THIS is what it's all about

I'm taking a quick detour from our chronological travelog to relate a very nice encounter. On our third day in Athens, after having trouped the kids through the Acropolis and Acropolis museum, we found a nice, non-touristy pedestrian area lined with cafes. (Athens is full of areas like this – it really is a nice city, much different than the popadopoly we encountered 20 years ago, but that is a story for another day). (As far as the “non-touristy” part – at this time of year, pretty much everything is non-touristy from what we've seen so far – and that's the way we like it. In four days in Athens, we only saw a group of tourists once, off one of the big cruise ships that dock in Piraeus and send groups into Athens for a quick visit to the old sites and the shops.) As we were sitting there finishing up our coffees and hot chocolates, a cute little girl ran up to our table and said something to Ellie in very fast Greek. At least we thought it was very fast Greek. For all we know it could have been regular Greek but we can't tell the difference. After Ellie looked at her with a quizzical look on her face, the girl looked around at the rest of us expectantly. The best response we could muster was “Angliki” (English) because, despite having been told how to say it at least 17 times, we can not remember how to say “I don't speak Greek.”

The girl held up her finger in the international symbol for “wait a minute,” and ran off. Sure enough, she was back in a minute with her doll and asked Ellie, “Do you want to play?” in cute, broken English. The little girl introduced herself (Dora) and her doll. Dara quickly scanned the crowd to see what could be behind this, and sure enough, at the cafe diagonally across the way, the little girl's mother waved to us with the international symbol for, “It's ok, my little girl is not an axe-murderer.” With a little encouragement from us, Ellie got up and they started to play with the doll.

After a few minutes, Dora's mother, Despina, came over, introduced herself and invited Ellie and Ari to come over to their table because they had ordered a piece of chocolate cake and they wanted to share it. So the kids reluctantly (yeah, right) went off to eat chocolate cake. After a few minutes, we paid our bill and went over to introduce ourselves.

Despina speaks English very well. Her husband, Ilias, understands English, but does not speak it very much. Between that and the four words of non-food Greek that we know, we were able to communicate very well (and we only know four because “please” and “thank you” are the same thing). Dora (short for Theodora) evidently is not shy at all and it was completely her idea to go ask Ellie to play. The girls were very cute together, despite the language barrier. Dora has been taking English lessons for about a year and does remarkably well considering it has not been very long. They did cartwheels, drew pictures and played tic tac toe and more. Every now and then, Dora would turn to Ellie and say, “Run.” And the two girls would take off up the street giggling as they ran. We (the adults and Ari) had a very nice conversation and exchanged e-mail addresses.

That night, when we returned to the apartment, Dara e-mailed them a couple pictures of the girls that we had taken. The next day, Despina e-mailed back and said she would like to invite us over to their house for dinner. We soon discovered, however, that that evening wouldn't work for their family and, unfortunately, we were leaving Athens early the next day. A few minutes later, we received a phone call and Despina offered instead to come pick us up and go to a local amusement park. This we were able to arrange and we ended up having a great evening. We took the metro down to the outskirts of the city where they met us. We walked around the amusement park – it was like Gillian's on the boardwalk in Ocean City, NJ, but nicer. There was an area for kiddie rides and an area with more adventurous rides. But it was nice to walk around and you could just pay for the rides you wanted to go on. So the kids went on a couple rides and we all ate hot dogs (They know how to do hot dogs there – a nice grilled bun lined with cabbage and fried onions and a big fat hot dog smothered with mustard, ketchup and mayonnaise.)

It was great to meet Despina, Ilias and Dora. Getting to know them and experiencing their hospitality and warmth was one of the real treats of the trip so far. THAT is what this trip is really all about.

Dora and Ellie drawing pictures at the cafe

Quick friends - Dara, Ilias, Ari, Mark, Despina, Dora and Ellie

The pedestrian walkway lined with cafes near Syntagma Square in Athens

Ellie and Ari ready to go on the puke-n-ride (as Mark and I like to call it!)  The park was clean and bright and a great escape from more ancient ruins for the kids.

Dora's FIRST EVER HOT DOG!! YUM!!

We brought along some I Love NY t-shirts to give to new friends we meet along the way.  Here's Ellie signing the shirt for Dora... We hope she'll remember us whenever she wears it!

We love you too, Dora!  Maybe you can come visit us in the USA one day! (You too, Despina and Ilias!)

The Greek name for cotton candy literally translates to "old lady hair"...get it?