My third time in Greece. The first was our honeymoon, the second one a return to clean beaches after the Indian experience. This time it's a business trip and I can honestly say that I've never been on a more difficult business trip than this. There is a lot at stake: my American-born Greek husband (at least it would seem this way here; he generally prefers to label himself an American of Greek descent, happily describing his Grandfather's village, Paelochori, meaning Old Village, at 1,000 meters, so remote you have to list about 3 other villages in the valley it is “near to” to anyone who asks, but the Greeks won't have any of it: you are Greek) is possessed by an idee fixe, a veritable fixture in his mind, to buy a house in said Old Village for the modest sum of 67,000 Euros (at current exchange rates roughly equivalent to 90,000 USD) and mentally turn it into a mountain chalet to whisk away his paying guests to in the heat of summer. Except that the business is just getting launched, and the house is in need of a bit of TLC and quite a bit of real work before one might be able to consider it charming by any stretch of the imagination. This is all the more fascinating as my husband has just recently professed to be “all about charm” which is quite amusing given his sarcastic and sometimes caustic nature. But the perfect charm for a place three times the price in a would-be seaside village doesn't quite cut it either: all the work is done already and despite the views of the eternally blue Greek sea from the terrace and all the curb appeal of an old ruin lovingly restored, the place is too small and we find ourselves doing a dance with the lovely German couple who have no other reason to sell than to return to Germany to be near their grandchild – this property review having long since turned into a social visit Greek style, with the obligatory kafee (in this case espresso to account for the foreign influence; generally a thick paste prepared by boiling the grounds, adding equal parts sugar, and leaving them in the bottom of the cup which can later be read like tea leaves should you be so lucky to find yourself in the presence of a qualified older lady).

The similarities to India are undeniable. Thirty years years ago, this country was considered part of the European Third World. EU membership has brought a lot of funds for public works construction (and higher prices!) but you can still see old men and women riding donkeys with a load of sticks – firewood – strapped to either side of the animal's belly. The building style in the suburbs of Athens, and even for some of the newer houses in the villages is remarkably similar to what we saw in Bangalore: the same squat, square boxes, flat roofs, the re-bar sticking out at the top to simplify the later addition of a separate apartment for a child or in-law, the colors all shades of creme, beige, ochre and white. Not Santorini, this... but Greece nonetheless. Inside, the front room usually doubles as the kitchen and bed room, and one extra bedroom and a bathroom is all you are likely to get, a catacomb style basement with extra room if you're lucky. The fancier neighborhoods will feature modern apartments, of course (here, too, no difference to Bangalore where squalor and riches exist side by side). Weeds are everywhere, growing out of the cracks in the marble terraces or the holes in the sidewalks where you have to do the same quick sidestepping for a load of bricks or pile of sand, or simply because the trees have uprooted what pavement there once was, or the street is too narrow to park the delivery truck anywhere else. It's the climate, too: sunny and warm even in March, the pale green of the olive trees alternating with the lush of the orange groves, the tender young shoots of the figs (what better place to watch the unfurling of a perfectly shaped young fig leave at the tip of a bare gray branch day by day than this country of the Gods!) and the dark majesty of slender cypresses. The sandy soil, aided in part by the winds bringing the “red dust” from Africa, do their part to make this feel familiar. In Monastiraki, central Athens, walking distance to the Acropolis, Parthenon, Agora, Hadrian's arch, Pan's sanctuary, and a host of other famous and not so famous historic sites at every corner, but also in part site of the recent riots, you add the graffiti and the trash for the perfect grit: Ted does not like the Plaka, the old adjacent quarter prettied up for tourists (no surprise here – he doesn’t like Naplion on the Peloponnese either, this stuff is just too cute for him). In the villages of the southern Peloponnese, old rusty trucks rumble through the narrow streets, not quite as ridiculously overloaded with goods as we're accustomed to from India, yet reminiscent nonetheless. Even some of the smells initially greeting me in Greece were putting me back to the subcontinent. It's a matter of degrees, of course, and I know many Greeks, some close to home, who would be extremely offended by this comparison. The splendor of the countryside is unparalleled and defies description, and there is nowhere near the amount of trash, pollution, or people.

In fact, there are remarkably few people we see around in the villages, especially women. Greece is still a very paternalistic society, and the platia (central square) and kafenion are exclusively the domain of the men. The old men, mostly. I was aware of this from books and descriptions by other visitors, harking as far back as a casual comment made by a friend during my visit to Cyprus almost 20 years ago, but have never registered it as acutely. This trip has probably brought me in touch with the “real Greece” more than ever before; there is a natural authenticity to the places we visit which is at the same time a vital ingredient and condition for success for the business: just like India (and other places in the world), this is a “high context” society – things are relationship-based, relationships which take the endorsement of a local person in the know, and time to develop. You don't just open the yellow pages to buy your inventory, rent or buy a house, and hang out your shingle. And we are forced to slow down the pace in other ways, too: our appointments all turn out to be too close together, in part because we didn't plan for the extra time for the kafee chat, due to Greek standard time and the “avrio, avrio” (tomorrow) mentality, or simply based on the fact that our planning did not account for the inevitable wrong turns in villages only marked with signs in Greek and roads not on the map. Ironically, we feel horrible about having kept the Greek homeowner waiting twice who probably never thought any of it (motivated to sell, after all) but have no patience for the German real estate lady who lets us know what she thinks of it in no uncertain terms but who of all people should have been on our side.

The first night Ted’s cousin, Nikos, a retired container ship captain, takes us to dinner in the local taverna, after I just finished commenting on the male exclusivity of public places, I promise him and my husband that I will simply give them all the mati, the stink eye (or evil eye as the vastly still very superstitious Greeks usually call it). He reassures me that they only look at us because we are xeni, not from here, and likely all the more so because it is a highly unusual opportunity in the rather laid back Greek countryside to spot a car with two kayaks on top, especially in a mountain village – and I must admit that as much as I would have liked to stare them down I didn't have the nerve and only demonstratively ordered a bottle of beer instead. In the end, their gaze was primarily fixed on the television after the initial curious glance, and we were with a local after all. Which isn't to say that a day later in the kafenion across the street, there wasn't the odd double-take by passers-by, including the Orthodox papas (priests) with their flowing beards, while I thoroughly relished the casual bantering back and forth between Nikos and his compatriots – my Greek is nowhere near good enough to understand even one sentence, but between him and Ted occasionally summarizing in English, and picking up a few key phrases about the spiti (house – obviously a topic these days) myself, I never felt totally excluded and still had an opportunity for the most lovely and intriguing character study along the way.

In the space of the hour or so that passed while we were mostly idle onlookers, the men of the village were moving in and out, some staying for a few minutes, some engaging in rather heated and passionate debate about anything from American politics (no doubt brought on by the presence of the Amerikani) to the “ecologist's” opposition to the planned windmills, which Nikos thought was ludicrous considering there are much more pressing problems facing the nation. For a moment, I was able to put my frustration with the prevailing attitude towards women aside and imagine that the Greeks really did invent the skill of debating. (Incidentally, my American sensibilities have me puzzled about the ecological issue: wind power is “clean, renewable energy”, and as such should be favored by the environmentalists? Especially considering how much wind and how many hilltops Greece has to boast?). The character proclaiming this looked like he had stepped right out of a Greek movie about the underground – but when I went as far as comparing him to Kolokotrones, the hero of the Greek revolution against the Turks in the 1820s, Ted vehemently protested. No one can touch Kolokotrones.

A soft (and slow!) spoken older man with olive skin and straight white beard, however, amused me most when he called Obama a pushti (you'll have to look this one up for yourself) and declared that he and the rest of them might just as well commit hari-kari – this nicely punctuated by a dramatic gesture of pulling his hand across his stomach. This gentleman (not a phrase that typically comes to mind when thinking about most Greek men) mostly surprised me when he started speaking English – a few phrases, but still. We never got to the bottom of it but many Greeks of course have been to the US, and Nikos himself who is from this village has been to just about every corner of the world as a captain. I just didn't expect it here – a thoroughly unjustified bias on my part, obviously. Otherwise, the conversation was peppered by phrases like gamoto and malaka, of similar caliber as the one above, confirming every stereotype I might have had, and delighting me with the fact I was actually able to pick them out in conversation – including when Nikos called his 94 year old father names, when the latter came wondering into the square as oblivious to traffic as he has a right to be at this ripe old age – healthy, no medications – but sure-footed and with all the sansouci his years have earned him. All these words can connote the ugliest or the friendliest of meanings, depending on the circumstance, but I have been warned never to try them myself, as excited as I may be to try my little Greek in the real world.

Athens shops. On our return to the capital, after what seemed like endless driving over steep mountain passes, with new vistas opening up at every turn, mountain tops alternating with sandy beaches and dizzying transitions in between, Athens is a mad house. It doesn't help that we ended up driving right to the center, 2 blocks from our hotel, by accident, only to try and find our way out again in a maze of narrow city streets that aren't on the map, hurried pedestrians, and moped and motorcycle drivers cutting us off at every turn. We finally decide to follow signs to the airport, the only “safe” place we know to leave the rental car at, and exchange it for a taxi back to the hotel. Magically, the main avenue leading us out of town for that purpose takes us right to our original destination. Now, instead of a taxi, we take the trolley back, and are able to observe the madness from a safer vantage point, apartment block after apartment block, with balconies leaning out over noisy streets, an endless procession of identical square boxes continuing in every direction, from the suburbs to the center. On the evening of our departure, we rush to the top of Philopappos Hill, to take a few last pictures in the waning light, and let our eyes wander over the sea of white that lies at the foot of the Acropolis and spreads until the distant hills all around, and to the port of Pireaus with its massive ships at anchor. Not unlike the view from San Francisco's Twin Peaks from this vantage point, breathtaking to some extent and even beautiful, far removed from the noise and clatter of the traffic, and the crammed outdoor cafes and restaurants. The Parthenon in this golden, caressing light unparalleled.

But dive down into the level of the city's streets and walk around for a few hours on a Saturday morning and you will find yourself wanting to be as far away as possible, as quickly as possible. It all depends on what you're used to, of course: The pedestrian shopping area is not unlike Munich's on a Saturday, a sea of people 50 feet wide, bobbing along, darting in and out of shops, maybe resting for a few minutes on the steps of an old church. Monastiraki is worse because it's on the main ascent route to the Acropolis – here your walking space is further constricted by endless numbers of street vendors, all seemingly selling the same designer handbags (or imitates), spread out on a white bed sheet that can quickly be grasped at all four corners, rolled up and slung over the seller's shoulder should the police approach. The same cheap scarves, bags, shoes and clothes that you would find in Agra or Kathmandu are crowding the tourist shops, often unclear where one shop ends and another one begins. The flea market provides a welcome rest for the eyes and an interesting mix of antique furniture, paintings, porcelain, linens and knick-knacks, and the fish and meat markets with hundreds of freshly caught or slaughtered animals in what is still called the Agora today, its decorative wrought iron work reminiscent of Les Halles in Paris, is truly a sight to behold. Since we're coming up on Easter, lambs dominate, strung up on their hind legs and surprisingly small stripped off their wool and skin, their heads jerked as if in a last attempt to escape, their eyes blank and expressionless.

What a contrast to the lovely mountain villages and beach towns we have seen. Giotsali, the ancient village pre-dating Agios Dimitrios, where we spend an afternoon wandering around the ruins of Ted's great-grandfather's house, heading up one of many dirt roads into the mountains that seems to lead to nowhere but then opens up into delightful meadows full of wildflowers. The deserted village in Mani where we end up instead of the monastery, and where all we find is a starving cat, stark and bleak mountainsides, and a sign indicating hiking trails that soon peter out. Venizelos, the last outpost before venturing into the wilderness of Cape Maleas, with our futile search for the lighthouse but a gorgeous walk along the cliff looking onto the deep blue ocean. On the way back over yet another high mountain road with crags and wild rock formations I finally declared all of the Peloponnesus one big National Park. Then there is Elafonisos island with its turquoise water (and our first paddle!), its harbor lights and clear night sky. Monemvasia, the “Greek rock of Gibraltar”, predictably beautiful, especially as a huge orange moon rises above the water, and eventually turns the sea into a sheet of silver. And finally Kiparissi (apparently the site of Princess Diana's last swim before her untimely death), and Tirou, both fishing villages on the East coast of the Peloponnesus with lovely half moon bays and gravel beaches with incredibly clear water.

But it takes time and energy to take it all in, and in some ways is just as exhausting as the city. Time, forever our enemy. We wanted to accomplish a lot with this trip, and we did... but invariably it involved a lot of driving. Driving is different here – not hours on end on highways, burning the 600 miles from San Francisco to Portland in 10 hours. But continually winding roads through villages where acute attention is required to take the correct exit, unmarked T-junctions and intersections, steep climbs and drops with equally steep drop-offs, obviously without a guard rail, seems to take as much if not more energy. Even though I was not doing any of it, being on the edge of my seat on so many mountain roads, with new vistas opening up at every turn, drinking in the landscape, still took it out of me. For all its long history of settlements, the Peloponnese is wild and untamed, and it is no wonder that tourism is sparse – both its attraction as well as its challenge.

In the end, I think that Ted’s business will take off here in a few years. We’ve rented a house, bought some kayaks, he has a website up (http://kayakgreece.com) and is actively soliciting reservations for this fall. He has his plane tickets for two trips there June and late August, and will spend almost 3 months there this year from June – early October. The next time I come, I want to do yoga on the terrace in “our” house looking out over large swaths of fields, go for hikes from village to village, paddle some more in turquoise waters – and learn Greek to have a ready answer for those staring men!

Related links:
http://kayakgreece.com
http://ecotoursgreece.blogspot.com/
http://ecotoursgreec.com
http://poseidonkayak.com
http://kayaktoursgreece.com