Three Strikes and You're . . . Just Starting

The first strike (metro and bus lines, but maybe not all of them) was waiting for us when we got off the plane less than a week ago.  Dimitra had planned to pick us up, but what would have been a 40 minute drive took more than twice as long, given the automobile traffic.

The second was a partial--the metro stopped running after a certain hour of the day and only on certain lines (we aren't sure because it didn't affect us directly; we just heard about it).

The third was today.  To complete our residence permit for Ken (I'm covered by Fulbright), we needed to get official translations of his health form, insurance letter, and our marriage license.  We got to the government office that does the translation in plenty of time (12:45--they close at 2) only to find that a strike had begun at noon and the office was closed.  

We saw the first riot police massing as we walked through a trendy, high-end tourist mall (local color, I guess).  Most of them were young.  As they stood around waiting for whatever, they were answering email on their I-phones.  

Finally, we saw the beginning of the actual march.  Ken could translate some of the banners, mostly about solidarity among various categories--he figured out "railway workers," but wasn't quick enough to get much else.  It was all quite orderly and peaceful, at least while we were there.

We kept walking home and at some point heard sirens.  A fire-truck passed us going the other way--toward the march route.  When we got home, the news showed some smoke and a few scuffles, but from what Ken could catch, it wasn't a major confrontation. 

We'll try for the translation office again tomorrow.

Sculpting with glass

This is The Runner--it's made entirely of horizontal glass sheets. As it happens, the sculptor was a Fulbright scholar. We didn't know that when we came across it on our travels to the Metro. It's huge--you can see Ken in the first picture for size comparison. Our Fulbright hosts explained its provenance and that that this is not the original. The first installation had to be moved...but someone didn't realize you can't move thousands of sheets of glass. I leave it to you to imagine what transpired. Eventually, the figure was re-created on a new site. In the second photo you can see a concrete wall around the base. That's the rim of a 6-foot moat of sorts around the base of the figure.... I suspect it's there to keep people away from the glass, itself. There's no water; just grass, weeds, and some garbage. But since this is Greece, there's also a volunteer fig tree, almost tall enough to reach the top of the concrete rim.

Day 5 (first post)

How do you know you are in Greece (without looking at the street signs)?  Balconies everywhere and lots of marble.  In quite ordinary houses or office buildings, you'll find marble stairs, marble entranceways, and even marble walls!  For that matter, sometimes there's marble paving on the sidewalk. 

Also, it takes five times as long to accomplish a task--partly because we are on foot and using public transportation.  But there's also a lot of bureaucracy, some of it stunningly obtuse.

For example, the first full day we were here, Saturday, Ken tried to get money out of an ATM.  We were still entirely jet-lagged, and he didn't realize until after he got two "wrong PIN" warnings that he had put in the wrong card--a credit card instead of a bank card.  He hit "cancel" to retrieve his card.  Then the message said "sorry, card has been retained."  (And and the ATM stopped working entirely--the man behind us on line was not amused.) 

So first thing Monday morning we went to the bank, explained the mistake, and asked for the card back.  "No," the woman at the desk said, "we only return captured cards to customers of the bank."  "OK, I'll open an account," I said.  "No," she said, "we will not open an account for only 6 months."  "But it's MY card," Ken said.  "Yes," she said, "but that is our policy."  There was actually more dialog, but that's what it boiled down to.

We have had charming interactions as well, but it's dinner-time, so I'll save that for another post.