Daphne stands in our doorway, doing her normal pose of one arm pressed up against the doorframe while the rest of her hands off this arm in a pose that is seductive in both senses of the word.
“Hey boys.”
Oh great.
“Potluck at your place at 9:30?”
Great.
20:30 Michael and I get the water boiling for what is going to be our very simple contribution to this fabulous meal. Pasta + Frozen Spinach + Pasta Sauce + Leftover Grilled Chicken equates to some half-assed approximation of actually fine Italian cooking. Whatever, it is delicious. As a side note, water in this apartment takes forever to get boiling. Our cooking apparatus consists of a glorified EZ-bake oven with two electric stovetops shoved on top. Maybe it is the fact that the electric current in this country seems to be powered by Chickens (no disrespect, I am sure the chickens powering the grid are upmost patriots) but the stove is cold for ages and then suddenly hot-like-the-surface-of-the-sun. Groovy.
21:10 There is too much water in the pot for it to boil how did this happen and why?
21:30 Briana arrives with a pasta salad with honey mustard, strawberries, and avocadoes. It is perhaps the first unequivocal “winner” by consensus of the crowd. We walk out on the balcony before any of the other guests arrive and hear some chanting coming from the church across the cemetery. Yes, there is a cemetery just outside our window, but the fact remains that I have no idea why this is happening. Our catholic girl’s cracker-jack insight: it’s The Last Supper.
21:40 Oh, there’s everybody. Here are some things we ate. EB brought a salad of apples, walnuts and feta. JW brought feta-a-roni with a side of pork and peas. DB brought fried rice, SD brought a plate of sliced chicken sausages (that looked exactly like hot dogs), and there was plenty of this blog’s aforementioned plastic wine.
22:30 Why is there a moment at every party of real life adults I know in my life where we have to talk about Twilight / True Blood / Oh Wow Vampire Culture Isn’t It Funny?
22:35 Sweet, now we’re talking about AIM. Maybe I am more comfortable with this being part of my culture.
23:01 Three knocks on the door. The room gets deathly quiet. Quiet hours begin at eleven, and we are convinced we have ticked off Megan, our TA. There are probably only four people who are in the program who are not in our apartment now. It is just Mike [P, not G]. He wants us to go out to a Jazz Bar called the Half Note. Cool.
23:20 Three knocks on the door. The room keeps up at the loud-on-the-outside levels of noise that we can’t detect. It’s Megan. Party’s over, y’all. Meet in the lobby for the Jazz Bar in half an hour?
23:30 Oh shit going out to a proper European bar. I have no idea how to dress. Eventually settle on a tucked in blue shirt and a black vest. Michael is going out in his same look of T-shirt, blue jean shorts, and fanny pack. I begin to wish I could pull off a look like that.
00:10 There are about ten or fifteen Greeks with glasses in hand congregating outside of the Half Note. We send in an expedition party to determine what the cover is.
Permit me another digression on cover charges here in Athens. They are everywhere and subtle and malicious to the species known as “cheap American collegiates.” Now don’t get me wrong, I like going out, and I know you have to pay for that privilege. But the nickel-and-diming from 1.30 per-head bread charges and the fact that water is never free in restaurants (tap water, are you crazy?) leads to bad feelings when you’re adding up the tab. Especially when I see my peers ordering from the cheapest end of the menu, only to have their 6.50 Crab Salad cost upwards of 10 Euro by the time all is said and done. Don’t get me wrong, restaurants got to get money and get paid in these times, and tourists like us are a fine source of income. But one thirty per head for toast when I can buy a whole loaf for 0.70 makes me feel ripped off.
So when the lady behind the counter at the Half Note told us “Twenty Euros, and you get one drink free,” needless to say she lost about four hundred Euros in potential business. I feel like making a cheap analogy to Judas here to emphasize the last-supper-ness of this meal.
00:15 Right, so now we’re about halfway back to our apartment, dejected because 1) we can’t party in our apartments, 2) the bar we had hyped up was a rip-off, 3) drinking in the streets is probably frowned on. Patrice comes up with the great idea to go hunting for bars on a major thoroughfare near our apartment. It’s a straight uphill march, but we finally reach the district. We walk past a couple of bars, doing the hemming-and-hawing of “well this place looks nice but we can keep walking if you want.” In the future, I will not volunteer to be the navigator for twenty college students looking for a place to party together.
Then a dark haired man runs out of the first bar we passed by and yells at us “hey free shots!”
So it’s going to be that kind of outing.
00:30 Welcome to the Tritone Bar. The regulars consist of a handful of old men off in one corner, and a group of younger guys bellied up to the interior bar. Our bartenders are Thanos, the young hype-man who is currently combining several rums and juices into a large pitcher, and Greek Dan, whose name I never got, but who resembles my high school English teacher. Greek Dan is clearly the most talented of the pair, but we’ll get to him a little later on. There is a large projection screen off near the bathrooms that is playing the latest game in UEFA Champions! and a smaller TV set above the bar.
My first instinct was that free shots were simply bartender code for “bring your American wallets in here so that we may pick them as the evening goes on.” Then they started playing “Paradise City.” I guess we can stay here.
00:45 I am making up the approximate timing of all the events that follow. They are actually making good on their promise of free drinks, and are very charming. Thanos explains to me that the justification behind this unprecedented kindness is either the closing of the bar after five years of business, or that this is their fifth anniversary. Whatever. What you’re all really interested in, I know, are the Impressive Bar Tricks.
IBT 1: A shallow rectangular plate is procured, just deep enough to pour out a quantity of ouzo. Some pepper is added to the mixture. The concoction is then lit on fire, producing your standard blue flame, but then more pepper is showered on, creating sparks. The fire is blown out, and this drink is consumed by taking two fingers, running them over the plate, and putting them in your mouth.
IBT 2: Mike is given three ice cubes. Thanos uses an empty(?) bottle as a bat, and Mike pitches him the cubes. The furthest one of these travels is straight backwards into the mirror behind the bar. We clearly need to colonize Greece with beisbol.
IBT 3: See IBT 1, but now done with a mystery liquor in a martini glass. He literally refused to tell us what we were served. Straws were provided for sharing.
IBT 4: Lemon lime soda and booze in shot glasses, which are then slammed down before taking to get them to fizz over. There goes my vest.
01:30 Football highlights are over, and they change the channel to something called FashionTV. FashionTV, as far as I can tell, is designed to get you feeling mildly horny if you are very drunk, as it consists of thin models walking around in their underwear and promoting a beverage called F. Vodka. (Guess what the F stands for?) There was even a perpetual “news crawl” beneath the footage of the Beautiful People talking about the popularity of F. Vodka in Beijing! And Rome! And other cities of beautiful people! The best part about this news crawl is that they put every positive line about F. Vodka in quotation marks, making it sound not-so-accidentally sarcastic. "Enjoyable," says Tokyo.
When you’re mostly sober, however, FashionTV accidentally highlights how totally coked out and emaciated these women look. Whoops.
02:00 Wait what why are they playing Bruce Springsteen, oh cool Briana requested this.
02:02 Seventeen Americans singing “Dancing in the Dark.” A couple of us are wearing blue jean jackets.
02:30 Goodnight, and Good Friday.
