Friday, July 18th 2008

For my last day in Greece I was going to have a nice quiet day. Walking the Acropolis and the other ancient sites on Wednesday, and walking over Hydra yesterday had worn me out. So today I was taking up a traditional Greek past time that goes back to the days of Aristotle, wandering around thinking about things. In particular my thoughts were occupied with why we travel, and how it was sad that I was wandering around all these monuments to an ancient civilisation without taking it in beyond a superficial level. I also had a bit of a headache, which I put down to lack of food, lack of water, or lack of sleep. Unfortunately two Australian girls had moved into our room at two AM and decided to complain loudly amongst themselves about taxi drivers and the hostel. They were a paradox; they apologised several times for waking me and the other guy in the room and then carried on talking. It is probably fair to say that I was a little grumpy as well.

I had a fairly small list of goals for the day. I wanted to head back up to the temple of the unknown god to see if I could get better panorama shots of Athens. I wanted to head over to a couple of places that the tour had bypassed (such as the observatory) on the tour, and get pictures of the Olympic stadium. I had to head down to the pier at some point to check out the enormous toy store to see if they had stuffed hippos. Finally I had to find “God’s restaurant”, a place my mother had absolutely raved about and made sure I had the address of before I left for Athens. I think she was going to disown me if I didn’t go, so I had dutifully placed a mark on my street map of the restaurant.

I grabbed some water and made my way up the Acropolis. I found some neat things up there, such as the prison Socrates was placed in, and I spent some time pondering on Philopappos (The hill of the muses). After sitting up there a while, my water depleted, I still had my headache and still felt quite hungry. God’s restaurant was on the opposite side of the hill and it seemed like a logical next step to make. I have a reasonably good sense of direction, and with the street map the restaurant was not that hard to find. I only had €10 in my pocket, and a quick glance at the menu indicated that a meal would probably run a little higher than that. Still, I had not had a lot of Greek food and my mother insisted this place was worth it, so why not splurge a little? It looked like quite a small place, so I did not want to use Visa there as they would incur the merchant fees (not to mention the currency conversion fees I would face). Instead my plan was to withdraw a fair amount of Euros to cover me here and my trip to Italy, reducing the transactions fees I had to pay.

The area the restaurant is in is the Southern end of the Plaka district. This is a district of small, winding roads occupied by small bunches of people or no one at all. The roads do not make nice right angles, but insead the angles vary from 15 to 25 degrees making it difficult to find things in the Plaka. It is easy not to get lost, however, if you make your reference points things outside the Plaka. The Acropolis is an obvious reference point, as is the other hill poking out over Athens. The sun makes a good East-West marker too. The main point to emphasise here is that it is easy to find your way out of this district to where you want to be, but difficult without a map to find places within the Plaka district. The district is quite old fashioned as well, and after twenty minutes of wandering around it seemed that my best bet for finding a cash machine was to head into town. I was making my way out onto the main road when a small excited man called out “Excuse me!”. He flagged me down, asking if I knew what the hours of the National Architectural Museum were. Naturally I didn’t know off-hand, but I always appreciate people helping me, so I told him I had a guide book and I would look it up for him.

The National Architectural Museum was in my guide book, but oddly enough the opening hours were not in there. It did not seem to matter anymore to the man, who introduced himself as Francisco. He was Italian, lived in Tourino and worked as a design engineer on Alpha cars. He had arrived in Greece at 9:30 this morning, and tomorrow would start his business trip on working with the Greeks to design Alphas for the local market. He asked about me, where I was from and what I did. He was quite pleased to find out I was from New Zealand, and talked about his sister who was a paediatrician over in Christchurch. He seemed interested in wandering to the Olympic stadium, and asked if I had any interest in seeing the animals in the national park, located next to the parliamentary buildings. I thought I would just come back to the restaurant for dinner, this guy seemed friendly enough and my morning musings on why we travel had made me think about getting to know other people and other cultures better. And what better way to learn?

I don’t want to seem like I would follow somebody anywhere, especially down the narrow streets of the Plaka district where you quite often end up being alone. But Francisco was quite a bit shorter than I was, and I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I sized him up and thought that if he attacked me I would probably come out of it all right. If he just wanted to take my money then I suppose I could afford to forfeit €10. It is somewhat sad that I thought like this, but my experiences in Bangkok had lead me to be a little more suspicious of people than I would like. And at the I moment there was no mention of anything involving money so it was hard to see how a scam would work if he was pulling one on me I was impressed with how well he navigated his way through the Plaka for one morning in Greece. I have a good sense of direction, but his must be phenomenal! He laughed when I mentioned this to him, saying that he had started wandering around when he first got here and new the area around his hotel fairly well.

Francisco made no move to attack me, instead he went on about his family and his dog. He even invited me to go and stay with him if I was ever back in Italy near Torino. “We stop somewhere, I give you my address” he told me as we marched through the Plaka. He was quite a talker, although his English was broken and he had quite a thick accent making him hard to understand. Still he seemed quite happy to chat away, and after finding out I was leaving the next day for Italy started telling me what various nouns were in Italian. Before heading into the park he stopped by a doughnut stand to get some food, which he split with me. Now I was costing him money, so I put aside my concerns about him being out to scam me. The doughnut was pretty good too; eating the sugar allowed my headache to subside. We then wandered around the park, chatting about various animals and learning their names in Italian. “You like music?” Francisco asked me. “I have a friend, very good music”. The first time he mentioned this I could swear he said “in a park”, but his English was thickly accented and it was difficult to pick things out. Sure, I would go and listen to his friend’s music, at least for a little while. So together we made our way back through the Plaka district to the New York Pub. It is not very impressive to look at from the outside, but Francisco is talking about how good it is.

We step inside and the place is very odd. For a start, it is quite dark and the place only has the bartender and two women in there. There is music playing, but it is fairly standard Greek music playing over a small stereo system. In retrospect that should have been my first hint that something was seriously wrong, but Francisco asked me to sit with him and was very enthusiastic. Francisco ordered a glass of wine, while I ordered an orange juice. “Don’t you drink?” he asked me. “No, I prefer not to” I replied. Especially in such an odd place, I thought to myself. Francisco was not put out at all “Soon the good music will start” he told me, and waved the two women down. One sat next to Francisco, the other next to me. Francisco ordered a glass of wine for the lady sitting next to him, and suggested I do the same. Now I was really uncomfortable. I asked for a glass of wine for the woman next to me, and just wanted to get me drink finished and politely leave. I was especially glad now that I was not drinking anything with alcohol in it! Francisco was acting silly with both the girls, saying things like “Your name is Niki? We passed a Nikis street on the way here! It must be your street!”

Our drinks arrived; mine was not orange juice but some sort of orange soda. It was non-alcoholic, however, so I didn’t complain. Francisco was acting more and more outrageous, and it looked like the whole event could become rather …. embarrassing before long. After I finished up I asked the bartender for the bill. He returned with two receipts: one for me and one for Francisco. On each one there were three lines: 10⁰, 160⁰ and 170⁰. I looked somewhat surprised: €17? I suppose these were expensive glasses of wine, and this was one of those take advantage of foreigners schemes. I would just put it on VISA and let it be a lesson learned. After all, it could be a lot worse. Although it was odd how only one of the decimal places was raised. “That is 170 euros each” the bartender told us. See – it could be much worse! I looked at Francisco expecting him to complain or be mad as well, but instead he was still smiling and handed the bartender a €200 bill.

Now I don’t care how rich you are, you don’t happily buy yourself a €10 drink and someone you’ve never met before a €160 drink. Francisco would go out and find tourists, and offer to take them to listen to music which is something reasonably safe (and inexpensive) sounding. He would get them back here, run up a huge bill with overpriced drinks, “pay” his bill and later he would split my bill with the bartender and two girls. It explained a lot: his knowledge of the Plaka district despite being in Athens only one day, the remarkable coincidence that he had a sister working in Christchurch. I had to give him at least grudging admiration, not only had I been completely suckered by him but he had spent around an hour wandering around with me first. If I had decided I was busy or walked away at any point during that time he would have made nothing. To make the whole process economical they must have two or three “grifters” like Francisco picking up tourists.

If you find yourself in this situation, probably the best thing to do is to refuse to pay and ask to speak to the police. This is an excellent solution if you are being scammed and outside it is a busy street, or there are lots of other customers. If you are stuck in a dark corner, everyone else in the bar is complicit in the scam, and the street outside is only sporadically busy then it may not be the best plan of (in)action. After considering and rejecting this first plan, I told the bartender that I only had €10, and that I would have to go to an ATM if he wanted more. I pulled out my wallet and gave him the 10 euro bill, and showed him that was in fact all my cash. “Which card will you use?” the bartender asked me. I pointed to it, and to my surprise he reached down and took it. The bartender told Francisco to come with us to the ATM, confirming to me that they were working together.

The bartender did not bother trying to make twists and turns, instead he took a fairly direct route back to the city centre. Along the way Francisco was telling him I was a student, and that I was from New Zealand.
“Ah, student. This must be a lot of money for you, yes?”
It’s a lot of money for anyone I thought, but simply replied “yes”.
He explained to me that in Greece that if you buy drinks for girls in the bars it is very expensive. I explained that I was buying a drink, not trying to buy a girl and he laughed. The bartender got on his cell phone and spoke to his boss. Whether or not there was anyone on the other end of the line, I don’t know. But when he put the phone down he told me because I didn’t know how things worked and I was a student they would call in even at €120. “Just be more careful in future, that is how things are done in Greece”.

The three of us reached Syntagma square, and we went right up to the ATM before my card was returned. Now that I had my card I considered running. I had paid him the €10 for my “orange juice” so it did not seem too morally dubious. But there were two of them and they knew the streets better than I did, but that was only an advantage if you were trying to find a specific place. There were enough twists and turns that I would probably lose them if I got away initially. The problem with this plan is that I would have a crowd of people say that I suddenly started running, and if they stopped me and got the police involved it would look really bad. They would probably be nervous about involving the police, but if I ran it seemed plausible that I would end up under arrest.

There were two other solutions that did not occur to me at the time, and that I would highly recommend to anyone that finds themselves in a similar situation. The first is to simply go and suggest that the three of you go and speak to a policeman, and confirm that the way this gentleman runs his business really is the way things are done in Greece. Now you are in a big open space, and there are lots of witnesses. The bartender is also under additional time pressure as he has to get back to his bar. If it turns out the local customs really are as perverse as described then you pay up, but at least you avoid the possibility of being arrested. The second possibility is to simply walk away. If they grab you or start threatening, then start calling for the police or help loudly. If it is you calling the police over it works much better in your favour, and the first anyone in the crowd will notice of the three of you is the pair of people harassing you. I did not think of either of these solutions; instead I discarded the idea of running and handed the bartender €100 which he said was “good enough”. I know I should have thought of the other two solutions now, but when you are there being pressured by someone, tired and feeling fairly stupid for falling for such a scam you are typically not thinking the quickest.

After receiving the money the bartender quickly disappeared, and Francisco apologised saying he had no idea that was going to happen and his only interest had been in listening to some music. Oh well, he had to go now, he informed me. I was left alone to wander around Athens; a little wiser perhaps, definitely a littler poorer. At least I finally found an ATM I told myself, in a vain effort to find humour in the situation. With nothing left to do I made my way to God’s restaurant. My mother would never let me forget it if I went to Athens and did not eat there. I made my walk back across the Plaka district and ordered drink and a moussaka. The food there was very good and I would highly recommend it, but I was too upset about the events of the afternoon to really enjoy the meal. The restaurant was quite quiet, and after finishing my meal I told the waiter what had happened and asked him if it was worth going to the police. “Of course”, he told me. After all, the worst they could do is take a report and make things easier for the next tourist that was caught out. He gave me directions to the nearest police station, and after settling my bill I was on my way.

Going to the first police station was not very useful. I was told that this was a very small police station and they did not deal with such issues here. Instead I should make my way across town to the main station, which the officer kindly marked on my map. The officer was quite insistent that I use the metro, then ask for directions on the North side of town. I thanked him and then headed out across the Plaka to make the journey on foot. This was not simply to be contrary; over the distance of two metro stops it was actually quicker to go by foot than to wait for a metro to show up, and I also wanted to locate the bar precisely on my map to aid the police as much as possible. One advantage of being scammed by a business is that they are in a fixed location! I may not have found the place again, if I had not remembered one of Francisco’s comments: “Your name is Niki? We passed a Nikis street on the way here! It must be your street!”

Running across the Plaka on a hot Athens afternoon is not an activity I would recommend. After a few minutes the sweat beads up along your forehead, mixing with the dust and pollutants that are ubiquitous in the dirty Athenian air. As these beads fall some of the dirt-water mixture gets into your eyes, stinging slightly. Wiping your forehead triggers a cascade of such drops entering your eyes, but buys you a few minutes of freedom before the sweat builds up again. With stinging eyes I make my way through the windy roads, and with the aid of my pocket map found Nikis street. I walked along the street quickly until I came across the New York Pub. I took note of the cross street and went down one of the side streets. Once out of sight of the pub, I pulled out my map and marked the location of the pub on it.

Now I made my way across Athens to find the Acropolis police station. Navigating in Athens is quite difficult, because while most districts have nice perpendicular roads the roads from different districts are at different perpendicular angles. It would remind a physicist or a chemist of domain walls in magnetism or crystal growth! The street names are typically written in Greek, while my map had all the street names in Anglicised Greek. I pulled out my map to try and figure out where I had ended up and saw someone waiting for the light. Breaking the “guy code” I decide that I would simply ask her for directions. As it turns out, she was incredibly helpful, and spoke fluent English. Unfortunately to start with she thought I wanted to go to the Acropolis site on the top of the hill, and started taking me to the metro. “No, I want to go to the Acropolis police station” I kept repeating, while she kept telling me that it was easy to get on the metro to go to the Acropolis. After a couple of minutes she heard the words “police station”, and started questioning me on what had happened. I related the story to her as we walked along.
“There is not much they can do about it, I’m afraid. You should really be more careful”, she told me.
I told her that I did not think I would get my money back, but that I was still interested in making a report to make things easier for future tourists. She quite helpfully asked strangers for directions to the station, and after five minutes walking around on the street we found it. This woman was incredibly helpful, as she came with me into the station and translated my testimony from English into Greek for the officer. This process took around 30 minutes before I was told to wait, and that some officers would go with me to the pub. The Greek woman I encountered on the street told me she had to leave as she had an appointment, but gave me her business card and address to contact her if I was every back in Athens. Looking at the card I discovered the woman’s occupation — she was a lawyer! Imagine my good fortunate to have come across a lawyer in Greece that was fluent in English, simply by asking directions to the police station. The down side is after meeting this woman I think I shall have to forgo telling any lawyer jokes for at least a month!

About an hour later a couple of Greek officers approached me and asked me for the short version of this story, namely how much and where. “One hundred Euros” I told the officer, and pulled out the pocket map and showed them where the pub was located. The officers escorted me downstairs and we all got into a police car. If you have ever been to Athens you will know the way they drive is insane. Like anywhere else, the police drive in a manner that is more insane than the other drivers. The police drove up the narrow touristy roads of the Acropolis, where the roads were cobbled and rarely wider than about three people across. Occasionally we knocked over chairs from cafes that were a little too far out on the road. It was not a high speed trip, but it was somewhat exhilarating to see them squeeze the car into the narrow lanes designed for pedestrians and maybe the occasional donkey.

As we pulled up to the bar I started to worry a little. Would they say that they had never seen me before? Would they claim that I had eaten and drunk a lot there? Would they claim that I had “purchased” one of the women? It seemed like it would be difficult or even impossible to prove that I had gone in for a drink of orange-like substance. The curtains were all drawn around the pub as we pulled up, and the bartender looked out the window suspiciously. When I left the police car the bartender saw me and waved a little. That seemed promising; at least he was not going to deny that I had ever been there.

I entered the bar with one of the officers. The bartender put on a smiling face, and I was quite prepared to smile back.
“I gave you €60 discount, you still not happy?” he asked me as we came in.
“Not really.” I told him as we entered.
The two women pulled faces at me and started raising their voices until the bartender stopped them. The policeman muttered something to him in Greek, and the bartender surprised me by offering me €100 back so that I would only pay for my drink. I told him that I thought that would be a satisfactory solution. I had to stay for a few more minutes while the officer took down some of my details such as my name and where I was staying in Greece. While I was standing there the bartender asked me who had given me the idea of going to the police. I told him that it did not really matter, and eventually he gave up pressing me on the issue. Finally I was allowed to go, cash in hand, while the officer remained behind to continue questioning the girls and the bartender.

Some of you may feel that I got ripped off still: €10 for a drink of orange soda? That is one expensive drink! The way I see it, the €10 bought me a ride through the Acropolis, a story that I could tell and the satisfaction of the people trying to scam me gain €10 for an hour and a half of leading me through town and then having to be questioned by the police. I feel it was worth the price.

It was now almost 7 pm and the sun was setting. Time to climb the Acropolis one more time and find something to eat. Or failing that at least something to drink ……. =)

My map of Athens

Photos of Athens, and a few remainder