It was the same greeting I hear every day from shopkeepers trying to invite me into their store. “Hello! Where are you from?” I usually answer just to be nice since I don’t like to ignore people. “America,” I said, “from Oregon.” The next question I would never have expected anywhere outside of Oregon. “Are you a duck or a beaver?” I stopped mid step. “Beaver,” I replied, stunned that someone in Greece would know the two state university mascots. The middle aged man was sitting on a small chair outside a jewelry shop on the main street in Olympia, Greece. When he smiled up at me I saw that he was missing two teeth on the top row. “That’s in Corvallis, right? I’ve never been there, been to Portland and Eugene though,” he said. I felt gravitated towards this man who seemed so familiar so quickly. He spoke in perfect English and yet had just the right thickness of accent for me to know he was a native Greek. He was wearing a plain orange polo with some simple tan slacks and reminded me of someone that would actually fit in back home. It was also the first time I’d seen someone wearing the color orange in Greece. It turned out that his name was Γιώργος (the Greek version of George) and he owned the little jewelry shop.
He asked me after a few minutes if I wanted to sit and have a coffee with him. I hesitated, not sure how far we would be going in order to get coffee, but then he pointed to the café right next to his shop. I took about 5 steps to the left and sat down at a small table. He took the seat across from me and signaled an older man who appeared to know Γιώργος quite well. Γιώργος asked me if I wanted a beer or a coffee and I must have looked puzzled at why the choice was necessary. “It’s around noon,” he said, “maybe you were looking for a beer.” I told him that a frappe was fine and he seemed impressed that I knew of such things. He ordered a bottle of water for himself and I scolded him for not getting a coffee with me like he said. “I’ve already had three today,” he explained, so I let it slide.
When I asked Γιώργος if he was born in Olympia he was very proud to inform me he was a 7th generation Olympian and everyone else in town were just Albanians or “fake Olympians” to him. I could tell he had a lot of pride in his town so I asked him what there was to do here; I figured he ought to know best. I wanted to find a place for dinner that the locals went instead of the tourist trap restaurants that charge too much for too little. He told me there was a place nearby that he liked to eat at for dinner if I wanted authentic Greek food and then asked me if I’d like to have dinner with him there that night. I was shocked, so I stumbled over the question, pretending to not have heard his invitation. Instead, I asked what it was called. He waved his hand off into the distance and told me it was down and around the corner. I changed the subject and asked him if there were clubs in the area and what the nightlife was like in Olympia. He mentioned there was one club that I shouldn’t go to because “things” happen there, but another club in town would be really great to go to that night if I wanted to. He gave me the name of the club and then the conversation focused more on him.
We talked about his job as an engineer in the states and why he had visited Oregon. He had actually gone to school for a couple years at UCLA and then traveled all over the US for his job as a civil engineer. He told me that his favorite place was New Orleans, Louisiana. He ended up coming back home to Olympia because of his family and stopped his career as an engineer because he would have had to live in Athens to keep that type of job. Now that he was back in Olympia he takes care of his family and works the little jewelry shop because he likes the tourists. We talked about Greek culture and what Athens is like compared to the islands or places like Olympia. He recommended an island or two that I should go see before leaving Greece, or maybe coming back to visit in the future.
When the topic of what I had purchased so far in Greece came up I told him I had been buying a lot of jewelry. I said my favorite piece so far was a blue opal ring I found in Crete. He asked some detailed questions about the ring and when he wasn’t satisfied with my answers he suddenly got up from the table and went into his shop. He returned a few minutes later holding a ring on a small stand. “Does the stone look like this?” he asked. I replied that it didn’t and he frowned, saying, “This is what real blue opal should look like. You didn’t get the real thing.” He waved for me to follow him into his shop to take a look at his wares. I then found a bracelet with a large turquoise stone in the middle that was beautiful and he had me wear it around for a while. He wrote the price down on a small piece of paper and set it down on the counter. “Guess how much it costs,” he said, “I won’t change the actual price just the price on the paper.” I was flustered and guessed something higher than I actually thought it was to avoid offending him. He laughed when I guessed, “70 euros.” The price was only 30! I finally decided to buy the bracelet as a memento of this strange coincidental meeting. Γιώργος gave me his business card with my little bag and showed me the back of his card with some common phrases in Greek such as “thank you – efcharisto” and “good morning – kalimera”. He said he put the phrases on there in the hopes that tourists would keep his card. I thanked him again for the bracelet and started to make my way out the door when he asked me to dinner again. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said, “and I think it’s good that you think like that, but look around, I promise you it is safe here! This is a small town, it’s just dinner so we can talk more about America and about Greece.” I told him I would think about it and asked when he was planning on going to dinner. “10:30,” he said, “after the shop closes.” I left him that afternoon not quite sure if I’d be going back to that jewelry shop again.
A few hours later at a café with some friends a man came to our table and gave us a business card telling us we should all come to his club that night. The name on the card wasn’t the same as the name Γιώργοςhad given me earlier so I wondered if this was the club he had warned me not to go to. It was our last night in the Peloponissos, however, and a couple of us really wanted to go out that night. I resolved the afternoon’s issue of going to dinner or not by inviting my friend Dani to join me for dinner to give me a reason to leave in order for us to go to the club afterwards. I decided it would also be useful to see Γιώργος again to ask him about the nature of this club we were invited to.
Dani and I met Γιώργος that night just as he was closing shop and he seemed very happy to see us. He also had another American to question now and they talked most of the way to the taverna. It was a small place with some locals eating dinner already and we sat down at a table outside. Γιώργος asked us if we knew what we wanted for dinner and we quickly realized just how “local” the place was since there was no menu to be had. He waved his hand and said not to worry about it; he would get us some authentic Greek things. I thought I had tried everything in Greece after eating at places for over two months but I was wrong! A spicy cheese dip was accompanied by a loaf of bread along with what appeared to be a Greek form of bruschetta. The appetizer was a round piece of wheat bread layered with chunky tomato and topped with feta cheese cut into moist pieces. Since Dani and I had eaten only a few hours previously we were hoping that this was the end of our meal. We were stuffed now that the bread and dips had been consumed over conversation about our life in Greece the last couple months.
Just as we were hoping to turn the conversation into us leaving for the club we got a large surprise in the form of meat. I had just finished asking Γιώργος about the club we were planning on going to (it turned out it was in fact the one he had warned me against visiting) when a gigantic platter of different meats and French fries with tzatziki was set on our table. I looked wide-eyed at the platter of food and seriously considered calling up the rest of our group to come help finish it so we wouldn’t be there all night. At that point our hopes of going out on the town had been dashed and we settled in for more food, wine, and conversation. It was 2 am before we decided we couldn’t eat another bite of the sausage, lamb, chicken, or pork. The tzatziki hadn’t even been touched! Γιώργος paid for our meal entirely and wouldn’t even consider us helping him with the bill. He walked us back to our hotel up the road and we bid him a good night knowing we probably wouldn’t be seeing him again. The night was truly wonderful and I’ll always remember my time in Olympia, Greece when I wear my bracelet. Γιώργος was a great example of the Greek hospitality I’ve grown to love and I’ll always smile when I think of him and his two missing teeth.
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Katherine's Grecian Adventure 