Bec – 14 July 2011

Sorry to bombard you with 2 blog entries today but I guess Athens has brought out the ‘blogger’ in us…

We have been on double-decker buses, taxis and on foot around Athens and I don’t think my chin has been anywhere but on the floor. You turn down a tiny street that has air conditioining units dripping water, cars lining the sides of the street whilst others try and negotiate their way between them and Athenians casualing going about their business… and you lift your head a little as you try to see where you are going and you realise that at the end of the street there is the Parthenon, high on a hill staring straight at you… and then it hits you… you are in the middle of history… living history.

I feel like I am the only one seeing it as I gasp in awe and watch these other people taking no notice but then you turn into the next street and you are standing in front of another ruin that has been cornered off by a rope and a sign that reads “Please No Touch”. No one is taking notice and people are certainly touching …but there is no alarm …no officer running after you… just a random Greek person half smiling, shaking their head and tsk tsking you for doing exactly what they do and that is… sticking it to authority.

Greeks hate to be controlled or told what to do…it comes from their long history of being ruled over by so many foreign governments that they don’t even differentiate when they are being ruled by their own countrymen.

They simply want to live and protect the two things that mean most to them …their families and their land…actually make that three…their families…their land …and their food. The latter of which we have certainly had our fair share of.

I am forming in my mind an opinion that Greece is a country that likes to under-promise but over-deliver.

They talk of ‘ruins’ – but I can tell you that there are magnificent structures on almost every corner – orthodox churches covered with byzantine mosaics, whole areas of the city studded with columns and marbles that bring the history textbooks that we read in school jumping out of the pages right at you.

The Greeks come across as very relaxed. You ask them a specific question and they usually come back with an answer that involves a shrugging of the shoulders and words such as…maybe….sometime….soon…… in a little while… but I have yet to catch a plane, boat or bus that did anything but arrive and departed exactly when it said it would …. something I have not experienced in any other countries that I have travelled in around the world.

I knew, from spending time with my wonderful Greek friends and surrogate Yia Yia, that ‘family is Number 1’ in Greece, but once again the words over-deliver spring to mind as I think back of our experiences both in Zakynthos and Athens. Never before have I been celebrated and lead to an “express line” in an airport…….just for having a family. On buses the adults stand up for the children, and in restuarants Jamie and I may as well fade into the background as the staff fuss over the kids making sure they have had enough to eat, and cooing over Sari whenever she comes out with some Greek words.

Greece and its people have won me over and I’m learning her language is full of poetry and beauty. Other than telling some old men in a shop that “I LOVE YOU” rather than “I LOVE IT” all is going well.

I was hoping to be humorous and witty, rather than gushy but seems like I have lost the ability for the mean time. Let’s see how I go in London.

At the end of every street is something wonderful