Girl Gone Greek (8 page)

“Yes, but you must realise that the Athens Metro was only built in 2004 for the Olympic Games, so of course it’s more modern. You’ve had your Underground for horse’s years.”

“Those artefact displays, they’re incredible!” I continued. “In London, any such displays would be regularly broken into and/or graffitied.”

“Well, you people clearly have no respect for your history,” Kaliopi observed flippantly, then announced we’d go to the Acropolis Rocks. “It’s at the base of the Parthenon and you get a great view of Athens, as far out as Piraeus.”

“I stayed in Piraeus when I first arrived here.”

“Never mind, dear.” Kaliopi patted my arm, helping me over the marble rocks, trying to find somewhere to sit.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Dimitrios after he’d spread his jacket for us to sit on.

“Yes, it is, but there are a number of young teenage couples that should
really
be thinking about getting a room,” I said drily as I viewed young teens—about my oldest students’ age—cuddled up close, nibbling each other’s ears.

“Oh, ignore them” Kaliopi piped up. “They’re here all the time. These rocks are famous for young lovers. And it is romantic, with the view and everything, don’t you think? But of course, the English: they are so uptight about such things, public displays of this affection,” she added.
Ouch—another barb about my nation in the space of half an hour! But spot on.

“Kaliopi, you realise I’m English and although a lot of the time you’re correct, you’re not being very nice about my fellow countrymen.”

“You’re more Greek than I am Rachel, you fit right in here…you’ll see in time.”

Dimitrios smiled…he was used to Kaliopi’s cryptic comments.

Behind us stood the Parthenon, and just beyond that, a flagpole proudly flying a huge Greek flag. Seeing me eyeing this Dimitrios explained, “When Germany finally invaded Greece on 27th April 1941, a German soldier demanded Konstantinos Koukidis, the Guard of the Greek flag here, to hoist the Swastika instead, or be shot. Koukidis took the flag, but when he reached the flagpole, he wrapped himself in the Greek flag and threw himself from the Holy Rock. He would rather kill himself than fly the German flag that represented occupation, and so the Resistance Movement in Greece was born.”

I was humbled by such an act of bravery. This country’s history of being occupied and being the underdog must be a factor in its desire to literally ‘put the flags out’ when celebrating a day such as ‘Ochi Day.’ The history of a country does, indeed, shape its people. I was increasingly impressed by what little history I’d learnt so far. I wasn’t quite sure, though, if Greece’s history explained Kaliopi’s excitable nature.

Descending, we wandered to Plaka, a fashionable tourist area near the Acropolis. We spent a pleasant hour chatting over coffee in the late afternoon sunshine. When the shadows lengthened, Dimitrios gave us both a Greek farewell kiss and hug.

“Come again, and soon. It was lovely to meet an English girl/secret Greek who is actually
interested
in our nation—not just here for the sunshine and alcohol on the islands!” I smiled, pleased that I’d managed to scrape beneath the surface and meet some lovely people—and also pleased I’d not voiced my original attraction to Greece.

We headed back to clean up Kaliopi’s apartment, gather our belongings and return to the village.

“We’ll meet my friends again, don’t worry, and probably Melanthi next time too, I think she must have been away this weekend,” said Kaliopi as we made our way to the railway station. As the train pulled in to return us to our weekday realities, I noticed a subdued mood had shrouded my friend.

“You know how much I hate the village, with its farmers who don’t clean under their fingernails and shout at me when they come into the bank where I work. Athens is my home and I love her, but I can’t get a job there unless my bank transfers me. They won’t do that unless there is a vacancy. And as nobody wants to work in the hole of shit provinces, I am stuck there for the time being!”

“At least you have me,” I offered as consolation.

“Yes, I have you” she visibly brightened.
“Pame, pame, katze kato;
Come, come and sit down” Kaliopi patted the seat next to her.

The train pulled away and I smiled down at Kaliopi who’d promptly fallen asleep on my shoulder and started to snore again, mouth ajar and dribbling ever so slightly.

School continued. The same issues with Dimitra and Konstantinos recurred, and I found myself having to dream up ever more innovative ways of dealing with them. One day, however, things took a turn in the opposite direction. I stumbled across them in a street near the school—kissing. “Ahem,” I cleared my throat.

“Ah,
Kyria
Rachel.” Konstantinos didn’t look at all embarrassed. In fact he seemed rather pleased with himself. “Dimitra has a problem with her family.”

“And you’re helping her how, exactly?” Blushing, Dimitra glanced away. “Besides, I thought you hated each other.”

“Love ... hate, is this not the same thing?” Konstantinos asked.
God, so astute and cynical at such a young age.

“Regardless,” I continued, “we’re not here to discuss love. You have class and should be in Mr Manos’s room right about…now” I peered at my watch. I pushed them on their way, but not without a last plea from this Greek Romeo and Juliet.

“
Please
don’t tell Mrs Stella you found us.”

I pretended to ponder this for a minute. “Hmm,
well ….” I trailed off, leaving the sentence unfinished.

“Oh
Kyria
, we will be quiet in class from now on,” offered Dimitra.

“And I’ll buy you a coffee,” added Konstantinos, winking at me. This thing with Dimitra was inflating his ego more than usual.

“Konstantinos, winking at your teacher isn’t really appropriate. Save that for Dimitra.”
Ah, that got him.
He looked away, embarrassed. “But,” I continued more gently, “I’ll take you up on that offer of a drink at the end of the school year—thanks.” They beamed as they headed off to class hand in hand, leaving me to ponder the complexities of teenage strife.

Not long after Ochi Day, another holiday came along. Although not an official public holiday, the schools didn’t open on 17th November and luckily for me, it fell on a Monday.

It was a perfect opportunity for a long weekend, and another chance to educate myself about significant dates in modern Greek history. I felt proud of myself: wanting to know more about my host country rather than just taking it at face value. Kaliopi and I got up early on the Saturday and boarded the coach for Athens.

“I’ve had enough of trains,” she stated. I could understand why: from my point of view, although the train was faster and cheap, the village station was at least twenty minutes out of town. My only experience of the train was the time I went to Athens for the weekend and whilst it was quaint, it was quite scary at night and early morning…not because of potential crime—more because of its isolated location. The station was pretty sinister, especially with the hooting owls and the screeching.
I hope they’re foxes and not wolves—or maybe that’s my overactive imagination again.
Having travelled by bus a short distance from school occasionally, I knew what to expect: people unwilling to move their bags from the window seat. But this time it wouldn’t be an issue with the two of us travelling; we picked an empty row together.

“What about the tickets?” I asked as we sat down. “Shouldn’t we have bought them beforehand at the bus station?” We’d boarded outside a small café two stops away from the main village terminus.

“Don’t worry,” replied Kaliopi. “The conductor will come and take your money. Get it ready—he doesn’t like to wait.” He was ambling down the aisle, collecting everyone’s fare. Luckily we both had the exact change—buying bread the previous week had taught me how much Greeks loathe making change, and often round up or down to the nearest five cents to avoid giving and receiving the pesky one and two cent coins. When he reached us, I couldn’t help noticing his right pinkie fingernail—it was about a centimetre long. Trying not to stare, I pointed it out to Kaliopi once he’d passed.

“Oh, that. You see? You can tell he’s from a village. It’s something to do with tradition in these parts, although I suspect it has more to do with nose-picking” came her laconic reply.

I smiled, leaned back in the cushioned seat and took in the scenery: wind farms high above the road on surrounding mountains; small roadside taverns; people bent over picking cotton in the fields. For ninety minutes we rolled through the picturesque landscape, stopping once or twice in small towns to collect more passengers. Then the scenery changed: more cars and built-up areas. Finally it was obvious we were approaching Athens: apartment blocks five or six stories high with green awnings shading balconies and CDs dangling from string to scare off the pigeons.

It was still early when we arrived.

“Let’s go back to my apartment for a little more sleep” Kaliopi suggested, “before we venture out.” Once again she gave me the bed; once again she commented that she hoped I wouldn’t snore like last time. I couldn’t help wondering who’d been in here last and if she’d changed the sheets. I didn’t have the heart to ask her, or to tell her that she was the one who rivalled a freight train. We awoke near midday, refreshed but hungry.

“Come, there’s nothing here to eat. Let’s go and grab some
gyros
,” Kaliopi suggested. Gyros turned out to be strips of pork or chicken, freshly made chips (“
patates
” fried in olive oil), salad and mayonnaise or
tzatziki
—the traditional Greek dip of yogurt, cucumber, lemon juice and lots of garlic—all bundled together in a thick pita wrap. Having skipped breakfast that morning, I was ravenous. This was the sort of fare the cafés in the village sold all the time, but I hadn’t actually tried one yet.
I could get to like Greek fast food.
Appetites finally sated, we lounged outside the small neighbourhood café in the November sun alongside the locals. Kaliopi’s neighbourhood wasn’t in a touristy section of Athens, so I had the opportunity to watch her neighbours go about their day, uninterrupted by streams of foreigners. Her apartment fronted onto a small square with a domed church and at a pavement table in the
kafinion
opposite us sat a table of four elderly men, playing
tavli
, occasionally shouting at each other and slapping each other on the back. A cluster of young boys and a couple of girls kicked a ball to each other while their mothers sat on the bench seat fixed around the monkey puzzle tree dominating the centre of the square.

“We will meet my friends again later.” She licked the last of the
tzatziki
from her fingers. “Come, I need fruits and there is a farmer’s market somewhere around here on a Saturday.”

Indeed there was—we just had to follow the cries of the stallholders and follow the elderly ladies dragging large shopping trolleys to find it only three streets away. I picked out two red apples and tried to pay, only to be looked at by the stallholder as if I’d insulted him. He waved me away with a flick of his hand.
“Dyo evro Copella, tipota!”
he smiled.

“It’s because you only want two items,” Kaliopi clarified. “He’s just told you two euros is nothing to him…if you’d bought more, he would have charged you.” Impressed by this act of kindness, I insisted that Kaliopi buy the salad vegetables from him. Feta cheese and meat from the local butchers completed our shopping for our evening meal and we made our way back to the apartment. It was nice to see that as well as supermarkets, it was possible to still find local shops in the capital city, and not just the village.

Kaliopi had made the decision earlier that we wouldn’t be going out that evening; instead she’d invited ‘a couple of friends over.’ A couple of Kaliopi’s friends turned out to be Melanthi, Nektarios, Dimitrios, Dimitrios’s sister Maria, Nektarios’s cousin Evangelia, her boyfriend Menelaos and Menelaos’s dentist (of all people!), Eleni. I was left reeling in confusion with the introductions as they all trooped in at nine o’clock, kissing each other on both cheeks and welcoming me in a similar vein.
Hold on, is Evangelia the dentist and Eleni Nektarios’s cousin?
Still, there were definitely more than “a couple of friends.” I was bursting to know how the dentist fitted into the circle, but an enquiry to Nektarios about this merely resulted in his asking,

“Which one is the dentist again? Ask Menelaos, he’s the one who brought her.” Kaliopi, not having been introduced to the dentist nor Menelaos before that night either, didn’t seem to mind and busied herself pulling pillows from the bed.

“You’ll have to sit here, Eleni… Evangelia… Maria—whoever,” she threw the pillows onto the floor. “
Katze, katze,
sit, sit. I am preparing
stifado
with salad.” That explained the smell wafting from the kitchen during the afternoon. I’d heard of this hearty winter meat dish: beef stew with small onions, vinegar, red wine, and cinnamon. But Kaliopi was preparing hers with rabbit—which would be a first for me.

“I’m Melanthi, we didn’t meet last time, I was away working in Dubai,” one of the girls extended her hand and shook mine formally, but with a smile. “I work for a major hotel chain in marketing and I get to travel a lot. Don’t let Kaliopi overwhelm you.” She leant forward confidentially, “she’s a lovely person with a very kind heart. I’ve known her for many years.”

“Yes, she’s really taken me under her wing in the short time I’ve got to know her,” I smiled as Kaliopi came back into the room, carrying a pot full of steaming stew.

We all tucked into the
stifado
and salad, complemented by a bottle of red wine. I found that rabbit didn’t taste all that different from beef, and as I settled back and allowed the good-natured arguing to manifest around me, and ducking away from Kaliopi’s flying fork as she rammed home a point, I found myself warming to the idea of enjoying life without all the need for advanced planning. So far in Greece, the times I’d most enjoyed had evolved spontaneously.

I need to allow myself to let go even more, to go with the flow,
I thought.
Hell, I’ve managed well with the time keeping issue…
My thoughts were interrupted as a piece of meat flew onto my plate from Nektarios’s fork as he rallied against Kaliopi’s argument. Life in Greece seems to consist of constantly fielding curveballs (and flying meat). I smiled at Kaliopi, still arguing and jabbing her fork in the direction of Nektarios and his cousin, Evangelia. He glanced over at me and winked. “We let her run out of the steam when she’s like this,” he attempted the English idiom with little error. “She’s complaining about the village…again.” He shrugged his shoulders.

“We keep telling her to be patient, a job will come up in Athens soon, and she has you now…this is good, no?” Melanthi joined in.

“Yes, it is good, for the both of us,” I replied.

I left them to it at three o’clock on Sunday morning and retired to the bedroom, leaving Kaliopi continuing her rant in the sitting room with Dimitrios, whose sister had long departed. I closed my eyes, thinking about how people in Greece didn’t feel compelled to leave a social gathering with the people they came with. It was all very relaxed. In fact, when Menelaos had left earlier, leaving his dentist friend deep in conversation with Nektarios, he’d stated he didn’t want to pay for a taxi, and it was too late for public transport. Leaning out of Kaliopi’s third-floor balcony, I’d witnessed him chatting with a twenty-four-hour pizza delivery motorbike man whom he’d flagged down in the street. After a moment, he turned back and yelled up, “Don’t worry about me, I’m getting a lift home.
Kali nichta all!
”