Romania’s not too far away and I’ve never been there, so next week I’m heading to Romania to spend a few weeks backpacking through  Transylvania. I figure it can’t be any worse than Greece!

In central Athens, police fired tear gas in after groups of self-proclaimed anarchists threw petrol bombs and rocks.

The anarchists also set fire to rubbish bins and cars, and smashed bank windows, before dispersing, police said.

Some violence was also reported in the northern city of Thessaloniki as protesters set fire to banks and cash machines.

Unions describe the general strike – the third of its kind in as many months – as the biggest protest so far against the pension reform plan.

It follows a wave of stoppages by workers from various sectors:

• an ongoing two-week refuse collectors’ strike has left piles of uncollected rubbish rotting on streets
• protest action by power sector workers has caused nationwide blackouts
• a public transport strike on Tuesday created traffic chaos in the capital Athens

Read the full story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7304154.stm

Strangely enough, St. Patrick’s Day seems to be more popular in the US than anywhere in Europe, but one thing we’re definitely good at is coopting holidays from other countries and turning them into an excuse to go drinking! (I’ve got Cinco de Mayo marked on the calendar!)

Regardless, I was determined to find a new place to go that wasn’t full of sailors and cheap hookers, so I dragged Stuffie up to Syntagma Square with me. Our original plan was to find Coloniki (sp?) but we ended up wandering around downtown Athens for a while without running into any huge flashing signs to point us in the right direction. A light rain had started by this point in time, so the cobblestone on the roads and sidewalks was very slippery. Stuffie almost fell over a couple of times, but somehow we soldiered on. Eventually, we decided to rely on a fallback tactic of finding a fun looking crowd that looks like they know what they’re doing and following them. It was slim pickings though, and after a few minutes of searching the only group that presented itself was a big group of Russian tourists walking along yammering excitedly in Russian. We followed them around for a little while, but they seemed to be more interested in taking blurry pictures of old Greek ruins getting rained on than finding a cool bar, so we eventually bailed. We walked down a small maze of alleyways and ended up somewhere near Plaka. Just when all hope seemed lost, we stumbled across the James Joyce bar.

As you might expect, the James Joyce bar was your typical Irish joint. Approximately every single American in Athens was there tonight, because there were so many people packed into this bar you were scared to breathe too deeply since somebody might fill the space. The majority of the crowd was American, either students studying abroad or visiting for spring break, but we did meet one Irish chick, a few greek locals, and a dude from Hungary.

Try as I might, I can’t seem to escape from our fellow computer dorks. When we finally pushed our way up to the bar and got drinks, sitting right beside us was the only Irish chick in the whole place who (as it turned out) also worked for Microsoft in Europe. She was there with her Hungarian boyfriend, who also worked at Microsoft in Europe, and who didn’t seem to be too thrilled that she wanted to talk to us more than to him.

Other notable people we met included a really annoying drunk dude from New York who was majoring in political science (”majoring in traveling abroad for a year” as he put it), a submariner in the Greek navy (the greeks have a navy??), and a cute local greek girl that I ended up talking to for about an hour before discovering she was only 18 years old! That threw me for a loop since I was used to people being 21+ in the US, but I’m not complaining.

In summary, I got quite drunk, had a great time, and got a cool plastic green top hat to wear!

You can imagine my surprise when I came back to Athens from Gstaad and the very next day Athens was hit with a snowstorm the likes of which had never been seen before, shutting down the whole city.

I put some pictures on the photo gallery - http://picasaweb.google.com/valtrain/SnowInAthens

I labeled them in iPhoto right after I uploaded them, which means the captions didn’t make it online. Doh! The Athens photos are (roughly in the order they appear): Syntagma (Constitution) Square, Parliament Building (with the funny looking guards), walking through the National Gardens, a stadium thing that looks like it was used for track running during the olympics, the ruins of the temple of Zeus (the pillars standing out in a field), Hadrian’s Gate (which divided the old and new city), the theater of dionysos (at the base of the akropolis), then walking up to the akropolis where there’s the Parthenon, temple of athena, and some other stuff, then down to the Aeropagus hill for a view of the Ancient Agora, then walking through the Ancient Agora, then the temple of hephiastos in the ancient agora, the athens flea market, then a snack break for ice cream.

When I got this apartment in Athens, it came with a washing machine in it which I assumed would make it easier for laundry. Unfortunately for me, all the buttons and switches on the machine are labeled in Greek so I had to make my best guesses and feel lucky. The wash cycles for European machines are much longer than the American ones, so the machine was carrying on and making all kinds of noises for almost an hour and a half while the whole time I was wondering what I had done wrong and whether the machine was about to explode.

Thankfully it did not explode and an hour and half later the cycle was done. It seems that the designers of this machine neglected to implement two relatively important features: the ability to dry your clothes and the ability to open the machine door once the cycle was finished. I spent almost 20 minutes sitting there banging on the door trying to get it to open so I could get the clothes out. It finally did give, but it wasn’t an easy battle.

Since there’s no dryer in the machine, you have to hang your clothes up to dry. I initially tried hanging them out on the balcony of the apartment, but it’s a little cool here right now and two days later they were still not completely dry. Finally I had to bring them inside and put them next to the heater to get them dry. Next came ironing, which I had been able to avoid stateside by using the dryer. I pulled out the iron and found all the buttons labeled in Greek again. I poured some water into one of the holes that I really hoped was the right now, which caused all kinds of hissing and groaning from the iron but it too neglected to explode and I managed to iron some of my shirts without destroying anything.

I’m trying not to become too jaded, but every time I try going anywhere or doing anything in Athens I become more and more convinced that the entire city is full of scammers and con artists (no offense intended to my one athenian reader).

Last night I decided to head to one of the local bars and see what I could find. There was one bar that’s pretty close to our office that I walk past each day and it looks like it’s usually full of people, so I decided to go check it out. It was a sunday night so I didn’t expect that it would be very full, but when I showed up and went inside it was packed. The first thing I noticed was that there were only 3 guys in the whole bar (myself included) and there were about 20 gorgeous women who seemed to be there by themselves. I thought this was a bit strange and made a mental note to ask one of the locals if this was a lesbian bar, but I sat down to have a drink anyway.

I started talking to a few of the girls at the bar and I discovered that all of them worked at there. Literally every single girl in the bar worked there! What is their job, you ask? To sit in the bar, make it look crowded, and when guys come in try to con them into buying overpriced drinks. Even more mind boggling, they’re very up front about this and don’t even try to hide the fact that they all work there!

And the worst part? Before I realized the extent of the setup, I did get conned into buying one overpriced drink for a cute romanian girl. I tried some of it when it came and I’m pretty sure that it was just lemonade because there was certainly no booze in there. Sweet! I guess that way as soon as I leave she can move to the next guy and keep going all night without getting drunk. After one 7 euro lemonade, I felt the need to go elsewhere.

It’s really amazing to me that this is so commonplace, everyone treats it as if it’s a normal occurrance. I suppose I made the mistake of going to a bar in Piraeus, since that place has a bit of a reputation. Nevertheless, the whole experience seemed very fake and very rehearsed, going through the motions without meaning or feeling. Surely there are better places to go with people that don’t exist to rip off the tourists, so I’m trying to give the city a chance.

Slightly nicer in that it’s a big city and not quite as expensive as Switzerland, slightly less nice because it’s Athens.

It’s always interesting trying to make long term plans when from month to month I’m not even sure what country I’ll be living in. Rock on!