My Big Fat Greek March

After enduring pure torture during the Obs and Gynae rotation, I hereby announce that I need to spend some money real bad, (please do not question the source of it) and also to take a real good holiday so I can conveniently forget about my exam and empty my brain good and proper to make space for my next rotation. So, me and 6 others went onto the internet and booked ourselves onto flights off to the historical and romantic country of Greece.

Getting There
Of course, if I was with my parents, everything would've been well planned and taken care of. All I need to worry about is what to wear, what to bring, what to er.... well really, that is about it. But since I am on my own with another 6 clueless friends and being STUDENTS, we had to of course book the cheapest flights ever which led us to booking a flight to London, then on to Athens with an overnight stay in between. And once again, being poor STUDENTS, we decided to spend the night in the airport.

Now don't get me wrong, airports are really quite nice places to stay in for the experience if you can sleep.
But after popping 2 sleeping pills and still tossing and turning, I realised that sleep is just not going to come and so in my own time decided to traipse down to Marks&Spencer which is incidentally open for 24 hours, obviously knowing full well that only STUDENTS take flights to this particular airport and being poor, will spend the night there, only realising that they cannot actually sleep on the bloody hard wooden uneven chairs, and by then will go down into their shop to spend some money. Good business trick.

I like Marks&Spencers. I like prowling down its aisles and exclaiming about how ridiculously priced the items are and then on the other hand praise them to the skies for their quality and beautiful packaging. But then again, being a STUDENT, and poor at that, I can never bring myself to part with my money in this particular shop (better spent on planning a 700pound holiday). And then again, awake at 11.45pm(medical students sleep at 9pm) in a foreign airport with the full night stretching on and on with no sleep in view is not normal and I allowed myself the luxury of forgetting to be a STUDENT. Who is poor. (Did I mention poor?)

So Marks&Spencers was brightly lit as always and to my (and my friends) immense surprise and joy! we saw that they had huge bags of sandwiches, wraps, baguettes, bread etc etc... all their overly priced items put aside as they were expiring that day. In UK, this spells P-R- I-C-E R-E-D-U-C-T-I-O-N. automatically switched back to being a poor STUDENT.
I tapped a sales assistant on the shoulder and my friend went on to ask how much they were going to go for, while the rest of us prayed to the heaven's above that it would at least be a 50% reduction (90% being overambitious).

"It's not for sale."

"What?! Why?!" Confusion and tears threatened to spill.

"It's expired, we are not responsible if you get a stomachache."

"Er, it's 11.45pm maam. It is another 15 minutes to expiring. If not what are you going to do to it anyway? Much better off in our stomachs." Tooting feed us hungry poor students already!

"Well, sorry, it's Not for sale. We'll just dispose of it."

WHAT THE TOOT. Would you actually throw this:

and this:
into the bin?!
THEY ARE TOOTING M&S PRODUCTS OF HIGHEST QUALITY! DEM EXPENSIVE NORMALLY OK!
But No, Miss-We-Are-Not-Responsible-If-You-Get-Stomachache decided the bin is more worthy than us! And we even offered to pay! (50% off is still a blardy profit alright) and it is just 15 minutes to expiring!! Which means we can still eat it in the 15 minutes window frame! And NOT get stomachache!!

#$%^&

Well and truly pissed as I had already switched to poor STUDENT mode, I stalked out and promptly returned to my hard wooden uneven chair making a mental note to write to M&S's management about wastage and recycling their food to poor students.
Gah. Someone should educate M&S about the poor starved people of Somalia.

***

Athens

The next day came after an eternity while the 4 hour flight to Athens lasted as long as the speed of light. One minute I was in British soil, the next Greek earth. It is hereby proven that seats in the airplane are much more sleep friendly than the airport.

After dumping our bags at the cheapest hostel we could find that was closest to the city centre (obviously booked beforehand), we decided to go for lunch and to the Acropolis. Now, as medical students who have our whole life planned out before us, we did it the medical student way and were well and truly prepared for the trip.

The books we borrowed and brought along

After studying our guide books (obviously studied during our exams too - hey, we are medical students, we are meant to be able to memorise a gazillion facts in one minute), we naturally made our way to the Acropolis without much problem. (minus the fact that we had to ask for directions after climbing up a set of stairs resembling Batu Caves and realising we had to take another route)

Still, we did manage to reach the famous Acropolis after climbing up a trillion steps that was equivalent to the Great Wall of China. Man, were we proud.
Really quite an awesome sight to behold except for it's horrible scaffolding and slippery stoned ground which we tripped over innumerable times. Then they had this really pretty looking thing:
6 statues as pillars. I swear there was a significant history of Zeus and the Goddess Athena or something behind it (probably wrong as those are the only few Greek Gods I can remember) but yeah, it is Important.
The whole place was really quite Wowing except for its down side; that is the whole area somewhat resembled a construction site. By the time we had walked around the compound, we were covered with a fine layer of dust and those who had black shoes on now had white shoes while mine went from white to er...whiter.
They even had this theater/stadium thing, not too different from Rome's Colosseum but the best is, it is still in use today! They have concerts there and what not, though I pity the spectators having to climb all the way up those never ending steps to watch their idols in action. Give me Genting Arena of Stars any day.

We then tried climbing up another hill which had no steps but just rocks.
I am not in the picture as my unsteady knee did not bring me up so far, but Hey! neither did any of them make it to the top.(actually there was but we shall just say there wasn't) We all stopped halfway to admire the er.. rocky scenery.

After sliding down the smooth surface on our bottoms (I definitely came down in a much more dignified way with my legs), we climbed up yet another hill. Jeez, did everything had to be on hills?!?!
By then we were almost half dead, what with the lack of sleep the night before, together with the hot sun beating down and the never ending steps - my bad knee was yelling blue murder. Still, we made it anyway to the top of Filapapou Hill to see their monument, so brace yourselves -lo and behold!

Essentially it is once again all rocky and dusty and...
I'll defend our actions by saying it was in the guidebook. Therefore, it would be one of the cardinal sins NOT to see it and since no one wanted to go to hell, we had to fulfill the prophecy of the LonelyPlanet Guide Book or live to suffer the consequences.

The whole Acropolis just behind

The next day led us to Monastiraki, where the Ancient Agora was situated. For all its grandiosity and rich heritage, we were greeted by none other than:

more dust

more sun

ruins where magnificent buildings that touched the heavens once stood (nothing now as they were reduced to smattering bits of stone after an attack by Mars)

and plenty of headless statues whose sculptors had the skill to create to detail their muscular body and clothes but do not possess the ability to carve the features of the human face. (Or maybe the Martians stole the heads for themselves.)

But still, it was cool enough on its own and all our studying of the various guidebooks gave us enough information to conduct our own mini tour of the area. To top of the whole experience we even had the friendly keeper yelled profanities at us for touching their precious ruins when what really happened was we were too tired and sat on some rock that was on the floor. FINE. NO TOUCHY.