"Be prepared" is certainly something I should have learned from Boy Scouts. I guess I did learn it, but failed to learn to practice it. At any rate I arrived at Athens unprepared, drugged with jet lag, and confusing Athens for Disney World as though there were a giant neon sign over my head proclaiming: "Clueless American, please abuse me."

I had physically switched cultures, but not mentally. I had not even purchased a new Saint Christopher's medallion, without which, I had promised my mother (again she emerges), I would never travel. And un-religiously I had worn such a medallion around my neck for many years. Although it now occurs to me that it probably would not have been terribly effective in Greece. Older rules abide there. Not merely a Saint for travelers, but the God Hermes himself.

No sacrifice to Hermes had been made-- nothing for the God of travelers and thieves(a curious and portentous combination)-- and so my fate was "hermetically," so to speak, sealed.

I calmly put on my ass head and followed my daughter, that faerie scamp of the low-budge/no budge traveling world, onto the Athens Metro for an hour-long tour of subterranean Athens, and emerged at my destination (and I hold no one but myself accountable for this) devoid of my wallet. "But what see I? No wallet do I see. Cursed be my pockets for thus deceiving me!"