The Fretful Mother's Blog

My first thought upon arriving at the metro station from the airport in Athens was that I may have made a horrible mistake. I cannot read Greek. It’s all Greek to me. And there was not a single drop of English anywhere. WTF? Did they not know I was American? Did they think I was going to change my life around to fit into their little country? These Greeks must be some selfish bastards, I thought.
So in this predicament, I did what any other American, especially one from the Midwest, would do. I followed the crowd. I got on the same train with all the rest of the cheap tossers and pretended I knew exactly what I was doing. It wasn’t until about three stops into our 17-stop ride that I emerged enough from my self-induced “don’t look around like you are scared” trance and actually looked around. And then I was scared. I was surrounded by women wearing tights as pants, high-heeled boots, shirts with exposed midriffs and lots of jewelry. I had landed us on the hooker train.
I pulled on my husband’s sleeve and anxiously asked if those were all hookers. No, he said, everyone who dresses like that is not a hooker. I thought, sure, that’s what you have to tell yourself. But I have no such need. Lord only knew where this train was headed. Probably straight to a brothel. That’s why all the men looked so happy. Plus, they most likely had syphilis-induced dementia. What had a gotten us into? I just wanted to experience the city. Next time I’m talking a taxi and viewing it from the other side of the glass. You can never be too safe.

This entry was posted on November 23, 2009 at 11:47 am and is filed under Fear of the Day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.