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As I’m sure the major­ity of you who read my blog know,  I am back in Van­cou­ver (well, that’s not exactly true, I’m dri­ving to Cal­i­for­nia to visit some fam­ily and friends). That doesn’t mean I don’t plan on fin­ish­ing all the blog posts I’ve promised to write,  because there is plenty of sto­ries to divulge. I want to keep writ­ing because these blog posts are as much for me as they are for you. They are my jour­nal entries; they are the key to remem­ber­ing what an amaz­ing adven­ture I’ve had in the last six months. As for what’s in it for you,  of course it’s for the sto­ries,  some­thing to enter­tain you while your pro­cras­ti­nat­ing at your job or from your stud­ies,  but it’s also to encour­age you. Through­out your life,  there will be plenty of oppor­tu­ni­ties and a roller­coaster ride of adven­tures,  but there is only going to be one time in your life when your young,  sin­gle,  and able to do a trip in the way that Hor­atiu and I have done it. Free from com­mit­ment,  free to do what­ever you want and to meet peo­ple you oth­er­wise wouldn’t by say… going with your wife to the Bahamas when your 32. You truly learn a lot by tak­ing it upon your­self to do a long trip away from home,  both about your­self and the world around you. I have a lot more to say about this,  but I’ll save that for a post of its own. For now,  I’ll enthrall you with my adven­tures in Greece.

Day of dri­ving around Greece on scooters

Greece was sup­posed to be what the major­ity of my Balkans trip was going to be. The ini­tial plan was to go straight from Sara­jevo to Greece,  but as we got to more places,  we wanted to see other things. For those of you who know me,  I pre­fer an adven­ture to include as much “wing­ing it” as pos­si­ble,  plan­ning your every move is sim­ply not as fun. That and the whole visa issues popped up,  but since I was in Italy,  there was no prob­lem to go to Greece and back. We decided we’d go to Corfu Island and fig­ure things out from there.

Ran­dom beach

We spent 5 nights in the highly esteemed “Pink Palace”,  a place that I’ve heard about from trav­el­ers from all over. What it is essen­tially sup­pose to be is a party hos­tel; some­thing that resem­bles the best party col­leges in Amer­ica,  and although the place was a quar­ter full then it usu­ally is dur­ing that time of year (I assume due to the reces­sion),  that’s exactly what it was. Although there are cer­tain prob­lems with that,  because while you meet your fair share of fan­tas­tic peo­ple from all over the world,  you also meet your fair share of douchebags,  and I use the phrase because there isn’t another one that I could find to describe these guys any more accu­rately,  and I’ll tell you exactly why so you can see if the bill fits my description.

The women work­ing at the coun­ters are brain­less,  and the guys are grease mon­keys. Firstly,  all of peo­ple who work there get about ten euro a week to work there,  the only perk is that they get free food and a place to sleep. And while that is all well and good,  after five nights,  I was def­i­nitely par­tied out and needed a dif­fer­ent type of adven­ture,  so I’m not exactly sure how they don’t get sick of the place,  but con­sid­er­ing they do it for such lit­tle money they must be sat­is­fied with it. These guys’ ideas of a “chase”,  in terms of get­ting women were wait­ing until the night and hit­ting on the ones with the least intel­lect and the most alco­hol. I enjoy the chase, prob­a­bly more then most,  but not like that; going after ones you’ve never met late into the night that are drunk isn’t the exactly the most excit­ing nor most chal­leng­ing thing in the world. In my opin­ion, doing that is gen­er­ally done in des­per­a­tion,  but I was shocked when I heard one of the guys had reached a num­ber of two hun­dred,  a num­ber that could “wow” you if you didn’t know how pathet­i­cally the num­ber was achieved. As an exam­ple to illus­trate how big of losers I (and many, many oth­ers) thought they were, here is a sce­nario. When we were on one of the famous booze cruizes,  some­one took a pic­ture with them,  only to stop and make them retake it where they were wear­ing a pair of shades,  and only again to retake it because it would be so much more “cool” if they were hold­ing beers in their hands. Any­ways,  I just thought I’d share some sto­ries about these guys,  and to note that there is still a ton of fun to be had at this des­ti­na­tion despite the staff.

The Pink Palace

As I said before,  this hos­tel was a place to come,  get drunk and party with trav­el­ers around the world. We did just that,  meet­ing peo­ple from Aus­tralia,  New Zealand,  Britain,  Argentina,  Fin­land,  Amer­ica,  and a ton from Canada,  both the nor­mal kind and the sep­a­ratist kind. Dur­ing the day there was plenty to do,  they had ATV tours,  snor­kel­ing,  lots of beaches (although the pri­vate Pink Palace beach was far from impres­sive),  good places to eat,  and of course,  the semi-daily pre­vi­ously men­tioned booze cruise. Hor­atiu and I ended up rent­ing scoot­ers and dri­ving around the island (this time I wasn’t stuck with a slow 50cc bike, this thing could really rip). We drove around to a cou­ple beaches and I wit­nessed Hor­atiu wip­ing out on his scooter,  which is always scary to watch when it occurs but an amus­ing mem­ory to reflect upon. We spent one of the days on one of the famous booze cruises where they take you to jump of ten meter high cliffs,  swim into bat caves,  and hang out on pri­vate beaches. And of course,  as the name sug­gests,  drunk all day from morn­ing until night. There were a lot of cool peo­ple we met on the cruise that we con­tin­ued to hang out with through­out the night,  and I won’t go into details but I’ll just say it was one crazy night. Over­all we had a great time at the Pink Palace – if your going to Greece to chill out and go to the best beaches,  I wouldn’t rec­om­mend this place,  come here only if you want to party,  because that’s what its here for. I had my fun,  but I was def­i­nitely par­tied out after the five nights there,  and ready for a new adventure.

We had no idea what island to go to,  and since the more famous islands where too far to go,  since we only had five days left,  we decided that a road trip around Greece would be more appro­pri­ate. I know that every­one who goes to Greece loves to go to the beach,  but I’ve never been a big beach type guy,  and that didn’t change com­ing into this coun­try. We attempted to get a car on Corfu,  but unfor­tu­nately you can’t take the car off the island,  so we took the first one we could to Igoumenitsa and hoped for the best. When we arrived,  we looked for a place that had an auto­matic car that wouldn’t be too expen­sive. When we arrived,  there was noth­ing com­pa­ra­ble to the prices we found online on Corfu or in Athens,  and so we didn’t know what to do. We actu­ally ended up find­ing a place that offered us a great deal,  but that fell through and we were stuck. What some peo­ple rec­om­mended us to do was to take a bus to the clos­est big town and see what it had in store for us. So,  we hopped on a bus to a city I had never heard of,  Ioan­nina. The city was ridicu­lously nice,  and it turned out that it was a uni­ver­sity city full of stu­dents. We ended up find­ing a place that had an auto­matic,  only to find out that the bat­tery was dead,  and they wouldn’t be able to replace it until the next day. We decided to wait,  and when they finally replaced it,  they asked us how old we were,  and the result was that we were a cou­ple months too young. You had to be twenty one to rent a car in Greece,  a small tid­bit of infor­ma­tion that would have been use­ful to know before we started this wild goose chase. We ended up tak­ing a bus to check out Athens.

Ioan­nina

A lot of peo­ple had bad things to say about Athens,  but to them,  I say they don’t know what the hell they are talk­ing about. But we only stayed there for two nights,  so I guess we wouldn’t be best to judge. We stayed at a small hos­tel in the side streets of Athens that was full of cool peo­ple and a lot of char­ac­ter.  While in Athens,  we hap­pen to notice Tiesto signs all over the place,  and when we finally took a closer look,  we found out that he was going to be there dur­ing the same time we were there. It was fate,  and we had to get tick­ets. On the first day,  we did the typ­i­cal tourist things and saw Acrop­o­lis,  the Tem­ple of Zeus,  and other big name attrac­tions of Greece. It reminded me of Rome in a lot of ways,  with a slight Istanbul-like feel. The things to see in the city are noth­ing to yawn at — they were absolutely incredible.

Dog chillin’ beside the Tem­ple of Zeus

As for Tiesto,  get­ting the tick­ets were an adven­ture of their own,  never mind the actual event. We set out to the box office,  only to be told they don’t sell them there,  they sell them at a dif­fer­ent box office. We hop on the metro and head over,  only to find out they don’t sell them there either,  they are sold in a store. When we get to the store,  we find out they are sold out,  but we are told we can buy them at the actual event,  although it’ll cost more. We had already wasted hours chas­ing down these tick­ets,  we weren’t about to stop now. A Greek girl showed us on a map where she THOUGHT the event was,  so we headed over to the sta­dium to check. Unfor­tu­nately,  every­one there spoke ter­ri­ble Eng­lish,  but we were informed we were at the wrong sta­dium. We got direc­tions to a dif­fer­ent one,  walked a cou­ple kilo­me­ters and found a sta­dium that seemed reli­tiveyl empty and life­less. At this point,  we are tired,  hun­gry,  and almost ready to give up,  since we just arrived at our last lead and were empty handed. We found a restau­rant at the sta­dium though,  and thought we’d ask. Turns out we met a cou­ple young peo­ple who claimed they knew where the event was,  but it was far away on a ran­dom tram that went south of Athens. We already passed the trams,  so we knew where they were,  and we spent almost six hours try­ing to find these tick­ets,  we thought we’d give it one last go. Plus,  we were respon­si­ble for get­ting a ticket for our new ran­dom friend from New Zealand as well. After a half an hour on the train,  we arrive at the stop they told us about,  and saw it wasn’t a sta­dium that Tiesto was play­ing at,  it was out­side an air­port hanger. We arrived at about 7pm and the gates were about to open,  so we bought three tick­ets and headed back since Tiesto was play­ing at 11pm and we had no inten­tion of stay­ing for the ran­dom Greek DJ.

Michael, Hor­atiu and I at Tiesto

When we arrived at the hos­tel,  the guy we got the ticket for was there wait­ing for us. He was pretty stoked to see us,  not only because we were going to Tiesto,  but also because we didn’t steal his money.  Before we headed off,  we had a free din­ner at the hos­tel cour­tesy of some guy who cooks for every­one on a weekly basis,  had a few beers,  and headed off. Michael was a cool guy,  turns out he was a com­puter engi­neer but got bored and started vol­un­teer­ing all over the world. He bought us some vodka all to share,  and told us not to thank him for it,  but to thank the tsunami dona­tions from the dis­as­ter in Indone­sia. Turns out peo­ple were far too gen­er­ous after see­ing the cri­sis,  and there was plenty of money to spare for the vol­un­teers. I felt kind of guilty drink­ing it,  but there was so much to drink that it was soon for­got­ten. From all the parts I can remem­ber from Tiesto,  it was amaz­ing. He was great,  it was awe­some par­ty­ing with Greeks,  and Michael was def­i­nitely a blast to hang out with.

Pic­ture taken and they gave us a mem­ory stick -  I pretty much don’t remem­ber this at all

Greece was a great place to go. I thought I was going to relax on a beach,  but that idea died a lot faster then I expected. I’m dis­ap­pointed I didn’t get to go to the other great islands,  but they’ll be plenty of time for that in the future. Corfu was a blast,  and Athens was a place I def­i­nitely won’t for­get. After this,  we headed back to Italy where we stayed with my fam­ily. Shortly after Hor­atiu departed for Roma­nia,  and I con­tin­ued to stay with my fam­ily and then I decided to back­pack through a few more cities in Italy.

Tiesto spin­ning in Athens