Jennica & Matthew Geddert's Ramblings

Sep 8 Meeting Neighbours and Reading Signs by Jennica

Ever since the hallucinogenic gases that gave the oracle at Delphi her visions have stopped coming from the ground, the place has become significantly less exciting. We breezed through and headed on. We knew we wanted to stay in a hotel in Venice (very expensive), which necessitated using a campground in Athens (cheap). The ones we saw in the city were in a rather grungy part of town so we headed to the coastal port city of Rafina. We found a lovely campground there and had a delightful British neighbour.

Allan drives a lorry (transport truck) carrying expensive cars around for rich people. He made tea for us and told us about the eccentricities of the very rich and about the cars they drive. As you can imagine, Matthew and Allan got along very well.

Sample conversation:

Matthew: Have you driven a McLaren F1?

Allan: Yeah. Didn't like it.

Matthew shoots me a look that says "How can anyone not like driving the best car ever?"

Matthew: Why not?

Allan: The steering's in the middle. I like it on the right.

Matthew shoots me another look that says, "I understand his reasoning, but it's a McLaren."

Matthew: You've driven a McLaren.

Allan: Yeah.

We went into Athens for a day trip which was pretty fun. We saw the Acropolis and the Parthanon. We also climbed the Aereopolis (a big rock), the place where, according to the book of Acts, Paul preached about the unknown god. It was neat.

I must say that making our way around Greece has included some adventures in linguistics. The limited ancient Greek I learned at seminary has proved more useful than I expected. If you imagine someone from China who only knows the English in Romeo and Juliet on a road trip in Canada and the US and you can get the idea. The roadsigns and maps have been gibberish to Matthew, but merely my knowing the Greek alphabet has helped us when the names of places were not provided using our alphabet. The second spoken language of choice in Greece, unlike the other places we've been, is German and not English. This has meant that when we're in a restaurant, I can read that pizza (pitza) is on the menu, but Matthew has to order it.