Rob's Life: Water water everywhere

If you deny the existence of a form of magic which is generated when you put yourself in the way of life, with no effort or expectation, but just lolling your feet very casually in the river of human activity while you sit quietly on the bank watching the traffic of that river go by, then explain the following highly improbable encounter:

The crossing from Bari to Patras (or, with a little alpha-beta-ical flair, ᴨατραϛ) is eighteen hours, and my decision not to pay for a cabin resulted in me sleeping here, with surprisingly effective results, given the cold and my total lack of sleeping equipment other than my rain jacket to cover me.

Boarding a ship as a foot passenger is very odd. You just turn up at the edge of the land with your little pile of stuff and walk right aboard.

My cabin for the night. Actually it could have been far worse.

The following morning, as rain lashed the windows.

The journey from Patras to Athens is curiously ad-hoc given the fact that surely everyone must be going the same way. I was simply turfed out onto the street, blinking and stretching away the night's swelling, dreamlike crossing. I took a taxi to the bus station, went to a cafe to get my first spinach pie, where I befriended a man doing a Greek crossword by waving my crumpled Guardians at him and showing him the crossword I'd been doing. A bus took me to a train station and finally a train to Athens. On the train I got chatting to a pair of humanitarian workers who were working for the International Organisation for Migration, a UN body based in Corinth (I know: imagine working in Corinth! If I knew anything about Greek history I'd be amazed.) She was Greek and had lived in Strasbourg and he was Iranian and was doing interpreting work for the Pashtun speakers who had been doing the International Migrating.

We arrived at the central station and parted ways without swapping numbers and I walked my giant suitcase along the main road to the swanky downtown apartment I'd booked for my first night after the boat. The place was swish and I enjoyed some very mild strolling, ate Kurdish felafel with homemade bread, made before my eyes by a friendly Greek/Kurdish man, and generally began to form my impression that Athens is an unbelievably cool city where handsome people of all ages seem to be having a lovely time.

This morning it was time once again to move on, this time to the hostel that will be my home for the next two weeks while I start my Greek course and life starts once again to take some kind of shape. When I arrived at the Metro station, there was a hubbub as a small theatre troupe from Zakinthos were performing a traditional play in the street. I stood and watched in the sunshine (sunshine!) for a while then was about to call it a day when the acting was suddenly replaced by traditional hands-in-a-circle type dancing which was as easy for me to enjoy as the next person so I decided to stay and see it out. Some way through the performance I became aware of organised shouting behind me and turned around to see a protest passing, with flags and placards. It turned out to be a pro-Pahlavi Iranian protest demanding regime change in Iran and the restoration of the monarchy via the Shah's son. As I stood and watched the parade go by, reading signs and wondering at a population demanding a return to monarchy, someone from the procession grabbed my arm: the Iranian humanitarian man I'd met on the train! In a city of some large number of millions, I found myself right at the right place right at the right time! This time I wasn't going to miss out on a new friend so I walked alongside the protest just long enough to give him my number. We'll go for Persian food later in the week.

If you don't believe in magic that's ok for you, but I intend to keep dangling my feet in the river.