Homeward Bound.

I'm sitting in the Athens airport, going to head home soon. The entire flight is full of teenagers in big groups, like young ambassador type programs.

Yesterday, I climbed the Philopappos hill in Athens, and then I took a bunch of naps and walks. I got really hungry and had corn I bought from a street vendor. For dinner, Yoni, a guy on the trip who also had an extra day here, brought me to a restaurant he really liked. We split a Greek salad and two appetizers and it was delicious. I got to see my professors one more time, and Yaron, our resident "Silver Fox And Breaker of the Hearts of Straight Women" (a title awarded by Sammi), held my hand and told me what a great writer I was and how much he enjoyed my journal entries for school and I blushed. I am going to really miss a few people on this trip, and he is certainly one of them.

After dinner and some more walking, I went to my room to wait for Josh to get back to share the sketchy cigarillos that Yoni had bought. Josh never materialized and I fell asleep, so Yoni woke me up. Our plan to access the restaurant on the top floor of the hotel was foiled, so we didn't get to have our great view of the Acropolis. All the same, a good way to spend the evening.

Some other girls from the trip were also around and tried to invite themselves to our dinner but Yoni and I just looked at them and they got tired of being awkward and found their own table, far away.

Only 13 more hours until Atlanta and free water and my boyfriend and my parents and my friends and my guinea pigs :) And for now, I am going to start my Bill Bryson book; I have been saving it since I bought it in Amsterdam.


Note: we just got an announcement that the plane is going to be 15 minutes late. What the hell, Delta?

We're in Athens now, doing classwork after visiting the Acropolis this morning. After we returned, we all ate lunch and most of us then took naps. Long naps. I am still sleepy, even though I didn't go out last night. (After the mess that was Rome, I am pretty ready to not go out again; we got accosted by Neo-Nazis, and then I drank too much and then got cornered by a drunk girl on the trip who proceeded to cry at me and require sympathy because people got angry when she made bad decisions and endangered both herself and others.)

We took a boat from Brindisi to Patras and then a bus up to Athens. We stopped in Corinth, at the Canal, which divides the Peloponnesian Peninsula from mainland Greece. Athenians have so far been very nice, but the other tourists get on my nerves, especially today at the Acropolis, where people were pushing each other on the stairs and generally acting inconsiderate. The Acropolis itself is really pretty, other than the herds of tourists. We also went to the New Museum of the Acropolis, which opened about a week ago. We each got in for a euro. There are exhibits for the marbles Elgin stole from Greece: here the Greeks get really upset if you call them the Elgin marbles. In fact, they are still so extremely pissed about the whole situation that they uninvited the British to the opening of the Museum, and asked if our group was British because British visitors wouldn't get the special rate.

I wrote that yesterday, and the internet at the hotel has something against Blogger so I will post it later. For now, I am riding in a train on my way to Thessaloniki, which was, before the Holocaust, a huge center of Greek Judaism. We are spending the night there and then returning to Athens. I asked the hotel reception about booking a room for my extra night, and it's pretty reasonable- in the neighborhood of 68 euro for a single. I would try to split a room with someone, but I am more than ready to sleep alone.

Tomorrow.

Downstairs at 6:45
Rome Trastevere 7:14
Rome Termini to Brindisi: 7:31-13:22
Then a ferry, The Endeavour: 18:30-12:30 the following day

Friday:
Private Bus: Patras-Athens


Today I saw the Pantheon, the synagogue in the Ghetto, the Trevi Fountain, the Fountain of the Four Rivers, the Spanish Stairs, and the Capuchin crypt, which is amazing and terrifying.

Oh and then we all had dinner as a group. And got drunk.

Rome!

We are in Rome! The train detoured today into eastern Italy, which was NOT okay, since it was not at all where we needed to be. A four hour train ride took us about eight and it was miserable. Tomorrow we will explore real Rome, which I am excited about.

Last Venice Update

The day before yesterday we spent the day in the ghetto- the Ghetto Nuovo, which is the original ghetto and the origin of the use of “ghetto” as a quarter for minorities. We visited three of the five synagogues, and then we took the vaporetto to the Lido, a barrier island in the Adriatic, where we visited the old Jewish graveyard. Venice has been home to a lot of Jews, including Italian Jews, who settled in Italy after the diaspora, Sephardim who settled after 1391 and 1492, the Ashkenazi from Eastern and Northern Europe, and Levantine Jews from Turkey and Greece.

While I'm on the subject, a quick word on “ghetto”: originally it was geto, but the Ashkenazi Jews who were put thee were unable to say the soft g, so it became a hard g. Geto is actually a reference to the iron foundry, where cannons were made, around which the ghetto was built. The New Ghetto is actually the oldest, but it is the New Ghetto because it was built around the new foundry. By the time the Newest Ghetto was made, the term meant “Jewish quarter”. There was once a community of about 5000 Jews in Venice, all crammed into the ghettos New, Old, and Newest, so there were a lot of gravestones in the cemetery to examine. Many of the Sephardic stones are easily recognizable, as the Sephardim indicated their former hidalgo status on their gravestones, since they could no longer display the symbols above their doors.

After the cemetery, I went to the beach and walked. Then we all had dinner back in the ghetto and celebrated a classmate's birthday with cake.

Buona sera from Venice

I am pretty sure I could live in the Netherlands. I visited Bruges, Belgium, last Sunday and spent much of this past week in Amsterdam with a day in Leiden. Also I took an overnight train from Frankfurt, Germany, to Milan, Italy. We didn't stop in either city long enough to do anything besides change trains.


A canal in Amsterdam.

I promise I am still alive. I have journal entries to type up here from Amsterdam and a LOT to say about our train ride and even more to say about Venice. But internet is six euros for an hour here, and that is frankly highway robbery AND I have been too busy getting lost on purpose in Venice to write.

That said, I am not actually sure what day my flight home is on, and I am getting nervous.