Smoking Ban in Greece: Three months on

Passing from completely compliant England on to nagging but obedient Italy, I had assumed that oxygen inside confined space was my natural right, especially since it is generally considered vital for survival. I had taken it for granted that I could happily breathe inside bars, coffee shops, public buildings and other protected spaces. For me, the small crowed outside each bar was a group of socializing smokers, and my flatmates standing on the balcony for a smoke without previous arrangement, only natural.
My trip to autumnal post-smoking ban Greece was about to shake my smoke-free world.
Some history first: Greece reluctantly adopted the smoke ban law on July 1sr of this year. Initially nobody took notice as the fun was outdoors and outdoors smoking was allowed.
As the cold creped in so did the numerous amendments and interpretations of what started its career as a total smoking ban.
So the total ban that I saw was far from being total…. With the following amendments:
1. Small bars (like very small) can choose to be for smokers or for non-smokers. So ALL small bars I know are for smokers, since this is the dominant trend.
2. Large bars and coffee shops can divide their area into smoking and non-smoking, and divide the two with a two meter high glass wall (which was a state of the art, hey, as you could literally step through it! … It did not exist! Anywhere!)
3. Big nightclubs, with the traditional bouzouki where in the old days the best clients broke some plates reaching maximum entertainment.
4. Universities, being a police-free zone, once upon a time to ensure freedom of speech, now ensure freedom of smoke of equally academics and students (we are all equal in smoking!). This includes lecture theatres and seminar rooms.

This covers bars and coffee shops. The restaurants I have not tried yet. Let’s hope that the government has been a bit more successful there.
The best result of the smoking ban was the new discourse on discrimination. Apparently smokers who are the majority of the adult population feel discriminated against… Their rights are suppressed not because the government cares about their health, but because some insurance companies have lobbied far too well and refuse to pay for the operations needed to cure (or slow down) the diseases caused by smoking alone. We pay all our lives, they say, damn straight they have to pay for the operations!

The irony....

Walking back to Florence

Some say this was the last summer day of the year. I’d say, we were lucky having it mid-October. Golden light, warmth, and off we went to the very north of the Chianti region, the village of Impruneta. Legend wants its famous terracotta stones to cover the roof of Santa Maria del Fiore, the Duomo of Florence. I doubt any of us noticed it. What we did notice was the St. Luca’s fair that spread all around the small village. The dominating feature was the smell of hog roast. Nobody could overcome that.

So even before starting our hike (which later proved to be just an afternoon walk, but that is a different story) we engaged in watching, smelling, tasting and finally just wolfing down this lovely pig that was roasted for the believers of St. Luca.

The hike was mainly rolling down a Tuscan hill, but with undeserved, spectacular views of the valley below. Our first target: La Certosa.

On the top of a hill (because monks always choose well, as spirituality and good views go hand in hand) we found the monastery of Galluzzo, named La certosa from the order of monks it serves. These carthusian monks, live in silence, and only train their unused voice cord once a week for a whole hour, gossiping with their fellow monks. The rest of the time they live in their small cells, the size of a one bedroom central London apartment, with food service. A plate of food appears once daily through a small window in their room, as a reward after a hard day of prayer. Being there with a bunch of economists, we debated about the waste of material and human resources in this spiritual business, concluding that, it would have been better if the monks wrote PhDs. (The priest blesses first his own beard, say the wise Greek folk)

The most impressive finding of this walk was the monk who gave us the tour of the certosa. Father Benedicto was very grumpy at the beginning of the tour, giving us “efficient” information (This painting, this year, by that painter, represents this, moving on… boom boom boom!). Slowly, he warmed up on us, especially to the ladies of a certain age in the front of our group, always complimenting him. In the end - what an audience we were - he did not want to let us go. Our tour, supposed to last an hour, was dangerously passing the one hour and a half threshold, and he was violating his weekly speech quota by thirty minutes! And on top of that, he was flirting with the ladies, whose age should inspire him to chant his funeral hymns. Maybe he could smell paradise close to them, who knows. Fatigued after our tour, he removed his hat, only to reveal a glorious head bump, benign tumour I was informed. But I could not help but thinking it was a horn being hatched in there…. A hybrid devil, identical to the one of Salman Rushdie’s imagination in the Satanic verses.


After these thoughts, and sure that the catholic church would had burned me in purifying fire, we continued our scroll to Florence. We arrived at piazzale Michelangelo exactly at the time the sun was setting. Florence below our feet and the sky in purples and pinks. All I could think about was my blisters… F**k the sunset. My feel are hurting!

Είπαν... (just a quote...)

Έφυγε για αλλού και αλλού.
Όπως κάθε παιδί που αφήνει τον τόπο του, μα όχι ο τόπος το παιδί.

Ζ.Ζ.
(She left for other places. Like every child that leaves her home town, but never does the home town leave the child.)