Thankfully, I managed to sleep a good bit on the flight, and was reasonably alive when we landed in Athens. It was the first time I’ve ever been out of the U.S., so I was pretty excited. Another difference (and a very nice one) from normal travel presented itself. We had no idea where we were going, and didn’t care. All we had to do was find the guy from the promotion company (Jim Morris says it’s always the “same” guy, no matter what country he’s in), and everything would be taken care of. He found us, and got us in cabs and on our way. We made it to our hotel eventually. On the way, I got my first taste of Athens traffic. I’m from Chicago, where plenty of people drive like maniacs, but it’s nothing compared to Athens. Just before the hotel, four guys got out of a truck in front of us trying to make it up the street, picked up a car, and moved it out of the way so they could get by. And the cabbie said we hadn’t seen anything yet.

Our hotel was in a great spot, basically right under the Acropolis. We had a nice dinner right next to the hotel. Earlier, Jon’s dad (who is a pharmacist) went into a pharmacy across the street to talk shop, and find out what kind of differences there were between the U.S. and Greece. Within five minutes, he’d gotten into a big argument. It quickly became obvious where Jon gets some of his fire from. That night, we all walked around the Plaka (the old town area with lots of shops and restaurants) and scoped out some bootleg Iced Earth merchandise among other stuff. I walked into a record shop, and for the first time, realized that I was in Europe, where there would be all sorts of CDs I normally wouldn’t see in the U.S. I got Misanthrope’s Libertine Humiliations (a very fine CD!)

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