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Apr. 15, 2008 I arrived in Athens, Greece from LA around July 1,1990. I had brought a bag of clothes and a bicycle with me on the plane. So I cycled right out of Athens International Airport towards downtown. My Greek was minimal, but I could read. Anyway, I bought a dictionary and a street guide and started making my way about town. After a few nights on the beach in Kalamaki, I found a camp run by the Greek Touring Organization in a beautiful suburb of Athens called Voula. Voula and neighboring Glyfada, the Greek Beverly Hills, became my focal point. For the next three months I saw the sights and went to several towns within a 50 mile radius of Athens. I cycled right up to the Acropolis and to several museums, saw a lot of Greek Orthodox Churches, the monastery in Elevsis and Poseidon's Temple in Sounio. I visited all over town and went to downtown stores. I spent most of my time, though, cycling along the Saronic Gulf and relaxing on beaches. I would sit on the beach in Glyfada with a liter of iced coffee and study Greek by reading newspapers with my dictionary. In a word, I wasn't touring so much as just living in another country. Around the first of October, I boarded an Olympic Airlines jet with my bag and my bicycle, putting down three or four hours later in Alexandria, Egypt. I could read Arabic also, but had never spoken a word. Cycling out of Alexandria Airport, I was apprehensive about going straight into an Arab community with my biking clothes and long hair, but my fears were soon allayed, as I found my way to a park called Al Montazah, the grounds of former King Farouk's palace. There I met 500 people the first day I was in town. Friendly people, especially children, flocked around me. In the months I lived in Egypt I was swarmed again and again by crowds of 100 to 1000 merry children. I never had so much fun in my life. Elderly people, adults, college students, wives, the police and everybody were just as congenial as could be. I went around town about two days a week for the next six months, spending the other 5 days of the week in my room studying Arabic 12 hours a day. Incidentally, my first room in Alexandria, of motel quality, was $5 a day, but later, I found an older but perfectly livable place for $2 a day. There are no Pharaohnic memorabilia in Alexandria, which was founded after the fall of the last Pharaoh. For that you have to go to Cairo. So when I had been in Alexandria almost 6 months, I took my bike on someone's station wagon to Cairo. There I was able to ride right up to the Pyramids, the Sphinx, the Sahara Desert, the Cairo Citadel and the Egyptian Museum, where King Tut's regalia are kept. I crossed over the Nile a dozen times and visited Al Jazirah, the fashionable part of Cairo. Around April 1,1991, I returned to Alexandria and boarded a Lufthansa Airlines jet that would take me to Frankfurt, Germany in about 5 hours. Everything in Germany cost 5 to 10 times as much as in Egypt, which gave me some cause for regret. Still, a couple of days after my arrival, I bought a Eurailpass for $700. This pass entitled me to 30 train travel days over a 2 month period in most of the countries in Western Europe. I had to leave my bike in storage in Frankfurt though, so I was a little less mobile in the other cities I would visit. My first jaunt was a quick ride to Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon, where I spent a total of about 5 days. Then I circled back around to Genoa, Italy, where I bought a sleeping bag. Next I went to Rome for about 5 days. I'd been in Rome before, but I enjoyed returning to St. Peter's, the Vatican Museum and the Coliseum. I camped out right downtown and showered in the train station. Then I made an overnight run to Vienna, Austria, where I spent another 4 or 5 days. I visited the two famous museums at Maria Theresa Platz, as well as several less noted ones. I toured Schonbrunn Palace, visited the elegant downtown section, shopped on Maria Hilfer Strasse and saw the Danube River. Then I trained through the Austrian and Swiss Alps, with stops at Geneva and Zurich, rolling into Paris a couple of days later. There I slept right on the banks of the Seine and kept my sleeping bag in a locker in Gare Austerlitz. Of course I visited the Louvre, though I'd been there before. I went to Place Vendome, and shopped at Aux Printemps and Galerie Lafayette, where I bought several pairs of biking tights and a beret. In front of the Louvre, someone even took my picture, in my tights and beret, as if I had been an artist from the Left Bank. Then I took the train to Algeciras, Spain, where I boarded a ship for Tangiers, Morocco. This cost extra money. I met a number of amiable Arabs in Tangiers and then took an overnight train ride to Casablanca, returning to Tangiers in a couple of days. There I sailed for Algeciras again, and after I had made successive nonstop rides through Madrid, Paris, Frankfurt and Hamburg, the whole train that I was on rolled onto a ship to sail to Sjaelland, the island that Copenhagen is on. After a visit to Denmark, I got on another train that rolled onto another ship, and I was in Sweden. From there, I continued to Oslo, Norway. My whole Scandinaviann adventure lasted only 3 days or so. It was so cold and prices were so outrageous, with $3 for a can of soda, that all I wanted to do was leave. So I reversed my itinerary as far as Hamburg, and then headed for Berlin. It was raining hard in Berlin, so I didn't stay very long. But I did get to Berlin Zoo and Alexander Platz anyway. After that, I rolled back through Vienna to Budapest, Hungary. Hungary also cost extra train fare. I stayed in Budapest two or three days, with a room for $13 a night, which is cheap in Europe. Then I went west again, hoping to stop in Vienna for another visit. But it was raining torrents in Vienna. There were torrents in Geneva, Zurich and Paris too, so I just stayed on the train till we got to Amsterdam, where it was sunny. After Amsterdam, I went back to Paris and then to Frankfurt, and my 30 travel days were gone. Fortunately, in Frankfurt, I had my bike and could go all over town, out in the suburbs and even into the neighboring countryside. I saw everything there is to see over a period of 2 or 3 weeks. I went to the library and various bookstores almost every day, and I visited Frankfurt Zoo. Amazingly, Frankfurt, with only 1,000,000 people, has almost as many big department stores as New York, Chicago, London or Paris. So the last week I was in Germany, I rented a room, with $35 a night being the best I could do. Then, with a place to put things and try clothes on, I went shopping every day on the Zeil. I filled a second bag with sweaters and whatnot, though prices were very high. In late May, I cycled out to awesome Frankfurt Airport and boarded another Lufthansa jet. Ten hours later, I landed at Maribel International Airport, near Montreal, Quebec, Canada. I stayed for a week in a beautiful French-speaking suburb of Montreal called Rosemere, right near Riviere de Mille Iles, as lovely a spot as you can imagine. There were little islands in the river overgrown with graceful green willows trailing their osiers in the water. It was a two-hour cycle to downtown Montreal, but I took the long ride three of four times during the week. I went shopping at Eaton's and La Baie, and I converted all my money into dollars. I had begun my trip with $26,000 and ended it with $11,000, eleven months later. Finally, I got on a Greyhound bus is Montreal and after eight hours, I was walking my bicycle out of the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue on Manhattan Island in New York City. Half an hour later, I rolled into Greenwich Village to look for a couple of previous acquaintances, and that was the end of that. At my website I have pictures of some of the things I saw in Egypt and Europe. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Visit my website here. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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