Athens by Nightfall

SPENDING a few hours updating my blog I decided that it was about time to find myself some dinner this evening. The area where I am staying has been alive with the sound of traffic and people since I arrived so I figured that there must be somewhere remotely decent to cure my evening’s hunger.

As it turned out, I actually went to a restaurant just opposite where I live and enjoyed a traditional Greek burger and followed that up with some traditional Greek biscuits as a desert (what do you mean those aren’t two things they are famous for!)

Being in a new city there is always a lot to take in, and even though I have spent time in Barcelona and know very little Spanish, I feel as though it is even more difficult to communicate in Athens.
Exactly the opposite might be true as the two places I have been, the people I have spoken to communicated with me in perfect English. Perhaps they are just use to ignorant foreigners like myself and have learnt important bits of the language to save themselves some hassle.

I have to say on the language front actually, that whenever I go away (including Korea) it is always ridiculously humbling to hear people speaking ‘your’ language when communicating with you. We seem to have a mentality in England that foreigners are in ‘our’ country and should therefore speak English, but when we go abroad it seems to be the opposite.

I know that a large proportion of the world speaks English, or learns it at least, but going to Spain and attempting to speak something I learned over five years ago, it’s quite embarrassing how much I have forgotten, or if I was stuck, how little I would actually be able to communicate. What I like about ‘foreigners’ is that they will at least try to speak English, we, as a nation, just don’t really bother. I see it at polite when you go abroad to at least be able to say the basics in the language ‘please’, ‘thank you’, ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’, it doesn’t take much effort and I am proud to say in most places where I can I have done my best to communicate in the native tounge with the locals.

In Spain it is a little easier because even if words are spelt differently, you can sound them out and try and prounounce them, Greek is a bit different because I am not sure of the alphabet and they have different ‘symbols’ representing sounds as well as letters. That’s what it seems like from the little reading I have done anyway’. It’s funny that even though I am learning Italian at the moment, and have learnt Spanish for a few years, my default foreign language response is usually in French and occasionally in Korean, something which is even less use than English to them.

One wish that I do have is that I was actually bi-lingual so that I didn’t feel quite so useless when I travelled abroad. If you are immersed in the language you are trying to learn, I feel it is a lot better for you, than just trying to learn the odd phrase or pick up what people say. I think as a nation we probably shouldn’t take language so lightly, particularily in schools as we just see it as something which has to be done in the curriculum. Learning about different cultures, nations and their languages would probably serve us a lot better than the educational tools we are using right now.

After munching down my dinner, I sat and ‘people watched’ for a bit before heading back to my hotel. Night has well and truly set in and there’s something rather intimidating about being in a foreign place when the sun is not out. I did see, however, one of the strangest things I have ever seen in terms of food which is a guy come into the restaurant where I was eating and order a strange concoction in his sandwich. I’m not sure of which language he was communicating in as the man behind the counter was mainy responding to a combination of broken English and grunts. Inside a Panini this customer had a chopped up omlette, cheese, onions and French fries, which were then toasted and taken away…. Work that one out if you can. Would be a bit like putting lasage in a sandwich!

Anyway, I plan to spend of what is left this evening re-energising after a day or travelling and cancelled flights, I look forward to waking up tomorrow ready to see the sights of Athens and everything that it has to offer.