We flew with Austrian Air to Vienna and pretty much slept all the way. When we left Australia we had a 9.5 hour flight to Bangkok overnight and this time we also had an overnight flight of 10.5 hours so we arrived in the morning to Vienna and managed to skip the affects of jet lag despite a time difference of 7 hours to Australian time. It now is a little harder to stay in touch with people back home. We never left the airport at Vienna, but everyone spoke German so it was a nice buzz for me to have the first stop in Europe as German speaking - and our flight attendants all spoke German too so I practiced ordering drinks in German which was cool. We drank Kipfler (I think) and Wieselburger (veeselburger) beers. Red Bulls were 3.80 Euros (about $7.50 Au) so we gave them a miss! And food was very expensive at the airport also so we just waited until our flight to Greece. The toilets here are weird, the hole is at the front of the bowl. I can see how Kenny made a whole show about flying around the world looking at different toilets now haha
We boarded the next plane bound for Athens at around 10am and arrived in Athens about 2pm local time. Flying in to Athens was amazing because all of the city appeared to be white, white buildings, white everything. There were no massive high rises that I saw either. We got the bus to the city center which cost us 3.20 Euros each, so much cheaper than a taxi as it was about a 45 minute trip. After the bus we decided to walk rather than get another bus to save some money - we are backpacking after all - and asked a local lady for directions. She lectured Steve about not having multiple ear piercings cos they give you cancer LOL. She said he was hansome enough without them, even bigger LOL. So we set off on foot to head to Giannis house.
Giannis is a 25 year old Greek guy who we met on a site called couch surfers. We had arranged to stay with him for a few nights in Athens. This works well for us because it's free. And we get a local guide to tell us the best places to eat, drink, etc. Giannis turned out to be an awesome guy, very open and easy going and extremely funny. I guess you have to be to open your house up to back packers all the time. Apparently he has people at his place all the time, his record was 8 backpackers at once. He says couch surfers are his life and I guess it would be an awesome experience. He speaks very good English too, it probably helps having foreigners around all the time. His unit is just one bedroom, a lounge room, kitchen and bathroom. The entry hall in has a board with heaps of messages from lots of people who have stayed at his place. The lounge room wall has sound proofing on it as the neighbours are boring and grumpy :P
There are 2 other backpackers staying as well as us at the moment. Alejandro (alehandro) and Diego from Mexico (no we didn't catch the swine flu)
Not as many people in Greece speak English, compare to Thailand where most people have basic English. But most of the people who do speak lots. They drive on the right side of the road here and lots of the streets off the main streets are one way. There seem to be no parking rules as people park on the curves of corners (even in front of traffic lights). You can smoke inside as we learned at the airport. There aren't any wrong places to smoke or drink booze. You can buy beer from street vendors that also sell ice cream, much like Thailand.
Steve, Diego, Alejandro and I all headed to a bar that has free wi fi and we drank German wheat beer, which was actually really nice. I've never tried wheat beer before other the yukky Belgian ones. The toilet at this bar has a device that pops out of the back automatically and the seat lifts up and spins 360 degrees while the device sprays toilet cleaner on it. The lights, soap and paper dispenser and tap are all also automated. In Greece the hole is in the middle and the seats are round not oval :P
Then the 5 of us all headed out to a cool little bar that had bottles filled with different brightly coloured booze lining the walls floor to ceiling, with back lights so the walls appear to be made of coloured lit up bottles. They distill their own spirits too. I tried some Greek beers (Mythos and Alpha) and Steve tried some Ouzo and some honey spirits. We didn't stay too long as we burned through a decent amount of cash that day, Giannis had to work in the morning (Monday night tonight) and Alejandro and Diego had an early ferry out to Santorini.
Ruth
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