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« on: March 17, 2012, 05:12:24 PM »
I was travelling across Europe as part of a month long study abroad, skimming the artistic highlights of each city for a couple days before moving on to the next.
When we got to Athens, our teachers led us to a a posh little hotel in a nice part of the city, and started up with the guy behind the desk as we crowded the lobby, our overstuffed suitcases and day bags and sweating bodies filling all available space. An hour later, our teachers returned, red-faced. They had lost our reservations. But they had found another hotel. We had to hit the streets again.
We walked for what felt like miles, though it might just be the length of the day and desire to have someplace to rest our heads. As we walked the town got less nice. By the time we stopped, it's fair to say that it was the worst part of any city I'd ever been in.
I dragged my bag to my hotel room and tried to rest, but my gut protested. The art history was only half of the reason I was on this trip. Maybe less. Really, I was travelling for the food. I headed down to the lobby, hoping to see someone else from my class with the same idea. Soon, the teachers returned, holding foil-wrapped gyros. I asked where they got them. I was told to walk two blocks down from the hotel, take a left, and get to the intersection where people are doing heroin.
I bit my lip.
Heading back up to my room, I did everything I could think of to make myself look like someone not to be fucked with. I had no idea what such a person looked like. I put on the raincoat I had brought for London. I took the cigars I had bought from a shop in Charles du Galle airport. I took off my glasses. I decided my name was Carlos Gigante, and that I was a drug dealer from California. I took everything out of my wallet except for twenty euro and put it into one of my boots.
I headed outside the hotel, walked down two blocks, took a left, and found the intersection where everyone was doing heroin.
Golly.
I took a deep breath, walked into the gyro shop, crowded with customers and loiterers, and asked the man at the counter for a pair. I handed him my money, he gave me my change, and as I was putting my money back in my wallet, a man came up to me.
"Hey, where you from?"
I was afraid, but at the same time, I was secretly excited I got to bust out my fake backstory. "California. My name's Carlos Gigante."
"Cool, cool. What's it like there?" He peered at me, and I squinted back.
"It's... not bad." I hastily shoved my wallet into the pocket of my coat.
We made awkward small talk for a few minutes, and I was sure I was going to get stabbed, so when the gyros were passed to me over the counter, I cut off the sentence immediately and walked back to the hotel, as quickly as I felt I could without drawing attention.
As I unwrapped up in my hotel room and bit into it, it was the most amazing thing I had ever tasted. I looked up, enraptured, and realized that I looked like an idiot. Looking back, I realize I was an idiot. But goddamn, what a sandwich.