Greece Journal: 2003 part 1

I lived in Athens, Greece from 1965-1976. I speak Greek quite fluently. Between 1976 and 2003, I lived in the U.S., raised children, worked, worked, and worked, but in 2003 I returned. That is a gap of more than 25 years.

I was traveling alone, and thus felt much more comfortable having a purpose to my trip. I would do linguistics research on the situation of the Macedonian community in northern Greece. ( The research has since been presented at an academic conference at Ohio State, and gained me an A as I finished my M.A., so in the end my mission was accomplished.)

Greece was preparing for the Olympics, and construction construction was everywhere in Athens. There was a new airport.

I hopped on a bus to go to the Royal Olympic Hotel, owned by Saki Papadimitriou, whom I had last seen some time before 1976. A friend had been his girlfriend, and we saw him quite often. I wrote to tell him I was coming, and he wrote me back saying that it would be nice to see me, and my stay would be complementary. I was gratified at his warmth and generosity. After all, we hadn't seen each other in 25 years.

The bus driver asked where the bus passengers were staying, and seemed open to suggestion as to where he should stop. Giggling, excited American tourists were asking him to take them to their hotels, and he flourished many an "okay." When I asked him in Greek to take me to the Royal Olympic. He lifted his chin toward the ceiling -- the "no" gesture. "We don't go there."

"But you're stopping at many other hotels. Couldn't you stop at this one?"

"Oxi -- no." Abrupt.

I sullenly took my seat on the bus, prepared to either haul around my suitcases or get a cab when we got to Athens. One by one the tourists were dropped at their hotels, leaving me the lone passenger.

"Hey!" He called back in Greek. "Where do you want to go?"

I went up to stand next to him "The Royal Olympic."

"I know where that is. Are you Greek?" He began to chat with me, taking one hand off the wheel for frequent hand flourishes.

Though he had irritated me, he had me where he wanted me, and I didn't want to piss him off. He might change his mind.

"No. I'm American."

"How come you speak Greek?"

"I used to live here."

He laughed. "You speak Greek well."

"I haven't been here for 25 years."

He gave me a rundown on what had happened in the last 25 years. He said I should be sure to see the new Acropolis area, and declared Athens "beautiful now."

"I've read that the air is very polluted. Is that true?"

He wrinkled his brow upward and raised an open hand from the steering wheel. "What can we do? That's progress."

He not only took me to the hotel, but he helped me with my bags, chatting and laughing.

I realized I was back in the Greece I knew and didn't like so much. They toy with you. Their reactions to you have nothing to do with anything more than whim. First they insult you brazenly, then embrace you as if you were family.

I had an unpleasant feeling in my stomach as I entered the hotel and asked for Saki. I was looking forward to hearing about his last 25 years. He's an interesting man.

"He is in the bar," the woman at the front desk said, and I left my bags there and walked up the marble stairs into the bar.

How is it that two men sitting at a table having a coffee can look like conspirators in an international plot? That is how Saki looked in the corner of the bar. Greek men love to look "spudeos -- important," and nothing is as spudeos as having a secret, so they often speak as if they had one. It always looked silly to me.

I was delighted to see Saki, and it showed in my smile as I reached my arms out as I walked across the marble floor toward him. I was shocked to see how old and frail he looked as he rose from his seat. His skin was sallow, his body strained.

From the way he greeted me, I realized that he did NOT want me joining his conspiracy in the corner. It flitted across my mind that since I was a 60 year old woman, not a 30 year old beauty, I would be of no use at his conspirators' table. If I had been a 30 year old prize to show off, no conspiracy could have kept him from flaunting me..

He said he was busy now, and made no offer to see me any other time. I wrote him a note on the hotel stationery, saying I'd love to see him, but never heard back. Despite his generous offer of a gratis shotel room, I got a bill and, of course, did not protest. Saki owed me nothing. His offer had been an empty flourish. It did annoy me because his hotel is not cheap, and I had not factored in the hundreds of dollars it would cost me.

So I was greeted with the same kinds of brazen rudeness and self-interested crassness that I had always experienced in Greece. I had spent many years observing and experiencing Greek ways, and needed no more than a few hours to realize that despite the shiny Olympic veneer, it was the same old place. The only difference was that now I was better able to protect myself, and had a nuanced perception of the motives behind their ways.

The Royal Olympic is very close to where I and my husband used to live, and the first thing I did was to see what had happened to that house. We lived in the large first floor of a house owned by Mrs. Bambouki, an elderly woman whose son had a gambling habit bad enough to cause her to ultimately lose the house. There was a courtyard and garden out the back, and a large terrace along the street.

The location of this apartment had been ideal. It was an easy walk from Syntagma and Kolonaki Squares, right next to the stadium, across from the Royal Gardens and, most importantly of all, was on a hill seaward of the city, so the sea breezes cooled and refreshed the apartment through its high windows. I often did my laundry and strung it on the roof, where sheets would have flapped dry by the time I had hung up the rest of the laundry. It was a matter of stringing up the laundry, then bringing it right down.

I was quite sure that this taste of old Athens had been torn down and replaced by a square, generic apartment building, but was surprised to find it still there. The whole area had been gentrified, with a cobblestone street with plantings along it. The area under the terrace was now a garage. There were expensive, lovely curtains blowing in the wind through the open terrace doors. It had cost us 3000 drachmas a month (about a hundred dollars in those days). What could it possibly cost now?

When I was there we often strolled to either Syntagma or Kolonaki and sat at cafe tables, watching life go by. There were cafes on sidewalks all around both squares. As we sat there, we were always sure to see one of our friends or acquaintances passing by. It was an easygoing, enjoyable cafe life. People didn't usually meet in homes. They ran into each other at cafes. There were hardly any cafes left now. Syntagma's busiest cafe had been replaced by a MacDonald's, and the only one left in Kolonaki was the one where I had loved to eat loukoumades, deep fried puffs, which were always made fresh as you ordered them, and covered in honey sauce. They no longer made loukoumades. Too time consuming.

I went to a Linguistics conference which happened to be happening on the very days I was there, and walked around the equally gentrified Acropolis. There was little for me to do there though. My friends were all gone. The apartment of one of my closest friends there, Muriel, was now an embassy.

I couldn't wait to pick up my car and head north to Florina.