Greece - the experience

Poor George...

At breakfast one morning, we overheard a Greek-Australian family having a discussion about what they were going to do that day. The son, George (of course he's called George!), was devastated to hear that they would be going to a museum in the morning, driving to another town and visiting yet another archeological site in the afternoon. Sigh...Poor kid. Slow death by archeological sites...

In fact, there were a lot of Greek-Australian/Greek-American families showing their children the birthplace of their parents and grandparents. It's great to see them do this despite the kids sighing and protesting all the way.

Greek Alphabet

Hey, learning all those greek symbols in maths actually came in handy! Well, that is, after I worked out what I was looking at! Having finally deciphered Λ (lambda) for L, Π (pi) for P, Σ (sigma) for S etc., I was able to make a good guess at many signs.

Modern Greece

The Buses
One surprisingly efficient thing was the bus system, KTEL (or KTEΛ as it is in Greek). Of all the various aspects of Modern Greece, this was the one thing that I was impressed with. The long distance buses left on time and arrived on time every time we took them (8 times) bar one (the Delphi-Athens bus arrived in Delphi late but got to Athens on time). They were, for the most part, clean and comfortable with the seat belts neatly folded underneath the seats, requiring tweezers to extracate them (!)

The Food

The food we had in Greece was fantastic and cheap. The Greek salads were fresh with juicy, plump tomatoes, the gyros were very tasty (even when they stuck chips in them - are they copying the famous British chip butties?) and the seafood delicious, particularly the stuffed squid.

The Heat

The heat radiating off the stone of the ruins was extremely uncomfortable. It was really hard going to tramp up and down the marble and stone pavements to see all of the sites. Away from the archeological sites, the temperatures were much more bearable as you could find shade from the buildings to walk in and duck into air-conditioned shops for a breather.

Everything Other Than The Buses And The Food

Everything in Modern Greece, other than buses, is disorganised and nuts. It must be said, however, that they are much better than the Egyptians. At least they have relatively clean cities and towns. They do have some of those same half finished buildings with reinforcement sticking out the top like Egypt, though. None of the countries that contain the great ancient civilisations has impressed me. Egypt, Greece, Italy, Turkey and China are all poor decendents dwelling upon the past achievements of their ancestors. I have no doubt that India and South America are the same. It is very disappointing that these countries have yet to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and stop reminiscing about past greatness. It is time to move on.