Dateline: Athens, Greece.
The Bunker Staff members made it safe and sound, with only aching joints and a brain cloud head fog from flying into the time zones to show for it. We changed planes in Frankfort, and it was a forced march to get from one end of the airport to the other. I have two observations to make in this regard: 1. Germans are physically fit people. And 2. They are all training for some sort of future Olympic sport involving pushing wheeled luggage through the airport at a dead run, like if Samsonite sponsored curling competitions.

If you count time literally, we spent over twelve hours in the air. and it’s no surprise we are both wiped completely out. We had to stow our gear at the hotel and then walk to a late lunch/early dinner with our entire traveling group, 26 in all, with nearly half of them kids under the age of 20. The group cross-talk was a weird mix of adults trying to make “Get-to-know-you chitchat, and teenage girls being quietly mortified at, like, having to, like, you know, be near grown-ups and stuff.

Everyone working at the restaurant was very nice, at least, to us. To each other, the sniped and barked and made it very clear that, were it not for all of the foreign witnesses on hand, they would be trying to murder each other with cleavers and rolling pins.

We ate a large amount of food and then staggered back to the hotel, gawking all the way. The streets are narrow, the buildings boxy and colorful by turns, and there’s this vibe in the air that I’ve never experienced before. I’ve been to Canada several times, and there are parts of Montreal and Toronto that just have a different feel about them. This whole city is like that.

Tomorrow is the first real day; we are going to the Acropolis.