So back to my story. I didn't think anyone cared how it ended after allllll this time I haven't written, so THANK YOU ANNIE for asking me to finish it. :)
I'll try to make a long story short. I have hot peanut butter pasta to eat. :)
So the dude picks me up at my hotel in a taxi. I don't mean he hired a taxi to come pick me up. I mean he was DRIVING a taxi.
(At this point in the story, everybody always asks me if I sat in the front or the back. I sat in the FRONT, smartasses.)
His tires squeal on the gravel as the car shoots off down the road. He asks, "Do you want to go to beach or Mt. Olympus?" I say, "Whatever you want to do. You know what's best around here, I'm just along for the ride." He persists. "No, I ask YOU. Do you want the beach or Mt. Olympus?" I say, "Um, ok, how about Mt. Olympus?"
He screams, "I KILL YOU" which comes out more as "I KEEL YOU" then makes a u-turn in the middle of the road and we tear off in the opposite direction.
On Mt. Olympus, it becomes clear in the course of the conversation that he does not know what my name is. I try not to start hyperventilating, and go into survival mode. I realize at this point that NO part of this weekend will be good, not even getting to be on a legendary mountain, albeit in bad company. My goal is to get out of it alive. On the way down the mountain, he tries to massage my neck as we are walking. I wiggle away.
Once we're back in the car, he starts PICKING UP PASSENGERS and TAKING THEM PLACES. I'm still sitting in the front seat, trying to play it cool, like I do this all the time. No, he didn't split the fares with me.
At some point, I feign a headache and ask to go back to my hotel. He drops me off, then comes back for me at 9 to take me to the beach. I made the foolish mistake of wearing a swim suit. That gave him ideas. I snapped. I thoroughly disabused him of any notion that I was interested in any sort of intimacy. For the first time since I'd met him, he looked crestfallen. He didn't say anything on the drive back to the hotel. I hardly slept that night. Around 5 am I got a text message from him saying I needed to find my own way back to the bus station the next day.
My next thought was, "oh fuuuuuuuudge. what if when I call the cab it's his fuuuudging relative who comes to get me?" The thought after that was, "I have no fudging idea how to call a cab. I don't know the number and I don't speak FUDGING Greek." And I HAD to catch that bus so I could get back to Athens and get back to work.
Insert phone call to Embassy. Insert Embassy dude saying he can't help me. Insert me bursting into tears, and Embassy dude saying ok don't cry, he can help. Insert Embassy person in Athens making phone call to taxi company in Mt. Olympus. Insert cab driver who shows up (mercifully in a DIFFERENT cab than the one I was in yesterday) who must have heard the abbreviated story I told the Embassy dude, looks at me with sympathy in his eyes, and pats me on the back.
The story didn't end there. Two things: First, there is no "bus stop" so to speak. There is a plastic chair behind a shed that two police officers in mirrored shades were standing in just past a toll booth. Second, the driver got me there about 30 minutes early. So I'm chilling in a plastic chair under a scraggly olive tree with my suitcase next to me and some serious life re-evaluation to do on the side of the road. One of the police officers was trying to look me up and down and I glared and him and thought "I've been looking for someone to kick in the nuts, just TRY me buddy." He didn't look at me again.
At some point during my wait, I heard what sounded like a bell ringing. I thought, WTF. I turn around, and there is an honest-to-goodness SHEPHERD, with a CROOK, leading goats down a path behind me. Just typical, I thought. This day can't get any weirder.
Finally, my bus burst through the toll booth. The police officers flagged it down, I got on, and a few hours later I was back in Athens.
So much for keeping that story short. But there you have it, folks.
My worst. date. ever.
