Welcome to Ta leme, a newsletter on Greek time.
A newsletter?
Yes, a newsletter.
Fascinating.
Well, I’ve been thinking about starting one since I moved here. In fact, I thought about it so hard that my thoughts congealed into a first issue, which went to rot for months inside a desktop folder called “NL Greece”. It was about recycling.
What happened next?
Nothing. No time. Once I finally got more time, I realised that bins didn’t make for a particularly sexy first issue. So I went full circle and tossed the text into the bin.
Self-doubt is a bitch.
Preach.
Back to the topic at hand: what kind of news?
Me. Life. The Universe (stay tuned on that). I moved to Thessaloniki nine months ago with a Greek husband and two young kids. My ambition is to cover at least one aspect of “So, how is life in Greece?” in every issue.
What if you don’t have anything interesting to say?
I’m very afraid of this. I might just talk about the kids. Or about food. Food is a fine topic. Humans love to eat.
Last question: news for whom?
All the well intentioned people I’ve let down when they asked: “So, how is life in Greece?” Granted, it’s a difficult question, but “Uh, normal.” is a bloody stupid answer.
Last last question, then: how is life in Greece?
Great question. May I interest you in a few observations instead?
Life in Greece
Preliminary observations:
Greek people don’t have hobbies, they have coffee. (Don’t come at me for this, I’m sure plenty of Greeks have plenty of hobbies, but coffee is pretty big in the local hobby scene.) My kid’s school is also a coffee place and many parents meet for coffee on a weekly (if not daily) basis. You can go for coffee at 8pm. You can go for “a quick coffee” and sit for 3 hours. If there was a “Greek Declaration of Rights”, the Right to Coffee would rank pretty damn near the top. I don’t drink coffee, so I won’t bore you about the difference between a frappé and a freddo (both involve ice cubes, I think?) but going for coffee and getting a fisiko (an orange juice) is perfectly acceptable, too.
Going for food is nearly as ubiquitous as going for coffee, except that it lasts even longer. The first step towards an interminable meal is to pick between thalassina (fish) or kreatika (meat). Traditionally, you don’t eat meat in a fish place, or vice-versa (you might be able to, but, unless you suffer from an allergy, ordering meatballs in a fish taverna might raise a few eyebrows). The second step is to recruit as many people as you can think of. A meal in a taverna consists in a variety of simple dishes. More people equals more dishes equals more variety. It’s simple math. It’s lively, it’s greasy, it’s messy and, unless you actively refuse any alcohol, expect to end up pretty drunk.
B is for bougatsa. (Grilled seafood is fantastic, but breaskfast here is the bomb.)
People smoke – a lot. Sometimes, I feel like I’m living in the eighties. As for the ones who escaped the eighties, they vape.
We have a metro. It flooded two weeks after launch but it’s fine now. Fun fact: the metro line had to be buried really deep in the ground, in order to run below any potential archeological site. Ancient civilisation is the nemesis of modern urban planning.
Cars will park everywhere, even more so after dark. Zebra crossings, sharp turns, traffic lights, leftmost lanes, rightmost lanes: no place is safe from the Right to Park (another article in the Declaration of Rights). And no policeman is ever safe from locals defending their Right to Park. My bus-loving, biking-riding, little central european heart is bleeding.
Everybody loves chidren. On the flip side, everybody has opinions on your children (how many layers they wear, why they are walking behind rather than in front of you, where their hat might be). Still, they love them. I have been congratuled, in the street, by strangers, for having kids. Countless of times. This is very confusing to me, but I appreciate my kids not being regarded as a nuisance as soon as I step foot in the public space.
Any semi-hostile environment staffed by middle-aged ladies becomes much friendlier as soon as the children tag along. The administration, the supermarket… Sure, then you need to wrangle your children in a semi-hostile environment, but you can’t have everything.
Most shops have an owner. This might be obvious to you. Personally, I’m not used to shops that are not part of a corporation or a chain. It’s a nice change.
Except for rogue cars, my neighbourhood is full of pet stores and gyms. Why, you ask? I have absolutely no idea.
The city doesn’t have a beach, but it has a very nice seafront promenade (with a bike lane).
Watching the sea from the sofa is cool, but watching cargo ships glide very slowly accross the horizon at sunset is fucking hypnotic.
