Greece

PART I

escape from london

tired from my job-hunt in london and with very little money, i finally boarded my flight to athens, athina, on 26 august, which i had booked several months earlier, to make my way to nafplio, a small town on the peloponnese, where, on 30 august, two greek friends from london were to get married. i was very excited, and hoping to finally get my share of something resembling a bit of a summer. august 2008 in london had been worse than august 2007 and august 2007 had been about as bad as a summer could possibly get. with lumpy grey skies hanging low over an edgy city and depressed people walking about, putting on fake smiles, and going to the gym everyday to beat their chronic winter-blues.

so, the prospect of getting away from it all, to athina, to greece, to a mediterranean country, to another life on another planet - held a promise nothing short of salvation and deliverance. deliverance from all the shabbiness and constant frustrations of my life in london, perpetually closing doors and antagonisingly polite voices carrying messages of rejection on topics as varied as bank accounts, overdrafts, appointments at the eastman dental hospital, a deal with virgin mobile and jobs applied for through recruitment agencies. hick-ups and negativity all over the place - high time for a serious shift.

so, when on a cold and ugly 25 august i locked the door behind my tiny ground floor flat and walked out of the council estate, i felt that my 'real life' was finally dawning, and a snappy little voice inside me told me that i wouldn't be back any time soon.

petros

at gatwick airport, i was surrounded by an army of overweight red-faced and white-bossomed english people, off to their late summer holiday. and the only greek person i spotted was a handsome young fellow, standing out somehow, in his mid-or late twenties, and i decided i'd sit next to him. and that's what happended, and i spent the next 4 and a half hours (the flight was delayed) learning my first greek phrases. starting with 'then eho pai pote stin ellada' or 'i have never been to greece before' and ending with 'to megalo tondro elleniko gamo' or 'my big fat greek wedding'. and obviously - as i always do - i played my little game freaking people out with my good pronunciation and speed at which i'd pick up even lenghty phrases (which doesn't mean i'll still remember it 10 minutes later). and it worked this time like it always does.

and the guy, petros was his name, loosened up and we dived straight into a fun conversation about everything and anything and the greeks and the english and whether he preferred london over athina or the other way around. and he shared his thoughts about greek doctors taking money from greek patients even if it should be the greek NHS paying for it. and about greeks in greece being generally lazy and lacking in ambition and work ethics. and about greeks in greece being worlds apart from the greeks in london. and, about the fact that 'europe is feeding greece' and has been for a while. and, last, but not least, about greeks having huge inferiority complexes when going abroad and behaving accordingly. and i was amused. and beginning to ask myself whether petros was greek at all. needless to say that he didn't smoke or drink black coffee. and that his only distinctively greek vice was to eat souvlaki at thanassis, famous-infamous for its juicy and soft meat chops ('no one knows what they put in it')...

and i held that against something i had read on a Greek website, written by another Greek traveller, a certain Costas, who sustained that 'in greece, everything is better than in holland' - yes, he was comparing it to holland -' except for gouda and salaries'. and i felt tempted to substitute gouda with cheddar, fish 'n chips or guiness. and trade that in for better weather, food, friendships, music, sex, prices, beaches and parties. or whatever the guy had been thinking of.

no plan's land

i finally landed in athina, and to cut a long story short - because otherwise i'll still be sitting here tomorrow, telling, re-telling the ins and outs of every encounter with every greek person i met there - i will skip a few episodes, and get straight to the gist of what i'm here to tell.

when i first got to greece on 26 august, i didn't have much of an idea of what i'd be doing there. i just knew that upon my arrival i'd be staying with my old friend/acquaintance katerina for two nights. and that on thursday 28, i would move on to nafplio, where another wedding guest, renia, whom i had met at the groom's name-day party in london half a year earlier, had reserved a two-bed room for three nights for us. on saturday 30 at 6pm 'when the heat from the day is waning' - yes, greek people marry in the evenings - i knew there would be the wedding itself. and on sunday 31, i suspected we'd sleep all day.

and after that, i had no plans. and still another 7 days to go. my return flight was on 6 september. and i was worried about not getting what i wanted. that is, the real thing - the real greek experience - the real mediterranean experience, eastern mediterranean that is - with all its madness, exhilaration and crudeness. and sanity-restoring sincerity and straightforwardness. and kindness and generosity. and that different rythm to life, that rythm i knew from bosnia and serbia and italy. that heart-warming and energising way of interacting, cracking jokes and having a good time - and not just over a bucketful of pints after a certain hour, but throughout the day, as a way of life.

now, of course i had an inkling that the 'deliverance' from my woes in london and a real sense of recreation and recharging my batteries wouldn't have kicked in after only 12 days, arrival and return days included. and yet, i had no one to stay with or travel with for longer, and hence, when booking my flight, pressed '6 september', with a tear in one eye, and hoped for, against all odds, to somehow get what i wanted anyway.

and then, the day of my departure, i decided i'd have a great holiday no matter what.
and this is how things unfolded:

athina and nafplio

when i first got to athens, i was sick. temperature and a throat infection. and so i spent two days and two nights tucked up in katerina's guest bed in her flat in kifissia, a posh neighbourhood in the north of Athens, trying to get better and telling myself not to fret too much about losing 2 of my precious 12 days. the latter not being that easy.

on day 3 i eventually took the tube to piraeus where i boarded a train to korinthos, and from there a bus to nafplio, where i arrived after a 3,4 hour trip altogether. in nafplio, i found the room renia had booked at hotel athina and spent the rest of the day in bed - sweating, coughing, sneezing - not a lot of fun - and renia, who arrived shortly after me - putting up with it heroically.

the next two days were spent sleeping, visiting mykene, sleeping again, skipping epidavros, sleeping some more and, on friday 29 august, eventually joining the rest of the wedding guests from out of town on a pre-wedding night get-together on the beach... and, later that night, an attempt at checking out the local clubbing scene consisting of two or three bars altogether, one next to another, outdoors, on an elevated sidewalk leading to yet another beach - with a splendid view of a most beautiful skyline over a night-black sea and glittering lights on the horizon. no wonder they say that nafplio is one of the most beautiful towns in greece.

and i'd have plenty of occasion to convince myself of that again over the coming week. nafplio is made up of narrow streets laced with pretty little houses converted into small museums, squares made out of polished marble, shining in the morning sun and in the evening lights, with couples, parents and small children playing on them until late at night, and countless little boutiques selling crafts and jewelry at every corner, very much like in sarajevo. no wonder nafplio had been greece's first capital, and some leaflet referred to it as greece's 'most elegant city'.

my favourite spots in nafplio were the beautiful little church of agia paneia (?)where i lit many a candle, the icecream place selling home-made icecream tasting of kadajfi, and, next door, the guy making beautiful bright blue kombolois out of miniature dice, spelling out people's names.

D&G's big fat greek wedding

and then the wedding itself. well, if i was to recount it all, i'd still be here tomorrow morning. here, just a few highlights.

the 'stag' and 'hen' dos: dimitris in his underwear getting dressed by his pontiac-samothracean cousins. georgia-cinderella, surrounded by her numerous arcadian-aeginean family, trying on her satin shoes and writing her single girl-friends' names on their soles. dimitris being fed big bites of sweet round pies and having to pay money to get his second shoe. georgia riding off in a horse-drawn carriage.

the service: at the church of ai-yiannis. really beautiful. byzantine, ancient. priests in heavily adorned, embroidered robes walking around in circles, chanting, swaying incense, placing wraths on the bride and grooms' necks and shoulders, candles flickering, more chanting, more incense, the lithurgy, the rings, the vows - i felt elated. and yet almost fainted as i was shaken by another bout of temperature and other flu-like symptoms.

the feast: great location by the seaside and the sunset and the breaking waves, great food with luscious bits of baked aubergine and all sorts of other delicacies, great and crazy guests from both north-western and south-eastern europe, great dancing and live music from thrace and the peloponnese - and everyone who was there, will have taken home their own unforgettable memories.

more nafplio

and then, at some point, the beautiful big fat greek wedding was behind us and we all said goodbye. and the next day, my cold was waning (the day after the wedding - what outrageous timing) - and my friend sabrina from london had finally, very last-minute, booked her flight to athens and joined me in nafplio on sunday 31st august. and... i was delighted.

to make a long story short - sabrina and i basically spent the next 5 days lazing around nafplio, with no desire to do much else than sleep in the morning, sleep again in the afternoon, and drag ourselves to arvanitsia beach at some point in between. there we tried chatting up the occasional, unresponsive italian - one of them, a lonesome ranger archeologist whom we crossed at least twice a day -, and kept running into georgia's mother sitting at the same cafe at the same time every afternoon - once with her son, once with her husband and twice with her friend - just when we made our way back from the beach to the hotel. eventually, we were withdrawing to our daily evening meal trying out another restaurant every night - where we spent our money on wine and fish and - of course - baked aubergines and papucaki (i'm a junkie)... and discussed the 'events' of the day.

our favourite topics: 1. why the lonesome ranger italian was resisting our charm. 2. what life must be like being georgia's mother who, every day of her life, has the luxury of sitting herself down after a certain hour at a cafe facing the seafront, breathing the salt, letting her mind wander, and watching her friends and family walk by and sit down next to her. 3. what exactly the albanian waiter lendi meant when he invited us to 'join him in his house' later that first evening. 4. whether to finally take a bus to mistra or olympia the next morning or just keep lazing around in nafplio. we never made much progress on any of those subjects, which got drowned in buckets full of wine and the odd ouzo on the house, and we took them up again the next evening.

and eventually time was up and sabrina and i returned to athens, allowing her to catch her flight home and me, to change mine from the 6th to the 17th. what exactly i had in mind and how i intended to spend those remaining 10 days, i still didn't know. i just knew that my holiday had just about started now and that this was not the time to go back.

persian connection

and here begins the persian chapter of my little greek saga. on 5 september, i met up with arvin, my persian friend from london, who was staying at the flat of his designer cousin sofia in athens. sofia being absent and the flat being inhabited solely by arvin and his other cousin mamad, we divided the space up between the three of us. to my benefit - being good boys from good families, arvin and mamad gave me the only proper bed in the flat and themselves slept on couches and cushions on the ground.

the flat was near omonia. on alkiviadou street. off III septembriou, gourmeli, stournari, aristotelou, losios, marni, makedonias - all those being names of streets in the neighbourhood that i frantically typed into my mobile on my first morning, hoping to find my way back to the flat later that day. and nevertheless, for some reason, kept turning around in circles and getting lost every single day. all streets, all junctions, all houses and shops looking the same, all huge and ugly and overwhelming and noisy.

i spent the next three days getting stressed at internet cafes over a job application, and, other than that, watched persian music TV via satellite and the boys (mock-) lap-dancing in the sitting room. in the afternoons, arvin, mamad, their friends ali and ahmed and i usually took the tram at syntagma square and went down to the beach, towards glifada, but getting off at edem. now, edem was - compared to nafplio or - later - paros - hardly worth mentioning. and yet, when arriving at that beach late those afternoons, together with other athenians coming straight from work, feeling the warmth of the sea even at that time of the day and swimming into the sunset - was an experience in its own right. and on the beach the boys were cracking jokes in persian, arvin played translator and i tried my best not to mix up my newly acquired greek with my even fresher - few hours' old - 5 words of persian - and not to judge those kids for not having bothered to learn any english, let alone greek in the days or weeks they had been here.

immigrants

persians, it turns out, are quite a common sight in athens these days - with a lot of immigrants from asia and africa populating the place, including somalis, nigerians, afghans and iraqis... - most of them clustered together in the big cities of athens, thessaloniki and patras. in athens, most of them are concentrated around omonia square - precisely where i was staying. with a lot of crime going on - drugs and prostitition mainly - on the other side of the square, in the area flanking the acropolis, on geraniou and socratelis streets and theatrou square (or similar). in 'my' neighbourhood, around the flat, i saw a lot of ukrainians and arabs - one arab being the owner of 'my' internet cafe and one ukrainian the manager. and many more lingering about in and around an array of cafes - cafe sevastopol on one corner, a falafel and shisha place on another one. and the odd nigerian prostitute on a nearby sidewalk later that night.

in a conversation with a greek social worker later that week, i was told that greece has a serious immigration problem and that the greek authorities aren't doing much to support the immigrants, but rather deliberately neglect them as to signal them that they don't have a future in their country. as a result, the immigrants fall prey to organised criminals, also immigrants, who - in exchange for their services in drug or prostition deals - provide them with free accomodation and pay for their utility bills.

the ukrainians and albanians seem to yet enjoy a special status. being europeans, they tend to have learnt the language - greek - in record speed - many of them speaking greek without an accent. and many a ukrainian woman - of all ages - seems to have found herself a decent greek husband. albanians are a different category still - most of the ones i saw being men doing odd jobs from olive picking to building and painting. and it seems that they are only now - after almost two decades since they started coming - beginning to shed their bad reputation. the greeks seem to have concluded at last that albanians aren't the worst thing that has happened to them, and that many albanians are infact honest and hardworking people, and - in terms of lifestyle and mentality - very similar to the greeks themselves.

athehran

'my' persians however didn't have any ambitions of staying in the country. they were there on holiday. going west from iran - like ali who was there for just two weeks and heading straight to the army upon his return to tehran. or going south-east from london - like arvin, who clearly felt nostalgic about iran and anything resembling it. and athens, so i was told, resembled it a great deal.

we spent the next few days living on 2,5 euros a day - 1,50 euros being spent on our daily big fat ration of falafel acquired in the iraqi falafel shop on losios street - and for the rest chewing on pita bread - on the beach mainly -, hot peppers and cheap chocolate chip cookies. the main stimulation to our stomachs being not food, but ali's jokes.

like this one: on a taxiride around tehran, an american asks the taxidriver about a certain building on a street corner, and the taxi driver replies 'yes, that is the soandso building - built 2000 years ago'. the american replies - 'pa, in america, we'd build that in just 2 months', and they ride on.
on another streetcorner, the american inquires about another building - the answer is, again 'that building is 500 years old' and the american says - 'pa, in america we'd build that in just 1 month'.
on a third street corner, the american asks about yet another building. and the taxi driver turns his head, looks, looks again, and suddenly says, 'i have no idea - it wasn't there 1 hour ago!'

and so on. one joke upon another. relentlessly. ali had a whole collection of them, most of them playing on ethnic themes - taking the p... out of the persians, the turks, the ... (forgot the name of that group). over and over again, in all possible fashions - some made up at the spur of the moment, some being good old classics. and it was hilarious. note that out of the three guys present in that greek tram that one afternoon, one was pars (arvin), one turk (ali) and one ... (that third group - ahmed). and all spoke persian - albeit ahmed with a funny accent. and we laughed our heads off. and thoroughly did away with every form of political correctness.

on monday 8 september, arvin flew back to london and i decided to move on, too. and embark on part II of my greek experience. which - i didn't know that yet - would cause me to change my flight again - and last for another full two weeks.