Melting in Mykonos

The day we left Romania (for me, for the last time) was pretty slow. We ate at the Beer Factory, which was very cool. It was the first building in Timisoara, way back in 1713. Of course, i'm pretty sure the building has gone though a few changes since then, but it's still cool. We drank beer make only, and i experienced the last true Romanian meal in Romania in my life. We made it to the trainstation with time to spare, and i experienced my first sleeper train without incident. Of course it was hot, but i did manage to sleep a bit.

In Bucharest, the largest city and capital of Romania, we basically walked around a lot. We walked around The Parliment Building, the second largest building in the entire world. The Comunist leaders thought it would be a good idea to show how great a building they could build, so they invested up to 35% of Romania's entire GDP in the 1980s to construct it. Of course, it was a terrible mistake, only a third of the rooms are even used, but it dose look damn impressive. From there we walked back to the Peace Corps building where he stashed our bags (i had to wait outside because i'm not in the Peace Corps) and walked, and walked, and walked in search of Hard Rock Cafe, Bucharest. What he thought would be a 45 minute walk turned out to last for hours. Never in my life have i worked so hard, or burned more calories (or sweat more liters) in pursuit of a restaurant, but i guess it was worth it. It wasn't a great HRC, but it was a good one. They still charged for water and refills, which totally sucked (the awesome thing about HRC London was that after 3 weeks of paying for water and crap in Europe, i enjoyed an American restaurant experience), but we still had fun. After so much more walking, and the sweatest bus ride in history, we made it to the airport with plenty of time. As we got on the plane (less than a two our flight to Athens), i joked about our meal. Well, no joke. We actually got a small dinner on a super short flight. And the plane was nice and cool, too. I love that airline. We found our hostel in Athens without too much trouble. On the way, we met guy named Jim who was looking for our same hostel. The differenct was that he knew where it was, and we had a English map and all the signes were in Greek. We got lucky. The hostel was amoung the most interesting i've ever seen. It was a real party place, with a bar in the basement. It had an air conditioner, but i couldn't figure out how to turn it on. I asked, and the guy said that it was 1E for each person in the room, or 8E. Cameron was about to forget it, which i thought was totally insain. Sure, we were only going to be there for 6 hours, but i wasn't about to have my 6 hours be in hell when 8E could change it. As it turned out, not only did i not get stiffed by our roommates, i actually made money on the deal. Once again, i was the only one willing or able to take charge, everyone was grateful that i had. While Cameron was down at the bar (i was down there just for my complimentary "welcome shot"), everyone else came back and i felt like i was at a slumber party. We were all talking and excited for what was to come and making jokes and stuff. I was resting in my top bunk with my hat on my face because the light was still on, but every once in a while i would chime in with something funny, and they would laugh. It was actually pretty fun.

Less than six hours later we were up and out of the place. We waited for a few of our new friends, then all headed to the subway to get to the docks. The boats that farried us to Mykonos were huge. I think it was my favorite part of my journy so far. Nice and cool in the inside, and windy and fun on the top deck. It took about 6 hours to get here. Our hostel is unlike any i've ever seen. We all arrived together, had a mass check in, then shown where our rooms are. It's a tiny box with two beds. That's it. It's about 95 degrees in side, with hardly any ventillation at all. Sure, i'm super exhusted, but i'm not sure hot i'm going to do tonight. Once we changed, we headed to the beach. Cameron asked me if this was "one of those nude beaches" he'd read about. I didn't know, everything looked pretty normal at first. Oh, but wait. That fat guy lacks trunks. And it got worse from there. All together, out of the 500 or so beach bums, 10% or so lacked some sort of bathing suit part. After some guy came by looking to extort 8E for each of us just for sitting there, we left, caught a bus to downtown, and that's where i am now. It's an amazing looking city, but that's all i can say for now. We've got to try and book our next hostel from here. Ciao.