Vohu Manu

Athens was a city clearly struggling. For every five inhabited buildings was one abandoned. Interestingly the abandoned ones seem to be the nicest architecturally speaking, perhaps they predate the war. Much of the close-packed, tenement housing is in almost identical buildings, perhaps put up after the war. A Greek guy said that joining the EU had been disasterous for Greece, with the cost of living rising steadily for the last five years. I suggested that joining the EU was a gamble, but he laughed mirthlessly and said it was a chance guaranteed to failure.

The people were nice, the vast majority knew a smattering of English, perhaps because of the Olympics but even the others were patient and friendly. Early one morning we staggered into the Red Indian Cafe and asked for kafe and gestured at the coffee machine. There was some confusion, but 'espresso' did the trick. That was when she dusted off the instrutions and tried to oeprate the machine. Only later did it occur to me that "Cafe" obviously meant bar, open early, sure, but it was strange for anyone to ask for coffee...

Working with the Greek alphabet was quite interesting. Even if I knew what word I needed, such as a street name, it took some work to translate the phoenetic sounds of the text which you were looking at. Simple rules such as 'p's are 'r's and 'l's are upside-down helped. However sigma having three different characters did not.

The food was a surprising delight. Simple was all I'd expected of Greek food, and simple it was, but it all worked very well. Anna has since commented that European food was made for me as they serve bread at every meal. But of couse they do, 'tis the natural order of things.