Our house just got a bit greener!

We have plants! Not many yet, but it's a beginning. If we manage not to kill them all off the plan is to turn our balconies into forests - or failing that, gardens.
Yesterday we went to Kotzia square where there was a plant show. It all has to do with the mayor's crusade to fill Athens with green roofs. Since we have no greenery in the streets and hardly any parks, the mayor's solution is to ask people to plant their roofs. It's a win win situation for him, he doesn't have to do anything (like maybe plant a couple of trees or lay down some grass) but still gets to say that he's working on the problem of the lack of green in our sad grey city.
So we went, we saw and we loaded ourselves up with plants. Now we have two edible shrubs: basil and spearmint; three flowers: cyclamen, chrysanthemums and another I forget the name; and one tall bushy plant I think belongs to the ficus family. Not a bad beginning if I say so myself.
Wish us luck!

My verdict on the film festival

The 14th Athens International Film Festival is over. It has been for a week at least. It wasn't bad. Very different crowd this year. Many new, younger faces, while many of the typical ones were missing. Strange.

What with work and being broke, I only saw 10 films.


1. Better Things (uk/germany): Awful, awful, awful film. The english countryside at it's most dreary and it's inhabitants at their worst. Everyone was either a near catatonic teenager/twenty-something with a drug/sex problem or a depressed OAP. They hardly spoke and nothing really happened. A total waste of their time.

2.The Wild Man of the Navidad (usa): A b-movie featuring a man-monster, my kind of film! It takes place somewhere in the american countryside and is complete with red-necks, moonshine, guns and a weird "monster". Very fun!

3.Cat People (Jacques Tourneur 1942 usa): A classic b/w thriller. Not half bad even though it doen't scare anyone - except a two-year old - anymore.

4.The Tune (Bill Plimpton 1992 usa): A cute little cartoon musical about a guy who has to find the perfect song to keep his job and girlfriend.

5.I Walked With a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur 1943 usa): Another classic b/w thriller. I really liked this one. Zombies, voodoo, skeletons in family closets and innocent nurses, all taking place in the Caribbean.

6.Le Marais (Isilde le Bescaux 2005 france) and Demi-Tarif (Isilde le Bescaux 2003 france): She is supposed to be a new up and comming director. Le Marais was a short amusing documentary about the district in Paris. Demi-Tarif was a crazy, strange, touching, ultimately sad story of three children abandoned by their mother. The film was oddly intimate and claustrophobic, and a bit disturbing at points.

7.Bananaz (uk): An on the road documentary about the Gorillaz. Damon is an oddball and Jamie is nuts. We love them anyway.

8.The Upsetter (usa): A very informative documentary about another loony, Lee Scratch Perry. Very informative. Lee Perry was really crazy, but who cares, he's also a genius.

9.Gonzo - The Life and Works of Dr Hunter Thomson (usa): Yet another documentary about a crazy genius. Thomson was the inventor of Gonzo journalism and the author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Very good documentary with good footage of Thomson. Only problem was that it skipped out all his early years.

10. Sita Sings the Blues (usa): A cartoon about the story of Sita from the Ramayana incorporating blues songs. Very funny and well drawn, using different drawing styles.

And that's about it. Not much, huh?

Little update

I have been sick and depressed and internet-less this last week or so. I'm a bit better now, but not much. Now I am broke, depressed and quasi-internet-less.

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....