A personal recount of a life within Berlin, Venice and the EU

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Greece 3.0





I did not discover who is the "owner" of the wireless connection that i found in the main street of the tiny village of Fourni...I asked a lot of people...I did not find a single person who actually understood what the hell I was talking about...even my pretty good Italian gesturing art did not manage to let the concept of a uncabled internet connection to be cleared up...so I sit in my room now, write on my MacBook and go soon to the only (and very expensive) internet café of the tiny village of Fourni...

Sunday in the tiny village of Fourni: the mess of 8.00 just ended, old people and wooden sticks floating out of the church, at the speed of lazy cockroaches, in couples, alone, as the accomplishment of their only duty of the day...I sit in the coffee place in front of the church, my favourite one so far, reading a book and stare at them, wondering how can old people from a tiny village be so different in the way they look: an old woman with her stick, small as a sitting chair, as a luggage, bending her left , opposite to the stick, to an old man who is twice as tall as her...they walk away, I read the book till the end...have another shaked coffee...two euros of ice water sugar and a bit of coffee, a sort of officially acknowledged theft, in terms of money...but I found out it is not tourists´ fares...it is just an over priced tasty pleasure...

Bikes (motor-) start to couple the sound of the few bees and mosquitos that run the air, afoolish... I think that sometimes exageration turns reality into a very funny human-stage, ours...nobody drives his bike with helmet: neither adults, nor babies...neither when they are four (F O U R) on, the whole family driving helmetlessly, slowly though, through the tiny village of F O U Rni...nor when they are running through the steep and dusty roads that head up north...but then, ladies and gentlemen, on cigarettes´ boxes you read the very essence of EU´s taking care of us all: smoking kills, destroys lungs, testicules, the lungs of people around you (what about their testicules?), affects skin, makes you dummer, fatter and heart-attacks prone...all true but I wonder, sitting on the marble bench of my favourite coffee place in the heart of the tiny village of FOURni, how many die of car accidents, actively of passively, yearly or mothly; I also ask myself how a person can take one advice seriously when the whole thing does not look very consequent.
I get another sip of my medium sweet, over priced coffee shake and think it is odd enough to be reasoned upon...

The only persons I had a conversation with are the following:

1. a woman, early thirties, from Athens, who was sitting in a restaurant in Menoi Beach, Patmos for a couple of hour as I did, having a solitary woman vacation in Aegean Islands...told me a lot of stories, about Greece and about its islands, about the women in FOURni, who apparently should have a particular attractions for men in a uniform, showed me videos taken with her brand new phone and complained a bit about size, national composition (bulgarian and romanian, macedonian!) and loudness of Athens before leaving with a couple of tips about here and about other islands I should visit, and I will never do...her name? She said it...too difficult to remember anyway...sorry but who cares?

2. A man, Janni (my age? A bit older?), native from FOURni, I´d say 80 percent gay, I´d say 70 percent hitting on me in a havetolooklikeagreekMANway...works on the cruises, as waiter, knows a better-than-the-FOURnian-average english...nice guy, the only one who talked to me...thanks to him or because of him I played with my Ipod at this bar on the beach for half an hour..."The kills" being the only band awakening some sort of interest in the locals ( you know the bum bum bum beat kind of creeping into the song)...we talked about stuff, after during and before my short dj appearance...he likes Holland, has friends there...likes Belgium too, will go to both countries next December for Xmas...does not know that a city called Berlin exists (literally)...does not know what the word university means, I hope only in english ( have to find out, along the greek car-accidents yearly mortality rate, the word for uni in greek)...just to tell how complicated a conversation can be...he "bumped" me the same day of the my dj thing though (realized I am not gay at all?)...a guy is getting married in these days and on that evening a party for him should have taken place, at the same bar at the beach...well the janni guy told me he would have brought me there...supposed to show up at 12.30, never came and did not say why the next day...
Funny people...

Generations´ change is slower here, the difference between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters seems somehow samller in here than in someother countries...there is anyway a lot of sexual issues here under the surface...men being driving all the time, women lagging often a step behind them, boys with scooter, girls without...men handling money, women cleaning and taking care of babies...a bit too much old fashioned for me...but so relaxing and sunny and easy and simple and clear.
The only thing I wanted to take seriously here was myself...I sleep so much and drink almost nothing...swim a lot and smoke less...rehab.
Take care you all and have a nice beginning of September.

No comments: