Did you ever go on a trip to Italy or something and you land at the airport, and then, like, you meet these two guys and they’re like, “Hey, come on this yacht with us!” And you wind up going on a yacht trip and, like, Capri? And it’s like this whole other part of your trip you didn’t even foresee!

Yeah. I had one like that last summer. In Greece though, not Italy.

Renee and Mallory, I Feel Pretty

Growing up, Tinkle was one of my favourite comics to read. Come summer vacations, we (my brother, cousins and I) would rush to Chikmagalur to our grandma’s house, where we’d devour the stories and illustrations in the Fortnightly and Digest issues like ravenous wolves. One of my favourite sections of the late Mr Anant Pai’s brainchild was the series ‘It Happened To Me‘.

These were little write-ups of incidents – mostly silly – that had happened to and were penned by pre-teen readers, like then-me. The incidents weren’t out-of-the-ordinary tales. Looking back, they were quite benign. Some were funny, some were embarrassing. All were real. All were relatable.

A while ago, my friend KT and I went to Greece. We had a wonderful time on our laid-back budget trip and returned with loads of memories, trinkets, and Ouzo (actually, that’s just me). We also returned with a handful of stories. These stories from Greece are absolutely not the earth-shattering kind. Believe me, none are glamourous, and bear no semblance whatsoever to the polished scene from ‘I Feel Pretty’. Some have lessons, but most don’t. Some are funny (in my opinion), and some are embarrassing. However, all are real, and as you read them, I hope that they are relatable. These ordinary stories – our little adventures and misadventures – are what made our two weeks in Greece extraordinary.

Need help planning your travels? Check out my budget-friendly guide to Greece.

There are quite a few of these – I was kidding when I said ‘handful’ (so gullible you’ll are!) – so, in order to keep the length of this post uninfuriating, here’s part one of my Travel Anecdotes – the mainland Greece misadventures.

Chapter 1 – Athens

A rose for the beautiful lady

Athens, our first stop in Greece, was everything we had imagined it would be; at least in the parts we stayed at and explored. The sights, the food, the people, the cramped hostel bathing area that could fit only three-fourths of a grown man – they meshed so beautifully with the addictive combination of capital-city energy, much like the flavour play we get by adding jaggery and tamarind paste to sambhar.

We were at the Monastiraki Square, taking in everything we could see, smell and hear when a girl – no older than fourteen – approached me.

“Rose for the beautiful lady. Free for you.”

“Thank you!”, I said beaming, as I gently plucked a drooping red rose from her hand by its stem. I was ecstatic – no one had given me a flower free of charge before (not counting birthday bouquets)! No sooner was I about to bury my entire nose into the body of this once-luscious rose to give my olfactory nerve its dose of floral euphoria for the day than I heard some mumbling coming from behind me.

I gave her rose. Now you pay. Five euros for rose for the beautiful lady.

I turned around, only to find KT flabbergasted. His face transformed into a canvas, upon which many paintings were brushed in succession, sequentially titled – did she just call YOU a beautiful lady? I haven’t even bought my girlfriend flowers yet!, and FIVE EUROS FOR A FLOWER?

I hurried back to where KT and the sneaky flower girl stood, handed her the flower which she fought against taking back, sheepishly apologized, and the two of us power-walked to the end of the square. That wasn’t the last we saw of her.

On a later date, she and her friend chased me across the square screaming ‘rose for the beautiful lady’, while I rallied my calf muscles and darted away with as much speed as a semi-fit woman-in-her-late-twenties could manage, panting and shouting ‘no thank you I’m not that beautiful!’

Later that night, I saw her again. KT and I were taking a post-dinner stroll around Kalamiotou, and there she was – sitting on the pavement, back pressed against the wall. In her hand was a half-eaten gyro, soda in a foam tumbler next to her. She was among people who were familiar to her – perhaps her family, or others in the sneaky flower business. We looked at each other for a few seconds – both of us stoic-faced – and then returned to our worlds. I never saw her again.

Paradise lost

On our first night in Athens, we visited a cocktail bar called Drunk Sinatra where we helped ourselves to some truly fanciful, delicious and wallet-denting drinks. Before we were about to order another round, we assessed our financial situation and decided that it would be in our best interests to head to a shack for dinner.

After some meandering, we ended up at a pretty nondescript joint called tsiknaboom. We occupied one of the roadside tables and ordered a couple of beers and some food which would end up being the most delicious street food in Greece to grace our palates.

As we sipped our creamy beers and dug into our souvlakis, a man – probably a regular – pulled out his guitar, and strummed a tune so melancholic and beautiful that we lost track of time. We only left a few hours later because we had an early morning the next day; we decided we’d come back in the evening.

We never found tsiknaboom open after that one night. We came back early one evening, then later in the night, and also on our last day in Greece. Maybe we were cursed; maybe it was meant to be one of those ‘Cinderella went to the ball’ moments where once the clock struck twelve, everything disappeared. At least Cinderella got her happy ending. We, however, were left longing for just one more bite of that saucy souvlaki and one more sip of that creamy dark beer, but we had no prince who’d look for us, shoe in one hand, damned be his kingdom.

The Queen of My Heart

The Westlife song? Even better.

Day one in the heart of Greece, Athens, was going splendidly for us. We had just spent half the day at the magnificent Acropolis and were heading back to the city centre for lunch. A man – tall, muscular, serious demeanour – approached us.

I clutched my bag tight. Everything – wallet, passport, phone – was in it.

“Excuse me, man, do you have a minute?” he called out in an unmistakable Caribbean accent.

“Um, yeah, sure” KT spoke, as the man got closer. From the corner of my eye, I could see two more men walking toward us.

Tensions began to build. By now, I was prepared to go into full-assault mode to save my bag. And KT.

“Where are you from?”

“We’re from India”

“Oh, I love India! Beautiful country, beautiful people! How long you in Athens for?”

“Hehe, just two days. We’re trying to get some lunch, so we’ll just be on our way. Have a good day…”

“Wait man, you have money?”

Adrenaline began coursing through my veins, and I nudged KT. “No, not really. We don’t have much money, sorry.” We were definitely not prepared to get robbed, more so in daylight.

“Ah, we’re having a small concert this week, with Jamaican music. We are trying to raise money for it. You come, no? It’s good. Good music, good food, good people. Here, take this.”

He handed us what looked like woven friendship bands, one made of black and white twines, while the other was red, green, and yellow – the quintessential Caribbean colours.

“Oh, thank you!” I said, to which the man cheerily responded –

For you, free of charge! For you, sir, four Euros.

I could read KT’s thoughts as I looked at him and giggled into my sleeve. This is the flower incident all over again, he mumbled.

“Sir, I don’t have four Euros. We don’t want the bands. Good luck with your concert.”

“Ah, come on man. Okay, give two Euros, take one band. It’s good. Good music. Good food.”

“No, thank you”, and we tried to find an opening from what was now a small circle of men around us.

“Okay okay, take two. But you must tie this one to the lady. She’s the queen of your heart, no? You must cherish her…” he trailed off, as he continued to hold our hands and sing what I believe was a blessing for couples; I thought it was really sweet, while KT describes it as ‘very Lion King‘.

We said our goodbyes and walked away unscathed (obviously), although we were a bit red in the face. To this day, KT calls me the queen of his heart whenever we talk about how we need to be nicer to each other. On a side note, we did end up paying one Euro for both bands. Hey, when in Greece, you win a story, you lose a Euro.

Chapter 2 – Delphi

“Are you Italian? Come to my party!”

Delphi to us was something out of a countryside fairytale in Greece – the air was crisp and cool, looming mountains served as the backdrop, hilly roads lined by cosy cottages and quaint restaurants, and the local food as hearty as it could get.

We were just about done with a spectacular lunch spread – salad, moussaka, souvlaki, beer, yoghurt, and baklava – and I was full to bursting. We were planning out the rest of our day when I realized that I really needed to go to the bathroom. I told KT that I’ll walk up to the hotel and that he can take his time and explore.

Suggested read: A guide to speed-dating the best of Greek cuisine

As I walked hurriedly up the sloping road hoping I don’t soil myself in the process, a stringy-looking man wearing a grey vest passed by me on a light yellow Vespa.

I didn’t think too much of it and continued to walk. Another six minutes, Niviya, you can do it.

I saw the Vespa again, as it came from behind and sped up on the road. Strange, I thought. Is he lost? I hope he doesn’t ask me for directions, not right now.

The man took a U-turn, and this time, purposefully slowed down till he pulled up next to me. “Hi!”

I ignored him and continued to speed-walk to the hotel. Being a woman, I was no stranger to the series of events I thought would take place next. I don’t want to be attacked right now, just let me go to the bathroom, then we’ll see, I thought.

“Hi!” he said, a bit louder. By now, I realized I wouldn’t be able to shake him off, and decided to indulge in a little banter. “Hello.”

“How are you? New to Delphi? How long?”

Ah, so he’s a local. “Yes, just here for a few days. I’m in a bit of a hurry, so I’ll be on my way…”

“Where you from? Italian?”

“Oh, no no I’m from India,” I said, and wondered how he could mistake me for an Italian. I’m as brown as a grocery paper bag.

“Yes yes, you must come to this party with me tonight. Lovely party.”

It was time to test the efficacy of my go-to response when I’m in India – “Sure, my husband and I will be there! Where is it?”

“Ah…yes, you on honeymoon with your husband? Very good!” he said, and I’d like to say he sounded disappointed but I was still basking in the glory of being mistaken for a native of a primarily-Caucasian country (colonialism did a pretty solid number on us, eh?), so I didn’t pay attention to how he felt. “Here’s my card, come to this club. And I go to India soon, yes? I will see you there.”

And off he rode into the afternoon to find another who would be a better prospect for his party-promoting activity.

KT and I did cross the club that night but decided against going in. Instead, we chose to shop at a little local store and imagine what the party would’ve been like. “Maybe it’s a rave”.

“In Delphi? No way!”

“As if people who live in the mountains don’t need drugs!”

Chapter 3 – Athens once more

This is how I die! I’m not sleeping tonight!

Our booking for a lovely penthouse for a night in Athens fell through. We were at the Delphi bus station, sipping Greek coffee and waiting for the bus to arrive when I got the email.

I immediately slipped into panic mode. Turns out, the penthouse was double-booked, and the management tried to reach me on my India number (I had switched to a Greece number soon after arrival), and when I couldn’t be reached, my booking was cancelled. We were to reach Athens in four hours. It was imperative we got a good night’s rest because we had an early-morning ferry to Milos the next day. Finding a decent place to stay, within budget, and in under four hours, seemed impossible.

“Hey, this one’s available! It’s a hotel, in someplace called Menandrou, and it’s about thirty euros. A bit steep, no? But we don’t really have a choice.”

Um, the rating is 5/10.

Yeah, but how bad could it be?

We soon found ourselves outside Small Funny World, the hostel where we spent our first two nights in Athens. We went up to the dorms, filled our water bottles, chatted with the receptionist, and asked her if we could walk to Menandrou.

“No, better take a cab. It’s not safe for you.”

Not the best words to hear from a local. We booked a taxi, and it arrived in about fifteen minutes.

“To Hotel Soho in Menandrou. Thanks!”

“Oh, Menandrou? Not a very nice place, sir. Why aren’t you staying in this area?”

At this point, we were exhausted from our bus journey, and nervous about spending the night in what sounded like the seedy underbelly that plays host to Athenian crime lords. Within ten minutes, we found our taxi driving into a semi-deserted street, lined with shops with names we could easily pronounce. Turns out, the area is where the south Asian migrant population lives (all desis please stand up!). There weren’t enough streetlights to illuminate the roads; on the contrary, there were overflowing garbage bins everywhere, and a strange smell of abandonment and food rot hung over the area the way I hope my Body Shop Fijian Lotus spray clings to me – stubbornly. When our driver pulled up in front of a white, motel-like building, he instructed us to take our luggage, and hurry inside. “Don’t stay out. Not safe.”

We did as we were told – hauled our bags, marched right up to the reception, paid the night’s tariff, and walked up to our triple room. And what a room it was!

The room had a small foyer area, where we could probably keep our footwear, umbrellas and such. On the right was the door to the bathroom, which we decided to check out later. We stepped inside the room and saw four cots lined up next to each other, much like a dorm.

I then learned why the hotel had a 5/10 rating. It probably should’ve been lesser.

Stains on the bedsheet. And not the kind where only the remnants are visible in the form of slight discolouration surrounded by a cell-membrane-ish border that’s a tad darker. These stains were like blood spatter – some big, some small, but all dark, threatening, and ugly. And they were everywhere. I shuddered – felt the heebie-jeebies go up and down my back. We had no choice but to make peace with the stained bedsheets so we draped towels over them.

As KT sat on one of the now-covered beds, I moved towards the end of the room, to part the thick velvet curtains and peek down to the street of Menandrou. Only, the curtains weren’t velvet. They were covered in a layer of dust so thick, that they looked like they were made of velvet up until you actually touched them. And I managed to get a palm-size worth of dust on my hand (leaving an equal-sized impression on the curtain). As I whispered ‘Ewwww’ and backed away, I wondered – when was the last time they cleaned this place? Why does this look like the sight of a love affair-turned-murder? Why does the room smell so damp and swampy?

The answer to the last question lay in the mystery room – the bathroom. There was a white bathtub, standing lonesome and in need of dire attention, but since we, by now, had planned not to use any bathing facilities, we didn’t worry about this much. The sink was so-so – enough for a quick night-and-morning brush – and the tiles were a sickly green and stained, just like the bedsheets. Again, not too alarming, considering everything else.

And that’s when we saw it, the pièce de résistance – a gaping hole in the corner, as though someone had dug through the tile. It was black inside, and one may think it was just the darkness of the hole. But no sir! This hole – or as KT affectionately named it – the devil’s an*s, had a black, tar-like substance in it. It looked thick, sticky and disgusting, like blood that had been left to oxidize and coagulate (not sure if both can happen at the same time IRL) after draining someone’s body of every drop in the chipped bathtub.

“I don’t want to die here”, KT said in a nonchalant tone. “This room looks like the sight of a drug exchange gone wrong.”

“I think it’s an affair gone wrong. I mean, which drug dealer would be so close to the bed to leave so many stains of whatever-that-is?”

I just don’t want to get stabbed in my neck with a diseased needle by some random person on the street tomorrow. I want to make out of Greece alive.

And with meaningless banter like this, we drifted into a half-sleep, in the same clothes we arrived in. We didn’t want to risk infecting fresh sets of clothes with whatever germs inhabited the room.

Morning came, and we were out of the hotel in under thirty minutes. We walked to the Monastiraki Metro station, heaving sighs of relief when the first signs of the Athens we had grown to love graced our eyes. In a couple of hours, we were on the ferry out of mainland Greece. While fellow passengers were fresh as a garden blessed with morning dew, we were dishevelled, sweaty, damp, and disgusting. Much like the devil’s an*s in the bathroom in Menandrou.

Why am I sharing these stories?

I yearn to travel, to deeply explore places both novel to me and previously loved for reasons other than ‘taking a break’ or ‘vacationing’ (not that there’s anything wrong with these reasons). I often find, during my reading and research, a lack of honest, true-to-the-bone experiences. I cannot count the number of times I’ve lost myself in the rabbit hole of gorgeous shots of spectacular destinations, beautiful people donning perfect outfits with skin and hair ‘on fleek’, and have invariably thought to myself – why am I unable to travel/live this way? And I know I’m not alone in this.

We’re drifting purposefully through an age of social sharing, which is both wonderful and worrisome in equal measures. Never before has content been created and shared with such speed and volume, in a way that almost anyone located anywhere can access, use, and share truly engaging pieces. There is a darker side to such production, where the number of likes and comments deem our experiences worthy of a first glance, where the standards of aesthetically pleasing dream vacations and #travelgoals are as rigid as my cat’s right foreleg (she has a rod put in there), where not only is there some otherworldly pressure to constantly immerse ourselves into fascinating experiences in the most frivolous ways possible, but also to make sure that they are perfect, or at least picture-perfect.

Suggested read – What makes travel such a remarkable teacher?

That’s not all! Travel is now a social currency, the number and variety of stamps in our passports are our way to peddle our worth to the rest of the world, where we all scream – ‘Look! I’ve been everywhere! I’m worthy, and possibly even better than you. Aspire to be like me!’ And aspire we do, forgetting that mindless travel – travelling simply for the sake of checking places off of a sheet of paper we scribbled on at midnight on January 1 because everyone else did it too – does more harm than good to everyone, directly and indirectly, connected to it.

That is not true-to-yourself travel. In fact, that isn’t even life! The world is desperate for meaning and realism. These stories, as run-of-the-mill as they may seem, are real. They are light-at-heart, personal, raw experiences that happened to us, and hopefully will continue to happen to the best of us. The experiences added so much flavour to our time in Greece that without them, our travels would be amiss of that special something; they would have been nothing more than a status on Facebook or a post on Instagram which would gather a few likes and comments, and fall short of their true intention – telling our friends and families that we experienced things that possibly changed something in us, and that they drilled in us the need to stop rushing and to stay, not only to look but to see, and not to treat places as conquests but as homes, temporary or otherwise.

I, for one, look forward to having more such experiences no matter where my passport takes me, and I hope that they mar my aspirations of achieving perfection in my travels, and allow me to openly embrace the imperfect.

It happened to me in Greece. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.