Athens

Arrived in Athens a couple of hours ago and am now at a cyber on Syntagma square. The ferry, which was supposed to drop me in Igoumenitsa at 7:30, didn't get there until around 10:30, but the advantage was that i got to see the sun dawn over Kerkira, and it was majestic.



From Igoumenitsa i took a bus to Ioannina, and from there, at 14:30, to here. Getting from the Athens bus terminal to the hotel took about 45 minutes, as there's a public transport strike and traffic is crazier than usual – or so says the hotel manager.

My first impressions of Greece have been wonderful. The landscape, to begin with, is amazing. I was trying to compare it to other Mediterranean countries, but it's not possible. In the over 500 k of this land i've covered today, mountains are visible from everywhere (i guess that explains the ragged contour of the coast) but large valleys and plains are interspersed abundantly enough that there is a sense of openness wherever you are. As for the weather, it's an incredibly mild december. At 2:30 pm in Ioannina, northern Greece, it was 20C. Many trees and bushes are bare, and crops have already been harvested, yet the mixture of species seems incompatible: mountainsides are covered with scrawny xerophytes, yet rivers run everywhere and some trees, still green and luscious looking, grow in the valleys and hillsides. Many of them are covered by mats of ivy.

Alongside the roads (there is no true highway until 50 or 60 k out of Athens) you can see tiny shrines standing on poles perhaps a meter tall, some of them with offerings of candles and flowers. A few are quite elaborate and imitate miniature orthodox churches, but others are simply square boxes with some holy image inside and a cross on top. The only other place i've seen a similar practice is Argentina.

People are very friendly. There's again that harmonious chaos i saw in Bari, but people here are much more... receiving. Anyone you ask help of will try their best to give it, even when they can't understand what you're saying. The old lady sitting next to me on the bus insisted that i eat some of her chocolate, and the taxi driver offered me a cigarette every time he was about to smoke one himself – which he did three times in 45 minutes. I'd read somewhere greeks smoke a lot, and indeed, they do.

Athens doesn't seem dirty at all, though. Maybe it's because it's night and i haven't seen much yet, but all i can see is that it's bustling with life.