The most useless week of my trip

This is Teresa's roommate explaining the difference she sees between British English and American English. She mimics what both sound like to her and it's HILARIOUS. 

Murcia is full of fountains and pretty things. 

What's this guy doing? He was just standing there, looking down, with his cowboy hat on... 

Gofres are cheap and are thus abundant both inside and outside my body.

I'm usually a really healthy eater so all this sugar is starting to give me love handles. I promise, I'll stop when I leave Spain! I'm sorry, body! Or maybe I could just not stop and try to become the first documented case of mega-diabetes? 

Halloween isn't as popular here as it is in the states, unless you count Halloween parties for college students. So to make up for it, we watched Hocus Pocus (Retorno de las brujas in Spanish) and instead of candy (which you can't just buy in bags here like you can in the states) I bought a bunch of doughnuts and pastries for us. 

The. We went out with some of Teresa's friends and I got to hear people speaking Spanish with German, Romanian, and French accents. German accents are hilarious. 

20cl bottles of beer are only €0,50 so you just get a lot of them for everyone and count them up at the end and pay. Mine was easy because I only did three (I got to make fun of myself for being quite tipsy after only half a liter of beer). 

Gyros here are more commonly in the form of kebabs, which are either a meat stick or wrapped in a tortilla and they're better than anything you'll have in Kirksville. And cheap! 

Unfortunately my time has ended in Murcia, and now I'm on my way to Sevilla. At this point I have a feeling my adventures will pick back up enough to be marginally interesting, so I'll put a lot more effort into the next post. I'm staying one night in Sevilla before moving on to Las Canarias and still waiting for a reply from my potential host in Fuerteventura and another in Tenerife. Maybe I'll end up camping in one of the caves on the island. Who knows?! You know what time it is? 

ADVENTURE TIME 

It's a small world, after all

Warning: this post is the most disorganized post of all time. My lack of digital camera and structure in my trip has become apparent. It will be different on the next post. You have been warned! 

Basically, the same way we got to Greece we repeated on the way back. I took that night train from Athens to Thessaloniki and slept perhaps half an hour our of the six hour ride. For whatever reason the train stopped every hour or so in addition to stopping at each station so people could stretch their legs or something. I couldn't really figure it out, and I didn't feel like looking up more Greek words to ask what was going on. I applogized to the guy sitting next to me for smelling like a homeless person on account of my shorts and jacket not having been washed for nearly three weeks. I just now realized that I told him that in Spanish and he probably had no clue what I was talking about... I was really, really tired. Oy.

Right before we left, I got this creeper shot of a guy who looks EXACTLY like my dad. 

We made it to Thessaloniki right before sunrise. I was exausted, so I stayed in that same cafe from before in the train station:

I literally stayed there all morning, hogging the only available wall plug for four hours. At that point I'd had enough of sitting so I looked up "cheap" clothing stores in the hopes that I could buy a cheap pair of sweats and hide my shorts from existence until they'd been washed and didn't smell like everything that gives you nightmares, but after looking for an hour around town and finding nothing but closed shops and angry Asian women telling me they couldn't understand my Greek I gave up and took a bus to the airport to meet Teresa. There is apparently no such thing as a second-hand clothing shop in Thessaloniki, and you also have to realize that because of the economic collapse, nearly one in three shops in Thessaloniki had been closed. Yikes. 

There was a Carrefour (French supermarket) in the Thessaloniki airport and we bought an extravagant meal of tomato sauce, crackers, muffins, and some other crap. We looked absolutely ridiculous. There were no spoons, so we used straws, niece carrying that around the airport got us the best looks I've ever seen. I was tempted to actually attempt drinking tomato sauce through the straws... 

"MUFFIN"

I tried to sleep during the flight but even my exhaustion wasn't enough to lull me into sleep on the airplane. Teresa and I discussed getting a cheap hostel in Alicante when we landed, but there weren't any cheap ways of doing so since all the hostels were in the center of the city nearly an hour away by bus, so we gave in and slept at the airport, using our backpacks as pillows. We had even tried hitchhiking within the airport, but no one would take us!

 I don't think I've ever slept so deeply!

Dawn finally came and we took the morning bus to Murcia. I really, really missed Spain even though I'd only been gone for ten days. I was SO ready to be back in a country where I could actually communicate. 

Once home, we zonked. I was out like a light literally all day. And all night. And then again the next day. I was starting to get worried I was sick, but it's three days later now and I'm feeling great. The other day, Teresa and I went on a wild goose chase looking for a store that could fix my camera, and after reaching the third camera repair shop that was supposedly licensed for Sony products, they told me I would have to go to Madrid to get it fixed. Seriously?! UGH. I sucked it up and ordered a new camera which should be here Monday... Three weeks without a camera seemed like a waste and I figure when I get back to the states I can just sell the newer one and get the older one repaired since it should still be under warranty.

Unfortunately as a result of my traveling slowing down, I can feel myself becoming more complacent not to do anything and eat gofres all day. I think I've had like six or seven gofres now since being back, so yesterday I had to make a rule for myself not to eat more than one every two days... Not only are they fried, they have little sugar clusters embedded inside. AND they're covered in chocolate. 

I can't. I just can't. 

Would you like a "MAXI" sized smoothie? I know I do. 

I also tend to get homesick and miss my friends and boyfriend. I tried to find other things to focus on and ended up starting applications for grad school (which are uber expensive) and giving myself the absolute worst haircut ever (though partially the buzzer's fault because the guard fell off while I was cutting my hair...)

We'll try this for a while I guess...

We hit up the mall the other day to find cheap sweats (and we found them, thank the powers that be) so I can spend all my free time lounging like a bum. But the fun part of our visit to the mall was that I got more gofres (two in one visit!) and we ate delicious Spanish tapas for cheap.

Four sandwiches, potato chips, bacon cheese fries, and a giant beer for €6. 

Without my epic 18x optical zoom camera I can't take creeper shots of people from far away, I asked this guy if I could take a picture with him for my blog, and he said yes. Cutest guy ever, or cutest guy ever? 

After lunch was more gofres. 

"My gofre is all gone?" :( 

Then Teresa and I went hiking the next day and I was sad because of my stupid camera but I found ten euro on the ground! How wonderful! 

And we explored an abandoned house:

 

Later we went to a research conference where I met a PhD student in linguistics from Spain talking about gender inequality in Spanish dictionaries (which is a huge problem, since the Spanish dictionary actually dictates how words should and can be used on the radio and in television...)

Things I like to read about while on vacation in Spain. 

Suhila (Teresa's roommate, the one that had actual research to present) likes to sing La Vie en Rose and insists I sing it with her. 

Murcia is pretty, and I look like an elf who's having a bad hair day. 

Since I still don't have a camera I've been using my phone sparingly whenever I see funny things, of which there is an abundance in Murcia:

Spanish Jesus =\= American Jesus 

The cathedral by night. To tell the truth, the churches are usually the most interesting buildings in each city, and usually there are many of them like this. 

None of the cars are actually moving in this picture. They're all just honking at each other. 

This used to be a gay bar (now it's just closed). Background information: "Maricón" is the Spanish word for fag.

All over the city you'll see buildings with signs that say "SE ALQUILA / SE VENDE" (for rent/for sale), but the listings for those businesses aren't updated, so if you're looking for karaoke late at night and you finally find it, it might be OUT OF BUSINESS. UGH. 

Nooooooooo! I'm having karaoke withdrawal! 

And suddenly in the last two days I've met a bunch of people just walking around town. I met a couchsurfer for dinner a couple days ago and I tried morcilla (known in Great Britain and Ireland as black pudding) which is congealed pig's blood (GROSS) and looks like sausage: 

The next day I was walking around to burn off the gofres I'd eaten, went into an icecream shop (just to look!!! I swear!) and ended up talking to a couple from Madrid (Antonio and Marlena I think were their names... I'm still bad with names), who invited me to sit with them. Turns out they were singers in a play that was going on in Murcia that night, and they shared my love of karaoke, so they invited me to stay with them when I come to Madrid and show me he karaoke scene! Sweet. 

Antonio in his costume.

One more random thing: wine here is unbelievably cheap. There are some boxes of wine you can get too for less than a euro! 

Mmm, tastes like gas, but with grapes! 

Okay, now Friday night the STRANGEST thing happened. After giving up on finding karaoke I went to go find a bar to dance in (still haven't done any partying in Europe, how depressing) and ended up meeting the program coordinator for exchange students in Murcia, Roberto de Gea, and he happens to know a bunch of people from Truman and has been to Kirksville on several occasions. It's such a small world! 

I got his picture from his twitter account. Cyberstalking! 

Okay, more later. 

How to lose a guy in six days

We booked our tickets for Paros but planned on taking the ferry all the way to Piraeus, the port in Athens. As explained before, no one checks your tickets once you're on board, so booking a ticket for the next closest island and then just staying on is the most economical thing you can do. Plus, if they decided for whatever reason to check tickets (which is impossible anyway on a barge with a thousand people), we figured we could just say, "But we said Piraeus, not Paros! Our Greek is so bad!" We made it on the barge with only minutes to spare, security hurrying us along and Teresa lagging behind in her flats, which had come to irreversibly smell like rotting death traps, but were at least functional (her other shoes had broken). And I leave a trail of gross air everywhere I go because my shorts and jacket haven't been washed in two or three weeks. We make such a good pair.

Our reaction to our own stink.

Then, the unthinkable happened. Back in Santorini, we ran into Jeff the morning after we basically lied to get him off our trail and keep him from following us to the food store. Then we ran into him again before leaving. Now, we were on a boat full of hundreds of people, sitting on the middle deck on the outside, and there was Jeff. Walking towards us. I acted like I hadn't seen him, but he stopped by our table. 

We had the shortest conversation of my life. He headed up the stairs and Teresa and I glanced significantly at each other and burst out laughing. A bit later... We went to get food at the boat restaurant. Once again, there was Jeff. What do we have to do to get rid of this guy?! Another conversation consisting of Teresa and I talking and not looking at Jeff while still being mildly polite and a few minutes, he was gone. 

Right before disembarking (yes that's a word) WE SAW HIM AGAIN. He wanted to know where we were going and wanted to know if we were heading to the city center. Actually, we were headed directly to the center. But we told Jeff we were going directly to the train station and leaving Athens. And so we said goodbye to Jeff for the last time. Or so we thought. 

Later that evening, we were on the metro again. I couldn't figure out if we were on the right side headed the right direction, so I started walking really quickly towards a metro map, and then I heard Teresa's voice calling my name. "Aaahhhhh! Brandon!" I turned around and she grabbed me, urgently whispering "It's Jeff! IT'S JEFF. I HATE JEFF." Cackling at the situation and our own reactions, we ran the other direction and tried to figure out how on earth it was even possible for us to have run into a single person so many times over the course of six days. We hid inside the metro behind a bunch of other people, making sure to check for Jeff before we got off. He was no more. 

The rest I'll try to keep short. Teresa and I got to town too late for her to catch her night train to Meteora, so she booked a room at the same hostel I had, Dioskouros, and when we checked I there was a mixup. We got a private room for €10 each and I got to keep it for two and a half days. Woot! We got towels me free breakfast and our own bed and I had the best sleep I've ever had. I had no plans for the next day except sleep and recovering from the freaking ridiculous amount if mountain climbing that had destroyed my body earlier that day. 

The next day I literally did nothing but sleep. I slept until 9am, got breakfast, slept until 4, watched tv on my ipad until 7, got dinner, went back to bed and stayed there until Monday morning. Teresa left for Meteora on Sunday night, so I at least walked her to the metro. I planned on going out, but I was just too tired and missed home so I slept instead. 

Monday morning I finally decided to do something I hadn't done yet in Athens, so I checked out the "First Cemetery of Athens," which was started in the nineteenth century and houses the graves of some of the most important or wealthy Greeks from the past couple centuries. There is an entire section for the Protestants, which is entirely too boring for my taste. The only thing you see there is white cross after white cross after white cross... Boring! There were some cool christian-themed graves but for the most part I just like looking at statues of various things. My favorite type of sculpture so far is the mythological beings rather than the people. Statues of actual people are just weird. 

BORING.

Also, this morning when I woke up, my camera wouldn't open. The lens is stuck. I took it to a shop and while it was being fixed I took these photos with my phone. Unfortunately, camera is still broken. I'll have to get it repaired when I get back to Spain. Ugh. 

The rest of the day I spent back at the hostel downloading a bunch of tv to watch on my six-hour night train to Thessaloniki. I had some pleasant conversation with some people for all over the place staying in the hostel. As horrible as it sounds, it's actually a really easy way to make friends if you tell people all about how your family disowned you for being gay. It's kind of like a war story! And it gets other people to open up about things they probably wouldn't have so quickly otherwise. When ya travel, dig deep!

So now I'm sitting in a cafe inside the train station because it's freaking cold outside and I'm supposed to meet Teresa at the airport in five hours. I can't wait. I literally cannot wait until I'm back in Spain, where it's warm and there is a laundry machine and people who speak a language I can speak. Omg