What Shocked Me in Greece

Athens may be a city that has been deteriorating for over two thousand years, but it is modern in most of the ways that count here and now in the modern world. For instance, it’s the advertisements like I saw there that give people self-esteem problems these days. Activists in America gets in an uproar about how unrealistically skinny models are and how sexually charged advertisements can be. Obviously, none of these soapbox standers have ever been to Athens. By my judgment, Europe has completely different standards for its models, by which women must have visible cheekbones and hipbones, men must have a six-pack at minimum, and both must be either Greek-style brown or albino-style fair skinned to qualify for the job. Concerning the sex, allow me to present an example of one of the provocative advertisements I saw.

Now, the first phenomenon I found surprising in Greece, it may be loosely related to this intensely sexual advertising trend. Kim and Angela (my two traveling companions for this trip) and I stayed in Hotel Lozanni, accommodations that resembled a hostel more than a hotel, with its bunkbeds, shared bathrooms, and cold showers. Kim had picked this hotel/hostel without really researching its precise location within Athens, so when we arrived, we found it several long streets away from the city center, but located within a very city-like area. Dragging my suitcase after my two companions—they were carrying backpacks, which did not require maneuvering over curbs and around puddles—I noticed that some of the women in Athens sure liked to dress outlandishly. One of the women I passed had fantastically sparkly eye makeup on and a nearly neon black-and-pink-striped dress with black stiletto boots. Another was wearing a skin-tight lycra mini-dress in a bright shade of lime green, which contrasted with her obnoxiously blue eyeshadow, and of course, stilettos. In my opinion, she also certainly didn’t need to be wearing so much black eyeliner and mascara, because she was a platinum blond.

That first night we arrived, I didn’t pay much attention to these women, as we were trying to find our bearings in a new city. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but stare the next day when saw those exact same girls posing on the corner a block away from our hotel—at 5pm in the evening. Broad daylight does wonders for recognizing hookers. When we emerged at 7pm to find a place for dinner, they had multiplied. Angela and I counted fifteen on our walk to and from the restaurant, and after careful study over the next few days, concluded that if we donned some heels and makeup and hiked up our skirt (or shorts, in my case), we could easily be mistake for having joined the ranks. Seriously.

During the day, as Kim, Angela, and I perused the various Greek shops, I began to notice another astonishing trend: Athens has more mink coat stores than I had ever seen anywhere in my entire life. How did I know they were mink coat stores, you ask, when I couldn’t read Greek? Well, for one, why would so many stores strictly sell tons of random expensive-looking and similar-looking fur coats in a city as hot as Athens? But what about animal rights? you protest. Doesn’t anyone care about those poor creatures being butchered just so some hoity-toity lady can walk around in furry pelts? My response is this: why would so many stores go to such lengths to sell fakes? And expensive fakes, at that. I wouldn’t spend over 700 Euros for a fake fur coat, would you?

The third shock of the trip came inside our hotel. It could have been the fact that our TV remote control didn’t work and that I was the only one tall enough to push the power button on it (which means we did not watch almost any TV)—but that wouldn’t be much of a surprise, because could you have seen what sort of a place this was, you would have been surprised we had a television set at all much less a remote control, even if it didn’t work. The third shock could have been the fact that we had an air conditioner, but this would mean that it worked, which would not be entirely true. It, too had, a remote control needed to operate properly. However, this remote was not included with the room—as the hotel only had one to control all of the rooms in the place—so we had to go down to the front desk, get the remote, have the attendant turn on our specific room’s a/c, go upstairs, adjust it with the remote, return the remote to the front desk, and go back upstairs to wait until our room reached a reasonable temperature. And all of this with our room on the 3rd floor and no lift. Cheers.

So the actual third shock of the trip was one of the desk attendants (receptionists? check-in people? What do you call them when they are all men?). I would never have considered his blue eyes “shocking”—merely surprising, to find on a Greek guy—except for the fuss Angela made over them. We were barely out of the lobby when she started swooning over the banister. From then on, he was “desk guy,” and she spent the ten minutes before and after we saw him gushing over how good-looking he was and how she wanted a picture of him. He was somewhat handsome, in a striking way caused by the contrast of his pale blue eyes and tan complexion. Therefore, in an effort to strike up conversation, I managed to make a fool out of myself three times: once when trying to figure out whether to call him a receptionist or desk person or whatever, once when giving him a half bottle of wine that Kim and Angela failed to finish, and once when asking his name (for Angela’s sake, of course). He told me his name was Caesar. At first, I thought he was joking. When I made some sort of tentative response, he said, “Yes, call me Julius Caesar.” Now I took him at his word, and replied, “Really? So your first name is Julius?” He looked a bit amused and corrected me. “No no, just Caesar.” What a sucker I am.

To conclude, if you need a “quickie,” that one coat that will make you feel part of upper class society, or the experience of knowing someone who was named after a salad (or perhaps his mother was thinking of the historic ruler, you never know), the streets of Athens are at your service. Just be wary of the intense sun and perverted old men in parks.