From China to Athens
I left for China a little over six months ago. It was everything I could have imagined travelling to a completely foreign place could be. It was like being a kid again, everything was new and different. I couldn’t understand anything or anyone, and I had to make brand new connections and learn how everything worked. I arrived in Beijing, which had spared no expense in making sure the tourist vision of the city was as awe inspiring as possible(for the olympics two years prior) Took the airport train/sub/tram(it shifted through being all three) to meet my friend at the station, and went on a high impact tourist tour, including the temple of heaven, the forbidden city, and the great wall, during which I utterly failed to man my way up the hour long 45 degree slope unofficial trail to an unrestored section(she made it just fine, but paid a thousandfold for it on the way down and days later). We took trains down to Xi’An, the first capital of the empire, where we stayed longer than we expected and had to hightail it through to Chongqing and then down to Hong Kong to make our flight out to Turkey to meet up with her family. It was fantastic, and my friend made sure not a moment was wasted in making sure we saw everything we could in our two weeks there.
Afterward I went to Turkey with her to meet up with her family, who I was also friends with. An otherwise fantastically financially foolish move, but worth it to spend the time with them. Again we went on high impact tourism, seeing everything there was to see in Istanbul, before they had to leave or move on.
And then I was left in Turkey, to fulfill my plan of living on my own in fantastic new locales with no particular plan to speak of. I threw myself into my planlessness with vigor. Found a hostel over a turkish bath for 10$ a day(300$ a month, how I envision every choice I make in this regard. About half the cost of rent in phoenix.), and set about exploring the area. For a good 3-4 days I spent about 6 hours walking around seeing what there was to see in that maze of streets, the different kinds of shops, how they were laid out, what could be found and where. It was a fantastically dense area near Taksim square but a few blocks off the main lanes so everything was much cheaper and there was far less English to be found.
I never ventured much further than this though, out of an incessant need to spend as little as I could, to make this experience last as long as possible. But after about 2-3 weeks I had to move on, and so I made a plan to take a ferry through to Greece, across the Aegean sea. After a few hours of research, I decided that the city that I most wanted to make as a stop on my journey was Kusadasi, a beach resort town with several historical sites within reasonable travelling distance. To get there, I was going to take a 2 hour ferry, a 5 hour train, and a 4 hour bus, and I was going to stay the night in Izmir. The whole trip was supposed to cost about 50$, though it wound up costing over 100, mainly because I couldn’t/didn’t want to get myself up at 5am.
Having spent the equivalent of two weeks rent getting there, I decided I was going to relax and take it easy for awhile, living as cheaply as possible again. This decision was made easier by the hostels free wifi and the off-season, giving me a private room for the cost of a dorm, and the cheap, friendly, and by american standards positively healthy places to eat nearby.
I wound up staying 2 months.
This wouldn’t have been so bad in itself, but in the entire time I was there I didn’t do much more than I’d done in my 2 weeks in Istanbul after my friends left. In fact, I actually did less. Aside from exploring and eating and talking to the shop owners, I didn’t do much more than sit in my room and play on the computer. I did discover Minecraft, but I can’t really blame it for my laziness. A large part of it was that the ferry I had planned to take had it’s last run a week after I arrived, and I didn’t realize this until afterward. Right around the time I planned to go, actually. But that was no excuse either. I can’t really say what kept me there, except that it’s just a very comforting thing for me to escape from the world, and it provided me that.
Finally I got sick of myself and realized that I could get a plane ticket to Athens the next week(on thanksgiving day no less), for about 50$. Actually I could have done that any thursday, I’d just never looked hard enough. The airport was in Izmir, which I knew full well how to get to, I just needed to head back the way I came. But Kusadasi was comfortable, and I stayed until the last moment.
As it turned out, there was a bus strike going to the airport on the day I planned to leave, so I had to take a taxi(for 75$) to catch my 50$ flight. Again the travelling part of travelling incurs my ire, but I had to get out. I had plans for becoming social, actively engaged, in touch with the city, or at least to enjoy my time and see something new. Anything new.
And so I went to Athens.
