When we stayed in Cairo, it was cheap enough that we could easily justify a private double room, but since Europe is as a whole, much more expensive than Cairo, we went with a shared room for our stay. Neither of us really knew what to expect, and that has definitely lead to some interesting experiences. The 13 day length our our stay also meant that we got to see more than a few roommates come and go, so here's a not so brief retelling of some of the funniest, or funnest parts of sharing a room with strangers.
Guy 1: An Iranian guy who is living and working in Norway. He was only around for one night, which was unfortunate because he seemed nice enough and sat and talked to us for a while about Iran and some of the religious and political goings ons. He said interesting and hopeful things, which don't bear repeating here on the interwebs. What's interesting is I really don't know whether to believe him or not. Since the building blocks of our opinion about Iran come from mainstream American media, that doesn't leave a lot of faith that what we think we know is accurate. I think it's an area that I would certainly benefit from learning more about.
Guy 2: Oh my goodness, what a series of inappropriate words could be used to describe him. A cultural studies professor out of England, he enlightened us with quips like "they can just be housewives and mothers" when talking about women in Saudi Arabia and a broad sweeping review that "there was nothing to do in Athens besides the Acropolis." Surprisingly despite his prediction that Athens was a barren, boring city, we managed to have a great time for almost two weeks. Now I seriously question what kind of cultural teaching is being done in England if this is at all representative. He also snored louder than a trucker, a freight train, or any other typically loud object used for comparisons. So loud in fact that we bought ear plugs so we could sleep!
Guys 3 & 4: In and Out. They were only here a couple of days, and generally kept to themselves.
Guy 5: Rolled in on New Year's Eve, which I thought was strange, but I felt pretty bad for him the next morning after a night of Guy 2's epic evening performance. He certainly looked worse for the wear.
Guy 6: Professor from the US. A super nice guy, traveling around while in between semesters, like us! It was nice to reconnect with an American and chit chat about life in US compared to Saudi. He was a really nice guy and was in Athens for the remainder of the time we were. He came to Athens to get ready for teaching a new class about mythology; how cool is it that we have teachers willing to go that far to get ready to teach!
Guy 7: One night in and out. A guy from England just here for one night which was too bad, he seemed pretty nice. (easy on the eyes too)
At this point Guy 2 had to move to a different room, please know that we were not missing him at all.
Guy 8: Canadian who worked for the Google for the last few years. Arrived same time as Guy 9 who also happened to work at Google for a large amount of time. These two spent a solid 10 minutes recapping the building layout of Mountain View identifying similar Google buildings they worked in. Then they got on Google maps so they could proceed to look at the buildings. Aka super geeks? He also liked to use the phrase "mickey mouse" a lot, which I thought was kind of hilarious.
Guy 9: From England, pretty interesting except for the long forays into the location of Google buildings, foreigners and taxes, and politics in general. Aka bore my socks off guy.
Guy 10: Australian guy. Nice enough, but a little too dependent on everyone else to find places to eat/things to do.
So it was definitely an interesting experience sharing a room with so many different people! When we travel again over Spring Break, we'll probably end up sharing a room again unless we go somewhere cheaper than Europe.
*Catch up on our entire Athens adventure by checking Our Travel Page, or our Greece tag.*
Catch up on the rest of our adventure:
Athens Day 1
Traveling Back to Saudi Arabia
Small Math Problems and 4 Modes of Transportation
Restoring Faith in Traveling
Playing the Ethics Card
Changing Perspectives on Cash v. Debit
Athens: Day 2
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