2026-07-01

“WHY THE FUCK IS THE HEATING NOT WORKING AGAIN” - I screamed in the middle of the night like a lunatic. curtains wide open because I’m an idiot who forgot to close them, and the full moon sitting there like a fat whore, shining straight into my face. Beautiful, sure…

Moschato, Athens. already one month in this cheap, strange “hotel” where the rooms smelled of cigarettes and something rotten crawling up from the drains. anything to not be in Germany, I thought. anything.

I checked my watch. it was about 2 a.m. and, most importantly, FREEZING FUCKING COLD. the heating was dying again, coughing and wheezing like some old animal in its final hours: Khrrr… Brr... Khhhh…. Click Clack. Silence.

I lay there for a while trying to fall asleep again, wrapped in a thin blanket that felt like paper, failed, got up and threw on my jacket, and started rolling around in bed like an idiot anyway. after 5 minutes of that nonsense, I gave up and started doing jumping jacks in the middle of the room, somewhere between hypothermia and insanity. another 5 minutes of that pathetic shit and I was still freezing. by then my nose was running, and I was convinced this stupid hotel was trying to kill me AGAIN.

rage is a beautiful thing when you’ve got nothing else.

determined to take it out on the receptionist, I stormed downstairs in my socks, nearly eating shit on the marble stairs way too fancy for the rest of this dump. the whole lobby looked like someone had seen a real hotel lobby once and decided to cosplay it.#

and there the fucker was. same receptionist every night. melted into a chair too small for him, sipping something disgusting from a plastic cup. he looked like he'd never fully recovered from being born.

“the heating’s fucked again, man. might have a look??”

“I’ll have it checked tomorrow”, he said, not even lifting his eyes. clear as day; he was basically telling me to fuck off.

“whatcha mean tomorrow?? shit is always broken and I’m freezing my ass off up there. there are icicles hanging off my balls. wanna see??”

now he looked at me. not tired. not annoyed. just finished. “fuck off man” great. the poetry of a night shift.

I stood there for a second, weighing whether it was worth to jump over the desk and try to choke his neck. but those dark circles under his eyes showed me that this man had seen way worse than I have ever seen, and nothing I would do would ever serve him. I was just another mosquito buzzing around his corpse.

“son of a bitch”, I muttered, and dragged my ass back upstairs to slam my dammed door as hard as I could, to annoy him, I thought.

door slammed. too hard.

the sound cracked through the hallway like a gunshot. but it was already too late when I realized what I had done. I woke up my neighbor next door. the crazy German.

he was forty, maybe fifty. sweaty. nasty. looking for work in Greece (God knows why). he’d corner me in the lobby and dump his war stories on me like garbage: kidnapped in Brazil and almost got raped by some gang members, thrown off a third-story balcony over some argument at a house party, or teaching me how to avoid bar girl scams in Thailand like I was about to move there tomorrow.

at first I thought he was just another lonely expat looking for friends. but then the screaming started.

3 a.m. raging arguments with people who weren’t there. awful singing like a broken animal. you never fucking knew what was going on with this guy. sometimes I wondered if he was on Sisa, that Athens poor-man’s meth cooked with battery acid, engine oil, shampoo, cooking salt and regret. but his face was still intact, so it couldn’t have been that. maybe he was just beautifully, naturally insane.