An index of a miniature odyssey through Greece (Athens, Hydra) and the United Arab Emirates (Dubai, Abu Dhabi).

Alas, my time in Greece was cut short, so instead of a full-fledged epeisodion this will only be a capsule summary of the two places I had time to visit.

The Greek language or, more specifically, its script fascinates me. Membership of the club of scripts that remain in use and essentially unchanged for 3000 years is pretty exclusive: off the top of my head, I could only think of Chinese, Greek, Tamil and Amharic (Ge'ez), and checking with Wikipedia shows that Ge'ez and Tamil actually only barely scrape past the 2000-year mark. (Hebrew, that resuscitated zombie, doesn't count in my book.)

My first night in Athens, I set off on a quixotic quest for a quintessentially Greek food: souvlaki. I do this more often than I should, fixating on something that I think should be representative of local cuisine and usually finding out after hours of searching that, in fact, it's out of season or, worse yet, totally out of fashion.

Unfortunately, my flight landed half an hour too early. Dawn was breaking as we descended, but the islands of the Aegean were only visible as dark blobs speckled with the occasional lighthouse, and before I knew it we had touched down at Eleftherios Venizelos International, Athens.

So I have a trip to Athens coming up at the end of the month, including at least one and possibly two free weekends, and I was wondering how to best make use of it -- it's been 20 years since I last popped in and I can remember virtually nothing. So far my to-do list contains "Parthenon" and "drink retsina", but that's about it. Which of the countless museums are best? Is there an island within reach of Piraeus or some other must-see site in striking distance?

Suddenly I thought: wasn't coming to this place the reason I had continued on my journey for so long? I was brought here by a countless series of coincidences. Those coincidences did not need a word like "god" to explain them; no, it was just the wind, the water, the light, and yes, the buses. Thanks to public buses I was brought here...

 I managed a few hours of fitful sleep on the ferry (which is reassuring as I'll be taking it again on Thursday night) , and my arrival was mostly uneventful... mostly. I was perplexed by the announcements declaring our arrival at the port of Souda, but I assumed that perhaps the port had a name.

In an internet cafe in Athens, up on the second floor (by myself, and not getting pickpocketed), I've got the Afghan Whigs on the iPod, and I couldn't be happier.