IT’S ALL GREEK TO ME

It dawned on me with a jolt on my first night in Athens on my first visit ever to Greece.

It was about two o’clock in the morning and even though Monday was a work day the bars and nightclubs and bouzoukia were swinging all over town. But then, in Athens, they don’t go out for dinner until about 10-11o’clock. And then they party throughout the night. How they function at work next day I have no idea.

We had just passed the stunning, dramatic, Olympic Stadium, built (on time despite the sceptics) for last year’s Games. The vast complex of venues makes Sydney’s Homebush project look small. We headed for the rooftop bar at the towering Hilton Hotel. It reminded me of the Peninsula Hotel’s bar in Hong Kong. Only five times the size. High up at the Hilton I got my first view of the floodlit hilltop Acropolis.

Some reflections on Athens – from the file: “It’s all Greek to me”.

Athens will undoubtedly be the last major city in the world to ban smoking in restaurants. I would have said Beijing – where smoking is almost compulsory -- but this week there were moves afoot to ban smoking in restaurants in Hong Kong. If that happens could Shanghai and Beijing be far behind?

Virtually everybody smokes, and smokes heavily, in Athens. The incessant coffees and equally incessant cigarettes in crowded cafes are a ritual. The disturbing thing for non-smokers is that waiters and waitresses and restaurant managers openly smoke near food.

You see streams of traffic with hundreds of motorists (windows up) chain-smoking. It must be catching. A once fervently anti-smoking friend and health freak, a relatively new arrival in Athens, now smokes. A lot.

And speaking of traffic. They are skilled drivers in Athens. But fast and reckless. And the locust plague of motor bikes and scooters duck and weave at a speed that makes our couriers look like they are travelling in slow motion.

In the CBD you are only allowed to drive your car on alternating days when your number plate ends in an odd or even number. Imagine that in Melbourne! Although we did have it during the petrol crisis 25 years ago.

In Athens we naively, ignorantly and expensively, discovered a great way for Victoria to collect on millions of dollars of unpaid traffic tickets from “scofflaws” (as they call them in America).

There were no obvious signs, but apparently we had parked illegally. When we returned to the car from the teeming tourist district – filled with hundreds of small shops selling hundreds of different types of the usual touristy junk – there was an infringement ticket under the windscreen wiper. Fair enough. But the car’s licence plates had also been removed.

To drive without plates – apart from driving directly to your home – is obviously illegal. You can get them back the following day by paying about $A400. If you don’t drive the vehicle for twenty days you can get them back for $A130. If you are caught driving without plates you go straight to jail and are also fined $A1000.

So we took a taxi to Piraeus, the famous fishing port. That day, on a burst of walking fitness, I had passed an enticing fresh fish shop tucked away in suburban Athens. The fish display on a carpet of ice in the window was sheer artistry. Sea bream, red-mullet, Grouper, Dorado, Pandora, Sargo. Some fish I had never heard of. Plus octopus and squid.

Off to Piraeus for a feast of what they boast is the best fish in the world. As the Hungry Hinch restaurant reviewer I had always boasted that Australia had the best fish in the world. Not any more. Maybe it is their home in the Aegean Sea.

So there on the waterfront, alongside a forest of masts from hundreds of fishing scows and luxury leisure boats, we ate cockles and mussels. And thought of Molly Malone.

Some final reflections. Athens is an enigma. I passed Parliament House and was reminded that Ancient Greece was the crucible of democracy. The Greeks, ahead of their democratic times, were originally responsible for what we accept as normal. Some people forget that, as the United States ostentatiously takes the modern crown.

It is dangerous to generalise about the people of any city (or country) but it seems to me that there is a culture in Athens that most people work to live –to pay for their living expenses and indulgences. They don’t live to work.

Like Mexico, they take siestas in the afternoon. Most shops and department stores close at 2.30p.m. and reopen at 5p.m. until 9pm. most days. On Mondays, many of them close at 2.30 and don’t reopen at all. Saturdays are half-days. Banks close at 3p.m. As an advocate of 24-hour trading (if the business wants it) all that puts me at odds with the Greek philosophy. Many managers and company owners don’t go to work until noon. They all seem to work to pay for the play.

But there is a downside. I mentioned Mexico. When Mexico City was preparing for the 1968 Olympics there was an international perception that the manana syndrome would guarantee they would not finish their building projects on time.

The same applied to Greece. They did it and the friendliness of the people in Athens then, still applies today. Even when it comes to simple things like asking for traffic directions. Except for the coppers who impounded our number plates.

June 19, 2005

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2005