Praktikant Life in Baden, Switzerland: Greece with Kyle

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Saturday, July 30: Had to get up super early in the morning, catch a train to Basel, and fly to Berlin. I landed with a five hour layover, so I decided to head into town. I made my way to the train station, but there seemed to be a strange problem on the track I was waiting at. I talked to some swiss guys that were hanging out there, and we found out that the train was really delayed. Eventually after about 90 minutes a train came and we got on, and we realized it was the wrong train, so we got off again. The swiss guys went and grabbed a cab.

I discovered that there were two track 9's, and I should have been at the S-Bahn track 9, so I made my way there and caught a train into the centre of Berlin. That took another hour or so, so I didn't have much time until I had to turn around and head back out. I got off at Alexanderplatz, where there is a huge television tower. I got my first European Subway, and chilled in the park and ate it. Then I walked around and found a place to grab a beer. I got Erdinger, which I've had in a few places in Germany, and in Switzerland too. This tasted horrible though, it tasted like they hadn't cleaned all of the soap out of the glass. After finishing that, I was done with Berlin, and grabbed my train back out to the airport, and caught my plane to Athens.

After landing in Athens, I had to grab their subway to the stop where I was meeting Kyle. I told him the time I was arriving in Athens, and he thought that was the time I was arriving at the Filoxenia, our meeting place, so to him I was about an hour late. When I finally arrived he had made friends all around and people kept saying 'Ahhhh, you found him' and stuff. It was pretty funny. We went to the hostel and dropped off our bags, and I got to meet the super cool owner, who had a multiple personality disorder. He had been telling Kyle about his brothers, and then later had said 'See! Now I'm my brother.' Everyone in Greece seemed really nice so far. We went out to grab some food and eventually found some excellent Souvlaki, which was also super cheap.

Kyle in Athens

We learned our first Greek words, and headed back to the hostel for some drinking. We had to be back at the Filoxenia at 5:45 for our tour departure, so we decided to just stay up all night. The hostel owner had promised us free ouzo all night, so we started with that. The beer there was super expensive, but you needed some in between all the ouzo, so the night wasn't entirely free. The ouzo was mixed with grenadine or something, so it didn't taste at all like liquor, but it hit you hard. We both got pretty drunk. I decided to head to bed at around 5:00, and ended up crashing for 15 minutes before I had to get up to go to the meeting spot.

At the hostel after lots of ouzo

Sunday, July 31: At the meeting spot we weren't too interested in being social, so we just got on the bus and slept for the trip to the boat. The ferry was packed, so we found a couple chairs on the deck and slept there for a while. I woke up after a bit and talked to the girls next to us, Vanessa and Jodie, who turned out to be on the same island tour as us. We ate sunflower seeds and chatted for a while, then Kyle woke up and we all decided to move inside. We found some seats in first class, and people gave us really strange looks, because we didn't look like we should have been there. We played cards for the rest of the boat ride, which turned out to be about 8 hours in total.

Once we got into Mykonos, a van drove us to our rooms, and I met Anthony, a super cool guy from Australia. Turned out I was staying in a room with him and two other Australian girls, and Kyle was in a room with three New Zealander girls. We put our stuff down in our room and then headed to the beach to catch up on some sleep.

Arrival in Mykonos

We woke up and then moved over to the pool by our place, which turned out to be a salt water pool. At around 19:00 we got ready and met up with the tour group for a walking tour of Mykonos. We walked past the windmills, which are apparently famous in Mykonos. There is also a famous pink pelican there, that just walked around the streets and hangs out.

Windmills

Pink pelican

The town was really neat, it was designed to confuse pirates that were attacking the island, so all of the streets are really narrow and wind around almost randomly. Super easy to get lost. We went for dinner, and I got some local specialty, which was really heavy with meat and pasta, and some peppers. It was really good, but wayyy too much to finish. After dinner everyone headed to a few bars, mainly this one skandinavian bar and another down under bar.

In the harbor

Out at the bar with the tour group

The highlight was this one young boy, around 12, came in and danced like crazy to hip hop and was covered in glowsticks. It was quite strange. The bars weren't really any good, so after a while Kyle and Anthony and I left and walked around the town, which was pretty neat. We were all pretty tired, so we didn't end up going late to a bar, and headed home at around 1:30 to go to bed.

Monday, August 1: