Last Day in Athens

Today I needed to get going on the day early today so that I could mail the Conference Proceedings home as soon as the Post Offices opened. There is a smallish Post Office near the hotel and I decided to take it there. This was probably a mistake as it was like going to Little Baddow Post Office instead of Chelmsford. Nevertheless, in I went with my book. There were 5 counters, 4 said 'no parcels' and the 5th said a number of things including parcels. I approached the 5th desk and asked the rather gruff looking lady if she spoke English. She replied with an emphatic 'no', and turned to the next customer. I stood my ground and after she had served the man in question, she said 'envelope' to me. I said 'yes' and she produced an enormous padded envelope. I put the book into it, wrote my name and address on the outside and then stood there 'like a chapel hat peg' while she served the rest of the line. Eventually, I just put the envelope onto the scales. From then on the process became a bit of a mystery. She showed me a table with various Greek headings and pointed to 32.50 Euros and then pointed to her calculator which said 24.50 Euros. She kept repeating a stream of Greek and I kept shrugging my shoulders. I tried to make sure that she was quoting for surface mail and not airmail and I wondered if that was distinguishing the two amounts. Eventually, she enlisted the help of someone nearby and it was explained to me that it could go for 24.50 as printed materials. Since she had seen me put the book into the envelope, I don't know why I was being shown the other amount. In any event, I paid 24.50 Euros and it went. Heaven knows if it will arrive, but there are plenty of spares if it gets lost. Apparently I should have gone to the main Post Office in Syntagma Square.

You might wonder why I didn't wait until I arrived in England to mail the proceedings and the answer is that my case weighed 26 kilos leaving Melbourne and the British Airways rules allow you 3 bags but none must be over 23 kilos. This means that I need to put some things into the conference backpack to check through. The book weighed another 3 kilos and would have taken up most of the backpack.

I went into the university once I had finished the Post Office business. Stella called in sick (I think it is just the result of the conference being over - it was a tremendously big thing to organise and she had such top people from around the world to look after), so Konstantinos, Xenia and I met to discuss our work. This was actually fine as I had been able to discuss things with Stella on our walks. I suggested to them that I treat them both to a very late lunch after we have met - to thank Konstantinos for transporting me from Delphi (he would accept no money for petrol) and to finally acknowledge Xenia's birthday. We discussed our work until 3.00pm and then went to a local seafood restaurant where we had small deep-fried squid and marinated octopus to share and an individual grilled fish each. We naturally also had Greek salad, tzatziki, bread and a sweet semolina-based desert. It was very good food and I was a bit peckish by the time we ate.

After a brief visit back to the lab for coffee, Xenia and Konstantinos had a meeting to attend and I went back to the hotel for an early night as I was, by now very tired.