The weather and films

Finally, FINALLY, the weather cooled down a bit. To celebrate this wonderful turn of events I cooked fakes (lentils) for dinner, much to my sister's disgust.

The Athens Film Festival has started! Hooray! I'm off to see a film or two...

Snapshot from Athens

Often Athens is ugly and dirty. Some times, if you squint, it's quaint and oriental. Others it's laid back and trendy(-ish). Others still, it's amusingly peculiar.

The other day I had to go first thing in the morning to the Ministry of Culture to hand in some architectural designs for a building we're trying to get licensed. (Greek red tape is marvelously convoluted and senseless at times.)

The Ministry of Culture, I found out, is behind the Museum. (The Museum being the Archaeological Museum, proving by it's name just how many proper museums we have in Athens.) The Museum is right next to the Polytechneio (the old building of the school of engineering where nowadays only the architecture department is housed.) In between Greece's biggest and oldest museum and the old venerated university building there is a paved street with trees, a bit of greenery and a couple of statues. It sounds nice, doesn't it? The sort of place you'd like to sit on a bench and feed pigeons or read a book.

Only I wouldn't advise you to. Because, you see, this cute little paved street has probably the highest concentration of junkies in Athens. Junkies in Greece are mostly harmless, all they do is ask for money. They do have, however, the strange habit of snorting or shooting drugs in broad daylight. So it's nine in the morning. Some homeless addicts are still sleeping on the benches as I pass. Others are waking up, and yet others are taking their first hit of the day. I feel kind of weird, passing through in my office clothes on the way to the Ministry for official business.

It gets even more surreal as I reach the top of the paved road to find the front of the ministry crawling with police officers and security cars. I can't help but laugh. This is so typical of Greece. The police could care less about the junkies shooting up (and possibly overdosing) a stone's throw away, as long as they stay away from the Ministry building. Everyone minds their own business and everyone is happy.

I can't help but wonder if this sort of thing happens in many other European cities. Maybe it's a general phenomena and I never noticed.

September Blues

I'm back!

(My sister/flatmate is busy having a meltdown because she just permanently stained our new extra expensive sofa SHE insisted on buying. I refuse to get involved.)

Where am I back from? I had three weeks leave over August. Obviously I wasn't going to sit around in boiling Athens. I disappeared to the islands. I went camping and swimming and sunbathing. So where did I go? First to Crete, then to Donousa and then to Kuthnos. I know it's all Greek to you (tee hee).
It was hot and windy - as per usual. The seas where blue (and freezing in Donousa). Everywhere was crowded with Greeks and Italians and Frenchies. We spent our time visiting new beaches, swimming, sleeping in the sun and eating. A typical Greek holiday. The only amusing anecdotes I have are snipets of overheard conversations.

Crete: (A ditzy blond is getting a henna tattoo from a good looking blond blue eyed guy with a street stall.)
DITZY BLOND MAKING SMALL TALK: So where are you from?
TATTOO GUY: I'm Serbian
DITZY BLOND TRYING TO BE OPENMINDED: Wow! It doesn't show!

Donousa: (Student Girl is playing rackets with Average Guy on beach in front of us she has just met)
STUDENT GIRL: Are you a student?
AVERAGE GUY: No, those days are long gone.
STUDENT GIRL SURPRISED: How old are you then?
AVERAGE GUY: I'm thirty.
STUDENT GIRL SHOCKED: Oh my god! You certainly don't look it! (MEANING: I don't believe I'm actually talking to someone so old.)

Kuthnos: (I'm sitting with Maria, Boula and Elly at a restaurant.)
WAITER: What will you be having?
MARIA: I want fish. What fish do you have?
WAITER: We have gilthead, mullet and mackerel.
MARIA: I don't know if I like any of those fish.
WAITER: The mackerel is very good.
MARIA: I don't know if I like mackerel. I'll ask my mother.
WAITER LOOKS GOBSMACKED
MARIA ON MOBILE: Mum, do I like mackerel?
MOTHER: I don't know, but you father does!
MARIA TO WAITER: I'll have the mackerel.

Truth is, I have been back for two weeks now. And Athens in September is awful. After three months of blistering heat you would really like a break instead of having to suffer through September, which is invariably hot and muggy.

I might try and post some holiday photos later on...

please raise your hand if ikea drives you crazy

It's sweltering here and I'm in the middle of moving house. I'm in a bad mood and the Ikea moving company is driving me up the wall....

I’m busy, busy, busy.

Moving house is very hard work. Especially when you have no furniture.

We still have to put up curtains, get final pieces of furniture (my bed for one!), find cutlery, crockery, pots and pans, get sheets and towels, move our books/cds/clothes etc. So many things to do, so little time!

Because I’m a crazy masochist, I’m also taking part in another competition for the design of a park in the north of Athens AND I’ve written myself down to write a story for a fest.

Clearly I’m not alright in the head.

Mustn’t forget that the Athens Festival has started, the only worthwhile thing that goes on in this backwater town.

finally, finally moving house

After a long, tiring, soul-destroying search we have finally found a house! An apartment to be more exact. It’s in the area we want, but not exactly were we wanted, but whatever. It’s smallish, over-priced and the opposite buildings are too close, but the owners are very pleasant, it has crazy tiling in the kitchen and bathroom, the kitchen has a REAL window (!!!!), it’s freshly painted, the road is quiet, the floors are wood and fake marble. In short we are very happy and exited!

Who are we? Me and my sister. It’s too expensive living by yourself in this ridiculously overpriced city, so it only made sense to share. Besides, it’s less lonely.

So we have lots to do. Reconnect the electricity – the electrician keeps on putting us off. Put in a phone line and get an internet connection – in this hopelessly backwards country not all phone lines have ADSL yet, what will I do if we don’t have? Go to IKEA – I hate the place, but it’s cheap so needs must. Buy major electrical appliances. Clean the house. Move our stuff. And the list goes on and on. Lets see how long it takes us. I’m a bit apprehensive, because my friend Nikoletta moved recently and it took her almost two months. We wont survive if it takes us so long too.

So wish me luck, all my nonexistent readers!

Competitions and moving houses

Lately besides work I have been moon-lighting for an architectural competition declared by the municipality of Mihaniona

(near the city of Thessalonki in Greece) for the design of a light movable kiosk to be used as a sea-side seating area for the seafront cafeterias and restaurants.

I teamed up with a friend from university and we came up with a cute idea of a repeatable module that could be moved on tracks. Unfortunately our model turned out so-so (we used plexiglass which wasn’t such a great choice in the end) and what’s worse my team-mate lost her designs last minute and hadn’t got round to printing them all out. We sent what we could before the deadline, but the chances are great we’ll be disqualified for missing out a set of designs…

At this rate I will never win an architectural competion. My team was also disqualified for a ridiculous technicality from the architectural competition we took part in last year (the design of a Town Hall complex in a small town in Crete).

To top up the bad luck we didn’t move as planned. Ever since we finished our studies, my sister and I have returned to out hometown of Athens and have moved home to our parents’ place. It’s stifling and we’re desperately looking for a place of our own to rent.

Only thing is we’re fed up of student apartments and want something nice for a chance. And it’s hard! Landlords in Athens are out of this world. The rents are too high for the wages.

Let me just say that many people (us included), even with university degrees, only earn 800 euros a month, whereas most three-room apartments (70 to 80 square metres) built in the 60s in an average neighbourhood in the centre of the city have a rent of about 450 to 600 euros. Something new is out of the question. A studio apartment will cost 200 to 400 euros depending.

And not to forget that very often the houses are in bad repair, the kitchens and bathrooms the originals and the walls unpainted.

They area we are set on in living is one of the hardest to find a place because the locals are notorious for not moving out. At least two of the places we’ve seen the previous tenant was an old lady that died there. The furniture had not even been moved out yet! And the state of the places was un-believable. One of them was completely surreal, complete with antique television set, psychedelic green-veined black marble in the hall and dizzying flowered tiling in the kitchen and bathroom. We beat a hasty retreat!

Now we’ve found two prospective places. One is a bit small and has weird landlords that live way out in the suburbs on the complete different side of Athens than us where buses barely reach and they expect us to go to their house to talk about renting the flat! The other is nearly perfect, only a stone throw away from the ancient Herodio theatre, but the landlady, as usual, is asking far more than it’s worth.

And so the hunt continues…