Changes I've noticed in Greece, Part 1, or, I miss the old Retsina

St. Francis of Assisi outside his church in Rhodes - click to enlarge


I don't have much time to do this--the Germans are patiently watching me, and of course, they can read this too, since they sit five feet behind me. OK, I am uploading this off the USB stick, and hope I edited it when I wrote it (I don't remember!).

Changes in Europe in general - I won't focus on how very expensive it is here. Unlike our last trip, we've seen very few Americans. It is very pricy in Europe right now, even in lower cost destinations like Turkey and Greece.



Jack outside a console club in Rhodes...the consoles are Game Cube, PS/2, and XBox

The E.U. seems like the biggest change, and it really feels like the destinies of most of the EU countries are now even more strongly interlinked than ever before. The common currency in particular seems both an aspirational thing and a burden. I kind of miss Drachmas.

Retsina - When we were in Greece in 1982, almost al the restsina you drank came from a wooden barrel, often served in a ceramic or copper pitcher. We have had a lot of retsina on this trip, but none so far has come from the barrel (at least directly). It is almost always served in 500 ML bottles (a regular bottle of wine is 750 ML). It is still pretty cheap. Back then it was about $1.00 a bottle. Now, it is more like 2-3 Euros for the 500 ML size ($3 to $4.50 USD). I kind of miss some of that barrel retsina, since once in a while you’d get some heavily resinated wine. Now, it is resinated, but not too much. I miss that more over the top version, unsurprisingly—who wants subtle? Claire seems to like Retsina, but Column does not…in fact he coined the name Wine-Sol for it.

English - Since this was my first trip to Turkey. I don’t know how their English was way back when. But I thought they spoke a surprising amount this time around. Even though we’ve seen very few Americans on this trip, and not all that many Aussies or Brits, English is spoken much more in Greece than before. Not so much as anaccomodation to language-weak Americans, but as the mutual language between Euro-language speakers. It is common to see, say, a German, a Greek, A japanese and a Dutch person speaking English...their one common language.

If signs plaques, or posters are translated, they are almost always in both Greek and English. Museums in particular follow this convention. In Greece, street signs are often now transliterated. When I was here before, you had to at least learn the Greek alphabet to get around.

The American Presidency - Some things never change. When we were here in 1982, the Europeans did not at all like our President, Ronald Reagan. In 2008, they really really do not like our President, George Bush. Our landlord laughingly made the cut his throat sign about Bush when she asked us what we thought about Mr. Bush. He has not made anything easier for anyone here, and most of these countries—part of the “coalition”—lost boys in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Greeks in particular seem fond of “America.” As far as I can tell, mainly because there is a large Greek community in America, and almost all of them have an uncle, cousin, aunt, or brother living in the United States. Or maybe it’s because of Telly Savalas. More on the changes later. Love, Jack
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