By the title, you might think we are making a feminist point about how dangerous Athens is for women, but that is not the case. In Greek “Ne” (which is a Croatian word for no) means yes. You can only guess how many times we thought that the people were saying no to us and being mean, only to realize that was not the case.
The reason why the two of us ended up in Athens is because we were participating in their Model United Nations Conference. The mornings were usually spent in class with other people discussing political topics, so we had to make up for the lost exploring time during the night and that is exactly what we did for those five days.
During our time there, they had some kind of a carnival where you could just see a lot of people wearing masks, so we decided to blend in by buying silly sunglasses and masks. This was my first time in Athens and Marta’s second time and the first time I saw Acropolis was during one of our night, drunk ventures. We could not actually get to it because it was closed, but we could see the whole city and eat their deserts while admiring the beautiful view of the whole city. We are very confident in ourselves when drunk, so we found a guy that would drive us to our hotel, I was carrying a plastic fork for protection and at the end I did not use it because the guy was actually nice. However, he did not have a car, he just showed us the way back to the taxi which we already knew. One would think that people there because of their economic crisis are busy and rude, but that cannot be further from the truth. Everyone was really nice and the city center was always crowded.
We would drink at this amazing cocktail place called Old Fashioned Bar and I have to say the cocktails were not the ones guilty of us getting drunk of our asses, but the shots that they would give us for free between the cocktails. The shots were made in a traditional way and the drink is called Mastika.
Since the two of us are smokers, Athens is the perfect place for us because not only can you smoke in the room of the hotel, but also in a taxi. Being able to smoke everywhere also resulted in us going through a lot of packs of cigarettes; more than we thought we would.
Drinking all night and then participating in MUN all morning resulted in us being sleep deprived, but the city is so full of life that we didn’t really notice until returning home. The last hours that we had in Athens, we decided to actually visit the Acropolis and obviously since Acropolis is extremely close to their market place. We didn’t spend the remaining time we had exploring Acropolis, but actually buying a lot of things and talking to the local people which is one of our fondest memories from this trip. Since we did not have a lot of time, we knew what we wanted to buy, so the people on the market regarded us as amazing buyers which was the first for us. Not only that, but bargaining for a better price is one of our favourite things to do, so obviously we had a great time.
Returning home was sad because not only that we met a lot of people that we did not want to say goodbye to, but the city enchanted us with its special magic and we wanted to stay there forever. However, every trip ends, so this one had to end as well. It ended with the two of us wearing the most hilarious outfits on our way home, you should have seen the looks that our mothers gave us when they picked us up from the airport.
Athens; Where No Means Yes By the title, you might think we are making a feminist point about how dangerous Athens is for women, but that is not the case.