Girl Gone Greek Read online

  “I love you, Dad.” He enveloped me in an awkward bear hug—despite checking in a huge bag, I still had an inordinate amount of hand-luggage too—pinched my cheek in a Greek manner and then backed away towards the exit, smiling. The fact he seemed relaxed about me leaving made me feel more excited and less nervous. I waved as I took myself, teabags and all, through to the Passengers Only departure area that heralded the first part of my adventure.

  “Please return to your seats, ladies and gentlemen. Restore your tables and seats to their upright and locked positions. We will be commencing our final approach into Athens in ten minutes,” the stewardess announced over the intercom. I obeyed, looking out through the window into a cloudless evening, and I recalled an earlier announcement stating that the temperature in Athens, although September, was still a balmy twenty-five degrees…a far cry from the drizzly grey weather I’d left behind.

  Dad had asked his old Greek business associate to meet me and take me to the hotel. The next day I’d catch a bus to my new home in a village in the mountains, where I would meet my new employer—a Greek woman who’d been running an English language school for more than twenty years.

  “Yeiasou!” yelled an elderly, balding and rather large Greek man as I exited the customs hall. Clearly he recognised me…and I had a sudden memory of him—Stamatis: I was seven years old on holiday on a Greek island and he was making me cry as he told me off for climbing onto the unprotected side of his yacht.

  Yes, that’s him…the old coot, I remembered him shaking and scolding me, telling me that I could’ve been badly injured falling down the side and becoming trapped between two boats.

  “He’s only worried about you,” Mum had soothed, shooting Dad a look that prompted him to go and have a word with his friend. “He didn’t mean to make you cry…he’s just being Greek.” At seven years old, I didn’t understand what she meant…but had sniffled a shy smile as he’d wandered over to pat my head and boom “You’re a big girl, don’t be so sad…come now, let’s look at the fish.”

  Now I accepted his offer to take my luggage, and became aware of his eyes roving up and down my frame. My God, I’m the daughter of his best English friend, and here he is, sizing me up! Something else to add to the list of things not to tell my father. “Your father is an excellent man,” Stamatis claimed as we drove out of the airport. “But why he wanted to stay in that dump of a hotel in Piraeus when he came here on business, and not in Central Athens at the Intercontinental, is beyond me.”

  Well, clearly he’s a humbler and better man than you’ll ever be…I bit my tongue and smiling sweetly, politely responded “You know Dad. Never one to want to show off.” After all, despite yelling at me when I was younger and giving me the once over, he had met me from the airport and was driving me to “that dump in Piraeus” so I could stay in the same hotel Dad patronized twenty years ago. It wouldn’t be fair of me to be rude to Stamatis, regardless of his lack of tact. Also, not really fair to hold onto a grudge about shouting at a seven year old version of me! So I shut up, took in my surroundings and allowed myself to be dropped off at my resting point.

  “It is good to see you again, Rachel.” Stamatis hugged me, jumped into his 4-wheel-drive and sped off. Thank God he didn’t grab my arse. How would I have explained decking an old man?

  Contrary to Stamatis’ disparaging comments, the hotel was no dump at all. Built on a hill outside Piraeus, it towered above the port and I allowed a shiver of excitement to run through me: My first night in Greece!

  The next morning, squinting one eye shut against the daylight shining in through a crack in the curtains of my seventh-floor room, I could make out the sea and distant islands. Everything was bathed in bright sunlight—something of a novelty for me given that less than 24 hours ago, it had been a typically wet and grey English day. Still lying on my double bed, I rolled over and gazed at the view from the window. After a moment of allowing myself to bask in the sunlight from my vantage point, I stretched and padded out onto the balcony, marvelling at how clear and blue everything was. The hotel’s location meant I could witness the hustle and bustle of the ferries below, unloading and loading—one pulling out to head to a visible island in the distance.

  A glance at the bedside clock told me it was still only seven a.m., yet the street below was clogged with traffic, with horns blaring and people shouting at each other. I could distinctly hear raised voices and banging of fists on car bonnets. Leaning over my balcony, I saw two men shouting, waving and gesticulating at each other. They looked ready to break into a fight any minute. Yet suddenly, they broke out into raucous laughter and clapped one another on the back. If this is how they carry on when they’re happy, they must be ready to kill each other when they’re angry.

  Making my way to the dining room on the ground floor, I gazed out through the floor to ceiling window whilst eating a Greek buffet breakfast of yogurt with honey and muesli, listening to the cacophony of shouts, laughter and car horns around me.

  Later, as I was checking out, the receptionist behind the small wooden desk smiled: “Just stand outside, Madam. A yellow taxi will soon stop for you. Tell them you need to go to the bus station…and welcome to Greece” she added as an afterthought.

  I smiled: Yes, welcome to Greece, Rachel.

  Standing in the doorway of my new flat, I mulled over the last six hours. A taxi ‘stopping for me’ wasn’t as easy as just standing outside the hotel, as the receptionist seemed to think. I’d had to endure half a dozen variations of “Kyria, that particular bus station is miles from here, oxi.” (“Madam, that place is on the other side of the planet, I’m not going there”), but I finally managed to persuade one to take me. Clearly there was more than one bus station in Athens, and mine was so far from Piraeus, no-one’d wanted to bother. No priority in this country for a lone woman traveller then! I’d identified the correct bus for my destination after struggling to decipher the Greek letters on the front. A snort from the bus driver with a vague nod of the head also confirmed it. Clearly in Greece, the passengers weren’t accorded a great deal of courtesy from taxi drivers, nor public transport employees. A three hour journey took me to the inland village that’d be my new home for the next year. As my new boss had been lax in corresponding, I had no idea whether or not I’d be met, and no idea what to do when I arrived.

  I’m thirty-four years old. I can do this. I do not need someone to hold my hand every step of the way I repeated this until it became a litany in my head. In any case, what could happen to me in a small town in the heart of Greece? I’d always wanted this; craved an adventurous life over stability. I was determined not to fall at the first hurdle. Unfortunately my imagination, whilst at times a blessing, could also occasionally serve as a curse. Images from the old Burt Reynolds movie Deliverance came to mind: inbred locals with matted hair cackling at me from the roadside as the bus trundled along, with the Appalachian Mountains of America replaced by bright limestone and strong sunlight of mainland Greece. But the drive—a slow meander into the mountains of Central Greece, the built up balconied apartment blocks of the city soon giving way to single story farms and pine forests—didn’t produce any weird-looking locals along the way and I arrived at the village in the middle of a warm afternoon. I climbed down from the bus and found myself distracted from worrying about what to do next by the view…I stared at the mountain just ahead. The sun picked out the snow on its peak. Even in September in Greece, there’s snow.

  “Kyria Rachel?” enquired a very short lady in her forties with black bobbed hair and glasses that almost took up her entire face. “Me Anthoula, me sister of your boss man,” she said as she struggled to take my huge case from under the bus. With a year’s supply of clothes, my case was twice as big as her, and she seemed intent on picking it up and carrying it to God knows where.

  I turned and smiled down at her, after figuring out she was the sister-in-law of my boss, and pointed to the wheels at the bottom, extending the trolley handle. Anthoula raised her eyes
to the heavens and stretched out her palm vertically next to the side of her head. She then shook it rapidly from side to side, as if to indicate that she was a silly lady for not having figured this out herself.

  It took ten minutes to manoeuvre the oversized suitcase into a waiting Volkswagen Polo. All the while, I watched people greeting each other with hugs, kisses and cheek pinching—my trance only broken when I heard Anthoula beckoning me from the car.

  “Parnassos,” Anthoula saw me looking at the mountain. “Oreia, eh?” Having picked up that “oreia” meant “beautiful” from my earlier years in Greece, I nodded. Mount Parnassos was, indeed, oreia. I could make out pine trees clustered up to a certain point, and then this gave way to the snow I’d seen earlier.

  Anthoula dropped me at my flat and I stood in its doorway, taking in the main room with the single bed, desk, mirror, bookshelf and TV, as well as the separate kitchen and bathroom. The excitement of the last twenty-four hours was wearing off and I could feel my adrenaline and energy levels dropping. In their place I felt tears welling. It seemed as if the walls were closing in on me from all sides. If they’d been padded, it would have completed the illusion of an asylum. Anthoula had been sweet, but I still felt she’d simply dumped me here and expected me to fend for myself.

  “Later,” she’d said, patting me on the arm and unlocking the door to my new home. She’d placed the keys into my hands and scuttled off. My fridge was as bare as the walls; no milk, not even water. Maybe Kirsty was right—I’m a failure at anything new I try. Kirsty’s words crept into my head—as they always do when I feel uncertain of my choices.

  I looked out of the one window. Backing onto a small yard with an orange tree, at least I had something of a view: I told myself not to give in to negativity. Kirsty can’t hurt or affect you anymore. You’re a big girl; deep breaths...get some sleep. I was overwhelmed with exhaustion, and I knew that was making things look worse than they were. I liked my saner counterpart when it spoke out…it was a voice that made sense. I poked around some more and found, to my relief in the wardrobe in the corridor, a whole host of clean, fresh bed linen. I made up the bed and fell on top of it. Within minutes I was fast asleep, dreaming of ten year olds with matted hair knocking on my window.

  The knocking turned out to be no dream. As I came to, cob-webbed from a deep afternoon nap, I realised that someone was, in fact, knocking at the window. It was a different lady this time: medium height, about fifty with shoulder-length blonde hair dappled with grey, wearing a flowery apron around her ample frame. This lady came laden with goods.

  “ Yeiasou Rachel, me lene Vasiliki.” Vasiliki turned out to be my new boss’s sister, and had bought a plate of spaghetti, a jar of honey, some Melba toasts…and milk! Finally I could make that much needed cup of tea.

  I unburdened Vasiliki of her load and planted kisses on both her cheeks. I’d read that this was the Greek way of greeting and thanking others. Vasiliki, in turn, held me at arm’s length and proceeded to spit at me, three times: ftou, ftou, ftou. Here in the village, at seven p.m. on my first evening, a kind woman who’d brought food and milk for my tea had just spat at me! I became aware that it must be some kind of Greek custom as Vasiliki kept repeating “Oreia, oreia” and grinning at me whilst rubbing my arm.

  I assumed it wasn’t supposed to be insulting, but the arm rub on its own would’ve sufficed. I wasn’t too sure how much spittle had landed on my plate of food, but I smiled back, trying to keep the shock from my face and act as if older Greek women spat at me all the time.

  Having slept for most of the afternoon, I was now feeling more positive, especially as Vasiliki had just brought me food. Further inspection of the flat revealed a cupboard in the kitchen full of coffee and other useful day-to-day items such as crackers, bottled water, sugar and olive oil. While the water boiled I sat at the kitchen table and munched on the spaghetti, trying to ignore the fact that Vasiliki’s welcoming phlegm might be lurking somewhere within the sauce, whilst congratulating myself on having packed the teabags.

  I was glad I swallowed my pride and paid the excess baggage charge. For these small home comforts, it’d been worth it.

  At ten p.m. another rap came on the window. This time a lady’s voice called out in English, “Miss Rachel? Are you still awake? It’s Mrs Stella, your new boss.” I realised quickly that ‘Stella’ wasn’t her surname…because she was formally introducing herself, I was to refer to her by her first name and her title.

  I had cleared my plate, washed up and was trying to decipher the dials on the washing machine, so yes, I was definitely still awake. I ran my fingers through my hair in an attempt to look presentable and opened the door to let Mrs Stella in…only to try to stifle the urge to laugh out loud. Next to Mrs Stella—who loomed at least six feet tall with a severe bobbed haircut (what was it about bobs in this country?)—stood her husband Mr Ioannis, measuring in at about five feet two. With his hair mussed up, he looked a bit like a bewildered Einstein. His glasses seemed to be held together with duct tape.

  Oh God, I’ve walked into a freak show. I felt a bit guilty thinking such disrespectful thoughts, but I couldn’t help it—the size difference was just too striking.

  “Come up to the house and have coffee with us,” invited Mrs Stella. Mr Ioannis spoke no English, but no language was needed to understand him at that moment as he gave me the same once-over that Stamatis had subjected me to. I gave a mental shrug and decided then and there that trying to be all liberal would be wasted in this country. My immediate opinion of Mrs Stella was that she was a woman you didn’t say no to, so the “offer” to come up for coffee was more an order than an invitation. I really didn’t feel like making small talk to my new boss on my very first evening, dressed as I was in jogging pants and hoodie. Nevertheless, I followed them upstairs to their flat, more curious than anything else.

  Mrs Stella’s home was much more sumptuous in comparison to my little place. Settling onto a couch with big purple cushions, trying not to spill coffee as I sank back and wondered if it’d be considered rude to dunk the biscuits they proffered, I tried not to show my tiredness by yawning as Mrs Stella explained in her curt manner:

  “You need not teach tomorrow, but come into school nevertheless. You can meet the children and the other teachers and introduce yourself. I trust Anthoula met you at the bus station? I would have come myself, but the days are busy with school preparation.”

  Although a serious person, Mrs Stella at least seemed fair. Her husband sat next to her and occasionally nodded his head as she spoke, casting surreptitious glances at me, glances I felt weren’t in any way lecherous, so I saw no need to bleach myself in the shower afterwards or check the lock on my front door.

  Do Greek men size women up all the time? Perhaps they’re not even aware they do it. Maybe that’s why my boss seemed such a harsh woman, if she’s had to put up with being married to this kind of man all her life.

  “Our school is called a Frontesterion. There are many of these in Greece. The children come here in the afternoons after their normal school hours. We operate from four until ten p.m.” I gasped inwardly. The children must be exhausted by the end of the day. “So your timetable will start in the late afternoon.”

  “Why the need for extra schooling?” I enquired, realising this might be an insulting question, considering Mrs Stella owned and ran her own Frontesterion. I attempted to backtrack.

  “It is alright, it is a good question. For many years now, English is a very necessary subject to study, but students only receive one hour of tuition in this subject a week in the state system, so schools like ours are a necessity.”

  If the state system was improved, maybe there’d be no need for all this extra study. The poor kids. I kept this to myself: without the Frontesterion system, I’d have no job in my ‘dream’ country after all.

  “You like feta?” Mr Ioannis suddenly piped up. He went off to the kitchen, returning with a big plate of it. I thanked him, somewhat taken aback at the fa
ct that Mr Ioannis seemed a bit of a dark horse and could understand more English than he made out, and that his first words to me had been about feta cheese. Nevertheless, it’d taste great tomorrow morning on the crackers, drizzled with honey.

  “My husband is the Assistant Town Mayor here,” Mrs Stella explained as our evening coffee was interrupted by phone calls from people asking for favours and Mr Ioannis wheeling and dealing his way through the calls.

  Returning to my little flat at around midnight—after being led to the door by the elbow and a polite “Kali nichta,”—no cheek kissing from my boss then—I felt grateful that she was breaking me in gently. Or maybe she’s fattening me up, giving me false confidence before the kill? I guess I’ll find out tomorrow. Those were the last thoughts I had before drifting off to sleep.

  The next morning I noticed an immediate difference between waking up at the Piraeus hotel and in my new basement flat: blue skies and twinkling sea vs. lack of sunlight in a one-windowed, marble-floored room. And what was this? I craned my neck out of the window and stared at the slope on which the house perched.

  “Bloody hell!” I hadn’t realised just how steep the road outside was, and was grateful that Anthoula had met me at the bus station the previous day.

  I’d planned for a mini-adventure tour of the surroundings before school, but sleeping late meant I now only had time to shower (after I’d figured out how to turn the hot water tank on), eat crackers with cheese and honey, and choose suitable clothes. I rummaged around in my as yet unpacked suitcase. “Not sure about the jeans, and it looks too warm for a button down shirt…” I muttered as I threw aside each item, making a big pile on the floor.

  Eventually, dressed in my trademark black trousers, dark polo neck and purple scarf, I waited by Mrs Stella’s car—how it didn’t roll down the hillside, physics can’t explain—chewing on a thumbnail. I knew I was well trained and prepared for this, and had managed to dress the part—conservatively I thought best—but even so, entering a classroom for the first time would still be nerve-racking. Eventually Mrs Stella emerged from her front door and strolled to the car.