Athens with Eli

Being abroad was a lot of fun. Coming back home was not fun. Each place I stopped presented me with some type of misfortune. First, we have the Athens airport. As you may have found out in my previous blog, there are unpleasant memories tied to the Athens airport. My last day created even more of these unpleasant memories. It all started in March 2020 because of coronavirus. Fast forward two years and you have to present a negative covid test to enter the United States, despite almost all of our country's other restrictions being lifted. We (me and two other Loyola students taking the group flight home) were told we would need to show a negative covid test within 24 hours of arriving in the United States. With a 16(!) hour layover in Copenhagen and 2 hours in Oslo added on to 11 total hours of flying, getting a test before leaving Athens would be far more than 24 hours by the time we get home. Being the responsible, smart Greyhounds we are, we planned on getting our rapid test duri...

Most of the following times are completely made up but this format will help me keep track of my thoughts. January 24th, 3 PM, Budapest: My friends and I went to Budapest for the weekend and it was a lot of fun. We were checking out of our Air BnB when my roommate back in Athens sent me a video of snow coming down. He told us our plane definitely will not take off so we should find somewhere to stay for an extra night. We laughed it off because it did not look like a lot of snow.  January 24th, 6:09 PM, Budapest Airport: This time is actually exactly right because my Snapchat memory saved the time. We got to the airport and while we were waiting for our flight we got Hungarian airport KFC and a bottle of wine. I got a burrito-type thing. It was really average. Here is a photo KFC Burrito and red wine yum January 24th, 8:12 PM, Athens Airport Runway: The plane ride was horrendous. It was so rocky and the landing was absolutely terrible. I have no right to make these claims but I ...

1 . I am still allergic to cats      This one is unfortunate as Athens is crawling with stray cats. Most of them are pretty dirty so I'm not missing much from not being able to pet them, but I did find out early on my allergies travel with me. 2. If you miss your Ethics final your teacher will pity you and let you take it at a different time Happened to my buddy Eric, not me.  3. Greeks and Turks are not friends Can I call Turkish people Turks? Either way, I found out that they do not get along well. Greece became independent from the Ottoman Empire in 1829l.  4. People from Turkey do not typically get offended by "Turk." According to a Quora question and answer thread, I am in the clear.  5. 16 inches of snow in Athens is enough to shut the city down for days It was like the world was going to end. I was stuck in an airport with thousands of people for like 14 hours. I will post a blog going into further detail. 6. You are a lame excuse for an American if ...

As I mentioned in the prior blog, I took a ferry ride to Crete that was very long, a little over eight hours to be exact. When I was a kid I never understood the term ferry, I still don't, to be honest. I'm not sure why it's not just called a boat. In kindergarten, we were taking a field trip to Peaks Island, an island off the coast of Maine, and the teacher kept talking about preparing for the ferry ride. Obviously, my mind was registering "fairy" as opposed to "ferry." This confused me because I was pretty certain "fairies" were not real (I was gifted). Simply using the term boat would've saved me from questioning everything I thought I knew. I like the ferry rides back home. The furthest island is like an hour-long ride. That's the perfect amount of time to look at the views before getting bored. You couldn't even do that on this ferry ride, it was overnight. We took off at like 9 pm, but we did get to see the sunrise when we doc...

This weekend I traveled to the Greek island of Crete for Greek Independence Day and was able to try several new foods. One new meal I had the pleasure of trying was moussaka. Moussaka is a very common Greek dish so I'm surprised it took me this long to try. I'm bad at explaining what I eat, but according to Google moussaka is typically made up of sauteed eggplant and tomato with minced meat. I don't even know what sauteed or minced means. I got it because it looked like lasagna.  See? It looks like lasagna. If I were to guess the top part is probably sauteed eggplant? The meat is definitely in the middle. After Googling what "saute" means I can state with confidence the top is the eggplant. I tried this dish on a ferry that goes to Crete. The ferry is an eight-hour ride with very limited seating, so I took my time eating the dish to take advantage of the comfortable chairs in the dining area. I thought it was lasagna the entire time until one of my friends asked ...

Let me make one thing clear, I am not celebrating broken glass, nor am I a fan of broken glass in general. I am far from it. I get sick to my stomach just imagining the travesties that can be brought upon us through the breaking of glass. Eventually, in this blog, I will celebrate the removal of broken glass that's all.  You're probably wondering what the specific broken glass is I'm referring to. If you aren't, this blog is not for you and you should leave. Let me set the scene for you. It's the beginning of January and I just got to Greece. I'm walking down a busy road about 20 minutes outside of downtown Athens. I listen to my friends converse with each other on the way to the metro station. My hood is up due to the piercing wind and sounds of cars and mopeds cutting through the evening air. I have a hard time hearing what my friends say. If they look at me and move their mouth I respond with "Yeah haha." That's an all-time cop-out. In a friendl...