Tall Tales of Mount Olympus

A fellow traveler friend of mine, Heidi, and I decided to go on an international adventure-- what could we get for a discount flight, cheap, and easily travel around? Greece! We had traveled throughout Athens, the Cycladic Islands including Naxos, Mykonos, and Santorini. The end of our Grecian trip concluded in Thessaloniki, Greece, northern Greece. This is our story: 

We land at the airport, take a bus to some square, and grab a cab from there. This guy is whipping around tiny Grecian cobblestone streets into what most American's would consider sidewalks. He points us to a house that looks like a fortune teller lives there, we walk into the gate, and there stands a woman in her sixties. who I don't think has worn a bra since the sixties, and never quite grasped the art of underarm shaving or eyebrow maintenance (she obviously also never got a manicure because those ladies take any opportunity to hit you up for a brow re-shaping, even when they're fine). She shuffles over in a PJ dress and slippers, ushering us into this house/hostel that looked like something a Tim Burton character lived in.

Once inside, she tells us that her son owns the business, although it is attached to their house (always a lovely bonus when staying at a hostel), and he currently is out of town and double-booked the rooms (another lovely bonus), which meant that now the room we were going to have with just us now had an extra roommate (bonus #3). We walk into the room, right off the main entrance, and am immediately greeted by a wet, hot room that smells like a grandma's attic filled with a dozen cats that have peed in her house for years.

Hostel lady: "This is your roommate, Minnie (not her real name)"

Me and Heidi: "Hi"

Minnie: nothing

This rotund woman, also in her 60's, was sitting on the edge of the pull out couch, hair straight up and looked like she just woke up from a roofie coma. She's completely unresponsive so I'm slightly worried that she's dead and just sitting up like Uncle Bernie's weekend but obviously not concerned enough because I just continued to drop my luggage off one by one. We're escorted around the rest of the room (ie., stood in one place while the fortune teller hostel owner pointed at things) a kitchenette, a bunk bed, and a bathroom that you basically had to manually pump for warm water.

We unpack our clothes, put what little food we have in the kitchenette, and Heidi and I decide to go out for dinner. Since we're in a room with someone who I'm not 100% sure is alive, I'd like to get out of here. We explore the town for a bit, eat too much gelato, and find the most unfortunate bit about this particular part of Greece: the humidity. Pants are always a bad idea and walking up hill in pants should be avoided under any circumstance. We finally make it home after trying to find our way uphill at night in a city that has a ratio of 10 feral cats to 1 human, and before we even got to the room, I could smell the cigarette smoke. Lo and behold, there's Minnie, sitting half in in our room, half outside with the door open smoking. Great, because the grandma attic and cat piss combo stank wasn't quite enough.

As I scuttled around, grabbing my shower stuff, I notice that the dried fruit I put on the kitchenette table was gone. I stare at the blank spot for a while, thinking, maybe if I stare longer it'll just appear. So this lady couldn't say a word to us but she could eat our food? Part of me is glad she's not dead, so I turn around to tell Heidi the social faux-pas/hostel etiquette breach this woman has just committed when a glimmer on the pull-out bed caught my eye. A completely bejeweled captains hat sat cap down, and like an oyster holds pearl, this hat held a set of a teeth. That's right, everyone. It appears that Minnie not only wears dentures, but takes them out when she smokes, and puts them inside of a gemstone-covered hat. That's high class.

I cannot believe that a sixty year old woman is couch surfing in Europe and keeping her teeth out in hats. Ugh, whatever, it's time for bed and this denim isn't getting any less un-clinged to my damp ass. I get ready for bed and climb to the top of the bunk, and then became painfully aware of the fact there was no air conditioning. God- it's 90 degrees here and the Newport smokes and damp Grandma attic aroma is starting to conjure a gag reflex in me I never knew I had. Then came the next plague; for anyone who knows anything about anything, mosquitos thrive in wetness, that's where those bastards unforgivably lay their bastard eggs. I could feel them, all over me. While damn Minnie was smoking with the door wide open, she let every Grecian mosquito into our room. Just to review, it's a hot ass tropical mess in this place, it smells like I'm sleeping in litter box, Minnie not only committed one offense by eating my candy but she's also left her teeth out for show and tell in the place we're sleeping, and now mosquitoes are feasting on me. It's too hot to wear a blanket but sweet baby ray's I'd like some blood left when I wake up.

I did the thing only every other normal person would have done and that's cover my nose and mouth with one of the hard, but complementary hostel sheets. This blanket smells about as great as the room and is about as comfortable as a Motel 8 towel. Are Greek babies swaddled in this? Because, no thanks. And just as I start to drift off, thinking about babies sleeping in stinking blankets sans fabric softener, I heard a guttural grunt from our friend Minnie. And then another and then it became so even I realized she was snoring. Awwwwwwwwww hell no you don't.

Her smoker's cough's wet and full of phlegm, and her breathing rattled as if the weight of her body was crushing her. In between, what sounds like her gasping for her last breath of air, she rolled around, tossing and turning, the bed begging to be set free. I. heard. every. damn. sound. I can't sleep, I'm not even tired anymore so I get up and go outside, the Pollock in me wonders if I can get this night for free.

I sit outside and this tiny little Greek cat prances right over, as if she hears Minnie's offenses and knew I was coming, sits on my lap and if you've read my last post, you know that I was a cat in another life so naturally we hit it off. It was a complete love fest, she was crawling over my lap and I was squeezing her tiny kitten face- she saved me from all of Minnie wrath and just as we were in the middle of a full body scratch, here comes a drunk Frenchie stumbling in at 3am.

Drunk French Guy: "hey… do you have any money? I didn't bring enough money to pay the cab?"

Me: "No, I don't have my wallet."
DFG: "Oh man, the cab driver's gonna be really upset. Could you go get your wallet?"

Me: "I have a cat in my lap, I'm not going anywhere. Plus my roommates are sleeping (Or at least one of them is) so I can't wake them up."

DFG loses his mind, walks inside, and begins banging on all of the doors for money.

The hostel lady wakes up chastises him for being so loud and also for taking a cab when he knew he couldn't pay for it, and then gave him some cash. DFG is insanely grateful and pays off the cabbie who's been waiting outside for about 10 minutes.

DFG: "oh man, sorry about that, I just really needed money. Can I have this water?" Reaches for my water and takes a drink

Me: nothing

HL: "Go inside! It's too late for you to be so loud!

I blindly found my way back to the stink cave, mostly by smell and bed creaking sounds, and crawled back into the bunk bed. Good lord what a night. I've been a one woman dinner to 2,000 mosquitos, some random French dude tried to hit me up for money then drank my water, and I'm sleeping in a smoke jungle. My lids are heavy and I find myself sleepily excited that the night's disasters have left me finally tired. Just as my sense of smell readjusts and I swat away the final mosquito, I hear an air biscuit escaping from Minnie… and then another… and then before I know it, she's rolling all over and exploding like a can of crescent rolls. I will commit murder tonight. I will kill this woman in her farting, snoring sleep and I will go to Greek jail, and tell everyone this story, and no one will hate me because they will have wished they could have killed her in her sleep!

In the midst of my plot to murder Minnie, she escaped from the pull out couch. I saw the bathroom light flicker on, I heard a strain, a grunt, and then hard poops hit the toilet water. I AM BEING TESTED! What human has to endure this?

In the morning, I come to find out that neither of us slept, I had 26 mosquito bites (including on my ear and eyes), Minnie kept throwing the cats the off her lap (which elicited in me a similar reaction that the giant bug from Men in Black had when Will Smith kept stomping on cockroaches), she only smokes with her bottom teeth and in, and then she asked if she could accompany us to Mount Olympus. No. No you may not.

We went to Mt. Olympus, conquered Mt. Olympus, and lived to tell about it. Greece was lovely, the people are lovely, and the sunsets are lovely. The fellow tourists? Not always….