass. When they eventually realized that I went up the wrong staircase and so I still didn't have my passport or boarding pass and yet I was at the boarding gate, they got the head of security to quickly come and figure out what to do. He was going nuts, saying how the hell could I pass the police check, passport control and metal detector without any ID! He even started yelling at the police for not doing their job properly. They managed to fix the whole thing and after throwing away my pocket knife they rushed me onboard the flight just before departure :-) I said thankyou about a million times for all the trouble I caused.
I was so glad that I made it onboard this flight, because of how everything went wrong in my 1st trip to Greece after missing my original flight by a few minutes, and then the whole trip falling apart and having bad luck for the whole trip. So I hoped I would have good luck on this trip, and I did. (Give or take a few mishaps!)
All my photos from Turkey and Greece: http://shervinemami.multiply.com/photos/album/48/
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Day 2: (Thursday 18/9/08)
Sleeping on the street in Turkey
I arrived at Istanbul at 12:30am, thinking I would just go to a nightclub all night instead of paying for a hostel, since I was gonna catch a bus or train to Greece in the morning. But it took nearly 3 hrs to get out of the airport, and I was actually in the remote airport not the main one, but luckily there were still buses to the main city. I got to a main party area at 3:30am Thursday night, cos I heard that people usually party there till morning, BUT it happened that there was a freak storm just hours before I arrived, and also cos it was 3:30am, the whole area was completely dead.
So I asked a taxi driver if there is anywhere with a hostel / cheap hotel still open, and he took me to the main hostel area in Sultanahmet. He couldn't speak much English but I kept asking for a hostel that would be around $20, cos I wasn't sure if he understood me properly, but he kept saying "yes, $20". After how much people had told me that Turkey is a sketchy country, I assumed he might take me to the middle of nowhere and beat me up for my money, but he didn't :-) He drove me through Istanbul and told me the names of lots of places as we passed them. When we finally got to the main hostel area, he said the taxi ride comes to $47! I saw on his meter it did say $47, but obviously he was charging me way to much cos I was a tourist. So I pretended that because of our language barrier, I thought he said it would cost just $20 for the taxi ride, not the hostel. We kept yelling at each other until we agreed with $30 taxi ride. Then he had a massive smile on his face and he shook my hand, as if he was glad that I bargained with him!
I walked around for a while in the narrow streets at 4am, but all the hostels where either closed or full of people, so my options were either to find an expensive hotel, or sleep on the streets. So I slept on the streets. It was still raining & cold so I walked around and found an apartment doorstep that had some basic wind & rain protection. I slept on the hard & cold marble steps until morning. The funny thing is that after spending 3 months in the middle-east desert with 45 degree heat, it never crossed my mind that maybe it will be cold or rainy on my Europe trip! So I only brought a long tshirt, thinking it should be enough, and I didn't bring a sleeping bag, jacket or umbrella. So I just had my bath towel as a blanket & bed. It was damn tough sleeping there even for a few hours. I'd done it a few times before in Australia, but I'm always amazed at how tough it actually is. I don't know how homeless people can do it every night! I was only there for about 4hrs until morning, but it felt like forever, and I only got about 30 mins sleep overall cos the wind and the hard marble floor were so cold, plus a hot business women opened the door in the morning to go to work!
When I started walking around in the morning, I realised I was in a really cool area, just 200m from the sea but surrounded by cafes & shops & people going to work or school. Turkey is a muslim country and this was during the holy month of Ramadan, when no-one should eat or drink while the sun is up. So I thought I would have mega trouble finding breakfast, even though I was starving after not eating on the aeroplane or bus ride or during the night. But luckily Turkey isn't very strict about religion, so you can still eat & drink before midday :-)
I spent hours walking around randomly through most of the town, seeing lots of old mosques, a university, and the Grand Bazaar (a massive building with roughly 6000 market stalls). I was carrying my luggage (just 2 school bags) all day since I was planning on going directly to Greece instead of booking a hostel room. When I entered the Grand Bazaar, the security cop asked to check my bags for weapons. I asked him if he knows where I can leave my bags for the day. He said he will take them back to the station for me for free, and gave me his name & number in case he wont be in the same entrance when I collect my bags.
After walking around the city for most of the day and booking my train ticket to Greece, I tried to collect my bags off the cop. I went to the police station in the bazaar, asking for him. The cops said they never heard of him and they never hold bags and he might be a fake cop, dressed up as a cop to steal things! But when I called him he did pick up his phone, and he said he is still working at the same Bazaar entrance, and so 2 cops took me to where he said he was. It turned out that he was actually a security guard, not a cop (they wear identical uniforms but with a different colored badge), hence why the cops had never heard of him! My mistake :-) The cops started giving the security guard some trouble, saying that he shouldn't be holding a civilian's bags because it could be a bomb, etc, but he kept saying to the cops that I looked like I really needed help so after checking my bag for security, he helped me out by holding my bags, and he doesn't care if the cops don't approve.
It happened that the security guard (called Ismael Polat) was about to go on his break, so he offered me to join him in drinking some tea. I ended up hanging out in the Grand Bazaar with him & the other security guards for hours. Even though it was Ramadan (no eating or drinking or smoking between midday till sunset for all Muslims for a whole month), they kept giving me free cups of tea & dates and cigarettes, and Ismael took me to the market stalls that he is friends with the owners, to get me discounts if I wanted to buy anything. After having just slept outside with just 1 long tshirt, I really wanted to buy a warmer jacket, so he took me to his brother's market stall, and they were trying to convince me to buy a Barcelona FC jacket, but I would have felt like a douche if I bought a Barcelona shirt in Istanbul, and since they were being so nice to me I bought the Turkey jacket instead. Then I bought a turkish kebab, with a drink, for $1.50! They showed me tonnes of outdoor market stalls near the Grand Bazaar with fake products, like Billabong jackets for $5, or bottles of perfume that were half full of water.
I took an overnight sleeper train to Greece, and it happened that I was put next to a pretty cool 37yr old Romanian that lives in Canada but is backpacking through Europe & Middle-East & Australia & Asia over the next year. We ended up talking for hours about computers cos he is an old-school Software Engineer, and he gave me advice about visiting Romania and I gave him advice about visiting the Middle-East.
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Day 3: (Friday 19/9/08)
1st day in Thessaloniki (northern Greece)
In northern Greece I stayed at a really nice & cheap hostel in Thessaloniki (Hotel Rex), which is probably the only cheap hostel in Thessaloniki. Even though it was the cheapest hotel I could find, it turned out to be really good. It was in the infamously bad part of town with the strip clubs & prostitutes & brothels, and was next door to a strip club. The funny thing is that there's also some expensive hotels in the area, including a glamorous looking hotel who's name is pronounced "Hotel Fer-heena". In other words, there is a nice looking hotel with the sign saying "Hotel Vergina", in the area full of strippers & prostitutes!
Thessaloniki is basically a city full of cafes & pubs, nothing else. Everyone stops whatever they normally do by around 3pm, and just sit and chat all day everyday with their friends, while drinking Frappe & smoking cigarettes, and then often stay drinking alcohol & smoking till 5 or 6am. On the 1st night I hung out with my Greek workmate Nikos & his girlfriend Eleftheria. We met up with a few of their Greek friends at pubs, watched some live 80's heavy metal cover bands, and at the end of the night, ate a special soup that is well known for being a hangover cure, but smells & tastes terrible. My mate Nikos just mentioned the soup, thinking there's no way I would want it. But I said I wanted to try it, so then he felt obliged to order it as well so it wasn't just me in misery. When the big old Greek man served it to me, after finding out I'm a foreigner, he bowed his head and said "Respect" and smiled. I knew it could only be a good sign ;-) It turned out to be a mix of lamb intestines and lemon juice, something that my Mum used to make us eat when we were kids! So I managed to not throw up, and kinda liked it actually.
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Day 4: (Saturday 20/9/08)
2nd day in Thessaloniki (northern Greece)
My hostel had a tiny computer room with 2 computers with free internet. I spent a few hours on internet, while talking to the person on the other computer: a 25yr old chic from UK, who was trying to find a laptop to buy. This is because she is a stripper from next door, and she just found out she'll be getting paid 25% more than she was originally told, at $145/night. She has an obscession with the colour pink, and so was looking for a baby pink laptop, to match all her other baby pink stuff. She reckons most pink laptops are an ugly pink, so I helped her find a decent laptop, since I am a computer geek after all! Its funny cos she could tell I was from Australia from my accent, and from my eye colour she could tell I wasn't originally from Australia. And when I told her about how I'd just been working in a strict Muslim country, she knew a fair bit about Muslims and even knew that it's currently the holy month of Ramadan, where no-one should eat or drink during daylight hours. So she seemed quite smart for a stripper. But then when I mentioned that after Europe I go back to the Middle-East, she said "What's that?" It turned out that even though she knows more than most people about Muslims & Islam, she has never heard of the Middle-East! I had to explain that its almost like a continent, made up of about 20 countries!
I tried to do couch-surfing (where people allow random backpackers from around the world to sleep on their couch for free, in exchange that they get to meet people from around the world without leaving their own house). On the Couchsurfing website I joined the group for Thessaloniki and a chic posted a message saying she's having a party for her birthday, that will be an underwear party, where you're not allowed to wear anything except underwear, but nothing sexy. I was still trying to find people to let me couchsurf their house, so I went to the party :-)
I ended up making really good friends with the people hosting the party, and hung out with them for about 1 week.
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Day 5 to Day 13: (Sunday 21/9/08)
Remaining 9 days in Thessaloniki (northern Greece):
I met a really cool Belgian chic called Sanne, who just arrived in Thessaloniki. A couchsurfer asked me if I could show her around the town because she was busy, so I did, even though I'd only been there for a few days! Sanne had been hitchhiking through Greece by herself for 3 weeks and had already picked up enough of the Greek language while hitchhiking to talk to locals! It happened that the day before I left the middle-east, I had already quit my job so I could go travelling Europe for several months, but my boss promised me that if I return to work in the middle-east after 4 weeks of travelling, that I could join him in a new EU robotics project, meaning I'll get to work part-time in Belgium and part-time in the middle-east. I was really excited about working in Belgium, even though I didn't know anything about Belgium, so its was really lucky that I made friends with a Belgian already and she kept telling me how much I would like it there.
I ended up really liking the Belgian chic and hanging out a lot with her and the other Greek couchsurfers. One day, me and Sanne went hitchiking to a quiet village to see an old museum. The museum was pretty lame but we had a cool time anyway, hitching a few different rides and it was the 1st time I hitchhiked, even though I wanted to try it for a long time. She was really good at it, but it was obvious that being a pretty girl in a red dress makes it a LOT easier to hitchhike than being a guy! She didn't believe me until I shown her how much longer it takes for her to get picked up if she wears my sweatshirt instead of her red dress. Now she believes me!
I talked to my friend Alex in Germany, and we decided we would meet up in Munich in a few days and go to OktoberFest for a few days!
I went to meet my Greek boss in Pantelomonia, halfway up Mount Olympia. Even though my boss picked me up by car in the neighbour town from where I was supposed to get to, it took me 6 hours to get there even though its only about 1hrs drive, cos of crazy public transport issues in the middle of a sunday during rain. I tried to hitchhike part of it cos I had to wait an hour for a bus, but it was raining outside and as I was walking along the major road, a car sped past through a puddle on the road and COMPLETELY covered me in water. And then as I was crossing a road, I walked through some mud and so my shoes looked ruthless and I was all wet, so it was pretty unlikely that I would get picked up by anyone! And then on that bus, the bus driver couldn't speak any English and he got angry that I couldn't specify exactly what I wanted, so he kicked me off the bus halfway. So after 6hrs of bad travelling, I got my boss to pick me up. It was extremely nice where they were staying on the mountain, even though it was really cold & rainy & foggy.
On Thursday I wanted to hitchhike to Bulgaria for a few days with Sanne, cos it would have been an awesome experience, but since I already organised my accomodation for the weekend and paid my flight to Germany and found a cool underground / anarchist party to go to and was supposed to meet my boss at Pantelomonia, I ended up staying in Thessaloniki for the weekend, then caught an overnight train to Athens.
But unfortunately the sleeper trains were all booked out, so from 11pm till 10am, I was sitting down in a cramped train full of people in a bad mood. It was so cramped that we barely had enough space to sit down, let alone sleep in that position! There was 1 guy from India in my booth, but most of the other people were angry old Greek men, that were yelling at each other till about 4am. At once stage, the Indian guy took his sandals off, and then one of the old Greek men started yelling at him in Greek for some reason, until he put his sandals back on. Later in the night, there was a spare seat next to him so he turned sideways and used up space of 2 people. Then the old Greek guy yelled at him again for some reason. Then the Indian guy left our booth.
The next day I flew to Germany to meet up with my old housemate from Brisbane. He lives in Dusseldorf in north-west Germany but was driving all the way down to Munich in south-east Germany for OktoberFest with his friend. Not much of the trip was planned properly but we all knew we would get to Munich roughly around 29th Sept, for roughly a few days, and hopefully be able to sleep over at a friend's house.
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Day 13 to Day 17: (Monday 29/9/08)
5 days in Germany:
All my photos from Germany: http://shervinemami.multiply.com/photos/album/47/
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Day 14: (Tuesday 30/9/08)
OktoberFest'08 in Munich, Germany:
We had major dramas trying to find somewhere to sleep during Oktoberfest. All the hostels were booked out from weeks in advance before Oktoberfest. I went to OktoberFest with my german housemate Alex, and his friend Matthi, but neither of them live near Munich. Alex's friend Matthi knew someone in Munich that said Matthi could crash at their house for OktoberFest, and then he asked if it would be cool that my friend Alex could stay as well. So then when I tried to stay at their house too, I was the tag-along friend of the tag-along friend of their friend! But luckily they said we should be able to sleep on the floor when we get back from OktoberFest.
Oktoberfest was bloody awesome! All we did was drink from 4pm till it closed around 10pm, but it was such a joyful atmosphere, with so many people laughing and singing beer drinking folk songs and hot girls with major cleavage and carrying huge beers. I can only remember parts of the night but it was definitely better than I expected!
Videos from OktoberFest: http://shervinemami.multiply.com/video/item/116/Oktoberfest_2008_-_CIMG1097.MOV
At the end of OktoberFest, I lost my 2 german friends, and both of their mobile phones ran out of batteries, so at the end of OktoberFest I walked the streets for several hours in the freezing cold, trying to find somewhere to sleep. I didn't want to sleep on the street cos it was so damn cold, but after hours of walking around searching & asking drunk people on the streets & calling hostels, I eventually found a hostel with a bed for 50 EUR. I was going to stay there, but amazingly my german friend suddenly texted my phone, saying that he is back at our friend's place. I said I didn't know where it was, and he gave me a rough idea how to get there, even though he wasn't too sure where he was himself! I managed to get there and found him sleeping in his car.
It turned out that after OktoberFest, he wasn't sure how to get to the friend's house either, but he knew that if he followed the train tracks that he should recognise the street that he has to turn down. So he walked for 3hrs in freezing cold just wearing a tshirt, along the train tracks until he found the street! He then used his car charger to recharge his phone and thats how he told me where he is! His friend was dead asleep in the apartment, and his phone wasn't working, so we slept in my friend's car till morning, and left the heater on for a while because it was so incredibly cold.
The next morning, we woke up in the car and were hoping that Matthi would come outside or unlock the apartment or phone us, but he was still out of phone batteries. Meanwhile we tried to drive our car to buy some breakfast since we starving (food at OktoberFest was expensive so we didn't eat dinner), and it turned out the car battery was dead! It was also parked in a no-parking zone between 2 cars! So we managed to push the car into the middle of the street, but even with the help of several labour workers, we couldn't jump start the car by rolling it down the small street. After a few hours we found our friend Matthi, used his car to jump start our car, and bought food, so everything worked out well in the end and we had lots to laugh about! Especially since it took over 3 days to sober up after the 1 night in OktoberFest!
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Day 18: (Saturday 4/10/08)
1st day in Barcelona, Spain:
On Saturday night I arrived in Spain and got in contact with the couchsurfer Olivier, who said I could stay in his art studio in the middle of downtown Barcelona. I managed to get the correct 3 trains to his place, and met up with him at a cafe next to his house. But since I didn't really know what he looked like, and wasn't sure if I was in the right cafe or the right district (a lot of places in Barcelona have multiple or confusing names at first), but eventually it was all good. Olivier was really into cycling and was trying to get me into it, cos he's ridden his bicycle all the way from Spain to Hungary with his cyclist friends, and was organising a trip with his friends one day for riding all the way from Spain to Turkey! I never rode more than 5km at a time so it sounded pretty cool to me! Olivier let me stay in his art studio by myself while he would be in another part of Barcelona for a few days until his friend would arrive.
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Day 19: (Sunday 5/10/08)
2nd day in Barcelona, Spain:
On Sunday I just rested all day, trying to find what to do during the week. I tried to go out at night, hoping that there would be lots of people out in Barcelona even on a Sunday night, but it was my 1st time by myself in BCN, and it was so quiet compared to Saturday night, that I was walking around the dodgy backstreets where I was staying, and the only people around were African prostitutes, Indian guys selling beer & drugs, and the occasional dodgy-looking local. So after not finding anything for a while I started getting a little scared, so I just ate some food and went back to my room. Just as I was outside my building, someone messaged my phone to hang out, so I took out my mobile and started reading it as I was walking. At the front door of my apartment, a huge black guy on rollerblades was leaning on the front door, with his face covered in sweat, talking to an old lady. I asked him to move so I could unlock the door, and he did but then he followed me into the building.
To get to my room, you have to unlock that front door, walk through the urine filled hall for about 10 metres in complete pitch black darkness, then press the button for the lights, walk up 2 sets of stairs, then u get to my room. So when the huge black guy entered the building just behind me, I was suddenly in a pitch dark hall with him, so I figured there's a chance he lives there but most likely he's gonna mug me for my phone & wallet, and there's not much I could do about it. But surprisingly I managed to walk upto the lights quickly and turn them on and started walking up the stairs, thinking atleast he'll have trouble running up the stairs on roller blades. He followed me upstairs but the was going the same speed as me and started talking to me in Spanish and then English, asking where I'm from.
I figured he might actually live there and be legitimate, but he might still just want to mug me in the stair case, so I kept answering him as we were walking up the stairs and to my door but not slowing down. Then when we got near my door he asked me if I want a line of coke with him, cos its not much of a party by himself, and I said no straight away, thinking he might still be trying to mug me. But then when I got to my door I started thinking "fuck, I gotta take out my keys to get into my room, and he has to walk past me. If he beats me up as I unlock the door then he would even be able to steal everything in the room!" So I let him pass me while I pretended to look for my keys, expecting him to either hit me or keep walking. Luckily he just walked past me to the next door and said "Oh shit, you live here? I guess we're neighbors" and he went into his room!
In my room, I actually started thinking maybe I should go next door and ask for a line of coke, just for something to do, but I didn't cos I was too scared to leave my room or even sleep for several hours. I was surprised that I was so scared about the whole event, but then I suddenly remembered that for years while I was a kid living in apartments in western sydney, I had almost daily nightmares of being chased up the stairs of my apartment and not being able to escape or scream. Dark apartment staircases were my biggest fear when I was a kid, and here I was thinking it was going to happen to me in real life from a huge black guy! No wonder I was so scared!
From the next day on I was no longer scared or paranoid of being in the dodgy areas of Barcelona by myself and suddenly all the wierd people and prostitutes and drug dealers didn't seem scary, and pretty quickily I realised I liked the dodgy part of Barcelona more than the touristy areas full of white people! The next day when I saw my couchsurfing host that owns the apartment room, I told him about what happened and about how I thought I was about to be mugged, and he kept laughing because it turns out that the huge black guy next door is gay! Hilarious.
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Day 20: (Monday 6/10/08)
3rd day in Barcelona, Spain:
At night I found a Jazz club near my apartment, that had a live jazz band and lots of people dancing. I sat next to a group of people from France, and asked if the band was from Barcelona. It turned out the band was from Australia! After drinking with the Frenchies for a few hours, the club closed cos it was Monday night and so we bought some cans of beer off Indian people on the street, and drank on the street for an hour or so. The Frenchies were out because they were celebrating that the crazy hippie chic was moving overseas the next day. It was pretty funny, cos the crazy hippie chic Gizelle had spent years learning about ancient philosophy and therefore a lot about Athens in Greece, but when I told her that I caught a train from north Greece to Athens, she freaked out and didn't believe that Athens was part of mainland Europe. After everything she studied about it, she was sure it was on an island :-)
We chatted with 2 Germans, where 1 of them had only just arrived in Barcelona and it was her 1st time out of Germany. It was such a culture shock to her, especially since there were several Indian guys constantly trying to sell us beer or hash on the street, so she found it all really interesting. Me & the German guy were just laughing at how vulnerable and naive she was acting, as if she was a little kid, despite being 28yrs old. Then a scary looking Indian drug dealer asked her where she is from. She was so happy to be talking to someone that looks so different to her, that she innocently told him her name, where she is from, how long she's staying, where she is staying, etc. By this stage a whole bunch of Indian beer & hash dealers were chatting to her since she was probably the only European chic that they had actually talked to in their life.
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Day 21: (Tuesday 7/10/08)
4th day in Barcelona, Spain:
I had to leave in the morning from the place I was couchsurfing, so someone else could stay there. But after that, my host took me around sightseeing for a few hours, including the gothic district with a wall full of bullet holes from a massacre during the Spanish Revolution in the 1930's:
At night I went to an "Erasmus" party, which is a party for European university exchange students. It was in a nightclub and doors opened at 11pm, and cost 10 EUR ($15) entry including unlimited red wine (Sangria) so it sounded like a great deal. But of course, the red wine ran out after 45 mins, so everyone had to buy drinks for atleast 6 EUR for the rest of the night! They fooled us well.
It was a really cool party, full of people from all parts of Europe. It was mainly foreign exchange students, but there were a few randoms like me that were friends of an exchange student. There was a television crew going around a filming the party, for a show about Barcelona nightlife. The group that I was dancing with ended up getting filmed cos by that stage we were the craziest / drunkest, and they got us to yell "Go Barcelona!" to the camera with the hot TV host:
Around 4am I went upstairs where it was less hot, and ended up talking to a nice chic, Györgyi from Hungary. I didn't know crap all about Hungary, so it was cool to learn about it from such a hot chic. I was pretty sure she was only about 19, but she was actually 24yrs old:
Eventually the Hungarian chics went home I hung out with a big guy from Portugal that was the main party animal there. After forming a group of 3 of us and trying to impress the remaining ladies, the place closed at 5:30am. I was walking home with the portuges gay, and since it was atleast 40 mins walk to my place but near his place and we were both starving, he let me eat some of his pasta and crash on his couch. I explained to him about couchsurfing and how I'm trying to do it on my whole trip, and he had never heard of it, even though he was letting me crash on his couch & eat free food!
It was funny just before he went off to sleep, cos he showed me my couch and said that at 6am, one of his housemates will get up for work, so they might wake me up, but then we realised it was already past 6!
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Day 22: (Wednesday 8/10/08)
5th day in Barcelona, Spain:
I went and visited the Segrado Familia, which is the coolest looking building I've ever seen:
At night I drank at my hostel with a guy from New Zealand, then I met up with some random couchsurfing chics from Austria. We We were looking for somewhere to go on a Wednesday night, and followed 2 locals to a pub full of locals & other Europeans. I liked the place cos it had an oldschool pub feel, but the chics from Austria wanted to go to a nightclub since they said there aren't any nightclubs in Austria! So they left and I stayed at the pub, and sat with 2 spanish women in their 30s. They couldn't speak much English but it made things kinda more funny that way. One of them was decent looking and the other one was rough as guts, even if u ignored her 80's hair. I couldn't tell if they were lesbians because of the language barrier but its all good. They seemed really friendly, and even gave me free drinks cos another guy bought them a jug of beer. Eventually I said I'm leaving, and the pretty one gave me a lighter with the address of the cafe they work at.
There was a table with a guy and 2 rediculously hot chics from Switzerland playing with fake glasses that had red lights in them. I asked to take their photo with the glasses on, and a few drinks later I ended up going to a nightclub with them. The guy with them kept saying that the girls were really wild and I'm in for a crazy night, and I'll be lucky to be able to stand them for a whole hour, but it didn't bother me. The guy went home since it was nearly 5am, and I went to a nightclub with the 2 chics.
They managed to convince the security guards not to charge them 7 EUR for entry, but I still had to pay, so we split the cost. In the club, a guy wanted to impress the 2 chics and so he kept buying us free drinks, so it ended up quite a cheap night out for me! I thought both chics were only about 20, but later I found out they were 26 and 27! Man I'm bad at guessing European's ages. After a few hours of drunk dancing, where I thought I was getting somewhere with one of them, they ditched me and went home.
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Day 23: (Thursday 9/10/08)
6th day in Barcelona, Spain:
At night, I was expecting to meet up with some couchsurfers going to a Language Exchange Meeting, but I ended up drinking & hanging out with some guys from my hostel (Serhat the 28yr old Turk, Paul the 30yr old New Zealander, and Kieran and Teriy, two 18yr olds from London). It happens that Teriy is actually on the junior Barcelona FC team! He said that he lives in London but flies to Barcelona every few days for training with the team, and that in north Barcelona, everyone recognises him on the streets, but in downtown BCN not many people follow the juniors team so he's not famous there.
We went to a drum & bass night club that was 6 EUR ($9) entry but included a free drink. We thought it was an awesome deal so we paid entry, but then the club was dead even though it was 1am, and the free drink had to be from their 1 and only house beer, and that was probably the worst beer I've ever had in my life! We had to force ourselves to finish our beers just cos they were free!
Paul stayed in the club and the 4 of us left, even though more people started entering the club as we were leaving. As we were leaving the club, some drunk guy from Wales recognised Teriy from football matches on TV!
The 4 of us walked around the downtown streets looking for something to do. We ended up spending about 3hrs just walking around the streets laughing at all the crazy shit going on. For the 2 guys from London it was their 1st time in downtown BCN, and for the white guy Kieran it was his first time out of western civilization so it was all a crazy hilarious culture shock to him. To see the streets full of Indian guys selling cans of beer for 1 EUR ($1.50) each or really cheap hash, and there was black prostitutes everywhere, offering 20 EUR ($30) blowjobs everywhere, and yet there were cop cars everywhere too, trying to look for any illegal activity.
We ended up bargaining with an Indian guy to buy a cold six-pack of beer off him on the street for 5 EUR ($7.50). We drank one each but then for fun we tried to sell the last 2 beers on the street, just like all the Indian guys. And we were considering buying some hash off the Indian guys but since I managed to bargain a guy down from 20 EUR originally to just 5 EUR, it was obviously pretty bad hash! But then we found a group of locals on the street, and they ended up giving us enough for free for 1 joint.
The black Londoner wasn't allowed to smoke anything cos he's been drug tested since he was 11 yrs old! But atleast he was good at rolling a joint :-) The white Londoner couldn't believe that we were walking down the street drunk in public at 4am, walking past a police station while drinking our beers & rolling a joint and even 2 cop cars past us and it didn't matter :-)
We walked around the streets for about 3hrs, and after getting sick of being hassled by all the Indian guys to buy their beers and all the African women to hire their bodies, we decided we should try to join the free market right in front of us. So we started going up to the Indian guys, trying to sell them our leftover cans of beer for cheaper than they were offering. We managed to sell our remaining 2 cans of beer to a tourist for more than we paid for them. We also kept trying to sell our bodies to the African prostitutes, and also to a group of lesbian feminists, but alas, none of them were interested.
So after realising we can't sell our bodies to the prostitutes, we started trying to get a group discount for the 4 of us, but no-one would give group discounts. We eventually did find 2 transvestite prostitutes that we bargained down to 40 EUR for all 4 of us, before we ran away.
We also tried to convince the Indian beer sellers that some guys were selling the cans for 0.90 EUR, because there was obviously an unwritten agreement that all illegal beer sellers will sell each can at exactly 1 EUR, rather than compete for business.
The 2 guys from London kept telling the African prostitutes that if they just talked to guys at a pub, they would get much better business than just waiting on the streets, but the prostitutes kept getting angry. Teriy was especially annoyed that anytime we saw a black woman, they were always a cheap prostitute, so it didn't portray black people very nicely! At one stage Teriy almost got in a fist fight with a prostitute, cos he kept saying that they should have more respect for themselves and they kept saying that he is being rude, etc, and one prostitute got so angry she was trying to scratch him and hit him and I had to physically hold back Teriy and the prostitute apart from each other!
Just before we went home, a random drugged out guy came upto us trying to make friends and was jumping around us like a lunatic to make us laugh, and Kieran was getting into the it so then the guy put his arms around Kieran and they started jumping around together singing some drunken chant. But I could see that the random guy was secretly trying to take Kieran's wallet out of his pocket, so I told Kieran we gotta go home now and after a few minutes I told him that the guy kept trying to secretly grab his wallet, and then Kieran got scared the fuck out and was glad we were going home!
We went back to our hostel and had a heated drunken debate about the morality of bullfighting and animal cruelty.
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Day 24: (Friday 10/10/08)
7th day in Barcelona, Spain:
I checked out of my dorm in BCN, but hung out there all day with the Turk & Londoners from the previous night. We went to the beach and I swam in my boxer shorts since I wasn't carrying my swimmers.
Serhat from Turkey took us to a kebab shop made by real Turks, and so they made us specially huge Dürüm kebabs. It turns out that kebabs originated in Serhat's home town (Adana)! Pretty cool, since I've now eaten different types of kebabs in Australia, America (the worst), Iran, Greece, Germany, Turkey and Spain (the best).
At my hostel, everyone else in my room complained of bed bugs. I didn't get any bites, but I was only in my bed a few hours a day! But I did get a skin infection on my ear lobes. Or maybe I just didn't take care of myself enough :-)
I met up with my Italian couchsurfing host (named "Francisco Javier Martínez Clavijo"), living next to the mountains in BCN. He & his 2 Italian housemates took me out at night to party in Barcelona, and I got Serhat the Turk to join since he didn't have anything to do. It was a pretty cool night hanging out with them all, we went to a few different pubs & clubs and I think I got lost at some stage. I mainly just remember that at the start of the night, I got dared to do 2 shots of Absynth on fire! Which I was happy to do since they were paying :-) I don't remember much details of the night but I remember there was some issues at the end of the night when the others all went home but me & Francisco went to another club till morning.
All my photos from Barcelona: http://shervinemami.multiply.com/photos/album/49
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Day 25: (Saturday 11/10/08)
Last day in Istanbul, Turkey:
Just before arriving in Turkey, I managed to arrange a group meetup of couchsurfers in Istanbul, so that for my last day in Turkey I could meet some more locals. 2 different groups of people said they would hang out with me, and so I visited one group of couchsurfers and they convinced someone from the other group to come and join us. Unfortunately, I caught a cold during that day, so I couldn't really drink alcohol and was so tired that it took me over 1 hour to eat a kebab! But we still had a cool time visiting a few different coffee / tea cafe / pubs around Istanbul, and I got to see what Istanbul is like on a Saturday night: full of young people hanging out, and also shopping!
This marked the end of my journey through Europe, which I had such an awesome time and am really glad to have done it all and met so many cool locals and travellers. 3 hours after arriving in Sharjah (United Arab Emirates), I went back to my college dorm in the middle of the desert in Al Ain, but then realised that I left my room keys with my workmate Chandan, so ended up going straight to work, incredibly exhausted !!!
- 1 night sleeping on the streets on a hard marble floor during cold windy rain, in Istanbul, Turkey.
- 1 night sleeping on a sleeper train from Turkey to Greece, which felt like heaven compared to sleeping on the streets the previous night!
- 9 nights in a backpacker hostel next to a strip club in Thessaloniki, Greece
- 1 night sleeping on the couch at a new friend's house in Greece
- 1 night sleeping at an underwear party, and waking up in my undies next to a guy in his undies, not being able to remember where I was for several seconds.
- 1 night sleeping while sitting up in a packed commuter train in Greece full of old angry Greek men arguing with each other for 10 cold hours.
- 2 nights sleeping in a cold car in Germany.
- 1 night walking blind drunk after OktoberFest, trying to find a backpacker hostel to stay in, and eventually finding my friend's car to sleep in after several hours of wandering in the freezing cold.
- 1 night sleeping in a nice house surrounded by the forests of Heidelberg, Germany.
- 3 nights sleeping on a matress in a new friend's art studio in the dodgy section of Barcelona, Spain.
- 3 nights sleeping in a backpacker hostel in Barcelona, Spain, of which most people in my room were badly stung by bed-bugs, whereas I wasn't bitten cos I only spent a few hours a night in bed!
- 1 night crashing on the couch of a new friend I met on the way home from an Erasmus international student party in Barcelona, Spain.
- 1 night sleeping in Luton airport in London, UK.
It was obviously a great trip, I had an awesome time and met so many cool people and did so many cool things. Here are the details of each place I visited, if you're interested in reading:
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Day 1: (Wednesday 17/9/08)
Flight to Turkey
As usual I arrived late for the flight from Sharjah (30 mins drive from Dubai) to Istanbul (West Turkey). But this time it was cos I tried to fix a bug in our robot before I left work, and ended up leaving a bit late. But then the taxi driver got us lost so we wasted another 40 mins backtracking! So I got to the airport just 1hr before the flight, and they'd just closed the flight checkin. When I showed that I only have carry-on luggage, and they saw I'm from Australia, they managed to open up the flight for me if I promised to run to the boarding gate as fast as possible. But then then problem was I also had to pay $15 fee since I moved my flight 3 days back due to my work.
They said to run upstairs as fast as possible and pay the $15 then race back down while they process my passport, and they'll let me board the flight. So I ran upstairs, but it was actually the wrong set of stairs, and since I was in such a rush and honestly thought I was supposed to be there, I ended up getting past police security, passport control and the metal detector, even though I didn't have my passport or boarding pass, which you normally need to show at each of the 3 checks! The people downstairs with my passport had called the people upstairs at the boarding gate, telling them to hold the whole flight for me and look for me to rush me through quickly. So after getting past all 3 security checks even though I didn't have any ID and did have a pocket knife, the people from the boarding gate found me and tried to rush me onto the plane. I could have gotten onto the flight without any ID at all, with a pocket knife, and without being checked if I am legally allowed to leave the country! Considering I was born in Iran, its pretty funny. But since the guys downstairs still had my passport I didn't want to board the flight yet so I kept saying that I still need to pay my $15 fee and go back downstairs for my passport & boarding pass. When they eventually realized that I went up the wrong staircase and so I still didn't have my passport or boarding pass and yet I was at the boarding gate, they got the head of security to quickly come and figure out what to do. He was going nuts, saying how the hell could I pass the police check, passport control and metal detector without any ID! He even started yelling at the police for not doing their job properly. They managed to fix the whole thing and after throwing away my pocket knife they rushed me onboard the flight just before departure :-) I said thankyou about a million times for all the trouble I caused.
I was so glad that I made it onboard this flight, because of how everything went wrong in my 1st trip to Greece after missing my original flight by a few minutes, and then the whole trip falling apart and having bad luck for the whole trip. So I hoped I would have good luck on this trip, and I did. (Give or take a few mishaps!)
All my photos from Turkey and Greece: http://shervinemami.multiply.com/photos/album/48/
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Day 2: (Thursday 18/9/08)
Sleeping on the street in Turkey
I arrived at Istanbul at 12:30am, thinking I would just go to a nightclub all night instead of paying for a hostel, since I was gonna catch a bus or train to Greece in the morning. But it took nearly 3 hrs to get out of the airport, and I was actually in the remote airport not the main one, but luckily there were still buses to the main city. I got to a main party area at 3:30am Thursday night, cos I heard that people usually party there till morning, BUT it happened that there was a freak storm just hours before I arrived, and also cos it was 3:30am, the whole area was completely dead.
So I asked a taxi driver if there is anywhere with a hostel / cheap hotel still open, and he took me to the main hostel area in Sultanahmet. He couldn't speak much English but I kept asking for a hostel that would be around $20, cos I wasn't sure if he understood me properly, but he kept saying "yes, $20". After how much people had told me that Turkey is a sketchy country, I assumed he might take me to the middle of nowhere and beat me up for my money, but he didn't :-) He drove me through Istanbul and told me the names of lots of places as we passed them. When we finally got to the main hostel area, he said the taxi ride comes to $47! I saw on his meter it did say $47, but obviously he was charging me way to much cos I was a tourist. So I pretended that because of our language barrier, I thought he said it would cost just $20 for the taxi ride, not the hostel. We kept yelling at each other until we agreed with $30 taxi ride. Then he had a massive smile on his face and he shook my hand, as if he was glad that I bargained with him!
I walked around for a while in the narrow streets at 4am, but all the hostels where either closed or full of people, so my options were either to find an expensive hotel, or sleep on the streets. So I slept on the streets. It was still raining & cold so I walked around and found an apartment doorstep that had some basic wind & rain protection. I slept on the hard & cold marble steps until morning. The funny thing is that after spending 3 months in the middle-east desert with 45 degree heat, it never crossed my mind that maybe it will be cold or rainy on my Europe trip! So I only brought a long tshirt, thinking it should be enough, and I didn't bring a sleeping bag, jacket or umbrella. So I just had my bath towel as a blanket & bed. It was damn tough sleeping there even for a few hours. I'd done it a few times before in Australia, but I'm always amazed at how tough it actually is. I don't know how homeless people can do it every night! I was only there for about 4hrs until morning, but it felt like forever, and I only got about 30 mins sleep overall cos the wind and the hard marble floor were so cold, plus a hot business women opened the door in the morning to go to work!
When I started walking around in the morning, I realised I was in a really cool area, just 200m from the sea but surrounded by cafes & shops & people going to work or school. Turkey is a muslim country and this was during the holy month of Ramadan, when no-one should eat or drink while the sun is up. So I thought I would have mega trouble finding breakfast, even though I was starving after not eating on the aeroplane or bus ride or during the night. But luckily Turkey isn't very strict about religion, so you can still eat & drink before midday :-)
I spent hours walking around randomly through most of the town, seeing lots of old mosques, a university, and the Grand Bazaar (a massive building with roughly 6000 market stalls). I was carrying my luggage (just 2 school bags) all day since I was planning on going directly to Greece instead of booking a hostel room. When I entered the Grand Bazaar, the security cop asked to check my bags for weapons. I asked him if he knows where I can leave my bags for the day. He said he will take them back to the station for me for free, and gave me his name & number in case he wont be in the same entrance when I collect my bags.
After walking around the city for most of the day and booking my train ticket to Greece, I tried to collect my bags off the cop. I went to the police station in the bazaar, asking for him. The cops said they never heard of him and they never hold bags and he might be a fake cop, dressed up as a cop to steal things! But when I called him he did pick up his phone, and he said he is still working at the same Bazaar entrance, and so 2 cops took me to where he said he was. It turned out that he was actually a security guard, not a cop (they wear identical uniforms but with a different colored badge), hence why the cops had never heard of him! My mistake :-) The cops started giving the security guard some trouble, saying that he shouldn't be holding a civilian's bags because it could be a bomb, etc, but he kept saying to the cops that I looked like I really needed help so after checking my bag for security, he helped me out by holding my bags, and he doesn't care if the cops don't approve.
It happened that the security guard (called Ismael Polat) was about to go on his break, so he offered me to join him in drinking some tea. I ended up hanging out in the Grand Bazaar with him & the other security guards for hours. Even though it was Ramadan (no eating or drinking or smoking between midday till sunset for all Muslims for a whole month), they kept giving me free cups of tea & dates and cigarettes, and Ismael took me to the market stalls that he is friends with the owners, to get me discounts if I wanted to buy anything. After having just slept outside with just 1 long tshirt, I really wanted to buy a warmer jacket, so he took me to his brother's market stall, and they were trying to convince me to buy a Barcelona FC jacket, but I would have felt like a douche if I bought a Barcelona shirt in Istanbul, and since they were being so nice to me I bought the Turkey jacket instead. Then I bought a turkish kebab, with a drink, for $1.50! They showed me tonnes of outdoor market stalls near the Grand Bazaar with fake products, like Billabong jackets for $5, or bottles of perfume that were half full of water.
I took an overnight sleeper train to Greece, and it happened that I was put next to a pretty cool 37yr old Romanian that lives in Canada but is backpacking through Europe & Middle-East & Australia & Asia over the next year. We ended up talking for hours about computers cos he is an old-school Software Engineer, and he gave me advice about visiting Romania and I gave him advice about visiting the Middle-East.
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Day 3: (Friday 19/9/08)
1st day in Thessaloniki (northern Greece)
In northern Greece I stayed at a really nice & cheap hostel in Thessaloniki (Hotel Rex), which is probably the only cheap hostel in Thessaloniki. Even though it was the cheapest hotel I could find, it turned out to be really good. It was in the infamously bad part of town with the strip clubs & prostitutes & brothels, and was next door to a strip club. The funny thing is that there's also some expensive hotels in the area, including a glamorous looking hotel who's name is pronounced "Hotel Fer-heena". In other words, there is a nice looking hotel with the sign saying "Hotel Vergina", in the area full of strippers & prostitutes!
Thessaloniki is basically a city full of cafes & pubs, nothing else. Everyone stops whatever they normally do by around 3pm, and just sit and chat all day everyday with their friends, while drinking Frappe & smoking cigarettes, and then often stay drinking alcohol & smoking till 5 or 6am. On the 1st night I hung out with my Greek workmate Nikos & his girlfriend Eleftheria. We met up with a few of their Greek friends at pubs, watched some live 80's heavy metal cover bands, and at the end of the night, ate a special soup that is well known for being a hangover cure, but smells & tastes terrible. My mate Nikos just mentioned the soup, thinking there's no way I would want it. But I said I wanted to try it, so then he felt obliged to order it as well so it wasn't just me in misery. When the big old Greek man served it to me, after finding out I'm a foreigner, he bowed his head and said "Respect" and smiled. I knew it could only be a good sign ;-) It turned out to be a mix of lamb intestines and lemon juice, something that my Mum used to make us eat when we were kids! So I managed to not throw up, and kinda liked it actually.
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Day 4: (Saturday 20/9/08)
2nd day in Thessaloniki (northern Greece)
My hostel had a tiny computer room with 2 computers with free internet. I spent a few hours on internet, while talking to the person on the other computer: a 25yr old chic from UK, who was trying to find a laptop to buy. This is because she is a stripper from next door, and she just found out she'll be getting paid 25% more than she was originally told, at $145/night. She has an obscession with the colour pink, and so was looking for a baby pink laptop, to match all her other baby pink stuff. She reckons most pink laptops are an ugly pink, so I helped her find a decent laptop, since I am a computer geek after all! Its funny cos she could tell I was from Australia from my accent, and from my eye colour she could tell I wasn't originally from Australia. And when I told her about how I'd just been working in a strict Muslim country, she knew a fair bit about Muslims and even knew that it's currently the holy month of Ramadan, where no-one should eat or drink during daylight hours. So she seemed quite smart for a stripper. But then when I mentioned that after Europe I go back to the Middle-East, she said "What's that?" It turned out that even though she knows more than most people about Muslims & Islam, she has never heard of the Middle-East! I had to explain that its almost like a continent, made up of about 20 countries!
I tried to do couch-surfing (where people allow random backpackers from around the world to sleep on their couch for free, in exchange that they get to meet people from around the world without leaving their own house). On the Couchsurfing website I joined the group for Thessaloniki and a chic posted a message saying she's having a party for her birthday, that will be an underwear party, where you're not allowed to wear anything except underwear, but nothing sexy. I was still trying to find people to let me couchsurf their house, so I went to the party :-)
I ended up making really good friends with the people hosting the party, and hung out with them for about 1 week.
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Day 5 to Day 13: (Sunday 21/9/08)
Remaining 9 days in Thessaloniki (northern Greece):
- I went to a family concert at a science exhibit by the Greek / Australian band "Blue".
- did couchsurfing, sleeping on the couches of a few random peoples houses in north Thessaloniki.
- met a really nice greek couple that cooked for me and drove me to the train station.
- met a turkish guy and his 2 hot friends. later in the night we went to an underground / anarchist party I knew of, smoked weed, and got home somehow but we can't remember.
I met a really cool Belgian chic called Sanne, who just arrived in Thessaloniki. A couchsurfer asked me if I could show her around the town because she was busy, so I did, even though I'd only been there for a few days! Sanne had been hitchhiking through Greece by herself for 3 weeks and had already picked up enough of the Greek language while hitchhiking to talk to locals! It happened that the day before I left the middle-east, I had already quit my job so I could go travelling Europe for several months, but my boss promised me that if I return to work in the middle-east after 4 weeks of travelling, that I could join him in a new EU robotics project, meaning I'll get to work part-time in Belgium and part-time in the middle-east. I was really excited about working in Belgium, even though I didn't know anything about Belgium, so its was really lucky that I made friends with a Belgian already and she kept telling me how much I would like it there.
I ended up really liking the Belgian chic and hanging out a lot with her and the other Greek couchsurfers. One day, me and Sanne went hitchiking to a quiet village to see an old museum. The museum was pretty lame but we had a cool time anyway, hitching a few different rides and it was the 1st time I hitchhiked, even though I wanted to try it for a long time. She was really good at it, but it was obvious that being a pretty girl in a red dress makes it a LOT easier to hitchhike than being a guy! She didn't believe me until I shown her how much longer it takes for her to get picked up if she wears my sweatshirt instead of her red dress. Now she believes me!
I talked to my friend Alex in Germany, and we decided we would meet up in Munich in a few days and go to OktoberFest for a few days!
I went to meet my Greek boss in Pantelomonia, halfway up Mount Olympia. Even though my boss picked me up by car in the neighbour town from where I was supposed to get to, it took me 6 hours to get there even though its only about 1hrs drive, cos of crazy public transport issues in the middle of a sunday during rain. I tried to hitchhike part of it cos I had to wait an hour for a bus, but it was raining outside and as I was walking along the major road, a car sped past through a puddle on the road and COMPLETELY covered me in water. And then as I was crossing a road, I walked through some mud and so my shoes looked ruthless and I was all wet, so it was pretty unlikely that I would get picked up by anyone! And then on that bus, the bus driver couldn't speak any English and he got angry that I couldn't specify exactly what I wanted, so he kicked me off the bus halfway. So after 6hrs of bad travelling, I got my boss to pick me up. It was extremely nice where they were staying on the mountain, even though it was really cold & rainy & foggy.
On Thursday I wanted to hitchhike to Bulgaria for a few days with Sanne, cos it would have been an awesome experience, but since I already organised my accomodation for the weekend and paid my flight to Germany and found a cool underground / anarchist party to go to and was supposed to meet my boss at Pantelomonia, I ended up staying in Thessaloniki for the weekend, then caught an overnight train to Athens.
But unfortunately the sleeper trains were all booked out, so from 11pm till 10am, I was sitting down in a cramped train full of people in a bad mood. It was so cramped that we barely had enough space to sit down, let alone sleep in that position! There was 1 guy from India in my booth, but most of the other people were angry old Greek men, that were yelling at each other till about 4am. At once stage, the Indian guy took his sandals off, and then one of the old Greek men started yelling at him in Greek for some reason, until he put his sandals back on. Later in the night, there was a spare seat next to him so he turned sideways and used up space of 2 people. Then the old Greek guy yelled at him again for some reason. Then the Indian guy left our booth.
The next day I flew to Germany to meet up with my old housemate from Brisbane. He lives in Dusseldorf in north-west Germany but was driving all the way down to Munich in south-east Germany for OktoberFest with his friend. Not much of the trip was planned properly but we all knew we would get to Munich roughly around 29th Sept, for roughly a few days, and hopefully be able to sleep over at a friend's house.
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Day 13 to Day 17: (Monday 29/9/08)
5 days in Germany:
- On my 1st night in Germany, I went out with Alex in Munich city. We parked the car overnight in a place next to a park about 10mins walk from the city. The paid parking didnt start till 10am the next morning, and so we were planning on sleeping in the car since it was too hard to find accomodation in Munich due to OktoberFest. We got wasted at a western bar, drinking tonnes of beer and finally 2 big Calpirinias each, that were so big that I couldn't finish the 2nd one!
- We ended up walking around town wasted for ages cos we couldn't remember which street we parked the car.
- We went to Heidelberg in mid-north of Germany for 2 days, and visited Heidelberg castle.
- To save money on my trip back to Munich, I found a website that lists people who are planning to drive a long distance around Europe and are willing to take an extra passenger for a small fee. I ended up in a 12-seater car that was full of chics in their 20's and a male driver in his 30's, all the way back to Munich. My plan was to get off the car at Munich, and go straight to OktoberFest within an hour of getting there, and I wasn't sure how to get there so I was asking everyone in the car if they were going to OktoberFest too, expecting that they all would be. But only 1 chic planned on going to OktoberFest, and she wanted to sleep for a day in Munich 1st because of the long roadtrip before going to OktoberFest.
All my photos from Germany: http://shervinemami.multiply.com/photos/album/47/
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Day 14: (Tuesday 30/9/08)
OktoberFest'08 in Munich, Germany:
We had major dramas trying to find somewhere to sleep during Oktoberfest. All the hostels were booked out from weeks in advance before Oktoberfest. I went to OktoberFest with my german housemate Alex, and his friend Matthi, but neither of them live near Munich. Alex's friend Matthi knew someone in Munich that said Matthi could crash at their house for OktoberFest, and then he asked if it would be cool that my friend Alex could stay as well. So then when I tried to stay at their house too, I was the tag-along friend of the tag-along friend of their friend! But luckily they said we should be able to sleep on the floor when we get back from OktoberFest.
Oktoberfest was bloody awesome! All we did was drink from 4pm till it closed around 10pm, but it was such a joyful atmosphere, with so many people laughing and singing beer drinking folk songs and hot girls with major cleavage and carrying huge beers. I can only remember parts of the night but it was definitely better than I expected!
Videos from OktoberFest: http://shervinemami.multiply.com/video/item/116/Oktoberfest_2008_-_CIMG1097.MOV
At the end of OktoberFest, I lost my 2 german friends, and both of their mobile phones ran out of batteries, so at the end of OktoberFest I walked the streets for several hours in the freezing cold, trying to find somewhere to sleep. I didn't want to sleep on the street cos it was so damn cold, but after hours of walking around searching & asking drunk people on the streets & calling hostels, I eventually found a hostel with a bed for 50 EUR. I was going to stay there, but amazingly my german friend suddenly texted my phone, saying that he is back at our friend's place. I said I didn't know where it was, and he gave me a rough idea how to get there, even though he wasn't too sure where he was himself! I managed to get there and found him sleeping in his car.
It turned out that after OktoberFest, he wasn't sure how to get to the friend's house either, but he knew that if he followed the train tracks that he should recognise the street that he has to turn down. So he walked for 3hrs in freezing cold just wearing a tshirt, along the train tracks until he found the street! He then used his car charger to recharge his phone and thats how he told me where he is! His friend was dead asleep in the apartment, and his phone wasn't working, so we slept in my friend's car till morning, and left the heater on for a while because it was so incredibly cold.
The next morning, we woke up in the car and were hoping that Matthi would come outside or unlock the apartment or phone us, but he was still out of phone batteries. Meanwhile we tried to drive our car to buy some breakfast since we starving (food at OktoberFest was expensive so we didn't eat dinner), and it turned out the car battery was dead! It was also parked in a no-parking zone between 2 cars! So we managed to push the car into the middle of the street, but even with the help of several labour workers, we couldn't jump start the car by rolling it down the small street. After a few hours we found our friend Matthi, used his car to jump start our car, and bought food, so everything worked out well in the end and we had lots to laugh about! Especially since it took over 3 days to sober up after the 1 night in OktoberFest!
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Day 18: (Saturday 4/10/08)
1st day in Barcelona, Spain:
On Saturday night I arrived in Spain and got in contact with the couchsurfer Olivier, who said I could stay in his art studio in the middle of downtown Barcelona. I managed to get the correct 3 trains to his place, and met up with him at a cafe next to his house. But since I didn't really know what he looked like, and wasn't sure if I was in the right cafe or the right district (a lot of places in Barcelona have multiple or confusing names at first), but eventually it was all good. Olivier was really into cycling and was trying to get me into it, cos he's ridden his bicycle all the way from Spain to Hungary with his cyclist friends, and was organising a trip with his friends one day for riding all the way from Spain to Turkey! I never rode more than 5km at a time so it sounded pretty cool to me! Olivier let me stay in his art studio by myself while he would be in another part of Barcelona for a few days until his friend would arrive.
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Day 19: (Sunday 5/10/08)
2nd day in Barcelona, Spain:
On Sunday I just rested all day, trying to find what to do during the week. I tried to go out at night, hoping that there would be lots of people out in Barcelona even on a Sunday night, but it was my 1st time by myself in BCN, and it was so quiet compared to Saturday night, that I was walking around the dodgy backstreets where I was staying, and the only people around were African prostitutes, Indian guys selling beer & drugs, and the occasional dodgy-looking local. So after not finding anything for a while I started getting a little scared, so I just ate some food and went back to my room. Just as I was outside my building, someone messaged my phone to hang out, so I took out my mobile and started reading it as I was walking. At the front door of my apartment, a huge black guy on rollerblades was leaning on the front door, with his face covered in sweat, talking to an old lady. I asked him to move so I could unlock the door, and he did but then he followed me into the building.
To get to my room, you have to unlock that front door, walk through the urine filled hall for about 10 metres in complete pitch black darkness, then press the button for the lights, walk up 2 sets of stairs, then u get to my room. So when the huge black guy entered the building just behind me, I was suddenly in a pitch dark hall with him, so I figured there's a chance he lives there but most likely he's gonna mug me for my phone & wallet, and there's not much I could do about it. But surprisingly I managed to walk upto the lights quickly and turn them on and started walking up the stairs, thinking atleast he'll have trouble running up the stairs on roller blades. He followed me upstairs but the was going the same speed as me and started talking to me in Spanish and then English, asking where I'm from.
I figured he might actually live there and be legitimate, but he might still just want to mug me in the stair case, so I kept answering him as we were walking up the stairs and to my door but not slowing down. Then when we got near my door he asked me if I want a line of coke with him, cos its not much of a party by himself, and I said no straight away, thinking he might still be trying to mug me. But then when I got to my door I started thinking "fuck, I gotta take out my keys to get into my room, and he has to walk past me. If he beats me up as I unlock the door then he would even be able to steal everything in the room!" So I let him pass me while I pretended to look for my keys, expecting him to either hit me or keep walking. Luckily he just walked past me to the next door and said "Oh shit, you live here? I guess we're neighbors" and he went into his room!
In my room, I actually started thinking maybe I should go next door and ask for a line of coke, just for something to do, but I didn't cos I was too scared to leave my room or even sleep for several hours. I was surprised that I was so scared about the whole event, but then I suddenly remembered that for years while I was a kid living in apartments in western sydney, I had almost daily nightmares of being chased up the stairs of my apartment and not being able to escape or scream. Dark apartment staircases were my biggest fear when I was a kid, and here I was thinking it was going to happen to me in real life from a huge black guy! No wonder I was so scared!
From the next day on I was no longer scared or paranoid of being in the dodgy areas of Barcelona by myself and suddenly all the wierd people and prostitutes and drug dealers didn't seem scary, and pretty quickily I realised I liked the dodgy part of Barcelona more than the touristy areas full of white people! The next day when I saw my couchsurfing host that owns the apartment room, I told him about what happened and about how I thought I was about to be mugged, and he kept laughing because it turns out that the huge black guy next door is gay! Hilarious.
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Day 20: (Monday 6/10/08)
3rd day in Barcelona, Spain:
At night I found a Jazz club near my apartment, that had a live jazz band and lots of people dancing. I sat next to a group of people from France, and asked if the band was from Barcelona. It turned out the band was from Australia! After drinking with the Frenchies for a few hours, the club closed cos it was Monday night and so we bought some cans of beer off Indian people on the street, and drank on the street for an hour or so. The Frenchies were out because they were celebrating that the crazy hippie chic was moving overseas the next day. It was pretty funny, cos the crazy hippie chic Gizelle had spent years learning about ancient philosophy and therefore a lot about Athens in Greece, but when I told her that I caught a train from north Greece to Athens, she freaked out and didn't believe that Athens was part of mainland Europe. After everything she studied about it, she was sure it was on an island :-)
We chatted with 2 Germans, where 1 of them had only just arrived in Barcelona and it was her 1st time out of Germany. It was such a culture shock to her, especially since there were several Indian guys constantly trying to sell us beer or hash on the street, so she found it all really interesting. Me & the German guy were just laughing at how vulnerable and naive she was acting, as if she was a little kid, despite being 28yrs old. Then a scary looking Indian drug dealer asked her where she is from. She was so happy to be talking to someone that looks so different to her, that she innocently told him her name, where she is from, how long she's staying, where she is staying, etc. By this stage a whole bunch of Indian beer & hash dealers were chatting to her since she was probably the only European chic that they had actually talked to in their life.
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Day 21: (Tuesday 7/10/08)
4th day in Barcelona, Spain:
I had to leave in the morning from the place I was couchsurfing, so someone else could stay there. But after that, my host took me around sightseeing for a few hours, including the gothic district with a wall full of bullet holes from a massacre during the Spanish Revolution in the 1930's:
At night I went to an "Erasmus" party, which is a party for European university exchange students. It was in a nightclub and doors opened at 11pm, and cost 10 EUR ($15) entry including unlimited red wine (Sangria) so it sounded like a great deal. But of course, the red wine ran out after 45 mins, so everyone had to buy drinks for atleast 6 EUR for the rest of the night! They fooled us well.
It was a really cool party, full of people from all parts of Europe. It was mainly foreign exchange students, but there were a few randoms like me that were friends of an exchange student. There was a television crew going around a filming the party, for a show about Barcelona nightlife. The group that I was dancing with ended up getting filmed cos by that stage we were the craziest / drunkest, and they got us to yell "Go Barcelona!" to the camera with the hot TV host:
Around 4am I went upstairs where it was less hot, and ended up talking to a nice chic, Györgyi from Hungary. I didn't know crap all about Hungary, so it was cool to learn about it from such a hot chic. I was pretty sure she was only about 19, but she was actually 24yrs old:
Eventually the Hungarian chics went home I hung out with a big guy from Portugal that was the main party animal there. After forming a group of 3 of us and trying to impress the remaining ladies, the place closed at 5:30am. I was walking home with the portuges gay, and since it was atleast 40 mins walk to my place but near his place and we were both starving, he let me eat some of his pasta and crash on his couch. I explained to him about couchsurfing and how I'm trying to do it on my whole trip, and he had never heard of it, even though he was letting me crash on his couch & eat free food!
It was funny just before he went off to sleep, cos he showed me my couch and said that at 6am, one of his housemates will get up for work, so they might wake me up, but then we realised it was already past 6!
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Day 22: (Wednesday 8/10/08)
5th day in Barcelona, Spain:
I went and visited the Segrado Familia, which is the coolest looking building I've ever seen:
At night I drank at my hostel with a guy from New Zealand, then I met up with some random couchsurfing chics from Austria. We We were looking for somewhere to go on a Wednesday night, and followed 2 locals to a pub full of locals & other Europeans. I liked the place cos it had an oldschool pub feel, but the chics from Austria wanted to go to a nightclub since they said there aren't any nightclubs in Austria! So they left and I stayed at the pub, and sat with 2 spanish women in their 30s. They couldn't speak much English but it made things kinda more funny that way. One of them was decent looking and the other one was rough as guts, even if u ignored her 80's hair. I couldn't tell if they were lesbians because of the language barrier but its all good. They seemed really friendly, and even gave me free drinks cos another guy bought them a jug of beer. Eventually I said I'm leaving, and the pretty one gave me a lighter with the address of the cafe they work at.
There was a table with a guy and 2 rediculously hot chics from Switzerland playing with fake glasses that had red lights in them. I asked to take their photo with the glasses on, and a few drinks later I ended up going to a nightclub with them. The guy with them kept saying that the girls were really wild and I'm in for a crazy night, and I'll be lucky to be able to stand them for a whole hour, but it didn't bother me. The guy went home since it was nearly 5am, and I went to a nightclub with the 2 chics.
They managed to convince the security guards not to charge them 7 EUR for entry, but I still had to pay, so we split the cost. In the club, a guy wanted to impress the 2 chics and so he kept buying us free drinks, so it ended up quite a cheap night out for me! I thought both chics were only about 20, but later I found out they were 26 and 27! Man I'm bad at guessing European's ages. After a few hours of drunk dancing, where I thought I was getting somewhere with one of them, they ditched me and went home.
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Day 23: (Thursday 9/10/08)
6th day in Barcelona, Spain:
At night, I was expecting to meet up with some couchsurfers going to a Language Exchange Meeting, but I ended up drinking & hanging out with some guys from my hostel (Serhat the 28yr old Turk, Paul the 30yr old New Zealander, and Kieran and Teriy, two 18yr olds from London). It happens that Teriy is actually on the junior Barcelona FC team! He said that he lives in London but flies to Barcelona every few days for training with the team, and that in north Barcelona, everyone recognises him on the streets, but in downtown BCN not many people follow the juniors team so he's not famous there.
We went to a drum & bass night club that was 6 EUR ($9) entry but included a free drink. We thought it was an awesome deal so we paid entry, but then the club was dead even though it was 1am, and the free drink had to be from their 1 and only house beer, and that was probably the worst beer I've ever had in my life! We had to force ourselves to finish our beers just cos they were free!
Paul stayed in the club and the 4 of us left, even though more people started entering the club as we were leaving. As we were leaving the club, some drunk guy from Wales recognised Teriy from football matches on TV!
The 4 of us walked around the downtown streets looking for something to do. We ended up spending about 3hrs just walking around the streets laughing at all the crazy shit going on. For the 2 guys from London it was their 1st time in downtown BCN, and for the white guy Kieran it was his first time out of western civilization so it was all a crazy hilarious culture shock to him. To see the streets full of Indian guys selling cans of beer for 1 EUR ($1.50) each or really cheap hash, and there was black prostitutes everywhere, offering 20 EUR ($30) blowjobs everywhere, and yet there were cop cars everywhere too, trying to look for any illegal activity.
We ended up bargaining with an Indian guy to buy a cold six-pack of beer off him on the street for 5 EUR ($7.50). We drank one each but then for fun we tried to sell the last 2 beers on the street, just like all the Indian guys. And we were considering buying some hash off the Indian guys but since I managed to bargain a guy down from 20 EUR originally to just 5 EUR, it was obviously pretty bad hash! But then we found a group of locals on the street, and they ended up giving us enough for free for 1 joint.
The black Londoner wasn't allowed to smoke anything cos he's been drug tested since he was 11 yrs old! But atleast he was good at rolling a joint :-) The white Londoner couldn't believe that we were walking down the street drunk in public at 4am, walking past a police station while drinking our beers & rolling a joint and even 2 cop cars past us and it didn't matter :-)
We walked around the streets for about 3hrs, and after getting sick of being hassled by all the Indian guys to buy their beers and all the African women to hire their bodies, we decided we should try to join the free market right in front of us. So we started going up to the Indian guys, trying to sell them our leftover cans of beer for cheaper than they were offering. We managed to sell our remaining 2 cans of beer to a tourist for more than we paid for them. We also kept trying to sell our bodies to the African prostitutes, and also to a group of lesbian feminists, but alas, none of them were interested.
So after realising we can't sell our bodies to the prostitutes, we started trying to get a group discount for the 4 of us, but no-one would give group discounts. We eventually did find 2 transvestite prostitutes that we bargained down to 40 EUR for all 4 of us, before we ran away.
We also tried to convince the Indian beer sellers that some guys were selling the cans for 0.90 EUR, because there was obviously an unwritten agreement that all illegal beer sellers will sell each can at exactly 1 EUR, rather than compete for business.
The 2 guys from London kept telling the African prostitutes that if they just talked to guys at a pub, they would get much better business than just waiting on the streets, but the prostitutes kept getting angry. Teriy was especially annoyed that anytime we saw a black woman, they were always a cheap prostitute, so it didn't portray black people very nicely! At one stage Teriy almost got in a fist fight with a prostitute, cos he kept saying that they should have more respect for themselves and they kept saying that he is being rude, etc, and one prostitute got so angry she was trying to scratch him and hit him and I had to physically hold back Teriy and the prostitute apart from each other!
Just before we went home, a random drugged out guy came upto us trying to make friends and was jumping around us like a lunatic to make us laugh, and Kieran was getting into the it so then the guy put his arms around Kieran and they started jumping around together singing some drunken chant. But I could see that the random guy was secretly trying to take Kieran's wallet out of his pocket, so I told Kieran we gotta go home now and after a few minutes I told him that the guy kept trying to secretly grab his wallet, and then Kieran got scared the fuck out and was glad we were going home!
We went back to our hostel and had a heated drunken debate about the morality of bullfighting and animal cruelty.
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Day 24: (Friday 10/10/08)
7th day in Barcelona, Spain:
I checked out of my dorm in BCN, but hung out there all day with the Turk & Londoners from the previous night. We went to the beach and I swam in my boxer shorts since I wasn't carrying my swimmers.
Serhat from Turkey took us to a kebab shop made by real Turks, and so they made us specially huge Dürüm kebabs. It turns out that kebabs originated in Serhat's home town (Adana)! Pretty cool, since I've now eaten different types of kebabs in Australia, America (the worst), Iran, Greece, Germany, Turkey and Spain (the best).
At my hostel, everyone else in my room complained of bed bugs. I didn't get any bites, but I was only in my bed a few hours a day! But I did get a skin infection on my ear lobes. Or maybe I just didn't take care of myself enough :-)
I met up with my Italian couchsurfing host (named "Francisco Javier Martínez Clavijo"), living next to the mountains in BCN. He & his 2 Italian housemates took me out at night to party in Barcelona, and I got Serhat the Turk to join since he didn't have anything to do. It was a pretty cool night hanging out with them all, we went to a few different pubs & clubs and I think I got lost at some stage. I mainly just remember that at the start of the night, I got dared to do 2 shots of Absynth on fire! Which I was happy to do since they were paying :-) I don't remember much details of the night but I remember there was some issues at the end of the night when the others all went home but me & Francisco went to another club till morning.
All my photos from Barcelona: http://shervinemami.multiply.com/photos/album/49
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Day 25: (Saturday 11/10/08)
Last day in Istanbul, Turkey:
Just before arriving in Turkey, I managed to arrange a group meetup of couchsurfers in Istanbul, so that for my last day in Turkey I could meet some more locals. 2 different groups of people said they would hang out with me, and so I visited one group of couchsurfers and they convinced someone from the other group to come and join us. Unfortunately, I caught a cold during that day, so I couldn't really drink alcohol and was so tired that it took me over 1 hour to eat a kebab! But we still had a cool time visiting a few different coffee / tea cafe / pubs around Istanbul, and I got to see what Istanbul is like on a Saturday night: full of young people hanging out, and also shopping!
This marked the end of my journey through Europe, which I had such an awesome time and am really glad to have done it all and met so many cool locals and travellers. 3 hours after arriving in Sharjah (United Arab Emirates), I went back to my college dorm in the middle of the desert in Al Ain, but then realised that I left my room keys with my workmate Chandan, so ended up going straight to work, incredibly exhausted !!!
Aug 13, 2008
1st Trip to Greece
Photos: "http://shervinemami.multiply.com/photos/album/46/2008_-_08_-_August_-_Ios_Island"
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Aug 13th 2008:
Flight to Greece: Stuck in Airport for 1 day!
My boss paid for my flight to Greece, in exchange that I work a few more weeks in September before quitting. But since I had less than 2 days notice about the idea of going to Greece, and I still had to work 17hrs a day during those days, I didn't get a chance to organise anything for my trip to Greece. Since I was already expecting to visit Greece on my big Europe trip in September anyway, I didn't actually decide if I will go on this trip to Greece or not, until just a few hours before the flight! So I had just 4hrs to finish my work, eat dinner, go home and pack my stuff, book a place to stay for my first night in Greece, print some maps of the area, drive 150km to the airport, and return my car to the car hire place! Surprisingly I did all this ontime, within the 4hrs.
I was recommended to pack very light so instead of taking a suitcase, I took 2 smaller bags and carried them onto the plane with me. But I forgot about one of my bags as I went through a bag screening / security check! I didn't realise this until 20 minutes later when I reached the boarding gate, so I had to run back to the places I'd been, but of course, the don't allow you to walk back through the security sections, so I had to ask a security guard to look through the airport for my bag, which I knew I would have left in one of the 2 bag screenings I went through. The security guard came back 15 minutes later with my bag, but after running the whole way to the boarding gate to get on the plane, I arrived 2 minutes late for boarding, and so I missed the flight! I had to pay $100 extra and wait for the next flight, which was 23 hrs later!
Since I had to wait a whole day for the flight, I wanted to spend the day at Dubai beach, but after several hours of trying, I realised that since I'd already cancelled my visa for United Arab Emirates, I'm not allowed to leave the Dubai airport until I visit a different country! So I was stuck in the airport for 23 hours!
Since Internet wasn't working properly in Dubai airport and I arrived in Athens 1 day late, I hadn't booked another place to stay for my 1st night. When I got to Athens, my hostel was full so I had to find a new hostel, which I eventually did a decent place for 30 EUR / night ($45), right next to Monastirakki train station in the heart of the city. Actually I thought I was in heaven because this hostel is surrounded by about 10 hardware stores with really cheap tools and materials :-)
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Aug 14th, 2008:
1st day in Greece: Expensive!
I spent 4 hrs in an internet cafe to book my trip to a Greek Island. Both my Greek boss & coworker said that Ios is the rock'n'roll party island for young people, so if I went to just 1 island I should go there, so I did. Unfortunately my 4hrs of internet bookings in a rush turned out very bad, cos it turns out that in Greece, you are supposed to book these things through travel agencies, since only a fraction of things are available or cheap on internet. Since hotel rooms were becoming full even while I was using internet, I had to book as fast as possible. And most ferry tickets have to be bought 4 days in advance when booking on internet, so it was a big mess. The next day was a public holiday, actually the biggest day of the year in Greece, when everyone flees to villages and islands, so the cheapest room I could find for the 1st night was 90 EUR ($135) and 60 EUR after that. So I booked 3 nights for myself for 210 EUR ($300) since nothing else on internet was cheaper.
My boss said to visit the area called Psiri at night, which was about 10 mins walk from my hostel in Athens. I walked all along a main street in Psiri at 11pm and didn't find a single place open, just really dark & sketchy backstreets with trash everywhere and some homeless guys. After searching a few alleys, I eventually gave up on finding night clubs in Psiri, since I was basically asking to be mugged! But after getting lost on my way back, I happened to hear some music playing & noise from a distance, and finally found an area full of clubs & outdoor restaurants.
After failing miserably at chatting with various Greek girls I ended up chatting & drinking till morning with 2 Greek guys, which was really cool cos they told me lots about the Greek youth culture
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Aug 15th, 2008:
2nd day in Greece: Street scams
The next day I was very hung over. I had just spent 2 months working in a very traditional muslim town in the middle-east, where you're not supposed to even look at girls, let alone chat to them or try to hook up with them! So I hadn't talked or interacted with ANY girls in quite a while, and it took about half a week to be able to talk to girls properly again, despite being in a country full of hot Greek chics! I also had rarely been drinking alcohol in the middle-east, which meant my tolerance for alcohol had changed a lot. The country I was working in (United Arab Emirates) allows foreigners to drink alcohol, but the problem was that I had to drive every day & night cos there was no public transport, so I almost never had the chance to drink there.
So like I said, I got a big hang over in Athens from drinking for the first time in ages. It happened to be a public holiday (August 15th, the main public holiday of the year!), and EVERYTHING was closed except for a few western fast food places, so I didn't do much that day. When looking for food, I happened to see a sign for a Persian restaurant that was surprisingly open, so I ate there. There was just 4 persian guys inside, that are regulars there, so I ended up making friends with them and the waiters, and they all gave me tips for what to do in Greece, and how to find free persian music videos on internet (www.glwiz.com).
Unfortunately everywhere was shut that night because it was a public holiday and it was my last night in Athens, so I went to the city square and drank 1 EUR ($1.50) cans of Heinneken in the park with some locals that were drunken skateboarding. A sleek looking 50yr old Greek man walking down the street put his arm around me and started talking to me as if we were old buddies. I mentioned that I'm from Australia and just worked in the middle-east, and he said he also worked in Saudi Arabia for a while. As we were walking, he was acting over friendly to me, and he asked me if I wanted to have a few beers with him at a nice pub he knows. I said yes at first but eventually realised that he was trying to trick me into buying ultra high priced drinks from his pub. When I said I didn't want to go to a pub anymore, he kept trying to convince me to go with him, and saying that he promises we'll split the costs halfway, and eventually said he would even buy me a free drink. It almost seemed legit, but he was definitely trying to scam me. I was quite proud of myself for figuring out that I was getting scammed, thinking that I can't be out-smarted so easily.
Then at around midnight I walked around the backstreets in case any pubs/clubs were open, and I found a small russian pub in a small alley. There was only a big russian 60yr old bouncer outside, and a hot russian bartender inside. I asked for a beer, which was roughly the normal price for a pub / nightclub (7 EUR or $11), so I figured it was a decent place. The hot russian bartender asked me if I would buy her a drink so we can sit and chat since there was no-one else in the pub. I was already quite drunk by this stage so I agreed, and we had a nice conversation about Russia & life in general. While I was still drinking my 1st drink, she finished hers and asked me if I could buy her a 2nd glass of champagne. I said yeah why not. But after a few minutes she asked me if I could buy her a 3rd glass, and I finally came to my senses and realised its another scam, so I said I can't afford to buy her another drink. The she started saying that I need to buy her more drinks because otherwise she isn't allowed to talk to me. But I kept saying I don't have much money so I have to leave. Then when I went to pay for my beer and her 2 drinks, they said it was 30 EUR ($45) per glass of champagne! So I had to pay them 67 EUR ($100) when I just had 1 beer! I was annoyed at first that I got scammed by a hot Russian chic, but eventually I realised its pretty funny, and I got ripped of fair & square. Then when I left the pub, the bouncer put his arm around me & started talking about how he can get girls to come to my hotel room. Then I said he already took all my money so leave me alone.
After spending so much money at the Russian "pub" and booking expensive accommodation for my island trip, I decided not to spend any more money for the rest of the night, and since my ferry to the island was leaving early in the morning, I decided to walk to the Acropolis. In the midst of getting lost and walking through random back allies by myself, I eventually ended up on top of a mountain with a perfect view of the whole city! Even thought it was really slippery & dark, there was tonnes of young people also drinking & playing guitars on this mountain top, so I was really lucky to "find" this place.
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Aug 16th, 2008:
Trip to Ios Island: Mega sunburn!
After a few hours on the mountain cliff overlooking Athens and a few hours trying to sleep, I caught the ferry to Ios Island: apparently the main rock'n'roll party island in Greece. The ferry ride was from 9am till 5pm, in other words 10 hours in the direct sun. I sat on a deck chair / bench on the top deck, next to a rediculously hot metal chic from Greece (I think), possibly the hottest chic I've ever seen in my life! But maybe thats just cos I'd been in the middle-east for 2 months, where ur not supposed to even look at girls! I eventually tried to chat to her, but she couldn't understand English :-(
Unfortunately, I fell asleep for a while on the top of the ferry without much sunscreen on, so I ended up very sunburnt on my face, before even arriving at the Island! The last things you want when you get on an island is to be sunburnt! I looked like a lobster, and so I stayed indoors for several days in the hope that it wouldn't get worse, even though the beach was begging me to come outside.
Even though I booked 3 nights at expensive hotels in Ios (the cheapest I could find on internet), I found a small remote hotel in Ios for 30 EUR ($45) / night for 2 beds. Since an Indian guy from work was coming to visit Ios 2 days after me, I booked this cheap place for 2 days, to save about 150 EUR ($230)! But when I tried to cancel the expensive hotels I'd booked, I found out that they need 2 days notice for cancellation, otherwise they charge your credit card for the full amount. Which means I got charged an extra 200 EUR ($300) for 2 nights that I didn't stay! I tried to get them not to charge me the full amount but they had it in their fine print. So for my 1st night on the island, I was paying for 2 different twin share rooms (4 beds in total) just for myself! So a lot of money was wasted on my trip to Greece!
But more importantly, Ios Island, and probably all 2000 of the Greek Islands, are fucking awesome.
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Aug 16th, 2008:
Partying on Ios Island
For my 1st night in Ios, I was supposed to meet up with my bosses friend that lives on the island, so he could give me some local pointers over a beer. Ios is a very relaxed beach island in the day, with lots of water sports on the beaches but most people just spend all day on the beach until 7pm. Then most people eat dinner at around 10pm. But around midnight to 1am, everyone between 18 to 30 go to the center village and party till morning at all the pubs & nightclubs that don't close till atleast 7am. So I was supposed to meet my bosses friend at 1am in the center village. As I was trying to find my way to the village, I met 4 Italians that also just got to the island and were looking for the village, so I searched with them. We still weren't entirely sure how to get there, everyone we asked would just point at the mountain and say go up. Eventually I found 3 glammed up Greek chics that were going there through a shortcut that basically involves 10 minutes of mild rock-climbing, and yet these chics did it in high heels! We found the village, and since 2 of the Italians liked rock & heavy metal, we found a pub that played it but wasn't opening until 2am, so 3 of us waited for it while the other 2 that didn't like rock music went to a dance club. The rock club had decent rock / indie-pop / metal music, and cool drawings & stuff on the walls, but there was barely anyone in there so we started to leave, but talked to 3 Greek rock chics smoking instead. We ended up talking to them for a while cos they were hot and into cool music and play in rock bands. But they were 19. We said we were 29, 27 and 18. I was surprised that the tall Italian guy with a bandanna and old-school Guns'n'Roses shirt was just 18 when he looked about 23. But then the older Italian guy whispered to me that the tall 18yr old guy is actually just 15yrs old! It was basically the first time he'd been to a pub / nightclub! We eventually left cos of the age differences, but the chics told us of another rock/metal club in the area called Orange, so we went there instead.
Orange was much more of my type of club, full of goths & metal heads & punks, and metal posters & pics all over the walls and really dark & smoky, and yet still a fair few chics in there! I ordered an "Ouzo" cos I kept hearing of it as a traditional Greek drink. It tasted so bad! It was basically vodka mixed with tonnes of licorice / mint. I drank most of it and then asked a Greek metal chic if everyone does actually drink Ouzo, or if its a joke on the foreigners, and she started laughing at me, saying that only the older people drink it in small villages and only with food cos it goes well with food but tastes terrible by itself. She also said I should make sure I don't mix it with other drinks cos it makes an extremely bad hangover. Considering I'd already had beers and a mixed drink, I put the glass down. Then a few minutes later, the DJ played a Man-O-War song and about 10 Greek guys suddenly all collected together and started chanting the song as if they were in a huge opera, and played air guitars for about 20 minutes. It was pretty awesome. Me & the 2 Italians talked to another set of 3 Greek metal chics, but they were also about 19, and the Italians wanted to check other places out.
We ended up going to a big dance / techno club, since the 15yr old had never been. Inside, he kept saying how crap it was and how stupid everyone looked and how terrible the music was, and we kept saying that yeah its a nightclub, you'll have to get used to it eventually. But after a while, an Indonesian chic started dancing with the 15yr old. Eventually they were on the podium dancing & making out for about an hour. Me & the other Italian guy kept laughing, trying to think what the chic would do if she found he's only 15! She was probably about 22, and she would have thought he'd be about the same! Eventually we went home cos it was nearly sunrise and the Italians were sailing to their next Greek island in a few more hours. $10 says the 15yr old Guns'n'Roses rocker is a pill popping raver by now!
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Aug 17th, 2008
Staying on Ios Island: Peep Show
At my hotel, I went to use the girls toilet cos someone was showering in the guys toilet. After I started pissing, I noticed the big window in front of me was wide open, and there was a set of stairs to walk onto the roof of the hotel. I considered closing the window in case someone was on the roof and sees me, but I figured its so unlikely that there would be someone on the roof and they would come down the stairs within the 30 seconds that I would be there, so I just continued. Then a chic did walk down the stairs! I didn't realise until she would have already seen me pissing. She just ignored me & kept walking down the stairs, so its all good. But if this happened while I was in the middle-east then I'd probably be in jail right now!
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Aug 18th, 2008
3rd day on Ios Island: Infection
On my 3rd day on Ios Island, I woke up feeling really bad, especially in my lungs & stomach. I'd been out till 5am, but I only had about 6 beers, so it shouldn't have screwed me that bad. I had a really bad cough, and whenever I breathed deeply I would suddenly cough up flem. Normally I would barely notice it, but my workmate said it sounds just like a lung infection that he had in India, and if I don't take antibiotics then it will probably get much worse, and potentially become Tuberculosis. Then I realised that I've been coughing flem a lot for the past 5 days or so & haven't had an appetite in about a week either (I usually ignore or don't notice things like these unless if its really bad). So then I started getting paranoid that my infection will get worse unless if I take antibiotics soon, but that means no alcohol, when I'm on one of the biggest part locations in the world! I knew I would be drinking for 8 days straight if I didn't take antibiotics, which can't be helping an infection, so eventually I decided to see a doctor. This was so annoying, spending about 6 days on a perfect party beach island but not being able to go in the sun because of my sunburn and not being able to drink alcohol cos of antibiotics!!
The 1st night I took all my medicine, I suddenly felt extremely tired & weak, so I didn't go out that night (and I didn't go out that day cos still sunburnt!). Me & my workmate hired a scooter to share for 2 days. He's used scooters & motorbikes a lot in India, so I assumed he knew what he was doing, but I felt like he was going too fast around the turns considering it was only a small scooter, so I kept telling him to drive slower around the bends and he would just keep saying don't worry. At one stage, I said it again, he said to stop worrying so much, then 20 seconds later we slid out on a turn and I flew off the back of the scooter! A small Jeep behind us nearly hit me, but luckily they stopped just in time, so I wasn't really hurt.
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Aug 19th, 2008
4th day on Ios Island: Finally at the beach!
The next day I wasn't so tired from all my medicine and my sunburn was OK & not peeling, so we went to the main beach all day & tried the "Flying Fish": a big air bed that 2 or 3 people sit on while getting driven around on the back of the speed boat, and you get air cos of the wind and get through around and almost upside down, etc. It was pretty fun. But my coworker had only been in a pool or beach just once in his life (we took him to Dubai beach a month ago and tried to teach him to swim for the 1st time). So he wasn't used to being in water, and when he fell off the side of the Flying Fish, he was so scared of drowning (despite wearing a life vest) that he wouldn't let go, and kept yelling for help and to stop the boat. So even thought they said I shouldn't, I went over to his side to try to lift him back onboard. But since all our weight was now on one side, we flipped the whole Flying Fish over, which caused him to panic even more so I had to swim him onto the boat & we went back to shore. I did some wakeboarding too, with some good jumps and some good stacks. Then we just chilled with some aussies for a few hours.
I went out at night, despite not being able to drink, and I still had a decent time. I was in the "Orange" metal club most of the night with some Greek metal heads, and was constantly amazed at how all these ruthlessly hot chics kept going in & out of the metal club, cos u don't see that happen much in Australia or America! There was only a few girls that stayed that weren't with their boyfriends, but since I was frustrated about not drinking, I didn't end up talking to any of them. Then at 5am I went to a small Greek night club to see what its like. There was about 10 people inside, all Greek, and 4 were doing a cool traditional dance together. Eventually I talked to one of the chics, thinking she'd be around 27 - 28, and asked her if she could teach me how to do their dance. She said that dancing is part of their blood & life, so she can't just teach me in 5 minutes. Then she walked me over to the bar and introduced me to the 19yr old bartender, who was her daughter!! I like Greece :-) Unfortunately the daughter didn't like me much and after I decided not to hit on the Mum, I talked to 2 Greek guys for a few hours and watched them all doing dance improvisations.
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Aug 20th, 2008
5th day on Ios Island: Live sex show
On the walk home from the nightclubs in the morning, I ran into an aussie bartender that I'd met earlier. He went to say Hi to his old boss on the way home, but his boss and everyone around him on the street were just frozen stiff, staring at the top of a building. We had a look and assumed they were just looking at the church there something. But then we realised there was a couple having sex out the front of a building on the hill in broad daylight! Everyone was cheering, and when the finally finished the chic waved to us all!
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Aug 21st, 2008
Leaving Ios: Canadian chic
Eventually we caught an overnight 12hr ferry back to Athens, and were expected to sleep on deck chairs on the top deck even though it was really cold & windy. We were sitting next to 2 Canadians that were coming back from Ios too. I assumed they were a couple, but I talked to them anyway. It turned out that I got along extremely well with the chic, who was one of the rare chics doing a Mechanical Engineering degree! Apparently a lot of people in Newfoundland (an island in Canada where she lives) do Engineering so they can work for the oil rig companies there. I really liked talking with the chic, definitely girl-friend material, it was a pity she was catching the ferry all the way to Italy. After a few hours of talking & playing cards we were too cold so we went inside and found a corner wall that wasn't occupied and slept there till morning. But unfortunately I caught a cold since I was already infected with something, and it made it really hard to sleep in the tiny space on the hard ground with air conditioning.
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Aug 22nd, 2008
Last day in Athens: Exhausted & sick
When we got to Athens at 6am, me & my workmate were exhausted, but we still had to catch 2 trains and carry our luggage for 25 minutes to get to our hostel. We were SO tired by the time we got there, we just really wanted to sleep, especially since I had caught a cold in the ferry ride and barely gotten any sleep. But the hostel said our room wasn't available until checkout-time at 11am! I kept asking if we could just sit or lie down anywhere, but they kept saying they were packed full. So we had to wait 4hrs before we could finally rest, despite being dead tired. My coworker walked around Athens but I really needed to rest so I went up 2 floors and sat in the hallway and tried to sleep.
People kept walking in & out of their dorm rooms staring at me, but I got a bit of rest anyway. The hot young cleaning lady kept throwing the sheets & stuff over me into the dirty pile, and didn't tell the boss that I was sleeping in the hallway, so I thought she was pretty cool. Then at one stage I realised she was sitting on the stair case around the corner, having a cigarette break, so I asked her for a cigarette so I could sit & chat with her. She ended up giving me a total of 4, and we chatted about Romania where she was from while she was constantly switching between cleaning the rooms and sneeking in quick ciggy breaks without the boss finding out. She said she came to Greece to earn some money to finish her uni degree in Journalism, since its really hard to find a job in Romania. She had been working there 7 days a week for 3 months, with just 2 days off! Eventually I bought her a chocolate as a present for the cigarettes and asked her if she wanted to have dinner with me but it turned out she had a jealous boyfriend.
For my last night in Greece, I really wanted to go out to Exarhia, where everyone told me had lots of rock / metal clubs, but it turned out pretty hard to get there on public transport and I was still really tired, so I ended up just resting.
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Aug 23rd, 2008:
Flight back to Dubai: Ear Infection
We caught the flight back to the middle-east the next day. That was the worst part of the trip (besides the 1100 EUR I'd spent in just 9 days): going back to the middle-east, where things are so much more anal than Greece and you can even get in trouble for just saying something undesirable, such as saying Hi to a girl! I really liked my trip to Greece (even though things didn't turn out so perfectly), so I'm definitely going to visit the traditional parts of Greece in a month, and hopefully the party island again next summer :-)
The air pressure on the flight back to Dubai caused my runny nose to painfully spread into my ears and I ended up in a fair bit of pain & sickness for the first few days back in middle-east. This happened to be the only few days that I was in the middle-east and didn't have to drive people around all day since I didn't have a car, but of course I was on antibiotics so I couldn't drink now that I finally had the opportunity! I'm pretty sure God is trying to mock me on a daily basis, but I'm not complaining :-)
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Aug 13th 2008:
Flight to Greece: Stuck in Airport for 1 day!
My boss paid for my flight to Greece, in exchange that I work a few more weeks in September before quitting. But since I had less than 2 days notice about the idea of going to Greece, and I still had to work 17hrs a day during those days, I didn't get a chance to organise anything for my trip to Greece. Since I was already expecting to visit Greece on my big Europe trip in September anyway, I didn't actually decide if I will go on this trip to Greece or not, until just a few hours before the flight! So I had just 4hrs to finish my work, eat dinner, go home and pack my stuff, book a place to stay for my first night in Greece, print some maps of the area, drive 150km to the airport, and return my car to the car hire place! Surprisingly I did all this ontime, within the 4hrs.
I was recommended to pack very light so instead of taking a suitcase, I took 2 smaller bags and carried them onto the plane with me. But I forgot about one of my bags as I went through a bag screening / security check! I didn't realise this until 20 minutes later when I reached the boarding gate, so I had to run back to the places I'd been, but of course, the don't allow you to walk back through the security sections, so I had to ask a security guard to look through the airport for my bag, which I knew I would have left in one of the 2 bag screenings I went through. The security guard came back 15 minutes later with my bag, but after running the whole way to the boarding gate to get on the plane, I arrived 2 minutes late for boarding, and so I missed the flight! I had to pay $100 extra and wait for the next flight, which was 23 hrs later!
Since I had to wait a whole day for the flight, I wanted to spend the day at Dubai beach, but after several hours of trying, I realised that since I'd already cancelled my visa for United Arab Emirates, I'm not allowed to leave the Dubai airport until I visit a different country! So I was stuck in the airport for 23 hours!
Since Internet wasn't working properly in Dubai airport and I arrived in Athens 1 day late, I hadn't booked another place to stay for my 1st night. When I got to Athens, my hostel was full so I had to find a new hostel, which I eventually did a decent place for 30 EUR / night ($45), right next to Monastirakki train station in the heart of the city. Actually I thought I was in heaven because this hostel is surrounded by about 10 hardware stores with really cheap tools and materials :-)
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Aug 14th, 2008:
1st day in Greece: Expensive!
I spent 4 hrs in an internet cafe to book my trip to a Greek Island. Both my Greek boss & coworker said that Ios is the rock'n'roll party island for young people, so if I went to just 1 island I should go there, so I did. Unfortunately my 4hrs of internet bookings in a rush turned out very bad, cos it turns out that in Greece, you are supposed to book these things through travel agencies, since only a fraction of things are available or cheap on internet. Since hotel rooms were becoming full even while I was using internet, I had to book as fast as possible. And most ferry tickets have to be bought 4 days in advance when booking on internet, so it was a big mess. The next day was a public holiday, actually the biggest day of the year in Greece, when everyone flees to villages and islands, so the cheapest room I could find for the 1st night was 90 EUR ($135) and 60 EUR after that. So I booked 3 nights for myself for 210 EUR ($300) since nothing else on internet was cheaper.
My boss said to visit the area called Psiri at night, which was about 10 mins walk from my hostel in Athens. I walked all along a main street in Psiri at 11pm and didn't find a single place open, just really dark & sketchy backstreets with trash everywhere and some homeless guys. After searching a few alleys, I eventually gave up on finding night clubs in Psiri, since I was basically asking to be mugged! But after getting lost on my way back, I happened to hear some music playing & noise from a distance, and finally found an area full of clubs & outdoor restaurants.
After failing miserably at chatting with various Greek girls I ended up chatting & drinking till morning with 2 Greek guys, which was really cool cos they told me lots about the Greek youth culture
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Aug 15th, 2008:
2nd day in Greece: Street scams
The next day I was very hung over. I had just spent 2 months working in a very traditional muslim town in the middle-east, where you're not supposed to even look at girls, let alone chat to them or try to hook up with them! So I hadn't talked or interacted with ANY girls in quite a while, and it took about half a week to be able to talk to girls properly again, despite being in a country full of hot Greek chics! I also had rarely been drinking alcohol in the middle-east, which meant my tolerance for alcohol had changed a lot. The country I was working in (United Arab Emirates) allows foreigners to drink alcohol, but the problem was that I had to drive every day & night cos there was no public transport, so I almost never had the chance to drink there.
So like I said, I got a big hang over in Athens from drinking for the first time in ages. It happened to be a public holiday (August 15th, the main public holiday of the year!), and EVERYTHING was closed except for a few western fast food places, so I didn't do much that day. When looking for food, I happened to see a sign for a Persian restaurant that was surprisingly open, so I ate there. There was just 4 persian guys inside, that are regulars there, so I ended up making friends with them and the waiters, and they all gave me tips for what to do in Greece, and how to find free persian music videos on internet (www.glwiz.com).
Unfortunately everywhere was shut that night because it was a public holiday and it was my last night in Athens, so I went to the city square and drank 1 EUR ($1.50) cans of Heinneken in the park with some locals that were drunken skateboarding. A sleek looking 50yr old Greek man walking down the street put his arm around me and started talking to me as if we were old buddies. I mentioned that I'm from Australia and just worked in the middle-east, and he said he also worked in Saudi Arabia for a while. As we were walking, he was acting over friendly to me, and he asked me if I wanted to have a few beers with him at a nice pub he knows. I said yes at first but eventually realised that he was trying to trick me into buying ultra high priced drinks from his pub. When I said I didn't want to go to a pub anymore, he kept trying to convince me to go with him, and saying that he promises we'll split the costs halfway, and eventually said he would even buy me a free drink. It almost seemed legit, but he was definitely trying to scam me. I was quite proud of myself for figuring out that I was getting scammed, thinking that I can't be out-smarted so easily.
Then at around midnight I walked around the backstreets in case any pubs/clubs were open, and I found a small russian pub in a small alley. There was only a big russian 60yr old bouncer outside, and a hot russian bartender inside. I asked for a beer, which was roughly the normal price for a pub / nightclub (7 EUR or $11), so I figured it was a decent place. The hot russian bartender asked me if I would buy her a drink so we can sit and chat since there was no-one else in the pub. I was already quite drunk by this stage so I agreed, and we had a nice conversation about Russia & life in general. While I was still drinking my 1st drink, she finished hers and asked me if I could buy her a 2nd glass of champagne. I said yeah why not. But after a few minutes she asked me if I could buy her a 3rd glass, and I finally came to my senses and realised its another scam, so I said I can't afford to buy her another drink. The she started saying that I need to buy her more drinks because otherwise she isn't allowed to talk to me. But I kept saying I don't have much money so I have to leave. Then when I went to pay for my beer and her 2 drinks, they said it was 30 EUR ($45) per glass of champagne! So I had to pay them 67 EUR ($100) when I just had 1 beer! I was annoyed at first that I got scammed by a hot Russian chic, but eventually I realised its pretty funny, and I got ripped of fair & square. Then when I left the pub, the bouncer put his arm around me & started talking about how he can get girls to come to my hotel room. Then I said he already took all my money so leave me alone.
After spending so much money at the Russian "pub" and booking expensive accommodation for my island trip, I decided not to spend any more money for the rest of the night, and since my ferry to the island was leaving early in the morning, I decided to walk to the Acropolis. In the midst of getting lost and walking through random back allies by myself, I eventually ended up on top of a mountain with a perfect view of the whole city! Even thought it was really slippery & dark, there was tonnes of young people also drinking & playing guitars on this mountain top, so I was really lucky to "find" this place.
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Aug 16th, 2008:
Trip to Ios Island: Mega sunburn!
After a few hours on the mountain cliff overlooking Athens and a few hours trying to sleep, I caught the ferry to Ios Island: apparently the main rock'n'roll party island in Greece. The ferry ride was from 9am till 5pm, in other words 10 hours in the direct sun. I sat on a deck chair / bench on the top deck, next to a rediculously hot metal chic from Greece (I think), possibly the hottest chic I've ever seen in my life! But maybe thats just cos I'd been in the middle-east for 2 months, where ur not supposed to even look at girls! I eventually tried to chat to her, but she couldn't understand English :-(
Unfortunately, I fell asleep for a while on the top of the ferry without much sunscreen on, so I ended up very sunburnt on my face, before even arriving at the Island! The last things you want when you get on an island is to be sunburnt! I looked like a lobster, and so I stayed indoors for several days in the hope that it wouldn't get worse, even though the beach was begging me to come outside.
Even though I booked 3 nights at expensive hotels in Ios (the cheapest I could find on internet), I found a small remote hotel in Ios for 30 EUR ($45) / night for 2 beds. Since an Indian guy from work was coming to visit Ios 2 days after me, I booked this cheap place for 2 days, to save about 150 EUR ($230)! But when I tried to cancel the expensive hotels I'd booked, I found out that they need 2 days notice for cancellation, otherwise they charge your credit card for the full amount. Which means I got charged an extra 200 EUR ($300) for 2 nights that I didn't stay! I tried to get them not to charge me the full amount but they had it in their fine print. So for my 1st night on the island, I was paying for 2 different twin share rooms (4 beds in total) just for myself! So a lot of money was wasted on my trip to Greece!
But more importantly, Ios Island, and probably all 2000 of the Greek Islands, are fucking awesome.
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Aug 16th, 2008:
Partying on Ios Island
For my 1st night in Ios, I was supposed to meet up with my bosses friend that lives on the island, so he could give me some local pointers over a beer. Ios is a very relaxed beach island in the day, with lots of water sports on the beaches but most people just spend all day on the beach until 7pm. Then most people eat dinner at around 10pm. But around midnight to 1am, everyone between 18 to 30 go to the center village and party till morning at all the pubs & nightclubs that don't close till atleast 7am. So I was supposed to meet my bosses friend at 1am in the center village. As I was trying to find my way to the village, I met 4 Italians that also just got to the island and were looking for the village, so I searched with them. We still weren't entirely sure how to get there, everyone we asked would just point at the mountain and say go up. Eventually I found 3 glammed up Greek chics that were going there through a shortcut that basically involves 10 minutes of mild rock-climbing, and yet these chics did it in high heels! We found the village, and since 2 of the Italians liked rock & heavy metal, we found a pub that played it but wasn't opening until 2am, so 3 of us waited for it while the other 2 that didn't like rock music went to a dance club. The rock club had decent rock / indie-pop / metal music, and cool drawings & stuff on the walls, but there was barely anyone in there so we started to leave, but talked to 3 Greek rock chics smoking instead. We ended up talking to them for a while cos they were hot and into cool music and play in rock bands. But they were 19. We said we were 29, 27 and 18. I was surprised that the tall Italian guy with a bandanna and old-school Guns'n'Roses shirt was just 18 when he looked about 23. But then the older Italian guy whispered to me that the tall 18yr old guy is actually just 15yrs old! It was basically the first time he'd been to a pub / nightclub! We eventually left cos of the age differences, but the chics told us of another rock/metal club in the area called Orange, so we went there instead.
Orange was much more of my type of club, full of goths & metal heads & punks, and metal posters & pics all over the walls and really dark & smoky, and yet still a fair few chics in there! I ordered an "Ouzo" cos I kept hearing of it as a traditional Greek drink. It tasted so bad! It was basically vodka mixed with tonnes of licorice / mint. I drank most of it and then asked a Greek metal chic if everyone does actually drink Ouzo, or if its a joke on the foreigners, and she started laughing at me, saying that only the older people drink it in small villages and only with food cos it goes well with food but tastes terrible by itself. She also said I should make sure I don't mix it with other drinks cos it makes an extremely bad hangover. Considering I'd already had beers and a mixed drink, I put the glass down. Then a few minutes later, the DJ played a Man-O-War song and about 10 Greek guys suddenly all collected together and started chanting the song as if they were in a huge opera, and played air guitars for about 20 minutes. It was pretty awesome. Me & the 2 Italians talked to another set of 3 Greek metal chics, but they were also about 19, and the Italians wanted to check other places out.
We ended up going to a big dance / techno club, since the 15yr old had never been. Inside, he kept saying how crap it was and how stupid everyone looked and how terrible the music was, and we kept saying that yeah its a nightclub, you'll have to get used to it eventually. But after a while, an Indonesian chic started dancing with the 15yr old. Eventually they were on the podium dancing & making out for about an hour. Me & the other Italian guy kept laughing, trying to think what the chic would do if she found he's only 15! She was probably about 22, and she would have thought he'd be about the same! Eventually we went home cos it was nearly sunrise and the Italians were sailing to their next Greek island in a few more hours. $10 says the 15yr old Guns'n'Roses rocker is a pill popping raver by now!
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Aug 17th, 2008
Staying on Ios Island: Peep Show
At my hotel, I went to use the girls toilet cos someone was showering in the guys toilet. After I started pissing, I noticed the big window in front of me was wide open, and there was a set of stairs to walk onto the roof of the hotel. I considered closing the window in case someone was on the roof and sees me, but I figured its so unlikely that there would be someone on the roof and they would come down the stairs within the 30 seconds that I would be there, so I just continued. Then a chic did walk down the stairs! I didn't realise until she would have already seen me pissing. She just ignored me & kept walking down the stairs, so its all good. But if this happened while I was in the middle-east then I'd probably be in jail right now!
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Aug 18th, 2008
3rd day on Ios Island: Infection
On my 3rd day on Ios Island, I woke up feeling really bad, especially in my lungs & stomach. I'd been out till 5am, but I only had about 6 beers, so it shouldn't have screwed me that bad. I had a really bad cough, and whenever I breathed deeply I would suddenly cough up flem. Normally I would barely notice it, but my workmate said it sounds just like a lung infection that he had in India, and if I don't take antibiotics then it will probably get much worse, and potentially become Tuberculosis. Then I realised that I've been coughing flem a lot for the past 5 days or so & haven't had an appetite in about a week either (I usually ignore or don't notice things like these unless if its really bad). So then I started getting paranoid that my infection will get worse unless if I take antibiotics soon, but that means no alcohol, when I'm on one of the biggest part locations in the world! I knew I would be drinking for 8 days straight if I didn't take antibiotics, which can't be helping an infection, so eventually I decided to see a doctor. This was so annoying, spending about 6 days on a perfect party beach island but not being able to go in the sun because of my sunburn and not being able to drink alcohol cos of antibiotics!!
The 1st night I took all my medicine, I suddenly felt extremely tired & weak, so I didn't go out that night (and I didn't go out that day cos still sunburnt!). Me & my workmate hired a scooter to share for 2 days. He's used scooters & motorbikes a lot in India, so I assumed he knew what he was doing, but I felt like he was going too fast around the turns considering it was only a small scooter, so I kept telling him to drive slower around the bends and he would just keep saying don't worry. At one stage, I said it again, he said to stop worrying so much, then 20 seconds later we slid out on a turn and I flew off the back of the scooter! A small Jeep behind us nearly hit me, but luckily they stopped just in time, so I wasn't really hurt.
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Aug 19th, 2008
4th day on Ios Island: Finally at the beach!
The next day I wasn't so tired from all my medicine and my sunburn was OK & not peeling, so we went to the main beach all day & tried the "Flying Fish": a big air bed that 2 or 3 people sit on while getting driven around on the back of the speed boat, and you get air cos of the wind and get through around and almost upside down, etc. It was pretty fun. But my coworker had only been in a pool or beach just once in his life (we took him to Dubai beach a month ago and tried to teach him to swim for the 1st time). So he wasn't used to being in water, and when he fell off the side of the Flying Fish, he was so scared of drowning (despite wearing a life vest) that he wouldn't let go, and kept yelling for help and to stop the boat. So even thought they said I shouldn't, I went over to his side to try to lift him back onboard. But since all our weight was now on one side, we flipped the whole Flying Fish over, which caused him to panic even more so I had to swim him onto the boat & we went back to shore. I did some wakeboarding too, with some good jumps and some good stacks. Then we just chilled with some aussies for a few hours.
I went out at night, despite not being able to drink, and I still had a decent time. I was in the "Orange" metal club most of the night with some Greek metal heads, and was constantly amazed at how all these ruthlessly hot chics kept going in & out of the metal club, cos u don't see that happen much in Australia or America! There was only a few girls that stayed that weren't with their boyfriends, but since I was frustrated about not drinking, I didn't end up talking to any of them. Then at 5am I went to a small Greek night club to see what its like. There was about 10 people inside, all Greek, and 4 were doing a cool traditional dance together. Eventually I talked to one of the chics, thinking she'd be around 27 - 28, and asked her if she could teach me how to do their dance. She said that dancing is part of their blood & life, so she can't just teach me in 5 minutes. Then she walked me over to the bar and introduced me to the 19yr old bartender, who was her daughter!! I like Greece :-) Unfortunately the daughter didn't like me much and after I decided not to hit on the Mum, I talked to 2 Greek guys for a few hours and watched them all doing dance improvisations.
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Aug 20th, 2008
5th day on Ios Island: Live sex show
On the walk home from the nightclubs in the morning, I ran into an aussie bartender that I'd met earlier. He went to say Hi to his old boss on the way home, but his boss and everyone around him on the street were just frozen stiff, staring at the top of a building. We had a look and assumed they were just looking at the church there something. But then we realised there was a couple having sex out the front of a building on the hill in broad daylight! Everyone was cheering, and when the finally finished the chic waved to us all!
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Aug 21st, 2008
Leaving Ios: Canadian chic
Eventually we caught an overnight 12hr ferry back to Athens, and were expected to sleep on deck chairs on the top deck even though it was really cold & windy. We were sitting next to 2 Canadians that were coming back from Ios too. I assumed they were a couple, but I talked to them anyway. It turned out that I got along extremely well with the chic, who was one of the rare chics doing a Mechanical Engineering degree! Apparently a lot of people in Newfoundland (an island in Canada where she lives) do Engineering so they can work for the oil rig companies there. I really liked talking with the chic, definitely girl-friend material, it was a pity she was catching the ferry all the way to Italy. After a few hours of talking & playing cards we were too cold so we went inside and found a corner wall that wasn't occupied and slept there till morning. But unfortunately I caught a cold since I was already infected with something, and it made it really hard to sleep in the tiny space on the hard ground with air conditioning.
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Aug 22nd, 2008
Last day in Athens: Exhausted & sick
When we got to Athens at 6am, me & my workmate were exhausted, but we still had to catch 2 trains and carry our luggage for 25 minutes to get to our hostel. We were SO tired by the time we got there, we just really wanted to sleep, especially since I had caught a cold in the ferry ride and barely gotten any sleep. But the hostel said our room wasn't available until checkout-time at 11am! I kept asking if we could just sit or lie down anywhere, but they kept saying they were packed full. So we had to wait 4hrs before we could finally rest, despite being dead tired. My coworker walked around Athens but I really needed to rest so I went up 2 floors and sat in the hallway and tried to sleep.
People kept walking in & out of their dorm rooms staring at me, but I got a bit of rest anyway. The hot young cleaning lady kept throwing the sheets & stuff over me into the dirty pile, and didn't tell the boss that I was sleeping in the hallway, so I thought she was pretty cool. Then at one stage I realised she was sitting on the stair case around the corner, having a cigarette break, so I asked her for a cigarette so I could sit & chat with her. She ended up giving me a total of 4, and we chatted about Romania where she was from while she was constantly switching between cleaning the rooms and sneeking in quick ciggy breaks without the boss finding out. She said she came to Greece to earn some money to finish her uni degree in Journalism, since its really hard to find a job in Romania. She had been working there 7 days a week for 3 months, with just 2 days off! Eventually I bought her a chocolate as a present for the cigarettes and asked her if she wanted to have dinner with me but it turned out she had a jealous boyfriend.
For my last night in Greece, I really wanted to go out to Exarhia, where everyone told me had lots of rock / metal clubs, but it turned out pretty hard to get there on public transport and I was still really tired, so I ended up just resting.
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Aug 23rd, 2008:
Flight back to Dubai: Ear Infection
We caught the flight back to the middle-east the next day. That was the worst part of the trip (besides the 1100 EUR I'd spent in just 9 days): going back to the middle-east, where things are so much more anal than Greece and you can even get in trouble for just saying something undesirable, such as saying Hi to a girl! I really liked my trip to Greece (even though things didn't turn out so perfectly), so I'm definitely going to visit the traditional parts of Greece in a month, and hopefully the party island again next summer :-)
The air pressure on the flight back to Dubai caused my runny nose to painfully spread into my ears and I ended up in a fair bit of pain & sickness for the first few days back in middle-east. This happened to be the only few days that I was in the middle-east and didn't have to drive people around all day since I didn't have a car, but of course I was on antibiotics so I couldn't drink now that I finally had the opportunity! I'm pretty sure God is trying to mock me on a daily basis, but I'm not complaining :-)
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