Merle didn’t manage to get any days off while I was there, so I joined her for the trip into town, with a plan to wander. I looked around while we waited for the bus.

“Look how close we are to the mountains here,” she said. There was a park at the end of the street and the mountains loomed over the trees, no more than five kilometres away. “You can walk all the way from here into the mountains, but I haven’t done that yet.”

I had no strong expectations of what Athens would be like, so I wasn’t surprised. I was more interested in the building in the other direction. It was completely concrete – a monotonous grey – but its ‘igloo city’ structure of domes identified it as an orthodox church. I spent the time until the bus arrived trying to fathom how most of the world failed to build attractive buildings given complete freedom over the materials and colours used, yet the Greeks managed to give a plain concrete building all the fun of children’s playground equipment.

Once on the bus, Merle snuggled close and gave me a commentary of the journey. “I tried to draw the path the bus takes on a map the first time I took it, but it was too dark and wet so I couldn’t, but it wanders all over the place. The best way to remember where I live is to look at the number of the bus stop. The higher the number, the further away you are from the station. My stop is number 19.” It’s a very convenient system for tourists, as long as it’s charted properly. The stop number is no help if you don’t know which street it’s in.

Getting off the bus, we followed the crowd through the parking lot, then headed back the way we came and through a fence. “The way changes every day. I never know where the opening will be. I just have to follow everyone else, but I always get there.” Something else they’ll need to sort out before the Olympics. The metro journey was pretty uneventful, and we got out one stop before Syntagma.

“This is the embassy,” she said after a short walk.

“It looks like an apartment building.”

“It is. Estonia’s a small country so we only have a small embassy. One apartment is enough. Look! You can see the flag on the top of the building.”

“How does anyone find it?”

“That’s the good thing. No terrorist would ever waste his time with this building,” she said, laughing. “Here, let me show you the square. We can meet there at 12 and have lunch together.”

The square, just down the road, was a small park with a fountain that wasn’t running that day and a few park benches. I said goodbye and sat down to scan the map. There was a hill just to the north that looked interesting. Lykavittos Hill had a church and an amphitheatre at the top and what looked like a nice walking path up. I made my way through the streets until I found a park and started up. It was nicely overgrown near the bottom and I almost had to bush bash my way up. In most other places I’d been in Europe, trees were planted in stands, so it was a rare treat to find such wild foliage and I enjoyed picking my way along my own path. Higher up, I met up with a path and realised that I probably hadn’t entered in the right place, but as no one was around to complain I wasn’t going to waste time feeling guilty.

The church at the top was almost a small castle itself, with a flagpole in a walled courtyard overlooking the city. I looked inside the church, but I could only see a small front room, so I turned my attention to the city. The hill was higher than the Acropolis and offered a great view of the Parthenon and Temple of Athena, as well as the old stadium and numerous collections of ancient pillars. A couple of Japanese girls had arrived before me and I tried to exercise my conversation skills.

“nihon to chigaimasu ne,” I said, to show them that I was familiar with their country. “It’s different to Japan, isn’t it.”

“Huh?” said one, looking at me strangely. I repeated my sentence, realising that it wasn’t the best of opening lines, but unable to come up with anything better at the time.

“bikurishita,” said the other. “What a shock!” They went back to contemplating the view without responding further, and estranged, I headed off to find the amphitheatre. The path went down the other side of the church, past a restaurant, and along the ridge. Once I found it, the path was easy to follow, but the amphitheatre was locked up, with no way to view it from the path. I could see it was basically a set of tiered plastic seats, which meant it was modern and in use for some sort of performance, but I couldn’t tell what without seeing the stage. Determined not to be beaten, I scrambled up rocks to the highest point nearby and looked over the fence. The stage was a simple round concrete slab. I’m no expert in these things, but it seemed inappropriate for concerts and probably only used for theatre. The seats rose up around three quarters of the stage, so there was no room for a backdrop, and I imagined there would be little in the way of props either. I wondered what it would be like to come up here on a summer evening and watch acting in its purist form.

I still had an hour to kill, but that didn’t leave much time to get down and see anything else, so I found a comfortable rock and pulled out a book. It was one of my favourites, ‘A Game of Thrones’ by George R. R. Martin, but I couldn’t concentrate. True to the promise of all the writing manuals I’ve read, the act of writing 250 pages myself had opened up my awareness of my surroundings to the point that they were forcing themselves on me. I was trying to concentrate on the miserable scene where Sansa’s direwolf is put down because her sister, Arya, had attacked the prince (it all makes perfect sense if you read the book), but I was distracted by a scraping sound. I put the book down and took a few moments to listen. There was a road just through the trees, and someone was lazily scraping a shovel in the way of Balinese sweeping the hotel rooms. The day was chilly, but up on the hill, it had an atmosphere of the tropics – green, slow, peaceful.

Satisfied that I knew what the sound was, though still not sure why someone would be shovelling the road, I went back to Sansa’s trauma for a page or so. Behind me, and to my right there was a rustling in the bushes. I heard a cat’s tortured yowl and more rustling, then more right behind me. I turned to see two cats on the ledge overlooking the amphitheatre, one herding the other out of its territory. They both paused to look at me for a moment, then the grey reached out a lazy paw and took a swipe at the orange, which yowled again and slunk off into the bushes to my left. Just as I was opening the book again, a bird swooped past – brown with a flash of red – and I gave up reading for the day. There was too much to see, and even my subconscious wanted to take it all in. I wandered back down the correct path to the park and watched people make their way around town until Merle arrived.

“Let’s go up to the Acropolis,” she said when she arrived. “I can take a long lunch break.”

“Sounds good. What’s the best way up,” I asked, pulling out the map. There were cliffs on every side that I’d seen.

“The entrance is around the other side, but there’s a path curving around the hill from this side.” We lost the path a few times, but Merle managed to read the signs quickly enough and the detours were worth making. The downtown side of the hill was covered in the square, white villas touched with deep blue that I associate with Greece. They hunched on top of one another in a charming way, leaving only a narrow path, also white, zigzagging up the hill. A couple of times, the path ahead opened out into a white courtyard of a larger villa, but these were usually fenced off and I could only look at the scene of trees, a rich green against the white backdrop, from behind a cast iron gate. I pictured dark, shapely women in bikinis strolling along the path and lounging in the courtyards, and there was no one to spoil the image. The only people we came across during the walk were a couple of other tourists heading for the Acropolis. I’m not even sure the villas were in use. They may have been built there as part of the tourist attraction a taste of the Greek islands for anyone who wouldn’t get the chance to visit them personally.

Merle tried her power at the gate, handing over the diplomatic ID as she asked for tickets. The lady behind the counter looked at it blankly. “What’s this?”

“I’m a diplomat. We’re usually entitled free access to museums.”

The lady turned to her counterpart and they discussed this for a couple of minutes. “I’m sorry madam. Only the ambassador and his wife are invited in for free.”

“Our ambassador is a woman!” muttered Merle as we were walking away.

I must say that I was disappointed with the Acropolis up close, but that may have been because it was under construction. The whole middle part of the Parthenon was replaced with scaffolding, and the roof was missing, probably also in preparation for the Olympics.

As we wandered around the site, Merle gave me a lot of history on the various buildings. The English took marble statues from the Acropolis and the Greek government was still fighting to get them back. The Turks took the lead clamps from the Parthenon pillars and replaced them with iron, which is less flexible and didn’t stand up to earthquakes as well. It may not have needed repairing if that lead had been left in place. I can’t remember the rest, but when I got home, I pulled out the Lonely Planet and read up on it. None of what Merle told me was mentioned, but that wasn’t surprising. But what Merle had told me was the Theatre of Dionysos was actually the Theatre of Herodes Atticus, and the building with the statues of Athena was the Erechtheion, not the Temple of Athena Nike, so I’m not sure how much to believe.

Merle was running out of time, so we headed down, grabbed lunch and I wandered into the National Gardens for a couple of hours. I didn’t expect to see any dogs in such a prestigiously named park in the middle of the city next to the Parliament, but it was large and unkempt, so the German shepherd that kept pace with me wasn’t out of place. There were a number of joggers out, many with their own dogs on leashes, and lots of strays, or at least unleashed, dogs making their own way through the park, snuffling in the undergrowth in search of a snack or an unclaimed shrub.

When Merle finished work, we took the car back to the airport and came back to town for dinner. She wanted to take me to a place that played music, yet wasn’t specifically set up for tourists. We wandered around many back streets looking for a restaurant she’d been to before. Many of the restaurants we passed had those annoying people who stand outside and grab passers-by. I gave them a wide berth, but Merle simply went up to them and asked if they knew a place that had live music. They were always surprisingly helpful and we eventually made it to the restaurant she’d liked before, but the owner told us that his singer had a sore throat so he couldn’t help us today, and directed us to another restaurant nearby.

It was a large place, and both the food and the music were good, but the highlight was the dancing. Not long after we arrived, a brave group of three men moved out to the space in front of the band and took turns performing while the others squatted and clapped along. They appeared to place an item on the floor, which became the focal point for the dancer to move around. He would spin slowly, with his arms out and occasionally kicking a leg up to about waist height. Their faces took on the self-satisfied expression of a guitarist enjoying his own music, and when their emotion was high, they would kick up a second leg before the first hit the ground. They had no eyes for the crowd, and didn’t seem to notice the other diners clapping along. It was more like peeking through a window at kids opening Christmas presents than watching a performance.

I had no eye for the subtleties of the dance – it looked extremely simple to me – but I could tell that the first man was the better dancer. He had a fluidity and grace that the others couldn’t match. When they sat down, an old man of about 80 got up to have a turn. He’d been sitting in the corner watching enviously as the young men danced. He swirled around with a look of extreme concentration on his face, movements all jerky. “This is a dance for men only,” Merle explained as he put in a burst of energy and kicked a leg up. “I think this man was probably a great dancer when he was young. He moves well, despite his age.” His face lit up when the song finished and the entire restaurant erupted in clapping.

“I don’t like Greek music much any more,” she went on. “It was nice when I first arrived, but it’s all I ever hear now and I’m sick of it. It’s on every radio station, and they only play about one English song every hour. Even in the nightclubs and bars it’s rare to hear Western music. It is fun to watch the young people, though. The girls will get so into the music that they’ll start dancing on the tables. And it’s great to see the locals getting into the music in places like this.” I had to agree, and I was still enjoying the music. The beatless throb of techno music that dominates clubs around the world only makes me stressed. This was probably the side of Greece that most appealed to me. Ummm… besides the food.

I fell asleep as soon as we got home, much to Merle’s disappointment. She’d started lighting candles and getting out chocolate. It turns out I had come down with a cold – like most tourists, I hadn’t been expecting near freezing temperatures in Athens. The next day I slept most of the day, and didn’t have enough tissues to get me through the hellish trip back to Brussels. It wasn’t the most pleasant end to a holiday, and I only had a couple of days to recover before I left for a team meeting in the US.

Merle, like most people I know, is not a morning person, so I sat reading for a couple of hours the following morning, a Saturday, until she got up. We had decided to go to Parnassos, a ski area about 5 hours from Athens, but by the time we left, we knew we wouldn’t make it in time to ski today. In fact, it was almost lunch time before we’d finished pouring over road maps and decided to go directly to the village where we’d stay the night, rather than touring the north coast of Peloponnese. This would mean that we’d miss most of the ancient sites, but the guide suggested that they’d be closed at this time of year anyway. Merle drove until we were out of town because she was better at driving like a maniac than I am, and that seems to be a requirement for getting a license in Greece. She screeched u-turns where the signs clearly said it wasn’t allowed, crossed roads between cars only 5m apart and going at 70kmph, and slammed brakes on when we missed a turn, forcing the cars behind to scatter onto the footpath and median strip.

“Don’t worry. They can’t book me because I’ve got a diplomatic ID,” Merle said, wincing as she ran over another pedestrian. OK. I’m being unfair. Merle was actually driving more safely than most others on the road, but the Greeks even made Belgian drivers look safe, doing all the same things, but there were ten times as many and going at twice the speed. I happily took over once we’d reached a highway, where an overtaking lane would stop too many people getting upset at me abiding by the speed limit. Not that anyone bothered looking at the lane markers. There were often four cars abreast in a two-lane road.

The signs to Delphi came and went along the way, usually disappearing before a turnoff. We learnt to navigate by waiting for signs to disappear, then going back to take the previous turnoff, arriving at our destination at about 4pm. Most hotels were busy, but we found a carpet shop that clearly said ‘rooms to let’ in English that had no other customers. I assume this is some tax dodge, and that by writing the sign in English, he’s minimising the chance of being picked up for a second income. I’d forgotten to bring my passport wallet from the car, so Merle had to hand over her precious diplomatic ID as a deposit. The rooms were above the shop, with the door halfway up a set of stone stairs just as you see in movies, and our window looked out at the street below. The building across the street, and most others I’d see later, were thatched, and held down with shoe sized stones, though whether it was for protection against wind or snow, I never found out.

I was starving by the time we’d unpacked, so Merle found a place she’d been to once before with some more experienced friends and I had the best roast wild boar I’ve ever had. It was probably the best meat dish I’ve ever had, with the meat pulling away at the lightest touch and with none of the gamy flavour I’d expected. Merle had a rabbit dish she’d had before which was quite plain compared to what I was enjoying. Apparently they didn’t go in much for domestic animals in these mountains.

There wasn’t much daylight left, but we headed on to Delphi to try to see the amphitheatre there. It was closed, but we enjoyed an hour of windy mountain roads, the green hills falling away sharply to our left. “Look, that’s the sea,” Merle said at one point, but I was concentrating too much on giving another car room to pass me to look. We stopped a couple of times to look down at the rich green hills. They were covered in the leafless bristles of deciduous trees, occasional tiers for farming, and some stone pillars, remnants of the ancient architecture. “You can see the trees change there,” Merle said, pointing about halfway down the mountain. “That’s the olive trees. They only grow to a certain height, apparently.” She’d done her homework and had plenty of fascinating things to tell me about her new home, most of which I promptly forgot before I could write them down. One thing I do remember was that the Oracle, whose abode we passed, was an old woman who went into a trance, probably from breathing gases that erupted from the earth where she sat. Her priests would interpret her incomprehensible babble into vague prophecies for visitors. The building no longer stands, but the altar she sat at remains in a cut in the mountain.

Eventually we headed back to the hotel, but it was already dark and the passenger seat was on the cliff side. Merle was almost ready to pay for another hotel for the night in Delphi rather than face the mountains in the dark. I assured her it was fine and we set off. It might have been better to stay. “You’re swerving all over the road!” she said as I took a corner at 10kmph. “Don’t go so near the edge! We’ll fall over.” “Slow down!” I ended up driving in second gear all the way back while others tore down the road at 100kmph.

In a bar back in town, we started talking more openly than we had before and I found out that Merle had an 8 year old daughter, meaning she’d had a 5 year old daughter at the time of our tryst. It was a shock, but I was more intrigued than ever. Merle had managed to raise a daughter on her own for eight years, with a meagre salary from the Estonian Foreign Ministry, all the while continuing to travel and build a career.

She was a low level in the industry, but with great responsibilities and important contacts. A typical story casually names people you expect to see only through a wall of secret service guns and hidden communicators.

“The Spanish President was visiting and I was taking notes from the meeting when an aide came in and whispered something to our Prime Minister. I didn’t think much of it, but when the Prime Minister went on he deviated from the notes I’d prepared for him. “It’s important for us to have good relations, especially with the world in the state it is today.” We all wondered what he was talking about and he went on to explain that a plane had just crashed into the world trade centre. We all rushed out to the big screen in his office to see the second one hit.” Again, I’ve probably got half of the details wrong, but you get the idea.

Before going back to the hotel, we walked up the hill to the castle at the top of the town. Not much more than a square block, it nevertheless commanded a position of authority over the town, with a wide courtyard looking out along the valley in both directions, and down to the dwellings below. It was easy to imagine a handful of soldiers pacing the boundary, keeping watch for enemies or local brawls.

The next morning, I gave up trying to sleep and opened the windows to find it was already 10am and the town was deserted. Merle showered while I went to hire a snowboard and we rushed off to the snowfields, Merle driving since I’d never driven on snow before and she lived in it.

In the end, we didn’t need the chains, despite the 2m of snow beside the roads, but had to spend about an hour finding a place to park in the ants’ nest of roads and parking lots near the lift. We paid about 25 Euro for the lift pass, full price even though there were only a few hours remaining before the lifts shut. The first lift only took us to the main ski area, and we were pretty late, so we were happy to find that there was no queue. At the top, we found there was a choice of five lifts, and that was the extent of the park. Merle left a bag containing her drinks, sun cream, and goggles outside the restaurant at the bottom, confident it would all be there when she returned. I can’t imagine that being true anywhere else, but she was right and it was.

We made about eight runs over the next few hours, always choosing the chair lifts, though there looked to be some good runs on the lifts I refused to take. Anyone who’s ridden a snowboard knows that the lifts where you put a stick between your legs and get dragged up are a good way to get a twisted spine. Most of the snow had been compacted down, which is the most difficult condition for boarding, but I soon discovered where the other boarders were going and stuck to that for the rest of the afternoon. The main lift went straight up the hill in front, and the skiers were coming down either side of that hill, but there was a wide expanse of fresh snow on the front, near the lift, if you put in some effort to get there. Fresh, deep snow, few to share it with, and spectacular views of the Greek mountains – I couldn’t have asked for more. Except perhaps some sunscreen. I hadn’t bothered to put any on, thinking we were only there for a couple of hours, but I spent the next few days in St. George colours, a white stripe over my eyes against a deep red background.

There were surprisingly few foreigners – I only heard two people not speaking Greek – but after a bit of thought, I realised that the surprise was that we were here. You could see it in the eyes of just about everyone we talked to, in the village and at the ski park. It wasn’t particularly strange to see a couple of English people there. They don’t have too far to come, and it’s cheap. But why would an Australian come from the other side of the world, leaving their summer, or an Estonian come when she could go directly from her home most of the year? We were definitely a surprise to everyone we met.

The park officially closed at 5, but people started leaving well before and we weren’t crowded on the way out. After returning the snowboard, we made good speed back to Athens, but had a horrible time trying to follow the signs again. I was doing OK until we got into Athens itself, and missed the turnoff to Messogian. It was marked as straight ahead one minute, and the next the highway had shrunk to two lanes and we were squeezed into a truck depot. Merle took over driving and between my navigating and her stopping to ask people the way, we eventually made it back to her house. The city has a lot of work to do to get ready for the Olympics – the roads are a mess, and the public transport doesn’t run – but I remember Sydney being in the same state when I left, and it all worked out there.

I arrived in Athens just after noon, although Merle wouldn’t finish work until 5pm. We were planning to rent a car for the weekend, so I dropped my bag at the airport luggage and stopped off at the tourist information centre. I’d spent the flight reading up on the Greek writing system and some key phrases, so I thought I’d try out what I’d learnt.

“Yia sou,” I said, pronouncing it ‘yeeah soo’ as the guide suggested, but the guy just stared blankly. “Hello,” I tried again.

“Hello.” His accent was thickly Greek.

“Um, how do you say that in Greek? Hello, I mean. Yeeah sou?”

I tried to be amused by his merry laughter. He was pleased that I was trying, wasn’t he? “Yasu.”

I repeated it the way he did – one word, both short syllables with the accent on the first. The pronunciation isn’t as exact as they make out in the book, but I could deal with that. He gave me a map and directed me to the bus that would take me to Syntagma, the center of Athens.

While I waited, I looked around at the signs. To my untrained eye, the world was covered in algebraic equations, though somehow the Greeks are smart enough not to need operation signs. ‘E95 Συνταγμα’ said the one I was looking for. ‘E95 Syntagma.’

“The E95 isn’t running today,” I overheard someone say in English.

“Excuse me. Did you say the bus to the centre is not running today? How are we meant to get to town?” He seemed to just be a passenger, but I realised I’d been waiting a lot longer than the 20 minutes the guy at the information desk said it was between buses. I decided to trust him.

“You can take the E94 to Amaya,” he said, pointing to a railway station on the top left part of my map, “walk down to here and catch the metro in to Syntagma.”

An hour later, now already 3pm, I got off the E94 at a wide street crowded with people and street vendors selling various nuts – roasted, honey dipped and other styles that I neither recognised, nor had the language skills to understand if they told me. What I didn’t see was a train station. With nothing to help me get my bearings, I decided to head right and see where it lead me. I was more interested in seeing the city by walking than by catching the metro anyway, and this seemed like a good time to start.

One kilometre down the road, I found what appeared to be a street name sign and pulled out my map again to check my location. That name, ‘Messogion,’ wasn’t anywhere in the top left section. I checked other street signs around but was no better off. In a vane attempt to locate myself, I looked up at the sign again, and back at the map. Sign, map, sign, map… After repeating this ten times, I had to admit that I was totally lost.

“Can I help you?”

I turned to see a slim young girl smiling pleasantly. She made me feel guilty for the stereotypical image I had of Greeks based on those I met in Australia. Looking back, I’ve only met a few and most of those don’t fit the Con the Fruiterer stereotype either, but somehow that image had worked its way into my subconscious. She was beautiful, smartly dressed (and now I think of it, there wasn’t a gold chain in sight the entire time I was in Greece), and very helpful.

“No, you’re looking in the wrong place. We’re over here at the right-hand side, but off your map.”

I thanked her, cursed the guy at the airport, turned and walked down the street the other way. Messogion took me most of the way to the centre of town, but after an hour of walking, and still not on the map, I stepped off the dusty street into a bakery. Only baklava was familiar, but I didn’t want anything so sweet. Spying something like carrot cake, I pointed it out and held up one finger. The girl behind the counter said something that I guessed meant ‘one slice of carrot cake, 40 cents,’ but I hadn’t learnt any of those words yet, so she may have been saying “You don’t speak Greek, do you?” We exchanged Euro for cake and she said ‘have a nice day’ as I left. Or was that “My gypsy friends will look after everything else you have in that wallet.”

I’m sure I’m being unfair here. I never saw anybody that looked gypsy-like, but the Lonely Planet’s warning to keep an eye on your belongings was fresh in mind. The other warning was a little more complex. Some young men make friends with travellers and offer to show them good bars, shout them drinks, help them talk to women, then give them a huge bill. I was going to be staying with a local so that wasn’t so much a concern for me, but I latched onto the gypsy threat. Besides, gypsies appeal to my sense of fantasy.

I walked the last of the route into Syntagma munching on something that looked and tasted roughly like carrot cake, but which turned out to be soaked in honey. After locating the meeting point, I went for a walk down the main shopping street but was out of my depth in trying to compare the fashions I saw with that of any other country. Perhaps it was different, perhaps not. The one thing I did notice, to my delight, was the large number of lingerie shops with posters showing just how sexy Greek women can be.

Right in the middle of an intersection halfway down the street, perched a quaint church. This church was particularly striking to me after seeing so many grand, spiky, statue covered cathedrals. Greek orthodox churches are all domes and rounded edges of brickwork and would appear to hold only about 20 people. Looking at a picture of the typical inside of these churches shows that even the small interior is broken up into smaller rooms. It had a cosy feel that I appreciated more than the purely impressive cathedrals I’ve been gawking at for the last year.

From there, I looked left and caught my first sight of the Acropolis. I later learned that the building visible from the centre is the temple of Athena, which is much smaller than the famed Parthenon, but even so, the collection of pillars stimulated this travellers sense of wonder. I’m not one to visit tourist sites, and had never had Athens on my list of places to visit, but I suddenly found myself in awe at being so close to something that dated back to the time before the start of our calendar.

It was approaching 5:30, so I used a distant siren to distract me from the view and headed back up to the fountain at Syntagma, which served as the local meeting place. From the steps above the square, I watched a solid stream of people coming out of the shopping area to the metro entrance below, like ants bringing food back to the nest. The sun was getting low and my jumper wasn’t enough to keep me warm, so I began a moderate pace around the square and up the steps towards the parliament building when I was stopped by an old man pointing at his wrist. Not speaking any Greek, I simply showed him my watch, and saw something light in his eyes that might have been, “foreigner! Locked on target.”

“Thankyou. Do you speak English?”

“Yes,” I said, hesitating. He didn’t look like the sort of ‘young man’ that would drag me off to a bar to meet women at a cost, but it did seem like a good place to lurk in search of helpless tourists.

“Where are you from?”

“Australia.”

“Australia! Welcome to Greece.” He grabbed my hand and shook it vigorously. “I’ve been to Australia. Sydney is a beautiful city…”

He held a conversation with himself while I looked around for Merle, shifting from foot to foot to make it difficult for anyone to open my backpack without me knowing.

“Great beer in Australia.”

“I don’t like beer,” I volunteered, finally deciding the old guy was harmless and just wanted to practice his English.

“Really? Don’t you drink?”

“Yes, but I prefer spirits, like ouzo.” There was no harm in complementing the local produce.

“Yes, ouzo is delicious. It’s cold out here. I know a nice pub just over there. Why don’t you join me for a drink?”

“No thanks. I’m waiting for a friend,” I said, glad of the excuse, yet wishing I was comfortable enough with people to go into bars in strange cities. He wished me a great stay and walked off in the direction of the pub. I still hadn’t decided whether or not the old guy was one of the men the LP had warned about when Merle arrived.

It had been 3 years since I’d seen her during a short diplomatic training program she’d attended in Japan, but we’d written regularly ever since. She’d written in December to tell me that she had been trusted with an assignment in Greece, now responsible for basic activities such as issuing visas and more exciting activities like managing economic relations between Estonia and Greece. I watched the petite blond search the square as I walked towards her, then smile shyly as she recognised me. In the first awkward moment, she offered her hand and I grabbed her for a hug.

“I wasn’t sure I’d recognise you,” she said.

“I wasn’t sure either. I had to look over the photos you sent me before I came.” I wanted to say that she hadn’t changed, but there was something frail about her now. I remembered her silky blond hair, pale blue eyes, quiet voice, and skinny frame, but I recalled a strong presence that seemed to be lacking now. Where was the girl who confidently made her way through the strange culture of Japan with only 3 weeks experience, and had dragged me up to dance salsa at Nasca? She was still there, I’d find, but hidden behind the uncertainty of whether the romance was still alive. I’d been hoping and fearing the same thing. Merle was special to me, having been there when I needed company and distraction during my time of greatest stress in Japan. She had similar interest in languages and travel, and had encouraged my writing long after she left. But I’d had a failed long distance relationship last year and didn’t want to get into another.

“What should we do now?”

I’d been expecting that she would have at least the first evening planned, but it didn’t take long to put all the pieces together and determine that we had to pick up my bags from the airport and get a car before doing anything else. She bought the train tickets for me, in English to my surprise, and we headed off to the last stop on the line.

“I have a pass,” she said, explaining why she hadn’t needed to buy her own ticket, “but I don’t need that.” Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “They can’t fine me for not paying because I’ve got a diplomatic ID.” I would hear the same in many forms over the next few days. Merle was rightly very proud of her position, and excited by her new status and extraordinary rights, though a little awed by her new responsibilities. Personally, I find the exceptional rights unreasonable. There is some merit to allowing visitors a mistake or two if they break a law that isn’t in effect in their own country and isn’t advertised clearly at customs, but they should still be tried properly for anything so blatant. I certainly wouldn’t expect to be let off for not paying train fares, and I would think that a diplomat has responsibility to show respect to her hosts by knowing and following the local laws. Merle agreed, but she liked to joke about it and wasn’t about to give up the ‘get out of jail free’ card. And perhaps I don’t understand the strength of the rule because as I write, a Belgian diplomat in France is being investigated for murder.

The train, or metro as they call anything with power running through the rails, took us to Ethniki Amina (EQNIKH AMUNA), the very spot I’d walked from a few hours earlier.

“I live very close to here,” she told me. I groaned and told her of my unplanned expedition. “You’re lucky you didn’t take a taxi,” she said when she’d finished laughing.

By the time we’d caught the bus to the airport, picked up my bags, rented a car, complete with tyre chains and driven back to her place, past Ethniki Amina, it was after 9pm and I was hungry. She gave me a quick tour of the large apartment, completely surrounded by a balcony and windows in every room, then called a taxi to take us to dinner.

“Where to?” Or at least, I assumed that’s what he said. My Greek was getting better, but that meant I had three words rather than only two. Merle spoke through the inch of open window in the passenger door, giving the name of the suburb. Without saying a word, or even looking at her, the taxi sped off. Three more taxis did the same before one finally allowed us to open the door. Greece is the only country I’ve been to where lone passengers ride in the front seat, Australian style. Merle told me of more surprises.

“They will often pick up another passenger going in roughly the same direction.” Sure enough, a few minutes after she’d spoken, we screeched to a stop and another passenger got in. “We once had five people squeezed in to a cab and the driver stopped to take another person. There aren’t enough taxis in Athens, so they can make their own rules. They don’t even know the city very well, and get angry if you don’t know the directions yourself.” Almost as if the driver was listening for cues, he turned around and said something in Greek. Merle engaged in conversation for a few minutes before sitting back, lips pressed tightly. “He’s angry because I couldn’t tell him how far down the main street to go before reaching the restaurant.”

He found it though, and we wandered in. Merle was presented with a rose and we were invited to join a private party. Well, we weren’t actually invited, but the people at the door, owners or hosts, were very friendly and in no hurry to push us out. In fact, I think they enjoyed speaking English and demonstrating Greek hospitality. I wondered if they were practising for the influx of tourists they’d get next year for the Olympics.

“Do you need to give the flower back?” I asked Merle, worried that we were stealing from the hosts, potentially even depriving a guest of her gift. Merle shrugged her shoulders and made to give it back, but the giver looked horrified so Merle gave him a big smile and hugged it as we left. We followed the directions they’d given us to another restaurant, and from there to another, but they were all closing for the evening. We finally ended up at a small place with plastic tablecloths and rickety chairs, but the owners were just as friendly and the food worthy of a plush restaurant. We paid 5 Euro each for a large salad and a plate overflowing with Greek meats, chips and more salad. Greek food is Mediterranean in style, and the simple sausages, meatballs and other meats are flavoured with leaves and tasty spices. This type of food has always been my favourite ‘junk food,’ but of course it’s really quite healthy, and I was looking forward to days of it. Unfortunately, my appetite always drops when I’m travelling and I barely managed half of what was put in front of me.

That may also have been because it was already a couple of hours past my usual bedtime and that, combined with the deluge of new sights and languages, was enough to have me snoring as soon as we got back.