Well, here’s the deal: I tried to get tickets to Berlin, being that I haven’t gone there, but couldn’t find any that wouldn’t cost me my first born. So, I started looking around on RyanAir’s website for the weekend, and voila! For just under 100 Euros round-trip, I could go to Rhodes, Greece! Although I haven’t been to Berlin, I must say: Greece sounds like a winner.
And that it was. After getting up before any normal human being should be at 5am on Thursday, I headed to Porta Negra to steal a coffee café’s internet to send my sister a term paper to proof read, then caught the bus to Nells Park, the location that the Flibco bus shuttle runs from Trier to Frankfurt Hahn Airport, and off I went to Greece!
Here, I lucked out. I don’t know if I had some serious body odor or what, but no one sat next to me on the 3 hour 20 minute flight there, so I had all three seats to myself! Win for me, especially considering RyanAir’s cramped airplanes. Seeing all the Greek Isles in the last few minutes was amazing, too; hundreds upon hundreds of desert/rocky-looking islands populated a spectacularly blue sea that could even be noticed from hundreds of feet in the air!
I landed around 1pm local time (Greece is an hour ahead of Germany), and went straight (luckily) to the correct bus to head into the Old Town of Rhodes, the location my hotel was. The bus, although somewhat old and decrepit (it, like three other busses I encountered in my time there, seemed to have difficulty getting into third gear), cost only 2.30 Euros for the 20 some-odd minute ride into the old town. Cheap!
For some reason, the hotel had messed up my reservation and had to “walk” me to another hotel. I wouldn’t know what that meant had I not worked at a hotel before. Luckily, it was literally right around the corner from the one I booked, and MAN… let’s just say I lucked out.
The hotel I ended up in, the Hotel Athena, was newly renovated, and the room I was assigned was on the top floor with not one but TWO views of the beautiful Agean Sea from the balcony. That’s right, I had waterfront views of the ocean from my cheap hotel. Spectacular! What’s even better: the hotel, something like 100 yards from the ocean, also overlooked the sunset strip of Rhodes Town, something quite amusing to watch each evening due to its hosting of many clubs and bars that literally opened just after sunset, which also just so happened to be viewed right from my balcony. Can you say cruise-quality living?
Anyway, after I almost wet myself from excitement from the view and my wonderful room, I headed to the beach (rocky, just like Nice, France’s) to attempt to snooze for a few; I had only three hours of sleep the night before having been too excited to sleep apparently. I just couldn’t stay long, though, even though I had beautifully clear-blue water at my toes and a view of another Greek Isle in the distance. If you’ve ever seen one of those odd clouds in America that’s dark and looks almost as though it’s a mountain, that’s what this view was… except that it actually WAS a mountain. Did I mention it was roughly the high 80s/low 90s then and the whole time? Win.
I was too impatient to see some old stuff, though, so after an hour-ish, I made out for the old town. Little did I know how close I was to it! In about a ten minute walk, I could reach the oldest part of Rhodes, completely surrounded in the original encampment of walls and towers dating back around 1,000 years, with parts even older than that. I can officially say I’ve seen Byzantine ruins mixed in with signs of Italian, Ottoman, and German influences (as they all ruled Rhodes at some point).
Along the way, I found a tour company’s shop advertising 25 Euro tours to and from Symi Island, apparently about a 2 hour ferry ride from Rhodes. 25 Euros for an all day excursion to another Greek Isle? That would be a yes, so I scheduled it for Saturday. Remember, it’s still Thursday, so I have plenty of time. I’d hate to get bored in paradise, after all.
Stumbling upon the very northernmost tip of the island (well, almost… slightly west of it), I found the Rhodes Port complete with 3 or 4 cruise ships. Honestly, here it reminded me a bit of Key West, Florida, in its touristy-ness. And touristy Old Town was indeed, a bit of Key West mixed with China Town in that many of the goods sold were obviously knock-offs of name brands. For example, you could pick up a bottle of Calvin Kline cologne for 3 Euros, or some Dulce and Gabana Sunglasses (however you spell D&G, anyway) for 5 Euros. Yeah.
Still, near the port was awesome indeed. An old lighthouse highlighted the horizon against the cruise ships and small rocky beach nearby, along with many statues of whatever the Greeks felt needed to be commemorated. While the old town was neat indeed, it was pushing 5pm by this point, and I was absolutely tired of walking. I therefore set out to find a sandy beach to take another rest, and find I did. It wasn’t what I was looking for, as I later found out, but it was sandy (or as much as you can ask for in the Mediterranean) and made for a great nap.
I may mention here that, in the interest of saving money, I had stopped in a “Super Market,” which in Greek terms means “glorified gas station,” and picked up some Pringles, a water, and some Ritz crackers for my lunch/snacks to stave off the temptation to eat out. It worked, although I have a word of caution: just as I realized in England when I was there in May, there is a difference in Ritz crackers made in the UK versus those made in the US or Italy. If you see any that say made in the UK, avoid them. They don’t believe in salt.
Anyway. I eventually made it back to the hotel after a nice 30 minute walk or so, and decided it was time for real food. I must admit, I’ve never been a fan of Greek food per se, so being in Greece I decided I must try something legitimate. I found an all you can eat buffet overlooking the sea for 9 Euros, so I had a go. I’m not going to lie… I’m still not a fan of Greek food. I don’t really like feta cheese (ok, I can’t stand it even in Greece), don’t like olives too much (a stain to my Italian name), and am not a fan of casserole-styled foods. Still, I’m glad I chose the place; now I can say I tried true Greek food, and at the same time was highly amused with the staff there making comments about all the beautiful ladies that walked by in Greek.
So, being in a calm and relaxed mood, I returned to the hotel to have a beer at the bar (which was also cheap, just as all of Greece seems to be), and watched music videos the bartender was playing of 80s music that I had never seen, such as Elton John singing one of Queen’s songs: The Show Must Go On. Who would have thought.
Thus far, my thoughts of Greece: the people seem to be a mix of Turks and Italians; to me, although my history tells me better, it seems as though a population of Italians decided to breed with Turks, and Greece was born. English is also quite prevalent; it’s still comforting to see Greeks talking to all kinds of nationalities (especially Russians, Germans, Finns, and Sweeds, as seemed to be the most popular tourists on the island) in English. In fact, most everything on the island was bilingual in Greek and English, thankfully for me; while I can usually decipher anything in a Romantic or Germanic language, Greek is t-totally different and absolutely impossible for me to remotely decipher.
Rhodes itself reminds me of a mix of Belize + Key West. The touristy-ness and laid back nature of Key West was apparent in the town, but on the bus ride into town, I saw miles of desert-like land with many buildings half-completed and ghetto-like. The Greeks must be on Spanish or Turkish time, as the joke goes; projects both in and out of the city seemed to be started everywhere, but rarely completed. Sidewalks frequently just ended with no warning, and many buildings seemed to have been forgotten mid-build. It must just be so pretty there that the inhabitants forget they’re working on something.
Also, if you hadn’t gathered by my commentary thus far, Greece is far cheaper than I imagined; most tourist towns have jacked up prices, but not Rhodes; you could get a good sandwich for around 2 Euros, beers/wine for about the same as Germany, and goods such as towels and clothes for 5 Euros easily. Hotels were also cheap; for the 3 nights I stayed, 2 of which were in what I considered my penthouse, I paid 93 Euros total. Wowwwwww!
Moving on. The second day, after a night of strange dreams (likely due to the fact that I slept so well after having air conditioning, something I haven’t had since being in Europe to my memory), I slept in a bit… but, being in no hurry (I’m in Greece, after all), I managed to put-putt out of the hotel by noon. It felt like a good day to explore the island, being Friday and my last “full day” on Rhodes due to my booking of my excursion the next day. Naturally, my terrible map skills got me exceptionally lost, but eventually I made it to the larger part of the Old Town that I had only highlighted the day before.
Let me just say: Rhodes is oldddd. It even FEELS old; touch the limestone walls and you can feel hundreds of years of erosion at work! Just as in years past, people actually live in this fairytale land, but I must admit… I’m not jealous of them. It’s old, old, old, and many of the conditions are shabby at best. The lower floors of the 3-floor buildings were largely devoted to tourism shops and restaurants. It makes me wonder what else there is to do in Greece, as I seriously saw no other industry my whole time there. Maybe that’s why they’re in such financial trouble with the EU; with the world in a relative recession still, people have cut back on traveling to spend money. If Greece hasn’t anything else to do, they’re likely hit hard by the potential cutback in tourism (although I didn’t notice much slowness in that). That, and did I mention how cheap it was?
But off of my soap box. I enjoyed some of the best Italian gelato I’ve ever had (the kind that makes you stop in the middle of the street and look in amazement down at the cone you’re holding), and had a Greek salad at a little restaurant in the Old Town somewhat off the beaten path. Once again, I’m just not a fan of Greek food; a true Greek salad consists of no salad at all (in my understanding of the word); no lettuce, just cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, feta, and oil/vinegar. Don’t get me wrong—they were all fresh and delicious (especially the tomatoes, just as everywhere else in Greece that I had tomatoes), but just not my cup of tea.
Eventually, being dead-tired from walking for several hours in heat I haven’t been recently used to (when I left Germany the day before, I was wearing jeans due to the chill in the air), I found the beach I had intended to find the day before. Wow. The brochure wasn’t lying when it said there were more than 4,000 beach chairs laid out on a 4 kilometer stretch of sandy beach. Remember again here that sandy is a relative term. Still, it was gorgeous, packed, and a perfect place for another nap.
After the fact, determined to catch the sunset I had missed the day before due to being lost (gasp), I headed back to the hotel and bought one of the cheap beach towels. I should have done that beforehand… oops. I bought a cheap pizza to go and enjoyed it on my balcony, watching the initial phase of the sunset. Afterward, when my Greek Putumayo playlist ended and my pizza was gone, I headed down to the beach to shoot the sunset (photograph, that is), and enjoy a few Stella beers. Hey, I had tried the Greek beers, but the Stellas were cheap.
By this point, my feet were literally pounding in pain due to all the walking I had done, yet I strolled about for another 45 minutes to try to find some live music to chill with for the evening. I failed; just like in Germany, live music doesn’t seem to be too popular on Rhodes.
Instead, I headed back to my balcony to have a few “Super Market” Stellas and update my music playlists on my laptop something far overdue. Look at me being productive in paradise… of course, I got hungry around 2am, but lucky for me I could see a 24 hour pizzeria from my balcony, so I headed down to get a cheap sandwich. Greece seems much more lax on hours than Germany; most things were even open Sunday.
The next morning was that of my booked excursion to Symi Island, so I was up surprisingly early enough to have some of the included-in-the-price breakfast (with wonderful coffee, I might add), and was about to leave when I found out my third and final night was supposed to be in the original hotel I booked rather than the one I was in. Here I should mention the way I found out: the keys in both hotels I stayed in, as is common practice in Europe, are made to slide into a switch or hang as a magnet on a master switch in your room, controlling all the power in the room. That way, when you leave, you must take your key, thus not allowing any power to be wasted (even the AC).
So, due to this particular key being a mammoth iron key with a huge magnet on the back, it was my practice (as most people’s) to leave the key at the front desk any time I left my room; it costs 50 Euros if you lose it. So, I put the key on the desk, and the front desk agent, while on the phone, informed me in her broken English that I should be aware I was only to stay until noon that day before checking out. Apparently my first hotel told them I only stayed for two nights. So, with literally ten minutes before the bus was supposed to pick me up from the bus stop for the excursion, I had to run upstairs and pack everything in a matter of 5 minutes to be out of the room.
And I did it! The desk agent let me keep my bag in the luggage room, and off I went to the ferry boat for the excursion. It was packed, too… but still, a nice boat, and familiar being that I’ve worked on a riverboat before.
The cruise to Symi’s first port (a monastery) was quite pleasant; I sat on the third (top) deck, and sun bathed the entire journey. I was one of only two people that I noticed that was not part of a couple or family, so that was a bit odd… but lucky for me, I don’t care. There was an extremely annoying Scotsman (I think… I did not even realize he was speaking English until the return journey) that roamed the ship with his pals the whole time, but no matter.
The scenery, obviously, was gorgeous; random Greek Isles left and right! The first stop was a bit of a bore, but it was pretty nonetheless… just a church, and how many of THOSE have I seen thus far? Again, I should have done the Vatican last to make those I’ve seen following more interesting.
We only stayed on that side of the island for an hour, and after boarding again, it took about 45 minutes to get to the primary port and its Isla Roatan-esque views. It was truly gorgeous! Again, touristy as anything you can see, but I escaped the bustle of that and decided to venture up the mountain for better views.
Keep in mind here that the whole port town (quite small, really… only 2,000 people live on the island total from what I was told) is built on a fairly constant steep, steep incline; the Greek Isles have a habit of being mountains sticking out of the water. The trip up the hill, therefore, was constant stairs with little to no horizontal surface. The stairs, I may add, did nothing for personal safety; that doesn’t seem to be a Greek priority. That, and I got the feeling few of the fat tourists coming to the island bothered to get much farther than the shops, so the way up was treacherous indeed; the stairs were all uneven, there was rubble/debris everywhere, and sometimes you couldn’t even tell where the stairs were. Don’t even wish for a hand rail.
So, much out of breath, I finally made it almost all the way up the mountain to a beautiful church that was easily seen from the bay below. Naturally it was closed, but I’d say the view was WELL worth the climb and realization of how out of shape I was (and am). I stayed up in my bird’s eye view perch for the better part of an hour, taking pictures and just gazing; you could see the entire port town from where I was, as well as a good deal of the rest of that side of the island and the ships coming to and from port.
What I failed to realize, though, is that when one goes UP a mountain, one must also come DOWN. That was a bit tricky… especially considering I tend to go up stairs better than I go down. Needless to say, it took me twice as long to get down than up, being that I had to look down the whole way to make sure I didn’t miss one of the non-existent stairs and tumble hundreds of feet below. The fact that I was, as always, wearing flip flops didn’t help much either.
So, knees shaky for the better part of the rest of the day, I had an iced coffee (called a “frappe,” so know what you’re in for when you order what you think is a blended coffee drink in Greece) and walked around the rest of the viewable horseshoe bay for different angles of the bay. Quite beautiful!
I snoozed much of the way back on the top deck again, being quite hot from the isle itself; it seems it acts as a natural shelter or cove from the sea breezes, so it felt much like a breezeless day in Savannah. The top deck of the ferry, though, was quite nice, and ignoring the Scots again, I snoozed for a bit.
We docked back in Rhodes around 6pm, and wanting to catch the sunset on the north tip of the island, I headed back to the hotel to get my bag and transfer hotels. Naturally, when I got to the hotel I original booked again, they were confused about my reservation, and it took twenty minutes or so for them to find me a room; I guess it would have been too embarrassing to have walked me to another hotel again.
When I finally got a room assignment, let’s just say… I moved from the penthouse suite to the mother-in-law suite. Granted, this room had a kitchenette, but it had obviously not been remodeled as my last hotel had, and it was on the first floor (remember: in Europe, the “first floor” is what we consider the “second,” with our deemed “first floor” being called “ground floor”) right next to the noise of the Sunset Strip and the lobby (as I was literally right above it. Luckily for me, I could care less, and watching the Sunset Strip was even more amusing from this hotel due to it being on the actual block of the strip rather than a block away.
Here’s another helpful hint about hotels in Greece: something unbeknownst to me, there actually is a distinction between a reservation WITH and WITHOUT air conditioning. Although I know they were wrong, because I saw nothing of the sort on the website I reserved the hotel with (a third party booking site called “hostelworld.com,” something VERY helpful when booking hotels and hostels in Europe). But no matter. So, I was told I could purchase air conditioning for 7 Euros, but being cheap and realizing it would cool off a good deal at night as it always does in Europe, I opted out of that. Go figure.
Still, though… I can’t complain. 90ish Euros for 3 nights, two of which in what I would consider a 4 star hotel? Not bad. This last night’s stay, on the plus side, allowed me free internet. When I say that, I mean I found a signal I could bum off of someone. So, I sorted out school things that night and whatnot, trying to register for classes at two different universities (AASU and SSU) to no true positive end.
I may point out, beware of complications while studying abroad, especially if your semester abroad does not match that of your home university. Because most systems in American universities are automated, you’re likely to have your account frozen when your grades are not turned in during the time they’re due for regular students at home. That means you can’t register for the next semester, which for me will start less than a week after I return. It’s a bit difficult to deal with being thousands of miles away, too, so remember: patience is a virtue. :)
I suppose I should have gotten up early and done something Sunday morning, but I was under the impression that I had to leave by noon-ish to get to the airport to return, so I dilly-dallied around and just viewed the beach for a bit while waiting on the bus to the airport. The bus drivers there are quite helpful, although somewhat short with you. For example, I got on the wrong bus, and the driver allowed me to stand next to him for free while he pointed out where I should get off of his bus and onto the correct one for the airport. You wouldn’t get that in America… or anywhere, for that matter!
Unfortunately for me, I got to the airport an hour earlier than I intended, being that my flight wasn’t until around 3pm local time, but I used the time to finish up my last project of the semester while looking out of the terminal at the Aegean Sea, so it wasn’t a total loss. Upon my arrival back (after reading a hundred pages in Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson and ignoring the young couple next to me making out the whole time), I realized I had gone from paradise-like sun and warmth to rain and cool weather in Germany. Just my luck.
No big deal, though, as the rain stopped by the time I got back to Trier. Naturally, I missed the bus from Nells Park by one minute, so I walked the exactly 40 minute walk back to Martinskloster. I had forgotten there was a festival going on right outside my dorm called the Zurlauberner Ufer Festival (the name of the little district of the city I live in by the Mozel River), so it was quite hopping when I got back. That’s why I love Germany and Europe in general; random festivals go on all the time in much more of a serious manner than those we may have in the states!
Getting back to reality meant I had to figure out how I was going to give this presentation I had just finished in the Rhodes airport; my new laptop (which will be sold upon my return due to its large-ness) has no VGA port to connect to the projectors in all the university rooms. Don’t ask me why, but it only has HDMI. Out with the old, in with the new I suppose.
So, I had to go borrow a friend’s Dell laptop charger and try to get my old laptop (whose screen is broken halfway through) to work; it has the correct port. Luckily it works, and being that I’ll be using the projector anyway (or “beamer” as the Germans call it), I’ll just ignore the fact that I can’t see the screen. I’ll have to borrow the Dell charger again to get it to work, though; the battery seems not to hold a charge anymore.
Monday (yesterday) entailed the last classes of several ones of mine, including my final Business English Presentations class whereby the teacher from South Africa insisted we all bring wine to class and celebrate the semester’s end. We’d go to jail for that in America… but the whole class enjoyed wine after the grades had been handed out, and we stayed even longer than the class normally meets!
Yesterday was nice, too, to get to see a lot of my Erasmus friends for some of the last times this semester! The whole day, people came in and out of the various places I was perched between classes to catch up and compare leaving plans. Which reminds me: literally in ONE WEEK, I will leave Trier forever! Sadness!
Speaking of, I just wrote out what I should say to our house master that does not like foreigners and refuses to speak English; I was supposed to let him know two weeks before I leave to set up a check out date, but I keep putting it off. Normally, one of the girls two doors down from me would help me (she gets a stipend from the dorm to help students anyway), but she’s not here at present… so I wrote something out directly translated from my dictionary and gave it to another friend just now to rewrite. I figured if I put an effort to write something out in the first place, it would at least amuse my German friend when he re-writes the whole thing to say I’m leaving next Monday. :)
So, that about does it for this past week. It’s Tuesday now, and I have my final presentation on a film, Lone Star, in two hours or so after I try to confront the hausmiester. Tonight, after my final Northwest Coast Writing seminar, I have a little get-together with the other Trier Center for American Studies interns for our end-of-the-semester goodbye fling. Tomorrow, I must get my “scheins” together (grades, essentially, from each professor), which is going to be a pain; when we leave, we must have an “exit form” filled out, a sheet of signatures from all our teachers for ISEP’s proof of completion of courses, and a separate certificate from each professor saying we’ve completed the class and how many ETCS points we get from each class. That is difficult being that most teachers will not be giving out grades for the next few weeks as students have papers to turn in and whatnot, so we’ll see what happens.
Luckily for me, I’ve already turned in the one paper I wrote this term (on Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five), and I only have one exam this Thursday. I should probably study for that. Otherwise, the rest of the week will entail beginning planning what hostels I’ll stay in over my end-of-the-semester trip throughout Europe, partying for the last week with the other Erasmus students, and packing! :( Sadness!
So, until next week-ish…
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