I'm sorry, the hills in Athens don't actually have eyes, unless there are cats sitting on them, and generally cats do have eyes. This post is not actually about cats, or hills, or eyes. It is mostly more thoughts of mine about Athens, and about things that are different than I had expected them to be.
1. Grocery Stores. For one thing, grocery stores are usually quite tiny, and have an extremely limited selection of items. The grocery store that I go to is about a ten minute walk away from my house, and it has about three different types of bread, but three whole shelves full of different types of wine. Go figure. Different priorities, I guess. Things are also inexplicably expensive or inexpensive. Fruit, once you get past the fact that it is priced by the kilo and not by the pound (everything looks twice as expensive as it should be!) is generally quite cheap. Honey, on the other hand, is extremely expensive. (About $12 for a container that would probably cost $3 at home.) Another big difference is in milk and yogurt. At home, we mostly eat non-fat yogurt and drink 1% milk- here, the milk with the lowest fat content I can find is 1.5%, and the yogurt 2%. Most yogurt is about 10% milkfat, which is delicious, but a bit overwhelming.
2. Apartments. My friends at Scripps are aware of the fact that the walls in Browning and Dorsey are essentially made of paper. In my apartment, the feeling is even worse. The apartments here don't have very thick walls, and since everyone has windows and balconies that open up into central courtyards, you can hear people's telephones ringing in an apartment that is actually in a different building on the next street over. You can tell when your neighbors have done laundry. You can tell when someone set an alarm to ring at 6 am. When someone is having a fight with their husband/wife/significant other/children, everybody knows. There is really only privacy if you draw the curtains and are absolutely silent.
3. Greek people. They're actually really warm and friendly, which I guess I wasn't expecting. It's a little uncomfortable at times- they have absolutely no concept of personal space over here- but it's because they really aren't standoffish. One of our neighbors, who is particularly friendly, gave my roommate and I half a watermelon the other day- we had our window open, and he had his window open, and so he yelled down and asked if we wanted any. Other people have had similar experiences.
4. Elevators. Elevators in Europe- especially in office buildings and apartments- are tiny. You can fit two people in one, if the two people don't mind touching rather a lot. It's a good thing they don't care about personal space?
5. School. I'm in an American program, but I realized the other day that not one single one of my professors is actually American- two are British, two are Greek, and one is Belgian. It's actually really cool, because it means that you learn not only your subject, but also about their experiences. Latin is particularly hilarious- our professor, who is Greek, spends most of our "five minute" break talking about Greece. We learned rude hand gestures the other day. And where to get gyros. And Greek ghost stories. And Modern Greek is particularly informative- another Greek professor, who tells us all about Greek schools and Greek culture.
6. Everything is in two languages. I think it is probably because the Greeks use a different alphabet, but basically all signs are in both Greek and some other European language, usually English, sometimes French, occasionally German. Every once in a while Italian. It does mean that you can come here not knowing the alphabet and still read what street you are on, but in some ways it must be very strange for the Greek people here. When I walk into a store, I am usually greeted in English. (I try to reply in Greek- my Greek is getting good enough that I can conduct most of my day-to-day business without reverting to too much English.) On the street people do talk to me in Greek- I think, because I don't look like a total tourist, they think I'm one of the many resident foreigners in the city- maybe if I started wearing a visor and sandals with socks and carrying a map and camera, they would go back to speaking in English.
7. Sirens on Ambulances. They're actually totally different sounding than they are in the U.S.- who knew?
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