The Green, Green Grass of Home

A few notes on cultural acclimatisation and a compare and contrast (but hopefully in a good way!)

We’ve arrived back safely from a great summer in England. I’ve just been looking back over photos and thinking about all the friends and family we were able to see; the weddings and birthday celebrations attended; the relaxing trips to favourite places; the new people we were privileged to meet; the green grass we got to really enjoy (and we did – see below!) and the rain. Joel has said, on numerous occasions since we left the UK permanently twenty-one months ago, that rain is his favourite weather, and the rest of us are inclined to agree. We LOVE rain. We don’t see that much of it in Athens – and yet there is no hosepipe ban, ever. Often, when it rains in Athens (and it doesn’t often rain), it rains heavily all day. We may have had about 7 days like that last year, and it probably rained for a shorter period, usually at night, 15 to 20 times (and that’s a generous estimate!). In fact, this last year, it nearly snowed as much as it rained!

The kids enjoying the grass in York Minster Gardens

Hannah running around at Twycross Zoo

Esther in Museum Gardens, York.

Joel and Esther in 'our' back garden in Beeston

The visit of the Paros mission team got me thinking about the differences between British and Greek life. I guess they fall into a number of categories: Athens/Beeston differences – both objective and subjective; daily life differences (subjective?); and the kind of cultural faux-pas/niceties/strange habits that people need warning about!

Athens is a dry (no kidding) and dusty city with little open space and barely any green grass. The greenest part of the city is definitely the Ancient Agora at the foot of the Acropolis and overlooked by the Areopagus (see pic). As a family we were discussing what colours our two home countries were – what colours came to mind when we thought of them: Greece is the bright white of the sun shining off the white buildings and marble steps and paving slabs in the city centre; the bright blue of the sky; the olive green of the, erm, olive trees and other vegetation and the pale brown of the sun-scorched earth. England (or Britain, if you like) was mostly green and grey: the dark green of the trees; the deep green of lush grass; the grey-ey white of the clouds not quite ready to rain on us; the dark grey of the roads not bleached by the sun and browny-red, the browny-red of the red-brick buildings and roof-tiles.

Athens is built-up with busy roads and relentless noise. Although it’s sunny most of the time we are usually in shade because most buildings are 5 or 6 storeys high. The roads are broad and packed and the pavements are narrow – so it always feels crowded. The city has population about ½ the size of London packed into a space ¼ the size – so it’s DENSE! With the exception of businesses in the city centre, most places are open from 8ish til 2.30ish Monday to Saturday and re-open from 5ish til 9ish Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. There are very few places open on Sundays – mostly περίπτερα (periptera – kiosks), ζαχαροπλαστεία (zakaroplastia – patisseries), and flower shops – which are generally open when other places aren’t, to service the visiting periods… We live around the corner from most of the shops we’d ever need: supermarkets, cafés, bakery, clothes shops, etc I guess that’s big city life – very convenient! Joel and Hannah are at school 8ish til 12ish, so the mornings are quiet! We have enforced quiet time between 2.30 and 5 (mostly for the sake of our neighbours), with the kids ‘down’ and ‘away’ (reading quietly in a corner or sleeping in their beds) for about an hour and a half of that time. Bedtime for all of us is about the same as it would be in the UK (730/8ish for the kids, 1130ish – but aspiring to be earlier! – for us!). Cafés, bars and restaurants are open til late (at least midnight) and are generally chilled out but smoky. In terms of transport, we get around on buses and the metro which makes it impossible to blend in when we’re all together (the children talk loudly in English!). It’s cheap – 80 cents for a 90 minute ticket – and convenient and there isn’t enough space outside our house for another parked car anyway! We are able to borrow a car from Greek friends at church or missionary friends who live up the hill in Zografou for trips to the airport, the beach or IKEA! The only other immediate thing to say about Athens is that no building is the same as the next. There is absolutely no uniformity in the planning and building of this city. When a building needs replacing its neighbouring buildings are fortified and the building is carefully demolished and replaced. Only the outer-reaches of suburban Athens have anything remotely like housing estates, and even there it is quite rare.

Our friend Maria (the wife of our ‘boss’, Thanos) and her eldest daughter, Myrto, visited England in July and that has made me think all the more about the differences between the countries. Beeston is quiet. Our house is in the Rylands, one of the quietest parts of the town, and the contrast is stark. The roads are all wide and open and even in the rush-hour traffic of University Boulevard it is somehow calmer and less frenetic than Athens. It was great to go into Nottingham city centre for a day – we used the bus (first time as a family!) and found it VERY convenient! – and good to experience smoke-free pub lunches! It was also good to see that Costa coffee in the city centre is now open til 8! Café lifestyle is so much an all-day, all-evening thing here – the local Starbucks (3 mins walk up the hill) is open til 1130 – that I still find it unbelievable that cafés in the UK aren’t up for staying open later. Most of all (in objective terms) we love the green (have we said that before?!)! Maria took LOADS of photos of trees, bushes and grass when she visited – it’s just SUCH a contrast to Athens and Greece. As we flew into Gatwick I LOVED seeing all those lovely almost-square fields lined with green bushes and green trees. We even flew over the village I grew up in (where my parents still live) and saw park land and playing fields. The uniformity of buildings and streets is so comforting and easy on the eye…

Finally (sorry, I could ‘talk’ for hours about such things…), here are a few tips for anyone visiting Greece/Athens and the British alternatives (for those unfamiliar with British ways):

• Yes and No. Greek people will make TINY head gestures indicating a positive or negative response. A slight tilt to one side for yes and a sharp upward movement (often with a puckered-lip tut) for no. This is especially difficult when hailing a taxi: you need to be vigilant – as the taxi slows and you shout your destination, watch the driver’s head carefully, hesitation might cause frustration and embarrassment (even more so when you misread it and try to open the door of a taxi that’s not stopping! British people tend to speak first and only occasionally give a nod or shake of the head (often for emphasis).
  
• Paying at a till and change. This is especially true in supermarkets, but people in Greece generally like you to have the right change. I have no idea if this has any historical origin but if you have to pay, say, €8.80 for something, they will ask you if you have the 80 cents – especially if you pay with anything more than a €10 note. And you put the money on the counter (there is often a helpful scoop section) and not into the shop assistant’s hand. I had a reverse-culture-shock moment in Luton airport in June: I was in WHSmith’s and was scrabbling around in my purse for exactly £8.65 (just in case I had it!), laying money on the counter and eventually apologising that I only had £8.70. The shop assistant wasn’t that pleased that she had to pick up all that change and a little incredulous that I’d gone to so much trouble. Oddly paying money into the hand of the shop assistant is a rare way in which the British are more tactile than Greeks!
  
• Getting on and off transport. Most Mediterranean nationalities don’t queue unless they are made to. When they are made to queue (in the post office or bank) they are remarkably patient and calm. Bus, tram and metro stops are, however, a free-for-all. As soon as the bus/tram/train stops people are generally trying to get on, often pushing past you as you try to get off. This was particularly ridiculous on our first ever visit when we used the metro every day and had Joel (almost 2) and Hannah (5 months) in a double-pushchair. It was almost impossible for anyone to get on before we got off and yet people were always trying to clamber over the pushchair or squeeze past (occasionally losing some ankle skin in the process!). I still struggle to remember that it’s not rude to do so in Greece – it’s not expected, so why do it. It feels rude and thoughtless, so it’s especially nice when people help me off with the pushchair or the shopping, or both!
  
• Washing your hands. Athens is a dusty city and it seems that most Greek visitors to our house like to wash their hands on arrival. Not sure why. Maybe (probably) we’re just not as clean or hygienic as our friends… Maybe because Britain is less dusty and downstairs toilets are less common the practice is less common too.

If you ever come to visit as part of a mission team you will probably hear this again in a slightly re-jigged format. Apologies in advance for the repetition. Apologies too for the length of this entry but I hope it’s a bit of an insight into the differences in our lives.