Athens....Last weekend!!

Sunday
6:30 am

Oh for god sake…what is razor-sharp object piercing into my eyelids…I try and to force myself to open my eyes…but I fail desperately …put my head under the duvet and turn…

6:35 am
…I can hear a loud…ZZZzzzzz which occasionally becomes …Khhhhorrrr with a random frequency…I toss and turn a few more times before my brain gets into gear…I close my eye lid…and see bright little dots…and damn…. razor-sharp array of light…close my eyes again in form of lady bird trying to escape a naughty 7 year old boys trap and now the room is spinning…bloody hell what is that scratching noise?

6:37 am
I look towards the light again…oh I see…it must be the sun coming through the curtains…what time is it I think to myself? I fish for my mobile phone on the arm of the sofa bed and I read 4:37…ummm trying to get brain to function arithmetically and do a plus 2 unconsciously!!!

It is 6:37 am in Athens, I am sleeping on the sofa bed in Alexandra’s flat next to the queen of snoring…man I wonder how her husband sleep with her at night… R, or chipmunk as we call her…since she squeaks in a chipmunk’s style when she is high...normally on Pepsi that is, is a friend of mine from university.

Now I remember this happened last night too…and I wowed that I will get Dee to sleep on the sofa tonight…damn I was too tired to remember….

6:40 am
I slip out of the bed and walk towards the window, I can hear the horns from outside…wow Greeks are early risers…it is Sunday for god sake! I pull the curtain away and open the first door (two doors instead of double glazing…odd!)…and I can hear a man’s voice shouting… ‘kalimera’ , which reminds me of calamari and the fact that I am hungry…but in actual facts means good morning in Greek!

As I open the door to the balcony….the scent of orange tree blossoms ( bahar narenj) hits me and reminds me of my grand fathers place in Chalous…for a few moment I had flash backs of the garden and the little ‘Parchin’…and orange trees above the little pool ( houz!)…!!

Back in Athens, it is almost 7 am and people are just coming home from the late night adventures, I am not surprised, these guys start going out at 3 am…I feel so old!! I wanted to go to bed at 1 am…and Dee and Alexandra had to drag me along in the busy streets where people were sitting outside of Café’s in the pavement drinking merrily…and I was pulling faces in style of ‘mishe bekhabam’!

I was kind of woken up by the time we got to this club called the Privilege, was pretty amusing. A big barn type club with roman style furniture and red velvet setting, a delicate but amazing chandelier and get this…no roof…so you could see the stars while you are drunk on Orzo ( some red vodka thing!), comfy sofa’s…not too mention good looking Greek blokes!!

I read some where that; Alexander the great followed a policy of integration between the Greeks and the Persian communities, encouraging marriages and applying the formula of magnanimity and generosity, which had formerly brought success to Cyrus.

I smiled to that thought as I recalled last nights experience…ummm…I guess I couldn’t argue with Alexander!


7:05 am
Found my way to the kitchen through suitcases, lighters, and something sharp that I am guessing was some ones hair pin and make an attempt to make some toast! But am too sleepy and go back to bed! Put the pillow over my ears to lock out the ‘Khor khor’…and the merry Greeks already up in their balconies….

7:10 am
…tossing and turning….I thought after a while, you get used to a new mattress. You find a position in which you can just about sleep. You learn to lie with your back away from the bumpiest bit, turning your feet so that they don’t fall into the saggy part. And when you finally get to rest on your own bed, it feels odd, wrong somehow. You almost miss the contortion.

10:30 am
What the heck is going on now!!?…I feel a kick…and the following squeaky noise…oi…wake up…! Move your bum…it suffocates me…!!
WHAT? ...here is the queen of sophisticated sleeping telling me my very attractive (I would like to think!) Iranian style bum (pear shaped...in case u are wondering) suffocating her…while I have hardly had a few hours sleep from her snoring…I could swear at her in Farsi…but that won’t go well as she knows all the responses better than me and her memory is rather good...in fact she can be Mnemosyne… (i.e. the Titan of memory and the mother of Muses!!!)…so I leave it at that…pull the duvet to my side and kick her out of the bed….

10:40 am
Dee is very mad at R (you can see her infuriating looks...like I am going to take revenge so bad...u won’t know what hit u!)…she has just woken the whole house up…with excitement of course…come on look at the sun…we are going to miss the ferry!

Oh yes…we are suppose to go to an Island…damn…I wish we haven’t mentioned that to her!


11:30 am
There was no point in resistance…we looked like the ‘ghoshoone shekast khordeh englisa’ in Daee Jan Napoleon’s war stories verses Mash Qasem’s incredible courage and credibility!

I got out of bed while R has put the music from Greek MTV…’go shorty it is your birthday’ to full blast…So I made the run for the shower before I get attacked by 3 other chicks to fight for it!!

I have now my Ice coffee out of the blender sitting in the balcony in the sun watching the people go by…the lady on the opposite balcony is airing her sheets while the one next door is reminding me of a scene we familiar to us all in Iran just before Nourouz and so called ‘Khane Tekani’…yes you guessed it…she is airing the carpets…’Farsh mitekooneh..’….this made me smile ….and then the funniest thing happened…I heard a van passing by with a loud speaker…selling vegetables…oh man…they have ‘Namaki’s and ‘Sabzi foroush’ here too…amazing!!

I guess little things make a big difference. Deft, delicate touches can transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. They can make something dull seem fascinating. They can make something cheap seem expensive. I am not trying to claim that style counts for more than substance but in a surprising number of incidences, the two have almost equal weight. Right now, I seem to have the bulk of what I need… a break from the ordinary!

3:00 pm

Finally, we are on the Ferry on the way to Hydra, an Island that we have been told by Alexandra has no cars and the means of transport are beloved donkeys!!!

Settling in my plane like seat on the ferry, I opened my book to read, but my eyes are too tired and I just decided to let them wonder off.

The city that gave birth to democracy, Athens brims with culture, history and currently builders. There’s a heck of a lot of re-development taking place to resolve the usually grid locked streets in time for the Summer Olympics which return in 2004. Athens has always been a city of change and although much of the modern city is a result of post-war dollars from the United States, a lot of its history is coloured by the occupation of the Romans and Turks. While the Parthenon can’t fail to impress, standing atop of the Acropolis for the last two thousand six hundred odd years, a lot of the cultural treasures were looted by other nations in the eighteenth century. My history is not good, but I guess they do hold a lot of grudge against the Iranians…after all we weren’t’ exactly friends 2000 years ago were we!?

We all learned the story from fifth-grade world history and ninth-grade civics. In the beginning, all was darkness, except for some little pockets of organized life in China, India, and the eastern Mediterranean. Then light broke upon the Aegean Sea, and the Greeks discovered democracy and the worth of the individual. The light was almost extinguished by Christian superstition but began to shine all the brighter in the Renaissance and Reformation, bursting into flame during the Enlightenment, which culminated in the American and French Revolutions, and, since then, Americans (and their European followers) have marched unswervingly in their progress toward Huntington's "liberty, equality, individualism, democracy, rule of law, private enterprise" -- to say nothing of free abortions, Jacuzzis in every Holiday Inn, international human rights, gourmet food you can heat up in the microwave, fresh Mexican fruit from a market run by illegal Korean aliens, freedom from religions that claim to possess the truth ... !!

I quite enjoyed the little Café culture in the cobble streets near the Acropolis and around town.
Apart from the streets night life everything here reminds me of home, the music, the people, the city’s structure and definitely the yellow cabs with the old Taxi drivers which have put up plastic flowers and tacky decorations in their cars…flash backs of Orange Peykans!!

As we walked up the hill yesterday to see the Acropolis, had Frappe’s ( Greek version of Iced coffee!), Souvlaki and enjoyed the 28 degree sun ( since we have already had out one day of summer in London…!)…I couldn’t help thinking; As curious as they were about other cultures, the Greeks divided the world between Greeks and "the others," whom they referred to as bárbaroi, a word that may be an onomatopoetic rendering of foreign babble. Although the term "barbarian" certainly included such wild peoples of the North as Illyrians and Scyths, it was more typically applied to the degenerate subjects of the great empires of the East, especially the Persians.

Herodotus, who was the first extant writer to have taken up the conflict between the two civilizations of the Mediterranean, spent a fair amount of time hopping from island to island, roaming through Egypt, and living among the barbarians. The results of his casual investigations (or "histories," as he called them) form the most entertaining (and perhaps even the most honest) work of history ever written. As a Greek, Herodotus had no doubts about the superiority of his own civilization, but he had grown up cheek-by-jowl with Carian bárbaroi, and he was fully aware of the splendid virtues of the Persians and of the cultural antiquity of the Egyptians. His openness to alien cultures extended to the point of gullibility, since he appears to have uncritically accepted nearly every preposterous story told to him by Egyptian priests.

Well despite what we read of history and the fact that Greeks ‘be khoone ma teshnan’….they seemed very nice warm and hospitable people…even to me!



4:00 pm

I was woken up…again…must be the 10th time today…by R...screaming come on the deck and see the view…so I get up tumbling and walk up on the deck…!

I have to give it to her…it was an amazing view of the little Islands…little houses and no sign of pollution!

4:30 pm

I can hear the siren…and there we are… Hydra…a little Island a short distance away from Athens, wow….how pretty is this!

We are too excited to find a place for staying the night…so we hit the beach and catch the last couple of hours the sun lounging around the stone hedged beach…drinking…talking…and a dip!

7:45 pm

We sat there quietly watching the sunset…no one said a word…I guess everyone was deep in their own little worlds…R must have missed hubby and is probably thinking how romantic would have been if he was here….Dee must be thinking ...can’t wait to get some sleep…Alexandra is probably dreaming of how to get rid of us…and I am just totally lost in the moment and can’t think of much but tomorrow!

Now, let me ask you a difficult question. Is it true that we need help to see the future? Or can we see it perfectly well? Could it be that we are concerned about our vision? Are we hoping for a second opinion or an alternative point of view? Are we, perhaps, a little overwhelmed by what appears to be looming so large on our horizon?

I guess no matter what way we think about it and how much evidence we get that we can perfectly see the future or the events of tomorrow... but we are just having some difficulty in believing the evidence of our eyes. Shall we say if what we see is inspiring, trust it? And if it is not, change it? What if we ignore it?

8:15 pm

“Izzy Wizzy let’s get busy!” That’s what Sooty used to say, before tapping his magic wand firmly on the counter. Or rather, that’s what Mr Corbett used to say that Sooty had said. Sooty, of course, was a glove puppet – famous for never speaking a word. People had to interpret his gestures. Which brings me on to this weekend’s kind of magic… For as long as we believe that power rests in someone else’s hands, namely our beloved R ( although unlike Sooty…She can’t stop talking!)…we will be ok…so she takes the lead…we walk around…brows the little shops…admire the little white and blue houses and retire to eat…at a little place by the sea…where we can see the stars…the lights of the boats in the bay and the soothing Greek music coming from the bar below…!!

And yum yum…Sea food Linguini with Greek Salad, Calamari’s and fisheggs!…I don’t think I have ever eaten so much at once!!!

Monday
00:30 am

Alexandra and I have excused ourselves and retired to our little room which we managed to rent with the help of the guys from the restaurant, and have left Dee and R on the Pier…!! I am too tired and I fall sleep as I hit the pillow!!!

The bed is actually a bit hard…but I am too exhausted to even care….

00:45 am

ringggggggg ringggggg…..what now….I can hear a mobile ring…I reach out for mine and press the red button…back to my deep sleep again…

ringggggg…….blurtttttttttttttt….this time I actually manage to open my eyes…the green light is on and it says ‘Dee’ on the screen…I guess some where in my brain I try to compute why is she calling me at this time…but obviously… I press the red button again…as you do!

Riiiiiiiiiiinggggggggggggggg….damn…YES…I blurt out…she is being very conscious of my bad mood and quietly says…”ummmm we are kind of lost!!!” That wakes me up….but can’t think so I just hand the phone to Alexandra who is now up as well with all the commotion..!

01:00 am

A big bang followed with giggles and damn…knocks on our door…Dee wants her bag which is in our room….this better be the last of them!! I am knackered…and very ‘Saggy and bad akhlagh’…..

01:05 am

Silence….. finally I can sleep……

01:07 am

Wishful thinking that was…knocking on the door again….

Now R wants her sun glasses…..WHAT???? Can’t it wait till tomorrow?...

Obviously not…..

6:30 am

ddddderedeee………..Alexandra’s alarm….

Wake up we are going to miss the ferry …..Oh my GOD……

07:00 am

We have managed to drag very moody R out of bed….decently dressed and outside….going down the stairs in the little Alley…everyone is kind of moaning and groaning….

07:10 am

the donkeys queued up to start the day….one of them is looking at me funny….’Dareh chap chap negah migone…’

What seems to be a zillion of cats have lined up by the fisher man’s boats and where they all jump in for little fishes thrown for them is rather amusing….

07:15 am

Siren…..the boat is here….

Got some sleep on the boat …thank god for that…

11:00 am

Back at Alexandra’s flat…R is feeling rather poorly…can’t figure out if it is sea sickness…lack of sleep or simply too much talking!

While we give her some tablets and put her in bed…Dee and I are getting ready to go SHOPPING…..hooray….

Human beings were born to shop. This is what they were placed upon the earth in order to do. The creator said, “Let there be people – and let them have credit cards. And let there be online catalogues for those who cannot get to the malls.” You doubt this? Then why, pray tell, are there so many retail outlets in every town centre? This is no haphazard accident of commerce – this is the divine will. Isn’t it? Then think. What else is there in life now that we can see as indispensable yet which actually matters far less …imagine?

So we hit the shops ……

10:30 pm

A day of shopping, more Frappe’s and Souvlaki and plenty of R’s sick ( sorry…..)…and we have only got couple of hours before our flight…

I sit outside in the balcony, smelling the Orange Tree blossoms ( bahar narenj)…and wish we didn’t have to leave this early…and try to inhale as much as I can to take a piece back with me for mum and Dad…especially Dad…I bet he has missed it so much!