Saturday, January 18, 2014

Brutal Athens

No sorry - the title sounds like it, but there's no physical violence in this post.


You know. We really just wanted to go see a movie tonight. We weren't quite sure which one to pick. I'd favoured the Coen brother's Inside Llewyn Davis (Yeah, still haven't seen it. But I will!). Fortunately, Sam had the idea to see Nebraska. Beautiful!!! Go see this movie!!! If you don't know it, watch the trailer. If you don't like it, watch the movie anyway. Do it! The trailer is good and tells you a lot, but it doesn't manage to communicate the beauty, the power of the movie. Seriously, it is packed with great shots of landscapes and people, with really nice humor, with kind-hearted and well developed characters, with so much sadness and love. Watch it! And it features Bob Odenkirk whom you might know as Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad! Watch it!!! Okay, so we really only wanted to see a movie tonight. But then - you know how it goes - we thought, well, let's just have a beer at Tony's, talk about the movie a bit. And that's when it started. This is the first weekend in Athens that probably all of the students are really back in town, and it shows. There's crazy people around. We've just had snow, but still dudes were showing off their tanned and tattooed arms in t-shirts, and girls wearing their high heels and mini skirts on Court Street, jumping off taxis singing Black Eyed Peas stuff while running to the ATM in order to make this night happen. In Tony's we were just gonna have this one beer, saying how we liked the movie. In comes Bob and tells us that we should come see this band at Casa across the street. Well. Okay. See the band, then we can still go home. And they were really good. Some rock'n'roll stoner blues thing, and a good show! I also liked the band that played after them - these kids looked kinda hillbilly and redneck while playing something in between the former band and straight forward punk rock - but Sophia and Sam were not that enthusiastic about them, so we left. However, the moment when we wanted to go home was already gone. So we went to Lucky's and had a beer there. It was obvious then that there was no chance I would start reading and writing tomorrow before 10 or 11a.m. So we just had a good time. And suddenly it's almost 2a.m., which is when bars in Athens close. I really tried, but I could not find anyone who knew some place else to go afterwards, so we just headed home, praising Leipzig and Germany for clubs and the absence of curfews. It's true that party in Athens starts earlier than in Leipzig. But it also ends disproportionately earlier. And, I think the most important difference is that, in Leipzig, you know you can go out, dance, party, or whatever, as long as you want to. Here, it's over at 2a.m. if you like it or not, unless you know the right people. So, Athens is tricky. You know you shouldn't party hard so you can get up early in the morning in order to study hard. And then, Court Street sucks you in, and in less than an hour, you are ready to paint the town. An hour later, Court Street sends you back home because it's 2a.m. Too late to get up early tomorrow, too early to want to go home.

Anyway, life is good here. Classes have started this week, and I think I might really enjoy at least 3 out of 4 courses. I'm gonna read a couple of great pieces of American literature, and some very interesting theoretical texts. It's gonna be a lot of work, but I expect it to be a lot of good and rewarding work. Thus, I'll have to limit myself to writing less blog entries in the next days than I had done previously. But I'll somehow manage to keep track of things.

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