Athens, Amsterdam, San Francisco

Prev :: Monday, 24 October 2005

53. Athens, Amsterdam, San Francisco

As my flight was departing Athens at 5:50, there was no point in sleeping. Indeed, it was the last night of my trip and therefore time to party! This was the only time I really went out in Greece. Almost nothing really gets going here until after midnight or even 1:00 in the morning. It's a very late scene, and I had been too interested in sightseeing during the day to stay up quite this long. I left Rages around midnight and went to a nearby place called Sodade for some more ouzo. This was a nice place, with a long dark wooden bar and an outdoor area which went unused perhaps because the weather was too chilly. The Greeks seem to divide into two distinct sets — one gorgeous with jet black hair and long, lean features, and the other have maybe been eating too much souvlaki. I stayed here until around 2:00, and then headed back to pick up my suitcase from the hotel.

The bus from Syntagma Square to the airport helpfully runs around the clock, so I was able to use this cheap means of transportation even in the middle of the night. I was sleepy enough that I didn't feel much of anything, but I knew that my trip was almost over, and if I had felt something, it would have been a great sadness and a sort of intense profundity, thinking back to all the places I had been and the cultures I had absorbed. I arrived at the airport around 4:00, somewhat nervously as I had never gotten round to calling the airline and reserving a seat.

Checking in for my flight was a process that teetered on the brink of disaster. My name was not on the list for the flight! I waited a few minutes for another agent to open, and then discovered that they had canceled my ticket — unbelievable! Apparently, they thought I had never showed up for my flight to Amsterdam back in September. Well, how on earth did I get to Europe, then? They wanted to see my boarding stub, and I spent some time digging through the mass of credit card receipts, museum tickets, and maps which were crammed into my suitcase. Eventually, I remembered how I had gotten on that flight at the very last minute — giving them my boarding pass which I had printed out at home, with the problem of the mixed up KLM and Northwest systems. So I didn't have one. After more persuasion than should have been necessary, I finally got them to accept that they had made a mistake in canceling my ticket. Of course, this flight was again over-booked, so I had to wait nervously at the counter until I finally got a seat assignment at 5:30. So, I can't necessarily say that I recommend KLM, although the service onboard this one segment from Athens to Amsterdam was particularly good.

After a flight of 3.5 hours, I landed in Amsterdam. It was cold and rainy here now — so different to how it had been in September — but I was very much tempted just to run out of the airport and start the whole thing over again: Berlin, Vienna, Munich, .... The line to get through customs control was huge and disorderly, as bad or worse than anything I had ever seen even going into the US. Many people looked to be missing their flights, but I had a couple of hours still. I managed to spend all but €0,06 of my remaining Euro cash on a nice big box of Droste chocolate (also not difficult to find in the US, but never mind). Usually I always come out of these things with an annoying pocketful of change; this time I did have some Czech and Swiss ones, but at least I wasn't adding many Euro cents. The airlines really ought to collect this change for charity, but I've only rarely seen them do this.

The flight back to SFO was long — difficult to sleep despite the fact that I hadn't done so for 36 hours. At least I had an aisle seat this time. Toward the end I watched a movie made by a German director, I think, about the palio in Siena! This was very moving, taking me back to this wonderful place I had recently been. It seems to have been filmed four years earlier, so the subject was not the victory of Torre. In fact, it wasn't about victory at all — it followed the townsfolk of a neighborhood who were desperate to win, but in the end, they didn't. So the film certainly wasn't a product of Hollywood. I tried to make it a bit further through Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, which I had got half way through on a previous vacation. Somehow it wasn't as fun following the vagabond Jack around through Germany as it had been following Newton in the first part of the book. Of course, I just got to the chapter where they reached Amsterdam, which only added to my desire to go back.

Not having had much sleep, it didn't really sink in that I was home for quite some time. Jet lag had been a problem going the other way, but not at all this time — my schedule adjusted right away. For a few days I had dreams where I seemed to wake up and think that I was somewhere in Europe — not in rooms I was familiar with, but odd dark places where I couldn't really tell where I was going.

I noticed pretty soon that my eye for art and for architecture seemed to be a thousand times sharper than it had just seven weeks ago. It had been a fantastic trip, with so much variety to look back on: the canals and tolerance of Amsterdam; the medieval skyline and delicious food of Bruges; the excitement and urbanity of Berlin; the atmospheric architecture of Prague; the museum scene and café culture of Vienna; the overwrought Romanticism of Neuschwanstein; the silly fun of Oktoberfest; the grandeur of hiking in the high Swiss Alps and Mont Blanc; the alluring design of Barcelona; the magical waterways of Venice; the beautiful, rugged towns of the Cinque Terre; the stunning art and Renaissance humanism of Florence; the utterly engrossing palio victory party of Siena; the sunny tranquility of San Gimignano and the Tuscan hills; the splendor and history of Rome; the archaeological treasures of Pompeii; the superlative scenery of the Amalfi Coast and Capri; the pizza and colorful character of Naples; the unbelievably spectacular sunsets of Santorini; and, finally, Athens, which marked both the beginning of Western civilization and the end of an unforgettable trip.

Jonathan's Travel Blog :: Europe

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Prev :: Monday, 24 October 2005

53. Athens, Amsterdam, San Francisco