a good night's sleepWho knew, for the price of a plane ticket from Atlanta to New York, one could fly from Italy to Greece to Spain to Ireland and back! That was my fall break. Even though we had some absurdly early/late flights and spent a couple nights sleeping in airports, trains, and 24 hour McDonalds to save money, it was absolutely worth it! Although, whoever said sleeping on a firm surface is good for your back never slept on the floor of the Dublin airport…

Planning this trip was almost as exciting as the trip itself. I traveled with a group of four theater students that were in our program. We sat down one night, each of us with our laptops looking at different websites. Three of us were researching flights on the cheap airlines and two were looking into hostels. We basically planned our trip around where we could get the cheapest flights. We had a few ideas on where we wanted to go, but being in Europe, there was really no way to go wrong. Around three in the morning and not thinking completely straight we were very close to booking flights to Egypt! Thankfully, someone chimed in and brought up the whole issue of leaving the continent, going to Africa, needing to get shots… a whole list of things we would have had to do.

Our first plan of business was getting to Milan to catch a flight to Athens. The flight was early in the morning so we had to take the nine hour slow train the night before. That in itself was an experience. Before I could catch the train, I had to take a final exam, finish a research paper, turn in conducting evaluations, and scramble around to throw five changes of clothes (for three completely different climates) into a small book bag for an 11 day trip. This left me with 12 short minutes to get to the train station. Zio Marco (Dr. Britt) was the man as usual and got me to the train station, NASCAR style, just in time to meet the four others and catch the 12:46am train!

Completely sleep deprived and utterly dumbfounded by the Greek alphabet and language, the five of us wandered around Athens that night. Lucky for us, one guy with us proclaimed he could get us around because he was in a fraternity and could read Greek! Umm… not quite. We just so happened to turn a corner and end up standing in awe of the Greek ruins upon the hillside, lit up and glowing gold! They were truly a marvel. After seeing the sights of Athens the following day, we took a ferry to one of the Greek Isles, Aegina. Everything was perfect, the weather was great, the island was beautiful, and the people were friendly. Minus one problem, the hostel we booked online was closed for the season and the owner was on vacation in Scotland. Great. With some sweet talking on my friend Shannon’s part and some bartering on mine, we made an arrangement with a moped dealer to put us up in his friend’s hotel for 10 euro a night in exchange that we rent three mopeds from him, a whole day for 15 euro each. It was a deal and things could not have worked out better! The two other guys and I spent most of the next day zipping around the island, down the coast, and up into the mountains. The girls would have nothing to do with the mopeds and spent the day on the beach, where we met up once we ran out of gas. It was hard to leave Greece but there was still plenty in store for us!

We let my buddy Danny make the arrangements in Barcelona. Those of you who know Danny know this is should be entertaining! A normal person would look into finding a hostel with nice amenities, good location, and clean; Danny is anything but. He tells me after booking the place he tried to find the most ridiculous hostel in Barcelona… he did, Graffiti Hostel. The name should say enough, but I’ll elaborate. First off, finding the place was like a quest for Neverland. Tucked away, not even in the right numbered order on the street, we find a door to “Graffiti Hostel” that takes us to a series of rooms, all decorated in graffiti and themed different cities around the world. We got there early and they were not ready for us to check in so we wandered a couple miles down to the beach and took an incredible six hour nap in the sand. We ended up staying in a NYC themed room of 20 bunk beds, one bathroom and a rabbit named PooPoo (take a wild guess at the name…) The place was awesome though! We had a blast and met some of the coolest people. Oh, but don’t say “awesome” too much in front of Europeans, apparently it is a dead give away that you are American; “Everything is awesome to Americans!”

Ireland was my favorite leg of the trip, which might have had something to do with the fact I was actually literate in this country! As we were walking through the airport, I noticed all the signs were in English. I stopped, threw my hands into the air and shouted, “I CAN READ!!” Although thoroughly embarrassing myself, I was too happy and too tired to care. Little did I know, the Irish accent on some people was so strong, it did not matter that they were even speaking English… There were far too many stories from Ireland to tell but I can share one highlight.                   

Dublin was one of our destinations so we could meet up with the theater students’ movement teacher, Bryan Burroughs, and his friend Aaron. Both of which are very well known, young Irish actors and spent a great deal of time hanging out with us while they were in Arezzo. They took us to see “Playboy of the Western World” in the Abbey Theater, a show Aaron had done a few years back. It was really a blast to see; they actually had a functioning tap of Guinness on stage for the bar scene! It was good fun, or as the Irish commonly say, “good craik,” not to be confused with “crack.” It took us a while to figure that one out…

Hands down, this was a trip of a lifetime! We pushed the limits on what people thought could be done in 11 days, how much one could fit into a book bag, and how long a person could, or better yet, should go without a shower, and it was worth every wrong turn.

 

Ben Grube 

ALTO CINQUE!!!