Kos, Greece

At the risk of sounding like I have bad attitude, I am just going to say that I'm a little fed up with our current situation.  I feel like I'm living in a bowl of soup.  The air is hot, the water is hot, my skin is hot, everything is just HOT.  and gross.  Yeck.

But one thing I do love about living here is the access to Indian newspapers.  Those things are a hoot.  Today's paper highlighted the scandal of chemically-ripened mangoes, but didn't really give anyone any tips about how to avoid them.  Apparently these chemical-mangoes are all over the place.  Below that there was an article about a woman who served her husband lunch, and then before eating his lunch, the husband went off to do something, and while he was gone a dog wandered up and ate his lunch.  So he came back to see his lunch mostly eaten and got upset with his wife for not minding his lunch.  This next part isn't funny, but anyway, she swallowed a rubber bullet in protest and then later died.

It's a good thing that I still have our trip to blog about because otherwise we've been up to not much, reading newspapers and sweating.  That's just about sums up my days.

So for now, let's go back to Greece:

To get to Cappadocia we flew from Bodrum to Ankara, then rented a car and drove to Goreme.  Then, we did everything in reverse to get back to Bodrum.  We stayed the night there in another crappy hotel, but it didn't much matter since we had an early boat to Kos the next morning.

The boat ride was quick and we were super excited to get our first taste of Greece.  Right when we got off the boat there was a man asking us if we needed a room, saying he had one available at his house.  Now, I know that this sounds creepy, but we've stayed in peoples' houses before on vacations, usually with great success.  At least, it's always cheap.  The idea behind these arrangements is that people who own a large house rent out the rooms they don't use for extra money.  Usually, the rooms are decent and sometimes awesome.  Once in Croatia my friend Kelly and I stayed in the upper level of a house where we each had our own bedroom and bathroom, and shared a kitchen and a huge balcony overlooking the ocean.  All for 9 dollars a night.

So, with past luck in mind, and the fact that we would only be in Kos for one night, we took the room.  It will not be cataloged in home-stay successes, but will always be remembered for the great adventure it provided.  More on that later.   

The first thing we did in Kos was eat.  Actually, the first thing we did was I went shopping and Brad got progressively grumpier, but as soon as I stepped off the boat I felt like a shabby mess among the highly fashionable Greeks, so I bought a dress to feel better.  Then we ate.  Oh, boy did we ever.  I had some ideas about how good Greek food would be, but when the waiter asked, "We have fried cheese, would you like to try that?"  I knew I was going to be in trouble.  Greek food is delicious!  The meat!  The cheese!  The yogurt!  Heavenly.  But not so good for the waistline.

Doesn't that look just like you think a Greek restaurant ought to look?

Fried cheese on the right, Greek salad on the left

 We spent the rest of the day wandering around town, sitting by the water, and just generally relaxing.  One hilarious thing about our time in Greece is that everyone there thought we were German.  We couldn't convince them otherwise.  Once, a man asked where we were from and we replied, "The US."
"Oh, so you're Germans living in the US?"
"No, we're Americans."
"Not German?"
"No."
But he still looked skeptical, we could tell he really didn't believe us.  So, we just kind of went along with it, even when people spoke German to me, I tried to reply with the ten or so German words I know.  And it still makes me laugh to think how afterward those people probably thought, "That German lady doesn't speak German very well."

A highlight of our time in Kos was the town-square, where we sat over iced coffees like the rest of the Greeks and watched the happenings.  We hit the very beginning of Greek-island tourist season, so in quite a few places we were the only tourists around.  It gave us the opportunity to catch real-life in action, which on this particular day was a chance to see the town bully bully people and hit on women.  We watched him do that for about an hour, but then my coffee ran out and we didn't think we could afford another round so we had to call it quits.  Two things: 1. the euro is insanely expensive and 2. Greeks can sit over one cup of coffee for a really long time.  We were out-lasted by everyone around us.

Town Square

Coffees and a shot of the bully, bullying someone

At this point I already have a bit of a belly, things only got worse from there

 That night we did some more town-square gawking, this time over wine.  The next day our boat to Rhodes didn't leave until 4pm, so we had the whole afternoon to explore.  To enhance exploring we rented a scooter and went about half-way around the island and into the interior.  It was fun.

scooterers

And now, the adventure, featuring BRAD, channeling the great Greek hero: the messenger of the Battle of Marathon.

Before we left to scoot the island we asked our lady house/hotel owner if we could keep our bags in the locked part of their house and she agreed to keep them safe inside for us.  After returning from our trip, with just about an hour to collect our things and walk down to the marina, we found the house locked up tight, and not a family member in sight.  She had set our suitcases out, but left Brad's backpack with the camera and laptop locked inside.  At first, we didn't panic, but calmly walked around the neighborhood asking people if they had a phone number or knew the whereabouts of the owners.  It was then that we discovered for certain the thing we suspected all along: our house/hotel owners were crazy social outcasts.  No one anywhere had anything to do with them.  One semi-helpful lady suggested that they might be at the marina, looking to rent another room.  And that's when Brad became a hero.  He took off like a shot, sprinting all the way down to the water.  I decided to spend the time he was away looking for a way into the house and acting like a maniac.  I climbed over a wall, rattled doors and windows, looked under every object in sight for a key and eventually started scoping the area for tools we could use to bust down the door.  (If you're wondering about the urgency, the boat tickets were 45 euro a piece and we didn't think they were refundable, though maybe they were.  I don't know, we were just in a state.)

Then...
Brad returned!  Victoriously waving a key!  Or at least that's what I was hoping for.  But really Brad just jogged up, looking worried and really sweaty.  He didn't find the owners at the marina.  The clock was ticking, we had less than 15 minutes before the boat left, and Brad and I were looking at each other, knowing we were thinking the same thing...BUST DOWN THE DOOR!  But then Brad leaned against a ground-floor window, and it opened.

Can I just say that all this happened in broad daylight and in full view of the entire neighborhood and that not one single person tried to stop us ever.  Not even when Brad climbed through the window and emerged with the bag.  Not even when we grabbed the other bags and took off running down the street.  I don't know what that means about that neighborhood, but I do know that we were really glad we didn't break down the door.  Because not five minutes after we showed up at the ferry stop (which was late, by the way) the owner of the house/hotel and her daughter came whizzing up on a motorcycle to ask us how we managed to get in the house.

A brief conversation cleared the air, the owners were just as apologetic for locking up our bags as we were for breaking into their house.  As the daughter started the engine to drive away she said, "Don't forget us!"

Oh, we won't.

And with that we stepped on the boat, headed to the island of Rhodes.