Sick in Athens.

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A spring evening in Athens comes to mind as I further reflect on @looeyville 's query about being sick and far from home. I was sick back then, in Athens, sick with fever, sweats and shivers. The rain falling in Nikis street just across from Syntagma Square got mixed up with music coming from the Urban Jazz Club right opposite the cold-water rooming house where I lay ill. The afternoons were filled with car horns and squawking street vendors and it wasn’t until around nine o’clock that the music started and it kept going till near sun-up. It was December 1977 I think. Some of the window frames had no glass in then but not all of them. The walls were colourless. Six beds were crammed into the room and there was not much space to walk about or set anything down. The toilet was down the hall. The other men in the room all slept late and were out from midday till the night clubs closed at dawn. Two of them (both Danes) looked after me when they were there, covered me with blankets when I shivered and took blankets off me when my fever rose. They always left water and aspirin on the windowsill before they went out.