Day 5, Thursday, December 31st – And a happy new year!

Due to how tired we were the night before, neither Bobby nor myself could be bothered to go down to the hotel lobby for wi-fi to check on the weather forecast. Earlier in the week, everything all looked the same: partly cloudy, mid-50s. Well, that changed, and not for the better. Today was to be our big outdoor sightseeing and holiday concert day, and it was so cold that it was snowing! A far cry from 50°. I had two sweatshirts with me, and left a third one and my thinnest had/gloves/scarf set back in the hotel. Had I known it would be that cold, I'd have brought them. Not that it would have done much good, because even people in real winter jackets (I didn't even bring mine to Greece) were shivering.

Regardless, the lot of us hiked up the mountain to the Acropolis where the Parthenon and some other ruins were. It was really pretty, but also really windy and even colder than down below. There were a significant number of stray cats that inhabited these ruins, which were also really friendly and let people pet them. Many parts of the Acropolis were roped off for restoration, but the ones that weren't were all really slippery marble and therefore very difficult to get purchase on. This meant that doing any meaningful parkour (in the hopes of keeping warm) was out of the question for safety reasons (I was ready to ignore my bad shoulder to gain some body heat), though we did manage to get a couple of shots of small stuff in on the things we were allowed to touch. On our way out, we spied hot chocolate for sale at the gift shop, and even though the price was a little ridiculous, it was worth every euro. Even just holding it to keep my hands warm while waiting for the bus was just lovely. Beyond that, it actually tasted delicious. It was the perfect creamy consistency, not bitter, watery, or too sweet.

From there, we went to Syntagma Square, which is the center of the city where Greek Parliament meets and where there's a fountain and a giant Christmas tree and a lot of people always moving. We did a sound check on the stage we were going to be using, and then had about 20 minutes to get warm before our performance. It was just about enough time to run across the street to the mobbed Greek McDonald's for fries and hot chocolate and to use the bathroom before heading back. The hot chocolate wasn't as good as the Parthenon hot chocolate, but it was still better than you'd expect at a McDonald's back home.

One thing should be noted: it's rude in Greece to just go into a place to use its bathroom, even a fast food place. Unlike America, where half the purpose of a McDonald's is that there are public restrooms. In theirs, it was on a separate floor, and had a keypad to get in. On the bottom of your receipt there was a 4-digit code that changed daily which would let you in the bathroom, and a button on the inside wall you had to press to get back out again. Once you got in, there was a boy side and a girl side, but the doors to each restroom were propped open, so everyone's just waiting in this tiny hallway and you can see into both rooms. I mean, there are stalls, so you just see the sinks, but still, a bit weird. The stalls in all the bathrooms I've been in here have very high walls and in some cases there isn't even a gap between them, so it's more like a little room than the half-walled stalls we have back home with the awkward gaps between the doors and panels that people can watch you through. Most of the toilets are more square or circular rather than oval shaped like ours, and many also have two different flush buttons, usually on the wall above the toilet, not actually attached to it, or else on the top of it rather than the side. I know that in toilets like these, one button is for #1 and uses less water, and the other button is for #2 and uses enough to make sure it all flushes, but in many instances, it wasn't clear which button was which, because they weren't labeled, so, yeah, the whole public bathroom experience in this country takes some getting used to.

The performance in the square was a lot less formal than yesterday's at the big, fancy theater. It was also just us and one other choir doing our own stuff, rather than the stuff together with the guest conductor (though he did show up to watch, which he didn't have to, so that was nice). We sang a few of our own songs and then mostly Christmas carols, and the other choir had a similar repertoire. They did a very similar version of one of the same carols that we sang before them (womp womp), but nobody in the audience seemed to care. The Greeks did know a fair number of our Christmas songs in English, and later in our free time, English-language Christmas music could be heard throughout the shopping district. Many of the people who worked in restaurants or other public-service places were pretty decently fluent in English, unlike some places I've been to, so the language barrier here hasn't been that noticeable. Until you look at all the signs, and everything is in Greek. Bobby had commented on how it was weird to be in a place where he was illiterate because even the alphabet was different, and I told him, “Well, that's how I felt in Japan, so the feeling itself isn't that new to me, but yeah, it is strange-feeling compared to America.” And he says, genuinely, “Oh, I'm SO sorry. I never realized that before.”

After our performance, we were on our own for lunch and had about an hour and a half to do whatever. This time, the part of town was a lot more busy and full of shops, but they were all selling things like $400 pairs of shoes, so nothing tourists like us would be interested in. Bobby and I walked off on our own and found an outdoor place called Angie's Way, so we kind of had to go there. The food was so good (chicken with mushroom sauce and potatoes for me, gyro for Bobby) that we had to take it home. Even though the place had those gas-powered outdoor heater things, we were still really cold, so we shared our third cup of hot chocolate for the day. It was almost as good at the Parthenon hot chocolate. Their process must be different or they must have a secret ingredient to make it all taste so good here.

At this point, we were supposed to have gone on a bus tour of a few city sights, but everyone was so cold and tired that we had some time at the hotel before a miniature version of the tour. We only got out once, briefly, at the first Olympic stadium in modern times. They told us about a few other famous buildings that we've actually driven by before just on the way to our hotel, but it wasn't really photo-friendly because the sun had almost set by then and we were moving. After the long day, though, nobody seemed to mind. I hope that we get some free time during daylight when it's not snowing out to go by there again and actually have the presence of mind to appreciate them. Being freezing and still sick was not really putting me in a mood to appreciate the culture and architecture of foreign lands.

The restaurant they took us to was nice and in a decent area that I hope we get to go back to in our free time later in the week. We're walking through these cobblestone streets with cute little store-fronts that will all be closed on our way back from dinner, and all I'm thinking is, “Couldn't they have dropped us here, in Plaka, two days ago for our free time?”

We walk into the restaurant and there are two men on a little stage with string instruments (one is a guitar, the other is some Greek stringed instrument similar to a banjo or ukelele in sound but triangular shaped in the body). Every table is empty. I'm thinking, “Great, the whole place to ourselves! It's like they learned from the last trip when people got loud celebrating new year's eve and pissed off the whole restaurant.” We're all seated, but there are four tables that are sitting empty. This is not a good sign. Whatever, on with the night. The band is a traditional Greek music ensemble and they were doing both singing and instrumental pieces. They were really talented and I liked the music. Later, when they were selling their CDs, I got one, and not just because I felt bad about how our comrades were acting.

The waiters were all really lively and funny, and when a few of the more upbeat songs came on and a couple of the usual suspects in choir got up and started dancing, they started dancing with them and showing them some Greek steps. It was all pretty funny, at least to begin with, but I knew exactly where this was going. Our meal was about a million courses. First there was bread, then this yogurt-cucumber sauce/mash thing which was amazing (touziki? I can't remember the name). Then sausages, our main course, and tangerines for dessert. You could choose chicken or steak for your main course, and Bobby found out the hard way that “steak” to them means “pork”. He said it was really good anyway, as was my chicken, so it all worked out. All the courses except for the main one were communally served and we put our own portions on individual plates. It's interesting how many places do that with food regularly.

One of the usual suspects went up and asked one of the band members if he knew a certain song, and then sang it while he played it, and everyone was singing along and it was all well and good, because we were still alone at that point and still having fun. It really should have stopped there, but if you give these guys an inch, they'll take a mile, and I'm not sure why the chaperones on the trip didn't stop these kind of antics, because anyone could see they were absolutely going to get out of hand, and they did. It was after this first song when a Japanese tour group came in to occupy the other empty tables, and we began betting on how long it would take for our group to drive them away. We were relatively quiet at first because food had just been served to us and everyone was eating, but it didn't take long for the same people to go up and bother the musicians again. Seriously, this is so disrespectful. They are being paid to entertain and enlighten us with their culture. I didn't come to Greece to listen to a bunch of drunk/over-tired/hyperactive college kids act like assholes and earn the reputation that Americans have when they go abroad. On top of that, we all had just experienced in our outdoor concert several noises happening right around us that we had to sing over and were disruptive...a random dude proselytizing, somebody with their own P.A. across the street singing their own Christmas songs with a cup out in front for money, phones going off...why would we want to subject our fellow performers to the same level of one-upsmanship and disregard for their craft? I wanted to go up and apologize to the musicians on behalf of the group, but it's not really my place, because I'm just a passenger on this crazy train, and the conductors were letting it become a train-wreck. I think there were four more interruptions for “guest performances” before it all stopped (some of them none-too-good, either) because it was time for us to go. But not before the Japanese group all left in a hurry as soon as their dinner was finished, and a group of regular Greek customers came in, sat down, and left without ordering because they saw how crazy it was.

Now, I'm far from a stick-in-the-mud, and I understand that bringing in the new year in another country is cause to celebrate, but there are appropriate expressions of joy and inappropriate ones. When you start annoying people, or there are people outside of your group that could possibly be annoyed in the first place, it's maybe time to stop. It's like going to a party where you don't know everyone there but you only tell inside jokes...most of which aren't even that funny. Nobody's going to think it's cute but you. Even just the dancing would have been fine, despite the fact that there wasn't really space for it between the tables, because that isn't detracting from another's performance or enjoyment of the evening, and Greeks love to get up and dance. If we had the room to ourselves and it was just noise carrying over to regular diners, it may have been almost acceptable, but we were sharing a space with other people and anybody with eyes could see that we were annoying them. I really try to avoid doing this myself when I go out places, and I appreciate when those I'm with call me out on my shenanigans. It's not like these people were unaware of social norms either; at least two of them were on the previous trip when things got out of hand and were reprimanded for their behavior, and everyone was given a speech about respectfully representing themselves, the university, and America at all times while traveling.  What's worse, is that when they're not acting like complete assholes, they're genuinely fun to hang out with, so I'm doubly disappointed because I can't just write them off as bad people.

The whole thing put a damper on what otherwise was an incredibly enjoyable evening after a long, cold, hard day. The dinner at the restaurant was not meant to actually ring in the new year, so people were brought back to the hotel and left to their own devices sometime around 9. Bobby was so tired he fell right asleep. I listened to the music blasting down from the rooftop bar of the hotel and the fireworks, but I was too tired to put on shoes and join them. I stayed up until midnight writing and coloring just so I could wake Bobby up and wish him “Kalihronya” (Happy New Year in Greek) and go to sleep myself.