In Ancient Greece

So I decided to go to Greece last week, partly because I had nothing to do and partly because I needed to give myself a birthday present. 25 I have decided is a good vintage, old enough to appreciate good wine, but young enough to cope with the day after drinking it.

In Ancient Greece I think they must have had really good hair products. This is evident from the fact that the representation in all the marble sculptures that plague the Greek Isles, of hair on the heads of these sculptures, is really well defined. When looking at the Aphrodite of Rhodes in the Archaelogical Museum, I couldn’t help but be jealous of how well defined her curls were, and I wanted to ask her if she used Clairol herbal essences, Pantene or Vidal Sassoon? Pity she was just made of marble.

They also had no regard for safety, or rather, the Australian regulations regarding workplace and safety issues, which barely let you breathe or take a step without reporting it to your supervisor would not be cool here. In Ancient Greece they built castles without rails on staircases, I found myself walking up the side of mountains with torrents of wind swirling, without any sort of warning about the sheer drop, except a cute little picture of someone falling off. This has translated to today where riding on Mopeds without helmets is the norm, Helmets are passé, and when you asked for a helmet, they didn’t understand what you were talking about. I guess they weren’t Vikings they were Philosophers. I don’t understand why they bothered building such major acropolis’s when they could have just lain on the beach like I did.

What else? I like the way they are renovating their ruins. At the palace of the grand masters, in Rhodes, when you look from the outside, all the windows have air conditioners attached to the outside of them. I found that really authentic.

They would also have no use for the Australian Censorship Board or whatever it’s called, due the free display of male genitalia everywhere all the marble/stone G-d’s seemed to have forgotten their toga’s (or is that Ancient Rome?). Talking of marble representations, there was a large scale model of Rodin’s ‘The Kiss’ on the beach at Faliraki. I couldn’t understand what it was doing there, last time I checked Rodin was French and also they have so many sculptures which are cool, why would they deign to copy the French? Sometimes I felt like walking in the ruins was like walking through Sherringhams, the old Garden Nursery that was near where I used to live, because there were so many statues around to pick and choose from to decorate your Garden with.

The Best was finding Boomerang Bar, run by an Aborigine born in Redfern, decorated with signs saying ‘Last Dunny for 2km’ , he called himself Skippy and has been there for 11 years or so serving Fosters. He’s proud of his establishment, but I managed to beat him in a game of Shesh Besh (backgammon), so I can’t give him too much respect.

The difference between the old city in Rhodes and the old city in Jerusalem – In Rhodes they have a sewer system so it doesn’t smell like excrement and the prominence of cats is less noted

P.S. If you didn't figure it out, I was in Rhodes