Friday-Saturday, June 7-8, Hania, Crete, Greece
Hellish trip in. Typical long, boring flight from L.A. to Frankfurt, Germany. Layover there of about three hours. Three-plus hour flight to Athens. Then I got stuck in the Athens airport for a little over 19 hours! New Version of Dante's inferno: Hell is an airport from which your flight never takes off. Crappy expensive airport food sucking away all your money. No place to sleep (you're unable to sleep anyway). Fake, recycled air slowly doing a number on your sinuses. A list of flights and times on the big board, but yours never comes up (or it keeps getting delayed). Light "jazz" coming thru the airport speakers, filtering thru the scene, broken up by bland voices in Greek and English telling you not to leave your bags unattended. This is it - this is your life (of more accurately, your death) ...
Hellish trip in. Typical long, boring flight from L.A. to Frankfurt, Germany. Layover there of about three hours. Three-plus hour flight to Athens. Then I got stuck in the Athens airport for a little over 19 hours! New Version of Dante's inferno: Hell is an airport from which your flight never takes off. Crappy expensive airport food sucking away all your money. No place to sleep (you're unable to sleep anyway). Fake, recycled air slowly doing a number on your sinuses. A list of flights and times on the big board, but yours never comes up (or it keeps getting delayed). Light "jazz" coming thru the airport speakers, filtering thru the scene, broken up by bland voices in Greek and English telling you not to leave your bags unattended. This is it - this is your life (of more accurately, your death) ...
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Found a cheap room (by Hania standards - 25 euros) in one of the twisted alleyways just off the old Venetian waterfront (sitting on its balcony right now with a cup of Nescafe (a pretty nasty substitute for real coffee - don't quite get why Europeans like it so much) and some Kalamata olives left over from last night's makeshift dinner (they go as horribly together as you would expect, but I don't want to carry the olives with me or waste food).
I hadn't slept in two days, so after getting my room, yesterday evening I went to a nearby market, grabbed some food, ate, and then crashed hard at about 8:00 PM, to the sound of the gentle tout of the taverna across the alley (just a handful of feet from my bed), the passing foot-traffic in the alley, and voices, Greek, French, American ...
***
Later, early morning ...
Twisting gentle alley. Soft early-morning air, not yet hot. Bird sounds, distant but everywhere. Few people up. A group of French women (a little too loud for this time of day) arriving at the little taverna (more a coffeeshop really) just below where I'm staying. The sound of an espresso machine. Spoons clinking on glasses, cups. Wonderful early morning Hania - I almost don't want to leave. But I know that the heat will come soon, along with tourists moving thru the alley. So it's an early bus for me, south, to Paleohora ...
7 comments:
Glad you made it back. Are you gonna be able to hit that music festival? Wiki.
Probably not. It's in a huge touristy area and I'm just not into the crowds (or the expense). I could change my mind, though ...
Well, if you do go, My friend's name is Maurus Fischer, and he's the guitar player for "The Kings of Floyd". It would blow his mind if you found him and told him that you and I are old friends. You could probably hear everything from a distance. Either sitting on one of your goat trails, or hanging out on a boat anchored off the beach and listening to Pink Floyd waft across the water....Wiki
Actually, if you find him before the show, he might hook you up back stage. Wiki.
I just got a messege from Maurus, and he said the event is free. So if that's the case....Wiki.
When is it again?
It was on the 22nd,oh well.
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