C

While we were in Moscow we were idly wondering what to do with the rest of our lives, or at least that part covering the few months after our Russian visas expired. Turning to what seemed an old friend, but whom we'd met less than a year earlier, we brought up www.craigslist.org. What would we find under "sublets/temporary apartments"?

We searched the whole world. Nope, nothing suitable in South Africa. Or Japan. Or anywhere else in Asia. But there was an excellent lead in Athens and two in Istanbul. We fired off emails to all. Within a few days we had replies from all and all looked good. But we quickly cut short our search because that first excellent lead in Athens had turned up trumps. We'd come to an agreement to take an apartment in Athens, in the Platia Varnava district, for four months - October 1 to January 31.

We had two main questions: What were we doing taking a place for so long? And where was Platia Varnava? Being in Moscow we didn't have enough resources to determine where Platia Varnava was and no matter where we had been we couldn't have answered exactly what we were up to going to Athens for four months.

But we arrived. And we found the apartment. And, lo, as the Bible says, it was good.

Our first shopping expedition

A quiet moment on the balcony

We've been in Athens one night short of a week and are getting our lives organized. It is always a new adventure for us, starting from how to get from the airport to the apartment. This time we did not even have the keys in our hand. But a friend of our new landlady who lives on the first floor had the key and answered as soon as we rang her buzzer even though (or perhaps because) it was past 11 p.m. The next day, as in Moscow, we had to find a place to shop for food. As expected, things here are more like those in Europe and the USA; in particular it was easy to find a large, modern supermarket owned by the French company Champion. The prices are also better than in Moscow and they sell French baguettes.

We're slowly sampling Greek food. Yesterday I came home with a can of stuffed vine leaves, a favorite of Jan. We also buy spanakopita (a kind of spinach pie made with flaky Greek pastry) and feta cheese. I've found some olives that I really like. So far the eating is pretty good.

We are about a 30-minute (2 km) walk from Constitution Square (Syntagma, in Greek. It is also sometimes spelled Syndagma, which is more like its pronunciation, but the t-version seems more current.). We've made the walk once so far; returning via trolley bus. A main goal of our first little excursion was to buy an internet card and we succeeded in that; so unlike other capitals it didn't take us a week to get online. Our second and only other excursion out the front door (except to the supermarket) was to walk over to the British Council and read the (London) Times for an hour. On the way there we passed the Army Museum and the Byzantine-Christian Museum; both appear to be worth a visit. Coming back we stopped outside Panathinaikon Stadium which was used for the 1896 revival of the Olympics Games. It was been heavily modernized for the 2004 games. We also passed the President's house and got treated to a 10-minute show of very strange walking for a sort of changing of the guards. The two guards actually just switched guard houses.

Whereas in Moscow we had a view of the Moscow River, here we have a view of the Aegean sea. Rather than being just outside our window it is five or six kilometers away, and we just catch a glint of it over the top of lots of other buildings. And in the mornings we don't see it because there is a heavy haze. We have to wait for the afternoon to get a glimpse of blue. In a day or two we will take a bus to the coast. But for now we are content to catch up on our personal affairs.

We're enjoying having balconies, including the one that gives a view of the Aegean. We take breakfast and lunch there. If we have any one, major, regret about trading Moscow for Athens it is that in the Moscow apartment there was a great collection of books, including several on history and architecture that Gerry finished or nearly finished. Here, we find not a single one on the shelves. What a shame! On the positive side here we have about 20 TV channels whereas in Moscow we had four. We get CNN and TV5 (French) and soundless Euronews. That will work a bit against learning Greek. On the other hand there is a station that broadcasts American movies with the original sound track and Greek subtitles. That is already helping me to learn a bit of Greek.

Jan is enjoying a reprieve from being the family interpreter. She had mixed feelings about this, wanting to get in all the practice possible but also hating to be always on call. She is continuing her Russian studies and does't want too much interference from Greek so will try to ignore it! That won't happen of course, with so much Greek around. But she is nearly halfway through a Russian-language murder mystery that she bought and started in Moscow.

After failing miserably to learn Russian in three months Gerry is now about to embark on learning Greek in four months. Here's what he has to say: "In Russia I did learn perhaps 200-300 words; but that is a small part of the 1500 words that people say are needed for minimal competence. In Russian there were many more cognates than I expected, but they were mostly nouns; I never learned many verbs and that was a killer. In Greek I expect a lot of cognates, or at least English words derived from Greek. Maybe one day I will read a page of Plato in the original. So far, I can say "Where is the supermarket?" and — in the long run much more important, but not needed yet — "Where is the toilet?" As for Plato, my connection so far has been reading the English-language encyclopedia article about him."