It took me a few seconds to register what I saw out on the horizon toward the southern tip of Greenland. Green bands of ghostly light undulated, pulsated and flared. Aurora borealis. I'd never seen it, but viewing it had been on my list of things to see at some time during my life. The possibility of an opportunity existing during this flight hadn't even crossed my mind. I stared at it for a few minutes while a broad grin broke across my face. I woke Alan so that he could see it, too. We took turns leaning forward to look out of the window. I thought about taking photos but the dim light from the airplane's cabin would have made the aurora appear as a fuzzy and indistinct smear. Its appeal came partially from the color and partially from the shifting bands of light, so instead of trying to capture it with a device bound to be inadequate to the task, I kept watching and marveling at the phenomenon until it winked out suddenly.
As dawn broke over the North Sea, I saw short towers of cloud crowding its surface, beneath which small pinpoints of light dotted a deep grey surface in an earthly mimicry of the twilight sky. These were the floodlights of oil rigs drilling into and mining the seafloor. Thirty minutes to the east, Amsterdam itself was like a patchwork quilt of greens and browns, full of farms, its earth rich and loamy. "Oh, look," Alan said near my shoulder as we watched the land pass underneath the jet. "There are the tulip and wooden shoe farms!" I groaned.
Schipol airport was open and airy. All of the souvenir shops had tulip bulbs and wooden shoes, to my dismay. By the time we walked from our gate to that of the connecting flight, it was time to board. Athens was a three-hour flight away. On board, the aisle seat in our row was taken by Georgio, 80, who was going to Athens to visit family, among them a new niece. We began talking when he saw Alan studying Greek from a textbook.
"You think you can learn that language?" he asked.
"I'm not doing too badly," Alan said. "My wife has been doing better with the language than I have."
"Iste Elenas?" I asked the man. Are you Greek? He nodded and said yes, but indicated that it was a long time ago. He was now and had been living for a while in Washington DC. He told us about his fishing business, and said that we would find that the fish we'd have in Greece would taste much different than that we'd had in the States. He asked where we were from. We told him that we lived on Long Island. He said that he had once lived in Seaford, and then proceeded to give me a recipe for spanikopita, which included baby spinach, fennel (anise he called it), green onions, olive oil and not butter on the phyllo, plus egg to coat the top. ("Use Dodoni cheese; that is the best kind!") He said "ya sas" ("Your health") was a phrase the older people liked better than the more contemporary "ya sou" or "ti kanete".
Thunder pealed on the way to Syntagma square (by bus, 10 Euros), but no rain came from the cumulus clouds. The air was hot and humid. The countryside looked like northern Arizona but felt like Florida.
Alan's method of battling the effect of jet lag is to forgo sleep and drop off items at the hotel, then go out and hit the ground running. We got off the bus at Syntagma Square and walked 10 minutes until we found Electra Palace hotel with help from a waiter at the Only 1 taverna, who invited us in. We had bags with us which we wanted to drop off, so we said we would be back. We unloaded at the hotel and showered to wake up, then returned to the taverna. I had a salad and iced tea, Alan had souvlaki, all were good if not remarkable. We headed to the national gardens, then back to the agora, the metropolitan cathedral, up towards the tower of the winds at the foot of the acropolis. Another taverna proprietor waved us in and we elected to stop for a bite while we watched the setting sun warm the colors of the stone's face at the base of the temple.
I did not think I would like retsina, having been told that it tasted like turpentine, but when I tried it, I found the wine pleasantly dry and possessing a faint piney character that quickly grew on me. It accompanied another tomato and cucumber salad and a side of bread with spicy cheese dip. My brain was beginning to cobweb over from fatigue. I had been awake almost 48 hours. I watched the tavern waiters and proprietor also work the passers-by. Their eyes scanned tourists' and locals' body language and facial expressions. They interacted differently with tourists, trying to coax them to a table. I suppose the locals knew whether they felt like stopping into this particular tavern or not. If the tourists passed on, the staff would sometimes joke with each other about this one or that one, mostly regarding the women. I could tell when they were teasing each other about the women even though I had no real idea what they were actually saying. My Greek wasn't good enough for me to have that level of comprehension.
We started back to the hotel at some point around 7P but quickly became lost in the maze of the agora, an area within the Plaka where goods were marketed much as they had been for thousands of years. I was mentally exhausted and the fatigue was showing on Alan as well. Neither of us was very good at helping each other find our way back and we got irritated, but eventually pulled ourselves together enough to navigate the agora and get back. After another shower and a quick email to let people know we were in Athens, we collapsed into bed at 10PM.
