27. Free at Last

Beseech you, sir, be merry; you have cause, So have we all, of joy; for our escape Is much beyond our loss.
——The Tempest, II.i 

The antagonist having departed the scene for the moment, I can pick up the pace of my narrative a bit. Here's how we spent the next three days in Athens. 

Monday, August 30 

In addition to the four of us renegades, Christian and Gilbert also stayed behind. They were scheduled to fly out of Athens before the group got back from Thessaloniki. Pandora, via her connections with other missionaries in town, got a bed at a YWAM house in north Athens. We helped her pack and sent her on her way. 

 As soon as Sarah and I came outside, Holly apologized to us for the previous night. Q. had promised to pay her for the trip; her husband was unemployed; she needed the money. So she'd kowtowed in hopes of collecting her check (although she never did). Having been ready, myself, to clobber Q. a few short hours ago, I was in no position to condemn Holly for giving him a soft answer. I didn't care to speculate about whose tactics were morally superior. 

Next Haris stopped by, and we expressed our condolences for everything Q. had put him through. He seemed relieved to have the guest list down to a manageable level. He loaned us a couple of sets of keys to the gate and the building, imploring us to keep both locked while we were out, or the Gypsy kids next door might climb over the wall and steal stuff. He even offered us his house to me and Sarah, but having no wish to impose upon him further, we declined. 

We had an ambitious agenda for the day: Go to the beach. A female acquaintance of Christian's was working as a staffer for the Games. She was staying at a beach resort, and she'd invited Christian to bring some friends and hang out as she packed up and got ready to leave. So, dear reader, while Q., E., and our former bandmates spent seven hours in a hot, cramped bus on the way to Thessaloniki, the five of us floated and frolicked in the Aegean Sea, and Logan stuffed his mouth with sand. If this wasn't exactly revenge, it felt just as good. 

This was the day that Gilbert and Christian told us how Q. had sent them around town to beg for bookings before the band arrived. And I made sure to apologize to Christian for regarding him as "part of the problem" earlier in the trip. As a sound tech working on an unrealistic schedule with unfamiliar equipment labeled in a foreign language, he'd done quite well. 

We returned to Athens via Omonoia Square, where we spotted Benji — the Ghanaian percussionist Holly and I had played with on Saturday — coming out of Starbucks, along with several other missionaries we'd met that night. Later that evening I returned to the Internet café and once again encountered Marc Price, the actor and NBC correspondent. "Hey," Marc said, "we wanted to do a segment on you and your bouzouki, but we lost your manager's phone number." I assured him this was for the best, since Q. had failed to note the absence of a bouzouki among the instruments I brought to Athens. "And," I said, "last night he kicked me out of the band because I wouldn't brown-nose him. So, heck, today I went to the beach." This exchange was low-key and nonchalant; I'm sure that anyone with Marc's experience in TV has seen people treated much worse than I was. But I do wish I'd thought of pitching my experience to him as a reality show. 

Tuesday, August 31 

Christian went to the airport and left for Italy. He later worked his way up through Slovenia and the Czech Republic to Poland, where he got an apartment and studied at the University of Krakow to get a certificate for teaching English as a foreign language. Then he moved back to California and started a rock band. Meanwhile, my fascination with small shiny objects continues unabated. 

Today's Pearl of Wisdom: Q. was miles away and still screwing things up, as we learned when a couple of YWAM missionaries showed up looking for their generator. Allow me to explain. Before I arrived in Athens, another YWAM team had been ensconced at Athens Christian Center, but after spending a few days with Q., they found another place to stay. Only they couldn't take all their equipment, so they left behind some foodstuffs (particularly a few jars of Skippy peanut butter brought from the States for a Europe-based YWAMer) and a portable generator, intending to return for them later. After a few days Q. decided those items were at his disposal, so he took the generator and some of the food up to Hope Place and bestowed them on Elias. Now the rightful owners stood in the courtyard, asking what had become of their stuff. Fortunately Sarah sorted it out for them. 

We made the traditional pilgrimage to the Mitropoleos Starbucks, where the staff were starting to treat us like regulars, and who should be there but Benji and his pals again. If you're a homesick American traveler overseas, just find the nearest Starbucks and wait there a while. Someone you know is bound to come in. 

Back at Athens Christian Center, Gilbert was in considerable pain, with huge blisters on his feet from walking a good deal more than he was accustomed to in ill-fitting shoes. We spent most of the day looking for a wheelchair we could rent for him. You'd think this would be simple, what with the Paralympics starting in a couple of weeks. But we called both the Paralympic committee office and a local advocacy group for the disabled, and neither had any leads for us. We hiked downtown to a medical-supply shop we'd seen earlier. The owner spoke no English, but he did have enough French to explain to Sarah that he'd sell us a wheelchair but not rent it. We tried to introduce Holly and Gilbert to Indian food, which wasn't a very successful venture, as neither of them cared for spicy cuisine. Indian food in Athens is quite different from what you typically get in the States (or, indeed, in Canada, Ireland, England, Norway, and France, the other countries where I've had Indian food). Makes me wonder what it's like in India. 

Although I had no bouzouki, I had notions of buying a baglama. That's a tiny six-string "pocket bouzouki" with a sort of checkered past. In the 1930s Greece was ruled by a military dictatorship. There was at the time a large criminal underclass consisting mostly of immigrants and known by the term rebetes. They were associated with rebetika, a type of bluesy-sounding folk music with macho lyrics about smoking hash and killing cops. Sort of the gangsta rap of its day. Many rebetes favored the baglama for playing rebetika, because it was small enough to (a) carry undetected in a coat pocket on the way to an illegal underground club; (b) conceal in a jail cell, if they were unfortunate enough to be imprisoned — since the music was forbidden in prisons. (Long before rebetika, the baglama was used in early Eastern Orthodox churches to help the singers find their pitches.) I don't smoke hash, kill cops, or even listen to a lot of rebetika, but I did want to look for a good baglama, which I figured I could carry home in one of the instrument bags I already had. While I searched, everyone else went to the Athens botanical gardens and discovered that most of the plants were dead. So were most of the baglamas I found — the remotely affordable ones all seemed to be cheap tourist trash that wouldn't stay in tune for a minute. 

I did manage, however, to find a hotel for me and Sarah now that the Olympics were over. That night Sarah and I took the Metro to visit Pandora at her YWAM house. Again she offered to let us stay there, but the accommodations were dormitory-style, and we were beginning to crave a little — er — privacy. So we declined again, and bade Pandora farewell. 

Wednesday, September 1 

Tiny bars and cafés dotted the streets around Athens Christian Center. They were seedy, but so was the neighborhood. In the evenings they'd fill up with locals drinking, smoking, eating, and talking very loudly. Sarah, Holly, and I had nursed an ambition to order a meal in one of these joints, but so far we'd chickened out and kept mostly to larger, touristy souvlaki palaces. Today, though, we took a chance. Holly remembered a particular café that intrigued her, so I set out with her to find it. (Sarah and Logan were having a nap.) We picked our way through a pedestrian alley and soon were more or less lost. We didn't find the place Holly had in mind, but we found another and stepped inside. 

It was rustic but clean. There were a few nice pieces of decorative glass on the wall, but no signage of any kind. The few rough tables and some interesting bottles behind the counter indicated that we were in a public house, but we couldn't tell whether it served food. And it wasn't exactly easy to find out.

Behind the counter stood the proprietor, who appeared to be in his late 20s. With very limited English, he introduced himself: his name was Aziz, he was an Iraqi Kurd, and he was grateful to America for kicking Saddam Hussein's behind. This came as a bit of a relief after our encounter with the Communists at the Acropolis, not to mention many of the hecklers at Monastiraki. Here at last was one person in Greece who was glad to see some Yanks. "Bush — thank you! America — no problem!" Aziz repeated. I had and continue to have grave misgivings about the Iraq war, but this clearly wasn't the place to bring them up. 

Next Aziz tried to figure out what we were doing in his pub. "Birra?" he asked. We didn't know what this meant until he reached for a bottle. No, no, we said, so he poured us each a glass of water instead. We kept gesticulating until Aziz understood that we wanted food. He vanished into the kitchen and came out with something in a pan. Progress! We didn't really care what he gave us; we were having an adventure. (Rick Steves would be proud.) 

The next chore was to explain that we wanted our meal to go. Despite the language barrier, Aziz didn't seem flustered. His kindness never wavered, and he even invited us to come back and sleep upstairs if we needed a place to stay — the third offer of lodgings I had received in as many days. The food we got from Aziz — cheese, tomatoes, spicy sausage, and spanakopita — was the best meal I had anywhere in Athens. It's a shame we didn't make it back there for more. 

Having climbed Mars Hill and the Acropolis, we thought we should give Lykavittos Hill a try, being given to understand that we could take a trolley to the top for an unbeatable view. When we reached the base of the hill, we learned that the trolley departed from a point about a third of the way up. Hundreds of steep stairs separated us from that spot, and Holly declared that there was no way she could get Logan's stroller up them. We stopped to ponder our next move — only someone forgot to tell Gilbert, who kept going, bum leg, blisters and all. Before we knew it he was several flights above us. Most people I know could learn a thing or two from Gilbert about determination. Apparently he intended to reach the top of Lykavittos if he had to do it alone. This was his last day in Athens, and if that was how he wanted to spend it, I was going to support him. I went up after him, leaving the women and child, who killed the next couple of hours resting, talking, and window-shopping. 

Gilbert and I conquered the stairs, rode the trolley, and walked the rest of the way up the hill. At the observation area, we kicked back for a while and checked out the view, which was pretty spectacular. We tried the coin-op telescope, which didn't seem to work very well. Just when the timer ran out, we realized we'd been looking through it backwards. I hope that's not a metaphor for anything. There's a former Orthodox monastery atop the hill, converted into a chapel, and apparently no one cares if you wear shorts inside. So in we went. 

Not long ago the Greek Orthodox Church released a list of professions from which they'd consider candidates for the clergy, as well as a list of professions they found unsuitable. The latter list includes soldiers (which strikes me as terribly unfair in a country that requires men to serve in the military) and politicians. I find both of these restrictions ridiculous, given that (a) among his disciples, Jesus called a government worker and a radical politician; (b) St. George and St. Demetrios, two of the most popular saints in Greece, are usually depicted as soldiers in Orthodox iconography. Speaking of which, the chapel's walls and ceiling were covered with icons, and after our eyes adjusted to the dark, I spent about half an hour deciphering them for Gilbert, in which effort my newfound knowledge of the Greek alphabet proved quite useful. 

Two professions on the Church's "acceptable" list are beekeeping and candlemaking. You'll understand why if you ever set foot in an Orthodox church building: The beeswax votive candle is an important instrument of Church revenue. Unlike the stubby Roman Catholic votive, the Greek Orthodox model is slender and about 4 inches long, and you stick it in sand instead of leaving it on a rack. So I bought a candle, lit it, and said a prayer for Q. — under the influence, perhaps, of Gilbert, who had suffered under Q. more than any of us, yet whose attitude was one of charity and forgiveness. 

That night it was Gilbert's turn to fly out, so I accompanied him to the airport. We took an express Metro train from Syntagma Square. Round trip was something like 8 euros — more expensive than the bus, but lots more comfortable. Our only encounter with Metro fare inspectors was on this trip; I guess enforcement's more of a priority when the price is higher. 

The airport is the one place in Athens where it's possible to borrow a wheelchair, albeit not without a bit of wheedling. The first leg of Gilbert's flight home to Orange County was on LOT Polish Airlines; he'd change planes in Warsaw. He had an ungodly departure time, like 3:40 a.m., and I was intent on catching up on some of the sleep I'd missed, so I embraced him and left him in the airport. Of course, Gilbert, being an extrovert, struck up a lively conversation with a couple of other travelers before I was out of the terminal. I'm still in touch with Gilbert, who apparently does concert promotion in Riverside County and is talking about taking some bands back to Athens himself. I'd be more than happy to go with him; I'll even push the wheelchair if that's what he wants.