Carrying Strap for Your Convenience

• Tiara316's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Athens

Trip Start Sep 07, 2008 Previous
Entry Trip End Dec 09, 2008 Next
Entry

  Athens, Greece
Thursday, September 11, 2008

Today's post is for my dear friend Godiva. Last year, she took a daring trip through Ecuador, and she gave me some advice about my travels. She said to look for the little details that are surprising and different. So here you go, Godiva, here is the first batch of everyday Greek culture observations.

1. I went to the supermarket for the first time today. I managed to find most of what I was looking for. Struck out on face cleanser, though, since I couldn't read the Greek bottles to know if I was buying cleanser, toner, or lotion. Despite the tight aisles, nobody said "excuse me" or "pardon me" or "sorry." I've read that Greeks sometimes think Americans are overly polite or fake for saying such things so often, but that there's a linguistic explanation: like the Romance languages, Greek has a formal and an informal version of address. If you use the formal version, there's no need to add extra polite words because the formal version is itself the polite form.

I got a huge kick out of some of the supermarket product packaging, which included a little bit of mangled English, my favorite being the "baby puder" I picked up in the pharmacy section. And I didn't notice until I got back to the apartment that the toilet paper package comes complete with a carrying strap. This is because nobody drives to the supermarket. You walk there and carry your bags back home by hand.

2. Also some sights around my apartment. The street signs are not on poles or hanging from traffic light lines.

Baby Puder!

Come to think of it, I haven't seen any traffic lights in my neighborhood. Instead, the street signs are posted on the sides of buildings. Fortunately, they are often written in both Greek and Latin letters.

Continuing on the subject of signs, there is a butcher shop on my walk to the classroom building that strikes me for the poignancy with which they advertise the goat and lamb meat available for purchase.

Each neighborhood centers around a square, which includes a taverna, shops, and an area for the kids to play (because in this sea of concrete there are no yards). My square includes a fountain covered in graffiti and full of filthy water.

Oh, and the graffiti itself is fascinating. I'm particularly smitten by the "Greeklish." English is taught in all the schools, so the bilingual young people mix English and Greek not just in the same sentence, but in the same word. In this bit of graffiti, the last letter is not an "E" with more angles, it's a Greek sigma, "S". So it reads "DOMINOS," maybe the nickname of the tagger.

Because it's so brutally hot, traditional Greek culture includes the afternoon siesta. All the windows have blinds made of heavy wooden slats, and you see all the slats on the street pulled down during nap hours. In the picture below, you can see the brown slats pulled halfway down the window.

3. Now a word about cars. It appears Athenians like to drive very tiny pod-shaped cars. Their fuel efficiency is probably spectacular. In the picture, I don't think I want to know what Sensual FX is, but if you look past the advertising, you can see the size and shape of the car.

Greeks like such small cars because that's the only hope they have of finding a parking place. I've seen many gated porches on the ground floor of houses which look like very swanky parking spots. Everybody else parks on the street. Or on the sidewalk.

4. The final little detail I've notices is the painting in the classroom I'll probably be teaching in. It just seems odd to be in a Greek classroom because I think the subject is, um, Lot's daughters. Eeew.

5. My apartment has two interesting details about it. First, there's marble everywhere. I would have to be a millionaire in the States to have this much marble. There's marble on the stairs, marble on the floors, marble on the kitchen counters, there's even marble on the sidewalks! This is a country where stone is bountiful but trees are not.

Finally, what we call the "Greek key" pattern is actually called a Greek meander. Here's a picture of a real Greek key, with holes bored into it in varying depths instead of notches taken out of the side.

Hope that was good, Godiva. No word yet on what Greek keyboards look like, as you asked me to find out. All the women who administer the program type on English-letter keyboards. Let me know in the comments if there are any other details you want me to investigate.

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

Toilet paper carrying strap	Street sign on the building	Butcher shop	Filthy fountain
Dominos	Wooden window slats	Little podlike Smart Car	Gated parking porch
Sidewalk parking	Lot's Daughters	Greek key	Marble stairs
Marble tree liner

Slideshow Print this entry Share Athens hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry