This humor piece was originally published on the excellent Vanity Projection, in late 2018, just as I went back to writing. VP is sadly defunct, so I’m reproducing the piece here, even though almost two years later I’m not entirely happy with its opening, or its butthurt.
Nevertheless, even though I’m not opposed to linking people to a country they usually like, sometimes shit goes wrong.
Beer #1. He arches an eyebrow at me and there he goes: “You have not preserved your legacy well.”
The Reviewer has been to Athens, Thessaloniki, couple other spots, and he is not satisfied.
My speaking turn breaks off mid-sentence. The expat protocol of international courtesy tilts, crashes, awaits hard reboot. “…What?”
He repeats, voice low with foreboding like I blew a deadline. “You have not preserved your legacy well. The ruins. It’s a fact.”
He’s for real. I am now the subject of a physical TripAdvisor review, spokesperson for our entire poor-yet-happy trimillenial people. Cavities already tightening.
“What do you mean?”
The Reviewer is out for blood, his pauses heavy with the ritual determinism of a Eurogroup meeting: “All you have is tiny bits of wall where you say ‘this is where something was’. Well… ok”.
I gather my wits. The Reviewer has been bestowed upon us from lands beyond dear old Albion, but he regards me with the stern consternation of a disapproving English committeeman, sharpening his fact-made knives. Is this how TripAdvisor always works?
Sap that I am, I roll the kicker off my tongue and give it to him. “So, you saw the Parthenon — “
“It’s in terrible… condition.” Voice even lower now, jawline tilted slightly inwards for dramatic effect, faintly nodding at his own words. Holy shit, the old story all over again. The Balkanians can’t take care of their marbles.
“Erm, no it isn’t — “
“It’s in terrible… condition.”
Aghast! Swirl of confusion! I was on the Acropolis a couple years ago, and I’m beginning to wonder if I’m tweaking my own memories in a subconscious bit of nationalist conditioning. Or could it really have gotten so bad in the meantime, the Fourth Horseman of the Syriza Age? Did these grumblers working the hill spill mustard on our Acropolis in a union picnic? I think about international archaeological communities roaring with outrage, cascades of one-star Google reviews, libertarians demanding our immediate conversion into a protectorate, Milo Yiannopoulos slicing off his one Greek buttock in penance.
The Reviewer smells the sizzle on the sacred cow steak of punctured hellenic pride, which he obviously appreciates as a rare treat. “Yes, I’m sorry to hurt your Greek feelings, Stratos. It’s a fact.”
Back up. Earlier I had mentioned the comparison drawn these days between Athens and Berlin, the former undergoing a poor-but-sexy artistic and bistro-culinary bloom evoking the latter. Two cities, not world-class pretty, filled however with hidden goodies. But the Reviewer would not have it. He had arched eyebrows over cold no-bullshit eyes and laughed it off: “Germany? Europe’s top GDP? Well…”
The Reviewer had been to Berlin but I wasn’t sure he caught its drift. But anyway it doesn’t matter; as a comparison, Berlin was off by a million. Things were really bad. Because apparently, Athens is…
“…like Belgrade”, as he declares in passing. True; the Orthodox brothers also boast a vibrant capital mixing East with West. But that’s not what he was going for. “Just as soon as you leave the main streets, it looks like Belgrade.”
Later, I would picture clueless tourists wandering off into Exarcheia, cursing at the treacherous lack of shrines to Apollo. It’s not a new theme, or unjustifiable — I’ve seen Athens included in a Bottom 10 with this reasoning. Then again, the combination ticket Athens sold, had what, seven major archaeo sites? Couldn’t they have done that? Are they not into paying to get into places?
Belgrade, Berlin, GDP. A pattern emerges. What does he care about Germany’s GDP? Does he travel by GDP? Is he gonna catch ’em all?
But I’m not thinking all that right now. Now I still intend to educate, unrolling an old scroll of knowledge to plead a case for Athens being effectively dead as an urban center in the centuries between antiquity and modernity, only to sprawl chaotically afterwards.
“Yes”, he retorts, “that’s when the problem started.”
So much for knowledge. He continues to intone “it’s a fact” like a mantra over my hastily weaved apologetics. Somewhere down the line Bro #2, still in good spirits, butts in: “Come on man, they were stealing all their stuff!”, but his voice is lost amid the dueling strings of lofty academic debate:
“Well, it’s a Balkan city.”
“Ah! But Greeks don’t like to be called a Balkan country. They say they’re… Mediterranean.”
“We’re also that. Like Spain.”
Eyebrows full-on: “Spain is in the Balkans!?”
“No, Spain is Mediterranean.”
“Spain is not in the Balkans. Spain is in the Iber… Iberic peninsula.”
“Yes.”
“It’s just that when we think of Europe we think something more like… the Colosseum.”
“When you think of Europe you think of the Colosseum?”
“Yes. Like Rome. We have this childhood image of Athens and Rome. Like a postcard.”
“You can’t really compare Athens to Rome. Rome was always a metropolis.”
“Yes. They’re hyping Athens up.”
“…”
“In Rome all the ruins are much better preserved.”
“They’re newer.”
Laughs. “What, five hundred years?”
“Um, yes.”
Guffaws, intoxicated by his own sarcastic menace. “What’s five hundred years? It can be ten thousand years old and well preserved! Why couldn’t you preserve yours?!”
The Facts!
Bro #2 takes a pee break. As if a wrestling bell had sounded off in a Taiwanese parliament, the review ends. I avoid eye contact, my airspace heavy with premonitions of a substandard people downcast to endless lifetimes of mandatory labor in the tourism industry. Lift that stone, you maggot Rhodeans! The Reviewers could be here this off-season! I need that Colossus recreated BEFORE the next debt restructuring talks, not AFTER!
With a wink-wink, the Reviewer offers: “it’s a fact!” and I can feel that in some untended brain part of his, he believes that’s how friends are made.
Having completed his mission, the Reviewer doffs the truth warrior armor, settles into his familiar guarded yet unfocused body language and asks me how come I haven’t played God of War. Apparently I’m the target group. But then he says, “Ah yes, in the last one they have Norse gods”, and proceeds to relay to me the storyline of the first three games, which only have Greek gods. Αnd in fairness it sounds kinda cool, though perhaps I could have done without “you fuck Aphrodite”. Later I would imagine a younger, wide-eyed Reviewer, sighing over a daydream of the movie 300. Elsewhere, vanquished Athenians, re-Ottomanized by their corporate overlords, go to bitter work remodelling the Acropolis into a God of War theme park, to compete with the subsidiary down south, which runs authentic Spartan bootcamps aimed at hipsters with undercuts.
By Beer #3 the morbid sideshow of his life’s upturned drawer slowly spilling its contents all over us has culminated into a Boschian mise-en-scene of post-Enlightenment void:
The Reviewer has a new girlfriend, prior to which he also seemed lonely but now he seems lonely and acts like an asshole. The Reviewer cares about money, but not too much: enough to tell me he wouldn’t blow as much as I on a personal trainer, not so much that he can’t get jokey about his and the girlfriend’s income disparity. Though she took it too seriously. The Reviewer does not believe in taking things too seriously. He brings up as an example of difficult personality a nerd who objects to him doing his nerd bashing. The Reviewer has read all Game of Thrones books, liked Season 7, and has strong opinions on George Martin’s work ethic.
The Reviewer has curiously absorbed the local nationalist narrative, will spontaneously announce an odd anecdotal antisemitism, and is angling for a citizenship. The Reviewer only seems to get worked up about countries other than his own. He seems resigned to the idea of safety risks dissuading people from visiting it. The Reviewer shed tears at Hiroshima.
My pattern from Beer #1 morphs into a theory that the guy works out a national inferiority complex by tailing countries he perceives as powerful and shitting on those that don’t have pretty streets. Quisling tourism.
#2 and I are hitting it off, but the Reviewer doesn’t look like he’s having a good time, despite his victory. Meanwhile he’s taken an ambiguous stance towards me, as if he doesn’t know what to do with our earlier mano-a-mano. I decide never to let him into the house lest he chokes on a fucking flódni.
Time to go home. Weather’s gone to shit, ambivalent between summer shower and storm. Locals swearing at the sudden lack of smoking areas.
I take the umbrella out the backpack and head off to the tram stop on the right. The Reviewer stops me. He wants an umbrella ride to the tram stop on the left, which works for both of us.
I arch an eyebrow.
the Budafoki amended 