OUT&ABOUT: My love affair with Greece just started- PHOTOS

The Greek Parliament building, Athens. PHOTO| ABIGAIL ARUNGA 

What you need to know:

  • Where most people welcome you with a smile because they know you are a clueless tourist and so the colour of your skin is to your advantage - and they almost always ask where you are from, and try and relate it to Obama, or a footballer, or some other African connection.
  • It feels like Greece and her people want to connect with you to be nice to you, to rock you to the rhythm of its welcoming arms.
  • So far, I'm loving it.

Maybe it's because I'm visiting. Or maybe Greece is just a lovely country. Oh, I'm doing that terrible thing where I assume because I've been to two cities that all of a sudden I can speak generally about everywhere else. So let me rephrase - Athens, and Iraklio, in Crete, seem like such lovely places to live. I've been overusing that word lately because it just so aptly describes everything I see. Don't get me wrong, of course there are signs of a country in frantic economic desperation, much like ours - a man in practically new sneakers stopped us yesterday, asked for our names and then asked for two euros. We frequently pass bussers in the metro and on the street who are playing music for money, or selling cigarettes for a little change.

Most of them are way past middle age and I wonder what happened that life dealt them this hand. Being old and poor is a terrible thing. I wonder where their children, where their friends are. How long they're supposed to be doing this.

But then there's the absolutely - well - lovely, parts of these two places. Where, when you leave your bag with a passport on a bus and realise it 20 minutes after the bus is gone, you can follow the bus and your bag will be in the exact same place where you left it. Where you wake up to riotous chirping every morning and a sun that starts baking at a cool 25 degrees. Where most people welcome you with a smile because they know you are a clueless tourist and so the colour of your skin is to your advantage - and they almost always ask where you are from, and try and relate it to Obama, or a footballer, or some other African connection. It feels like Greece and her people want to connect with you to be nice to you, to rock you to the rhythm of its welcoming arms. So far, I'm loving it.

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