Obama, he is good? 

Yeah, he is. I voted for him, anyway. Would you have voted for him if you could?

Better than Bush.

Mhm, at least Obama tries to talk to people instead of bombing them.

The taxi driver smiles politely and resumes concentrating on the obscure address printed on a ΔΙΚΕΜΕΣ luggage tag. I don't think he understands anything I say, but at least he can read my enthusiasm. You must be open in Greece; open your face, your voice, your hands, your body to your expressions and let people read the energy that rolls off of you while a clumsy American tongue fumbles over χ's and βδ's. I lean forward more, almost toppling into the driver-passenger meridian, and ask What do you think of the politics in this country?

This current President, he is no good for poor people.

I resist making a comparison to Bush.

This place, it is beautiful, but the service is no good, he says, as though complaining about a restaurant, People only stop here on their way to Istanbul or their way from Istanbul. Everyone goes to Istanbul now, they do not stay in Greece.

Greece still runs on agriculture and tourism, and so in Athen's touristed spots it sports the same desperate signage proclaiming the inimitable beauty of the country as third world island nations and particularly pathetic American states. Except that the Greek name sells itself, except that the name is Hellas and its Hellenic people speak Helleniki.

Greece has the flairs of both Western and Eastern Europe and of the Balkans, and of innumerable phases of conquest and subjugation and decline and fall (except that you could count every one if you wanted to and Lo, some do). But Greece is not any of the things that have touched it, in that Egypt is not Arab nor African—it is just Egypt. Greece is just Greece, now; in modernity, it floats above everything that has come before it—even its own past.

Calvin Harris shouts over the teeming blob of Έλληνες, Hello Athens, it is my first time in your city. I don't know your language but— and then everything is drowned in the universal languages of wild cheering and thumping bass beats.

Traffic in Athens is one giant game of chicken, be it pedestrian versus car, car versus motorcycle, or motorcycle versus dog. The dogs of Athens always win; every vehicle backs down because they know the dogs will not stop.

I have been in Greece not quite a week.