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We arrived in Patras still aglow from the ancient yet timeless beauty of Greece. We'd seen the sunset at Delphi and stood on lava rock at Santorini. My travel companion, Bill, was a friend of a friend from LA who'd come to visit us in London. We'd hit it off and I decided to accompany Bill on a two-week jaunt through Greece and Italy.

Things I learned about Bill on this trip: 1. Eating eggs causes him an almost immediate desperate need for a bathroom; however, because he is a lactose intolerant vegetarian, who doesn't care much for most vegetables, eggs are a main source of food for him, at least while traveling. 2. His somewhat controlling jerk of a boyfriend with whom he lived back home in LA decided that it would be a good idea to dump Bill long distance over the phone. Bill dealt with this well for about 2 days before having a semi breakdown and flying home 1 week early. I'll get back to that later. 3. Bill can sleep quite well under many adverse conditions. This will rear its ugly head again later as well.

So, after a week of Greece we'd turned our sights on Italy. We decided to take an overnight ferry from Patras to Bari where we'd make a train connection to Rome. We left my boyfriend at the time, Ted, amid a flurry of barked Greek at the bus stop in Delphi He was heading back to London from Athens that same day. We waved to him out the window as we set off for Nafplaktos. 2 and a half hours later we arrived and stopped long enough to change busses followed by a short hop on a ferry and then another bus which put us in Patras with about 4 hours to kill before our 18 hour ferry ride to Brindisi.

Patras I can definitively say is 2 and a half-hour town. This includes a meal, a stroll to all the "sights" and through some nice residential areas, a little duty free Ouzo shopping near the docks and voila in 2 and a half hours you've seen Patras. The sights included, as they always do, climbing a lot of steps-in this case the steps led to a lovely little park with a monument to something or other at the top of the town. Finally our boarding time came and tickets in hand we headed down to our dock to catch our first glimpse of the Medea II.

Immediately we noticed that she was a loser ship compared to the "Superfast" which docked next to her and seemed to mock her. However, we'd sprung for a private cabin with en-suite bathroom so we still had high hopes as we boarded our new home for the next 18 hours. In mere seconds, these hopes were dashed. The interior of the Medea had seen better days. Her best days I would have to hypothesize were sometime in the 1970's- about the last time any of the lounges had been refurbished. We instantly dubbed her the "Disco Inferno." The main bar's décor consisted of a wall to wall green and orange plaid carpet matched ever so cleverly with orange and purple vinyl airplane seats. Our "deluxe" cabin contained two very saggy mattresses, a door barely hanging on to its hinges, no hot water, a toilet that didn't flush and a smoke alarm that appeared to have been tampered with. I carefully checked out the life jackets and lifeboats and then, took great pleasure in perusing the disclaimers printed on our tickets. I figured, never a better time than when you've already set out to sea. In the course of my reading, I discovered that the shipping company would not be held responsible for any of the following ways in which we, or our luggage, might be harmed:

1. Shipwreck, collision or stranding even caused by an error in navigation or a fault of the master, crew, pilots or other servants in the management of the ship; If their navigational judgment was as bad as their taste we knew we were in serious trouble. As a group, they showed serious judgment lapses when it came to both fashion and grooming. My personal favorite was the bartender, whom we affectionately nicknamed Isaac after the illustrious Love Boat bartender. Isaac sported an afro which appeared to have last been trimmed when Love Boat was still on the air.
2. Fire; I believe I already mentioned the tampered with smoke detector—heartening.
3. Perils, danger and accidents of the sea or other navigable waters; Yikes this is Greece after all, land of the Odyssey; have any people been known to encounter more perils in the sea than the Greeks?
4. Act of God; blah blah blah Standard Legal jargon.
5. Act of war; This one wasn't too scary either - a dilapidated Greek vessel filled with mostly French tourists makes a very poor target- I bet those people on the old "Superfast" couldn't feel so secure on their brand new clean Superfast Super better target ship.
6. Act of public enemies; One could imagine that the Medea II might have made several enemies.
7. Arrest or restraint of princes, rulers or people, or seizure under legal process; I'm not even sure I understand the first part of this disclaimer. Do they really think princes and rulers would be traveling on this ship? And if they were, how often are princes and rulers arrested while traveling by slow boat from Greece to Italy? We did see a family of Greeks on board who we nicknamed the royal family of Patras, because they seemed to be getting awfully special treatment. They had a little poodle that traveled with them and was allowed to roam on the deck. They were waited on in an area that was self service and they were sort of secluded by a barrier of tables that said don't come over here- this area is reserved for royalty- well the kind of royalty that travels by dilapidated ferry-. In fact, now that I think about it, I think we made a special unannounced stop in the middle of the night to let them off at their private island. Well who knows, maybe they were simply restrained or arrested, but in the morning they were gone. Whatever happened to them I knew better than to hold the shipping company responsible.
8. Quarantine restrictions; No surprise after looking at the sanitary conditions on board- it would actually be much more surprising to be allowed through customs without Quarantine.
9. Strikes or lockouts or stoppage or restraints of labour from whatever cause, whether partial or general; I like the from "whatever cause" part of this one. Basically if for any reason they screw up, detain us partially or generally no one is responsible.
10. Riots and civil commotions; Luckily the bar on board appeared to be fully stocked, most likely cause of rioting would definitely be to suffer through 18 hours on the disco inferno while remaining sober.
11. Saving or attempting to save life. Again, what is this one? If the ship is going down and I dive into the icy Mediterranean waters to save their crew members but in the process ruin my dry clean only Prada silk shirt- are they saying they won't pay to get me a new one? I think they are.

Now fully aware of our complete responsibility for anything that might befall us aboard the Disco Inferno, Bill and I hunkered down to try and get some rest. Bill can sleep quite well under adverse conditions. I think I mentioned this before. He fared much better that night than I did. I did finish my book and maybe got a few hours semi-sleep before morning. We spent the day playing cards and lounging in bar. We figured the Disco Inferno probably had a whole bunch of disclaimers about changing currency on board, so we got a minimum amount of Lire and waited to reach Italy.

Finally LAND sweet land was in sight. Lovely Brindisi. Actaully all Bill and I saw of it was the pier and the train station and the labyrinth route between them. But the sun was shining and we weren't on a smelly Greek boat, so what could be wrong. We docked and followed the groups of tourists heading from the pier to the train station- which required walking long distances lugging baggage, looking for shuttle busses that never arrived and finally hoofing it up a big hill to the station. Here though luck was on our side- the express train to Roma was in the station. No time to buy tickets- we could do that aboard. We jumped on the train, found seats and voila, we were on our way. After about 10 minutes, the conductor came by. He was a delightful gentleman, who laughed a hearty Italian laugh when he saw that the meager amount of Lire we had changed was about $10 bucks short of our total for 2 tickets to Roma. He didn't take credit cards and none of the other Americans in our car- maybe there weren't any, volunteered to lend us the money until we could change some more traveler's checks in Rome. No, instead, the conductor said we'd have to get off at the next stop- Bari, change money there and wait for the next train. No problem. We embarked in Bari, changed money immediately and then went to look at the train schedule- oh goody- only 8 HOURS until the next train to Rome was due. Bari turned out to be a lot like Patras, only Italian. It was a sleepy Italian seaside port. It had a lot of fancy shopping and duty free stores, a plaza and not much else to see. We waited out the 8 hours trying on fancy clothing we had no intention of buying and eating real Italian pizza before giving up and camping out in the train station.

When the train finally arrived that evening—it was to be an overnight journey, at least we were saving on hotel- it was packed. We finally found two seats, not together, but at least in the same compartment and tried to settle down. Let me take a moment to explain the 2nd class Italian train compartment. The compartments contain two benches of 3 seats each bench can slide out to create more room to lie down. Because it was so crowded, we could not slide out the benches. When we set out there were 6 people in our compartment. An older business man, a grandfatherly like gentleman looking like he could have just stepped out of a Fellini film in his 3 piece suit, a large middle aged guy , and a young man in addition to Bill and myself. Bill fell asleep about 5 minutes into our rail journey through the Italian night. I, however, stayed up to read a bit. At the first stop, the young man exited the train and despite the fact that the corridors were filling over with people no one took his seat. So I decided to stretch out my legs and attempt to fall asleep- everyone else in the cabin was already long gone, or so I thought. As I closed my eyes and allowed the train to jostle me a bit I almost fell asleep, but I heard something- upon opening my eyes I noticed straight across from me—something pinkish and moving. It was in the lap of the Fellini-esque grandpa. I thought there must be something he was doing with his hand, maybe shaking it out because it had fallen asleep or something. No, as it continued I realized that the pinkish thing I could see in the blinking half lite of nighttime train travel was his tiny little old man penis and he was definitely wanking. I quickly closed my eyes and feigned sleep. However every time the train bumped me along and I opened my eyes, there it was in my face- he seemed to have an endless stamina. Eventually I sat up again so it wouldn't be directly in my vision if I opened my eyes. This did not deter him. He spent about 6 and a half of the 8 hour trip, yanking on his exposed penis while everyone but me slept peacefully around us. At one point he ejaculated, went out to the bathroom to wash his hand and the returned to begin again. At this point I got up and started to explore the train for other seats, but people were sleeping in the corridors and I decided it was futile. I didn't feel threatened by him, just annoyed that for a second night I was getting no sleep. I didn't even wake up Bill, there was nothing he could have done. Eventually some one took the 6th seat again in the compartment. This still didn't stop the Wanker. At this point I was so tired I was really sleeping, except I noticed that now the Wanker had decided to nudge me with his foot and wake me when I dozed so I could witness his business. After about ten minutes of this, I feigned sleep again and bided my time. Just as I thought, he nudged my foot- this time I was ready for him. Wearing boots, I stomped as hard as I could on his stocking foot. He screamed out. It woke everyone in the compartment with a start. It was about dawn. He said something in Italian, probably crazy American bitch or something like that. The travelers fell back into dawn like half sleep- no one seemed to pay him much mind. For the last hour as we came into Rome he didn't bother me again. When we got off the train, I told Bill what had happened. As we were exiting the station, I saw the Wanker meeting up with a prim little old lady and hurrying out of the station.  Welcome to Italy, I thought to myself.

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