Back to Athens

I am now safely back in Athens and in the same hotel as last week. As you can see, the Internet is working perfectly, and doesn't seem to be exhibiting its 'reboot after half an hour' behaviour I experienced last time. They did say on that occasion that they were experiencing (unusual) problems, but I tend not to believe such statements as I have heard them too often.

I have first-hand evidence now for Greece being a very unsafe place to travel by car. (I should add though that Konstantinos is actually a very safe driver and I was not worried at all about travelling with him.) I had noticed all along the road there were little shrines built to look like churches and crosses etc. I asked Konstantinos about these and he said that they were where a person had been killed on the road. I then in the next 20 seconds was able to identify about 15 of them, so obviously many people die on the roads.

Yesterday morning I got up at 7.30am after the late night (resulting from the Conference Dinner) and went for a good long walk. Although Stella had proudly announced the previous night that she would join me, I gave it very little chance as the conference had now finished and I predicted that she would probably sleep like a log. In fact she did fail to show at 8.00am and I set off on my own at 8.10am. I was not particularly disappointed either when she didn't show up as I really wanted a long, brisk walk and she likes neither. However, by the time I returned, had got dressed etc. and gone to breakfast, she appeared, so we sat together. Rochel (and later, Nancy) also joined us for breakfast and that is how I came to take the picture of them. Unfortunately, the background was a bit too light, so the picture looks a bit washed out.

After breakfast, I packed, paid for my room and then just sat in the lobby on my computer getting caught up on everything. I downloaded the pictures from my camera and was viewing the videos of the dancing from the last night when Rochel reappeared - this time alone. She was so fascinated by the videos that we transferred copies via my USB key to her laptop. The files are much to big to go in email, so it was good timing on her part.

She and Randy had hired a car to go travelling and one-by-one all the people departed. Jerry and Janet went on the bus, but they are in Athens this week and I will see them tomorrow as Jerry is giving a talk to the Philosophy Department here.

That has reminded me of something I forgot in a previous post, so I will include it here. The final session of the conference was Jerry and the talk was entitled 'Against Darwinism'. Janet sat next to me and visibly squirmed during the question time when - in her view - Jerry ran roughshod over the people making various objections to his position. He had started by saying that there would be no PowerPoint as he was a philosopher and he proceeded to present an argument about why there cannot be a theory of natural selection. It was rather clever, although I don't really have a chance of reproducing it here. (It is reproduced in full in the proceedings though and I will be mailing that back, so you will be able to see it). Needless to say, it was highly controversial and he had apparently been hounded by the press for an interview all day. It was agreed that they could talk to him after the talk and he went off with them for photos and interview while Janet and I waited for him to go to the dinner.

He finally emerged after about half an hour saying that he was too tired to continue, but the reporter said that he needed more time. When we got to the place for the dinner, the reporter once again came up and this time I told him that it was inappropriate for him to be disturbing Jerry at a social event and that he should go away. We negotiated a 10-minute time-limited interview after dessert and Jerry seemed very gratified to have someone prepared to protect him. He is actually a very shy and somewhat socially inept character who really detests social events of the sort we were at, even at the best of times. When the reporter somewhat sheepishly reappeared after dessert, I assured Jerry that I would come in 10 minutes to rescue him. However, the reporter was efficient and let him go in under the time anyway.

After the last of the delegates had departed yesterday, the student team, Stella, a couple of invited speakers who Stella was transporting back to Athens and I, moved to a restaurant for a free lunch to thank the helpers. I did feel that I wasn't really entitled to it, but Svetlana had gone home with her husband, so I was persuaded that I was just taking her place. At about 4.00pm, Konstantinos and I set off (the other students are staying an extra night in Delphi).

You may remember that I had originally planned to celebrate Xenia's birthday last Monday by taking her out to dinner. It didn't eventuate though as a result of a dinner organised by Stella. Xenia and I contented ourselves with the decision that I would take her out tonight. However, we both received contact from Stella today inviting us to join her and some of the remaining invited speakers at a roof-top restaurant at the Titania Hotel. (Have a look at its website: http://www.titania.gr/RestaurantsBars.asp) Naturally it would be rude to refuse, so we are going. It seems that we are destined to not have our dinner together. Jokingly, yesterday Xenia said 'I wonder what will happen this time?'. Perhaps she should have kept quiet!

Today has been a public holiday for banks and Post Offices, but not for the shops. This morning I went for a long early morning walk and then spent the remainder of the morning working on the corrections to my paper which needs to be resubmitted on June 30th. It actually had the audacity to rain during my walk, but I was still plenty warm enough just in a t-shirt and bike shorts. Later in the afternoon, I decided to take a break and walked into an old area called Plaka. The sun was, by now, shining. I hadn't had any lunch, but didn't want to eat too much because of going out this evening. I came upon a stall selling bananas, strawberries and black cherries. It was just what I felt like, so I chose 3 bananas since they looked so good (two for the next two days) and asked for a 'unit' of each of the others. The man took a sort of shovel and put a kilogram of each into two brown bags. Amazingly the bill for all this was just over 3 Euros (approximately $5.00). I sat down in the sun and munched on my treat, but I have made almost no impression on the soft fruit. I will take it with me to the lab tomorrow and it might discourage me from eating the biscuits. I have a real weakness for a particular type of biscuit which is very prevalent here. They look like normal biscuits on the outside, but contain a runny dark chocolate centre and are very more-ish as you can imagine.