I had planned to visit the Acropolis again at night to take pictures and whatnot, but it turns out our tickets had already expired. Plus, by the time I got up to the Acropolis ticket entrance, the lady said they were closing in three minutes.
"Three minutes?" I thought. I had just run up the freaking hill only fifteen minutes earlier to confirm that the Acropolis closed at 8 PM (the sign read, "Closing -- 20:00"), and then ran home to tell the others.
"We close at 7:30, empty by 8," was the reply.
Well, geez. Why don't you put that on the freaking sign then? I pointed this out to her matter-of-factly and got a "Psh" and a wave of her hands in return. Sheesh.
Oh well. I got a few shots from the top of the hill anyway, so you can still see a layer of smoke over the eastern mountains, but certainly no new flames were visible.
At this point, some of the others in our group decided to go watch "Inglorious Bastards" so I decided to head home and type up all our transcriptions from the last batch of interviews we had.
I hadn't eaten dinner, so Maggie and I headed out for the little Japanese restaurant up the street. I really do want to try it while I'm here, just to see how it is. It was closed by the time we got there though, so we strolled over the Acropolis and ended up getting pasta at the same restaurant where we all had our first meal with Taso.
I gotta say, that restaurant has some pretty dang good views of the Acropolis. It was all lit up at night, so I tried taking a few more shots. It turned out alright, I suppose.
After that, we strolled down towards Monastiraki and passed by an entire row of folks selling knock-off purses, fans, artwork, and more along the street. The scene is an all-too-common scene in Europe, although I've also seen it in New York. It wasn't the first time I saw them, but it was the first time that I really wanted to engage in conversation with many of them.
I had spent the previous night reading all of my blog posts from last year's trip to Rome, so I was reminded of our exercise to go out and interview new immigrant merchants in Piazza Vittorio. I also remember going with Brukab and his friends to talk with some of the purse merchants in the streets of Rome. Many of them had come from East Africa and were moving from city to city, trying to make a decent living.
Yesterday's stroll toward Monastiraki was no different. We ran into a couple of African guys selling purses, and as Maggie eyed the ones she liked, I chatted it up with one of the guys.
"Where you from?" I asked.
"Senegal," he replied, "I don't speak much English though."
Turns out, he didn't really speak much English at all. But I did find out, he was from Dakar. Since my dad had visited Dakar a few years back, I'm glad I at least new the capital and could ask if this was where they were from. He was particularly excited that anyone even knew where he was from.
I couldn't remember exactly, but I seemed to recall that Senegal was a Francophone country, so I asked him in French if he spoke French. I suppose that's never a good question if your French is as bad as mine, but I was able to understand him and chat very briefly in French.
He eventually called his buddy, Amidou, a young 21 year old from Gambia, to come over and translate for us. I asked Amidou how they all got to Athens, and he told me that they had flown to Turkey (him from Gambia, most of the others from Senegal), and then, after only one month, came to Athens by boat because business was not successful in Turkey.
They'd been in Athens for six months now and still weren't making a whole lot. I really wanted to stay and ask more questions, but we had to move on, so I just found out that they were all staying in a house a few blocks away. I was and always have been very curious about where the heck they get all their knock-off purses. Anyone know?
We moved further down the little road and came to an Asian couple selling painted fans. They looked really nice and only cost two Euros. I was curious where they were from too, so I asked in English, "Where are you from?"
I got a reply in Chinese that they were from China, and they brightened up when I answered in Chinese that I spoke Chinese too. Haha.
Turns out, they had been in Athens for two years and only spoke Chinese and a tiny bit of Greek. I didn't have much time to chat, and I didn't get to ask why they had moved to Greece. Meanwhile, Maggie wanted a brown fan and asked me to ask them if they had a brown fan. But sadly (yes, this is extremely sad, I know...), I forgot how to say "brown" in Chinese, so I started pointed at brown things and saying, "This color, this color."
So sad. Oh well. I guess they didn't have brown as she said they only had the ones laid out in front of us.
I'm sure I sound like such a nerd, but it's conversations like these that make international travel so eye-opening for me. I enjoy meeting new people and hearing about their experiences. It's really quite fascinating.
That's what we're doing in Greece for this program anyway, and this week, because of our shortened time, we have to double up on our interview sessions, so we can collect enough data for our final research project.
This morning, we tried a new strategy of sending our three teams into all separate districts/neighborhoods of Athens. Jordan and I picked Pangrati, which we had not yet visited and is supposed to be more of a working-class, middle- and lower-class area.
It was quite an adventure, since we'd never been there and were instructed to basically figure it out on the map and get out there. We ended up walking quite a ways, and for the first good hour or so of our walking around, everyone we saw was ollllllld. I don't mean in a negative way, but since our target population for our research is generally younger folks, we had the toughest luck gathering data.
Finally, we managed to flag down a guy who agreed to give us an interview, only then to have him reject our request to record the conversation as we do with every interview. We were so desperate though, we just interviewed him and took crazy hand-written notes so we could transcribe our conversation later.
He was an interesting fellow--37 years old, a civil engineer, and a guy, as he claimed, who used to be very involved in politics. His answers were quite striking, and I really wished we could've recorded it. His quote that stuck out in my mind, when I asked him if he was happy or unhappy living or being in Greece, was that he was unhappy.
Why?
Because Greece is very corrupt. He'd rather live in Sweden or Germany, where, as he described, "you give to the government, and they give back to you." He continued, "In Greece, you give to the government, and they take everything. It's very corrupt. Almost as corrupt as the US, except since the US is 100 to 200 years ahead, they do a better job of hiding it."
Hmm...interesting.
Anyway, after that interview, we got another two more and, during our stroll through Pangrati, I saw a newsstand with Greek newspapers covering the fires. Just about every newspaper had a cover story on the fires. Check it out.
We finally called it good after almost three hours and only three interviews to show for it. Besides, it was starting to get really warm out, so we headed back. The square was a really nice area though.
I got home and had to go buy groceries again. I seem to go through all my food and stuff fairly quickly. I also need to do laundry again since I only brought a few clothes with me, and we're leaving for Hydra on Wednesday until Friday, meaning I'd run out of clothes on Thursday if I don't do laundry tonight. Blehh.
Ok, we have another two and a half hours before our group dinner and then more interviews tonight. I'm going to go take a shower now and then do laundry. If I have time, I'm taking a nap.
I'm way exhausted...
Toodles,
Sam
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