Greek Myths

Greece is back on the front pages and a tragedy again, where is Midas and his golden touch?

When I was a little girl I was handed The Bible Stories, The Arabian Nights and The Greek Myths. It was obvious to me that I was a Greek. In Latin class all the stories started “erat olim in Graecia” Once upon a time in Greece.

As an adult I looked forward to visiting the monuments and the shrines I had only seen in history books or in the case of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum ripped from Praxiteles’ frieze and carted off for “:safekeeping “ in a northern clime, or the Victory of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo ensconced in the Louvre.

I lied to Elliot and told him that the Mediterranean would be like a lake in March. No stories of Ulysses taking ten years to return home on storm tossed seas. We were drawn to the Shrine at Delphi to see the Omphalos of the ancient world where the Oracle sitting on a three legged stool predicted the fate of Oedipus. We visited Corinth and stood on the bema where St Paul preached to the unruly crowds. It was said that in ancient Corinth one could hear a dozen tongues spoken in the agora. One could see a neolithic shrine still here 6000 years later or the Corinth Canal where British airmen had jumped to their death hoping to escape from German occupied Greece.

The most exciting if unplanned and unpleasant was our stay in Athens. The first day or two were fine, even though a general strike had been announced. By Friday the strikers were full to the brim with ouzo and antipathy, many “Americans go home” chants. We went about our tourist business in all innocence., We had no idea what a general strike meant. Our bus downtown stopped running and we learned of another a few blocks further from the hotel. We arrived at the Binacki Museum. They let us in and locked the door behind us which was comforting, sort of entering a safe womb. When we had finished viewing the fabulous gold we left the museum..and they locked the doors behind us which was less than comforting. The street was eerily empty although one could hear the strikers in the distance and see the gray painted school bus full of gray uniformed soldiers. Then they tear gassed us. Our friend the professor knew we were being tear gassed because he had been at Kent State. Then it was bedlam, no buses no transport at all. A taxi pulled up and I got in with another couple. We were six and I assumed another cab would come and take the remaining three. The cabs only held three passengers. I had the passport. Elliot arrived at the hotel three hours later much the worse for wear. No passport, no Greek language he walked back to the hotel through the street fires and tear gas. When he arrived he was furious I had deserted him in his three hours of need.

Paris in the Springtime

Yvonne and David are going to Paris next week. He for a business meeting she because she lucked out on the dates of Spring vacation and was "added on". Poor child I have been bombarding her with ancient tips and information probably none of it age appropriate for that matter century appropriate.

When Marianna and I rented the apartment in the fifth arondissement several years ago we glimpsed the lights of the Eiffel tower from the restaurant we ate in the first night of our stay. It was reminiscent of the first time we had seen the lights from our balcony when we came to Paris as green teenagers to spend our junior year.

We lived in the eighteenth in a very residential pre-World War II building. The elevator was to be used to go up. Walk down the five flights please. The hall lights were on a timer and one raced from floor to floor to push the button to illuminate the stairwell to descend further.

We lived with the family Mullander: Madame, Monsieur, Grand Pere, the daughter and son-in-law just returned from North Africa and Bruno who was four years old. If anyone spoke English they kept it to themselves. Our major communication difficulty was with Bruno as we had no vocabulary suitable for dealing with a four year old. Although we did exclaim at dinner on the wonderful carrion we had just eaten. Most of our vocabulary came from Verlaine and Beaudelaire. Grandpere had traveled in the States at the turn of the century and had carried a gun with him for fear of the redskins and the gangsters. He always asked us about our war, the Korean war, as if we were in control, or even knowledgeable.

Madame was a wonderful cook. I sent home recipes for the exotic lunches she made for us. My mother resented this thoroughly. Madame opened each spice tin in turn so we could smell and learn the French name. We had wine with every meal Bruno also had wine watered by more than half. Monsieur Mullander was an insomniac given to painting things like the toilet seat in the middle of the night. Each morning we went off to school at 4 rue de Chatreuse for lessons in grammar and reading and writing proper French. We translated Churchill into French, De Gaulle into English. We returned after lunch for culture lectures. As soon as the light went off for the slides I fell asleep so I missed much of the culture.

On days when there were no lectures we had a map and instructions on exploring Paris century by century starting on the Ile de la Cite an expanding each week into a larger concentric circle. These adventures are for another day.