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Elias
Entry 21 of 33 | show all | print this entry |
Elias
We got the train to Athens, and arrived that evening. Then we got a night train out at midnight, that would get us up and around the corner of Greece to Alexandropolis, the closest Greek city to the Turkish border.
The Greek train was worse than the Italian trains on a bad day. We had to literally fight to get any space in a carriage, and when we had, there was hardly any room. Karim and I, being gentlemen, and smokers, volunteered to go and sit in the restaurant car. All night. When we got there, some Greek waiter guy came over and asked us what we wanted to drink. We asked for two cokes. He went away.
The car was full of the kind of Greek men that hate Englishmen on principle. We both agreed quickly to talk quietly and not to draw attention to ourselves. The guy came back with two cans of coke. Then he asked for the money. In Greek. We lost something in the translation, but he kept asking for more and more and didn't stop until he had five Euros. That's £3, for two cans of coke, in the poorest country in Europe.
Our argument had attracted the attention of some of the others, who asked us how much we had paid. And then they had laughed. A lot. It turned out that we should have paid less than half that. Karim went up to the waiter guy, swore a bit, and - to his eternal credit - came back with money.
But our low-profile had kind of failed.
We ended up playing poker with the guy sat next to us, who only spoke a few words of English. Then Marie-Louise came for a chat. We were told at that point by the same waiter that we weren't allowed to play cards. Even though we weren't playing for money. Bastard. We were starting to hate the Greeks. Every one we had met so far had been, to a greater or lesser extent, a tosser.
Marie-Louise made the fatal mistake of showing us a photo of her boyfriend.
"Scally", I observed, impartially. Karim agreed.
"What's a 'Scally'"
"It's a Liverpool thing. He looks like the sort of guy who goes around stealing cars and beating up old grannies for their pension book".
"Oh".
"Sorry", I said. "I'm sure he's lovely".
"He is".
Bugger.
Marie-Louise went off to bed some time later, and then we got chatting to yet another Greek bloke. This one spoke very good English. His name was Elias, and he was a lawyer, currently performing his compulsory military service.
He was a very clever guy. He told us all about Greece, all about the history of the problems with Turkey (which we, surprisingly, didn't know anything about other than they 'didn't get on'), and he even taught us the Greek Alphabet. He wrote it on the inside cover of Karim's book and told us how to say each letter.
Then the conversation got on to football. This is when it got strange. Not, 'give me your money' strange, or even 'I like boys' strange. It was strange because he knew more about the England football team than anyone else I had ever met in my life - and I've been a barman for three years - I hear people talk shit about football all the time.
He knew which minute of the match in the world cup semi final in 1982 the referee (name supplied) made a bad call about the challenge (name supplied) performed on (name supplied). It was truly remarkable.
But I kind of switched off at this point. I was still thinking about one of the things he had said earlier. He had said that he saw England as the last hope for Europe. I asked him what he meant. He said that it was only the attitude of Great English Leaders like Churchill that had kept Europe free. He didn't like the way Greece was going now, and honestly saw England as the future of a unified, peace-loving Europe.
I wanted to cry.
Then I wanted to tell him that the English don't give a shit about Europe, and they certainly don't give a shit about Greece. As far as we're concerned, you're two weeks a year in the sun, but only if all the staff are English. I felt horrified that we had this reputation of being a 'nice' place. A model for all other countries. The future of Europe. Europe is, to us, amusing articles in the Sun about Brussels and Bananas, or features about the refugee camp at Calais. And that just about covers it. Hate Germans, hate the French, and hope the rest of them just go away.
I smiled and thanked him.
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