Greece Journal: 2003 part 3

On my first day, I rested. I didn't really wake up until around 1:00, which would be about right; that would be 6:00 in the morning for me.

Saki (the hotel's proprietor, and an old friend/acquaintance) did not contact me. I didn’t know what kind of cat-and-mouse game this was. How should I contact him? I could have left him a little note, but he knew I was there. I wanted to hear about his last 25 years and show him pictures of my children. I had quite a 25-year story to tell myself. He was sending me the correct message that, while I had one of the best rooms in the hotel, I was not truly a close friend of his. He looked in very poor health, hunched and drawn, with sallow skin and hollow eyes. Maybe that was why I didn't hear from him.

I was both exhilarated and cautious. Athens was my home for 11 years, but that was long ago. I knew nobody there in 2003. The tastes and inner feelings which I experienced there came alive to my memory cells. Not all of either tastes or feelings were pleasant; in fact, I had not regretted leaving, and would have left long before if I had had the money to go to Paris. Still, it was my home. The exhilaration came more from the journalistic nature of the trip. I would be investigating, learning, traveling, meeting people in search of material for my Master's Thesis on the language conflict between Greek Macedonians and other Greeks. Not knowing what would happen was a big part of the fun.

Before traveling there, I had been in contact with linguists and some Macedonians in Greece. My first meeting was lunch with Kostas from the Education Ministry.

I apologized for being late arriving at the Papaspyriou bookstore at the corner of Akadimias and Hippokratous. Though I had walked that area a thousand times when I lived in Athens, it seemed quite unfamiliar. A woman gave me incorrect directions.

Kostas was shorter than I, with a beard, dark hair, and a most welcoming, friendly manner. Not in the boastful Greek “See how hospitable I am” way, but in the truly friendly way. He had a bunch of flowers for me.

We walked to a modest outdoor cafe with aqua chairs laid out in a large square in front of the restaurant between two buildings. He greeted various people whom he sees almost every day when he goes there to eat lunch. There were people at only three of the tables. We discussed the menu and I decided to have kolokothiki tiganetes, which is zucchini pancakes, which arrived with a yoghurt and dill sauce. They were very tasty, certainly something I could take home with me as a recipe. Then I had eggplant with small onions. The squares of eggplant had a juicy sauce around them. It was also very tasty. Kostas had a stuffed pepper and a stuffed tomato, stuffed with rice and dill. He gave me a bite, and that was very tasty too. I knew that in Athens one must choose restaurants with care, because the food at most of them is, to me, inedible. It always pays to know someone in the place you are visiting.

Kostas worked in the Ministry on pedagogy -- how to teach Muslim children Greek. He said that many more Moslems had come here, especially to Thrace, or Thraki, which is in the northeast corner of Greece, quite far away, near Turkey. It used to be just Turks, but now there are three different communities of Muslims. I had notice many women in hijab in Athens, and many Africans, some in their customary colorful national dress. When I lived there, exotic intrusions from the outside world were few. My hippy long skirts had attracted attention, but these looked very ordinary next to the strong African patterns and Arab hijab.

The terms of the old treaty devised when there was a large population exchange in the beginning of the 20th century provided for a certain degree of independence for the Moslems of Thrace. Kostas said that one of the issues was the desire of the Moslems to have prayers in school. They resolved the issue by allowing one hour for religious education in the day, and during that time they could have prayers if they liked; otherwise, they prayed before and after school.

The situation of the Moslems in Thrace was at that time becoming marginally better for two reasons: 1) Greece was becoming much more cosmopolitan, and 2) there were many more Moslems than before.

Walking back to the hotel, I passed a couple of places that had tiropites. I had been looking for those. When I used to teach there, I would often stop at one of the small shops that sells pites, or pies, of all sorts, and eat one as I walked -- walnut, meat, cheese. They were always fresh and delicious.

Remembering those twice-daily walks to the Hellenic-American Union, where I taught English, caused me to veer up the hill to visit it. When I was there it was a part of the United States Information Service. They sponsored cultural programs, which I remember well; one was a movie which showed doo-wop groups, black men dressed in identical red suits, I remember, who choreographed their swooping, jiving movements to go with their music. When they began to perform the Greek audience of a couple of hundred shocked me by bursting out in laughter. I took it as a personal insult but got over it quickly. They had never seen anything like it. It was there that I nearly burst my tummy laughing at the first Buster Keaton movie I had ever seen (The General), and there that I gave my first concert of American folk songs. It was a big hit.

So I had many expectations as I turned up the very familiar street to the school. It was more than twice as big as it had been, and glitzy. In my new role as investigative reports, I went to the director's office and introduced myself as a former teacher. Christine was Greek but spoke perfect English. She was abrupt and rushed since she was leaving for the U.S. the next day. If only I had called ahead of time .... (she would have told me she couldn't see me). We chatted for a while anyway. That’s what happens when you are a reporter, you just barge in on people, take their time.

Clearly the school is larger than before, and things have changed a great deal since Greece joined the European Union. Many Greeks now work in Germany, and Americans cannot work in Greece. They don’t want people who are not members of the EU. When I worked there the visas was a minor detail, taken care of by the school. They were delighted to have native Americans teaching at the Hellenic American Union, where students came to get hip and get ahead by learning American English.

I recalled vividly my first days in Athens as I walked away from the now-unfamiliar school. I could not face coming back to New York, where I had been isolated and lonely, and had met a Greek man who wanted me to stay there. (Sheesh, that's another story.) I walked around to various schools where English was taught, and talked to the directors. I was still undecided. On Tuesday the director of the Hellenic American Union telephoned and said I was teaching beginning Thursday. "Is that what I said?" I asked him, laughing. "Not exactly, but that's what you're going to do." That's how I got hired., and I continued working there from 1967 to 1975. My Master's Degree in English got me hired somewhere after all. Now I was working on another M.A., and it was leading to other exciting things.

In 2003 only one teacher in ten was allowed to be American. Though the school still has the name "American" in its title, it is not at all attached to the United States, except that the Cultural Affairs Minister of the embassy is on the Board of Directors. When I taught there, bomb threats (fortunately always empty) came every year or so as public opinion turned against America for one reason or another. Maybe it's just as well that the link has been severed.

After my abrupt chat with Christine, I went to an internet café to send reassurances of my safe arrival to my family. MTV blasted in the background. I could not send a message to more than one person on their email system, so I sent the same message four or five times. There were other people there, mostly young, many of them on their cell phones, and all of them smoking. Smoking. Smoking. Smoking everywhere.

I had dinner in my room, then went out for a twilight walk. It was quarter to eight and there was a rosey light falling on the white buildings on the cliff at Lykavittos and on the Parthenon. The road running next to the Parthenon had been turned into a pedestrian walkway up a gentle slope to the Acropolis. Very impressive. Very beautiful. They made Athens so much more beautiful. Some of it was in preparation for the Olympics, and some a simple reflection of increased prosperity.