Getaway to Greece: Part II

I, Model Behavior, have gone from a compulsive to-do list making Manhattan maniac to an essentially worthless Mediterranean housewife in a matter of days. And I’m loving it. I quote myself as ‘worthless’ because I do absolutely nothing domestic. I haven’t cleaned one dinner dish or put together any semblance of a meal. Instead, I lounge, swim, read, contemplate exercising, and eat the plentiful leftovers from my arrival feast. Golden and I drink profusely at night, emerge from bed around noon, then sip frappes and consume Greek breakfast at outdoor lounges in Kithisia before swimming at home or heading to the beach. I’m a huge fan of the Greek yogurt with honey and nuts, the sweet brioches, and cheese pie. For the first time in months, I actually have time to eat. In New York, I’m one of those pseudo-anorexic anally busy chicks, who only gets a real meal if someone manages to get me into a restaurant and buckled into a chair. My diet tends to consist of yogurt, cereal, Milano cookies, and spoonfuls of peanut butter. Since Golden’s never seen me substantially consume food in the USA, he’s blown away by my new found appetite, and suspects my body’s been taken over by a squad of tzatziki loving aliens. He’s absurdly full at the end of our five-course Greek meals, while I’m ready for ice cream.

Our latest and most strenuous activity to date was a return to the lovely beach thirty minutes away. After swimming and sunning, Golden took me to a fish taverna in a tiny coastal town near where his grandmother has a summer home. We claimed an outdoor table in the empty seating area and proceeded into the kitchen where he and the waiter together picked our fish selection out of metal drawers filled with the catch of the day packed in ice. Golden held and examined our fish carefully before handing them to a worn woman in an apron to grill and fry. We eat feta cheese with our French fries. We snarf down large salads of juicy tomatoes, cucumbers and onion. My breath has never been more disgusting and I couldn’t be happier.

The majority of my time here I’ve felt like an infant. I can’t properly communicate with anyone, and Golden facilitates all our transactions with the outside world speaking Greek at a mile a minute. I paid for one of our bottled waters the other day all on my own performing sign language with the cashier. I felt like a big girl for the first time since I left Milan. It’s helplessly pathetic and I love it.

It’s only in a state of utter relaxation such as this when one can begin to acknowledge at what an absurdly fast pace we zoom through life in New York. I was such a gerbil on a spinning wheel that I had no idea how superhumanly fast I was going. Here, after waking up from my mid-afternoon nap, approaching my laptop to check my email just seems too stressful. I opt for some quiet reading by the open window where I enjoy the greenery and slew of country kittens that like to roam the yard and sneak into the house when Golden and I leave the terrace’s sliding doors open. I, the girl who used to check my four different email accounts every ten minutes during the working day, now cannot be bothered to connect to the internet. I fear receiving an email that might upset my daily schedule of nothingness by reminding me of something productive I should be doing. I, the text message queen, have had my cell phone off for over four days. I, the girl who’s averaged four and half hours of sleep a night this summer, now takes approximately three naps a day.

Safari came to visit and stay with us Saturday night. We went out to a local Athenian bar where the distinctly Greek music with mandolins is occasionally mixed with U2 and Nelly Furtado. I’ve met a lot of ship-owners children (who are all very down to earth for being worth $130 million each) as well as friends of Golden’s I apparently know from Pink in New York (I have zero recollection.) My new beverage of choice is peach daiquiris – and they put in a lotta rum over here. It’s kind of amazing when buzzed, sitting at an outdoor table, music swelling the background, you look to your left and see the Acropolis glowing on a mountainous rock complex above you.

Now readers don’t worry. This absurdly boring domestic bliss won’t last forever. Tomorrow we leave for Mykonos, where Golden and I both fear we’ll get so drunk that we’ll break up and lose each other in the swarms of absurdly attractive people. At least we realize this is a possibility. If we survive the party island, it’s off to Santorini for some good fish and romantic relaxation. After three more days in Athens we go our separate ways for a bit. Golden joins a guy friend of his in Riga (or someplace equally absurd) and I head to Italy. The million dollar question is: Where in Italy … ? I don’t really feel like ending up on some ex-boyfriend’s doorstep, which eliminates a lot of my vacation options. I’m thinking of publishing a humorous pro and con list of my Italian options sometime this week.

Stay tuned for an official Mykonos report. Some people say it’s classy, others deem it trashy. Some people have told me there’s tons of gay men making out in the street and Italian guidos grabbing at anything with breasts. Others say it’s twenty times classier than Ibiza with chic, high quality (whatever that means) people. Paris Hilton apparently hated it; my friend Safari was a big fan. No matter what, the sunsets are guaranteed to be amazing. I can’t wait to check it out for myself. Tomorrow!

Getaway to Greece

Having heard enough horror stories about unbearable traffic delays and missed flights, I forwent a taxi and instead hopped the subway to JFK. I was at AlItalia’s terminal in less than an hour, standing in line, making all the necessary ‘I’m leaving for a month’ goodbye phone calls to parents and close friends. I predicted we’d leave an hour late (Has anyone ever left on time from JFK?) and sure enough we sat at the gate for 45 minutes, then on the runway for another 40.

“Good evening everyone this is Captain undecipherable undecipherable and it is my pleasure to be flying you today to … (long pause as he looks through a clip board to see where we’re going) … Milan.”

That’s the last we heard from our dear captain as we proceeded to waste nearly two hours on the ground. See, other airlines constantly update you on what’s going on: “We should be heading out here in about twenty minutes, sorry for the delay,” or blame someone else: “We’re about fifth priority right now to air traffic control, thanks for your patience.” But no. At AlItalia you get nothing. No explanation. No blame pinning. Why? Because they’re all having too much fun playing cards and smoking Marlboro’s in the cockpit to inform the plane-full of passengers that we’ll be leaving with an hour and thirty minute delay. Note also that our AlItalia flight was operated in conjunction with Delta and AreoMexico. AreoMexico helped get me to Milan? I guess bankruptcy forces absurd collaborations to occur.

Thanks to the very large Ambien I consumed right before my plane meal of steak which looked exactly like canned dog-food, the rest of the flight passed very quickly. I woke about an hour before we landed and then wandered Milan’s Malpensa airport, memories buzzing around me like a swarm of wasps. I sought refuge in the Bulgari store and fell in love with what I thought was a simple pendant on a gold chain, only to be informed that the necklace would cause me around $1,500. Bummer. Only Milan’s Malpensa airport has the power to make even the most fashion conscious travelers feel un-chic. Every designer in the world has a store spanning the airports long hallway hub. Why bother driving forty minutes into the city to stroll Via Spiga when you can go bankrupt tax-free right in the air-conditioned comfort of Malpensa? Thankfully, I boarded my flight to Greece without any financially damaging purchases and began to get really excited to my best friend and Greek lover, Golden.

Now, I’m sure some of my more consistent readers are shaking their heads and muttering, “Greek lover? How have we not heard about this before?” Well, the answer is that Golden is my best-kept secret, and has been for a year and a half. Why? Because I actually have serious feelings for this guy. Feelings so deep rooted that even a reckless partier like me doesn’t want to write about him on the internet for entertainment purposes, and I want to write about everyone and everything (including myself!) for entrainment purposes. So we know this guy has to be pretty special. Let’s not go as far to call him Model Behavior’s boyfriend or anything like that, but let’s say that there’s a mutual long-term interest. Golden and I recently had a semi-serious conversation in which I addressed the fact that I felt it necessary to introduce him as character in the life of my blog, since I wanted to properly and truthfully convey my experiences during these weeks in Greece. Golden grinned and replied: “Make me however you want! Whatever to help make your writing the best it can be. You can even make me bad!” I don’t feel the need to make Golden a fictional bad boy because God knows we have enough real ones of those. The point here is that I was extremely psyched to see him. Golden lives in the US but not in New York. He left for Greece about two weeks before I would join him, but it felt like I hadn’t seen him in much longer.

Since I’d stupidly grin to myself every time I imagined finally seeing Golden, I was totally shocked when I came out of the airport doors, saw him rushing toward me, and realized I had tears streaming down my face. This is just another example of how lovely it is to be a woman: You have absolutely no idea how the rollercoaster that is your emotional state of being is going to swerve at any given point in time. Golden and I had traveled to Europe twice together last summer, but this was the first time we’d be together in his native Greece. For some reason, I was overcome with feeling. I’m sure the twenty hours of traveling, bad food, pills, dehydration and lack of sleep had nothing to do with it.

His parents are currently on vacation in the South of Greece so we have his family home in Ekali all to ourselves before heading to the islands in a week. Their family maid had kindly prepared several homemade traditional Greek specialities for me, which I dug into moments after my arrival. The meal included more deliciously roasted vegetables than I’ve probably consumed in the past two months. Next I was given a tour of the house, the outdoor gardens, and the neighboring houses including the Latsis residence, home of the notorious douchebag Paris Latsis who proposed to slutbag Hilton after dating her for something like three weeks. Their property had guards and walls with frightening looking spikes. It took us almost eight minutes to drive the huge country block around their whole private compound in a car going 30 kilometers per hour. Their mountain top pad is pretty damn big.

Next, we descended southward into the city of Athens. Golden showed me the enormous gated property where he went to high school (which literally looked like a wing of the Louvre) and then took me to see a building his family owned in Athens, an office six-story which they were planning to convert into luxury condos. After giving my opinion about where I thought the kitchenette should be installed in each and every different unit (which I’m sure he and the workman really appreciated) we did a quick driving tour of the city and ate more mouth-watering Greek food at a local taverna.

Today, I thought Golden had got word of my notorious Manhattan misbehavior when claiming to take me to the beach, he drove us further and further up into the dusty mountains. I became almost convinced that he was planning to throw me over a cliff, when suddenly we curved through a turn and the entire city and aquamarine ocean stretched out before us. After nearly impaling myself on a telephone pole trying to take pictures of this magnificent drop out the car window, we arrived at a secluded beach proceeded to read and frolic in the sand. The water was just how I like it: clear, with no waves, no fish, and as warm as a bathtub.

Other interesting phenomena of note:
a) The language is impossible to pick up (I’m still working on how to properly say thank you)
b) There are almost as many Starbucks as there are in Manhattan and
c) People here like to drive their mopeds with their helmet hanging from their elbow.

I fee this last observation is somehow telling about the Greek mentality, although my psychoanalytical abilities have yet to decipher what precisely it means. I can understand riding a moped wearing a helmet (certainly safe). I can also understand going sans-helmet, sexy Italian style. But to ride your vespa with your helmet around your arm? This just makes no sense. At that point wouldn’t it be easier to leave it at home or stick it on your head? I’ll try to get Golden to give me more info.

So the R&R ends right now, and partying begins tonight. This evening we’re having dinner in the center of Athens with Golden’s cousins (plural) and checking out some nightclubs after. Tomorrow my New York girlfriend Safari arrives from Mykonos to party with us as well, so I’ll have a friend from home to partner up with, if only for a night. Stayed tuned for reports of the Athens nightlife (we hear the Greeks like to drink) and for an eventual journey to the islands!

Andio keh simera tha ginee tis putanas! (I think that means ‘bye and tonight we’re going to party like bitches!') Cheers!