Can you introduce Michael to our cafe to let us learn when, where, how, what and how much we can discount for our shopping?
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I didn't know this before the trip, but you have to negotiate when buying things in many places in Greece. I will haggle if I have to but I detest having to do it, so I was horrified when people in the tour group told me what they paid for the items when what was asked. The only comforting thing was that I am not a shopper. I just don't shop very much other than perhaps for good books while traveling - I think you get to know what are best books about the place only when you get there and interact with the environment - and maybe just a few things for gifts.
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But one time I had to buy a skirt. It was an emergency. I found out that women needed to wear a skirt in order to be admitted in the monasteries, which wasn't said on our travel brochure. Monasteries have some skirts available for the tourists, but I didn't want to take a chance of not having one for me in case there were many tour groups admitted at once. I had very nice pants suits that should have pleased even Queen of England, I thought, but I discovered that even the dressiest pants weren't good enough in the monasteries. So I went out with a friend to the back streets of Athens where there were tons of little shops that sold everything.
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Did you know that there is a huge industry out there which is solely based on (and counting on) you forgetting things? The toothbrush and paste are nothing, compared to bras and umbrellas in the same travelers' store in case you forgot to pack them. People are so brilliant to know what to sell where.
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We went into one shop where there were many tie dye stuff. I just knew that this wasn't something I was ever going to wear again, so I wanted to buy something cheap, ease care, and something I can pull on over my jeans just in the monastery. The storekeeper spoke fluent English, which was one thing that always amazed me. Europeans do a much better job in learning foreign languages than Americans ever do, and I felt really bad about not even having made an effort to learn Greek before coming to the country. I actually saw a woman who spoke in Greek, English, French, and Spanish, and God only knows what else, all fluently, even though that was an exceptional case (she was a local tour guide of the islands we visited). Many of the city people spoke at least two languages, which puts most of Americans to shame.
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I found a skirt that I could live with and so did my friend. We were ready to pay, but the storekeeper didn't want us to leave just with the skirts. What are skirts without matching tops, she asked rhetorically, then she looked for tops for us. I found the one I liked but it had a big stain on it, and my friend found one that she liked but too small for her. The storekeeper said, oh yes those looks terrible on you so let me find something that will work. The old woman kept on looking (maybe for good twenty minutes and we were getting extremely bored) but realized that she didn’t have them. So she changed her mind about the ones that she just had called terrible. She said that the large oily stain on the purple shirt that I picked probably was by design to make it look more carefree and it looks really good on me (she actually said that!), and the smaller size that my friend was holding was designed to be worn very very tight especially around the chest!
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We are not sure about this woman so let's get out, my friend and I exchanged our looks, and the storekeeper saw that. She changed her tone from a sales woman to a caring mother. "My daughters, my daughters, just listen to me. I am telling you what look best on you. I don't run this business for money but for PEOPLE. If you don't like the tops that I made myself, of course, you should not buy them. The skirts without tops will not be very useful, but you will have to make your own decisions. My sweet daughters, come back tonight. I will make coffee for you. Do you know Greek coffee? They are the best, in case you didn't know. Don't buy anything tonight but come anyway for the coffee." She gave each of us her business card and called us her daughters a few more times before we got out the door. We were exhausted and just glad to get out of there so we didn't dream of bargaining with her. We actually got so stressed from that shopping that we went straight to a local cafe to get a drink!
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There was a man (I will call him "Michael") in the tour group with his wife and two other female friends of theirs, all slightly older than I. Michael was a man with a very high energy level and good sense of humor. Everybody liked him from the start. You laugh so much when he is around that sometimes your facial muscle hurt, and I sometimes got throbbing headaches just from laughing.
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He works as a doctor's assistant (not a nurse, but a medical professional) in California, and he deals a lot with psychiatric patients so he has this ability to communicate with people. I called him "a healer" and he accepted it.
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He was very good at negotiating, and no matter where we went he negotiated as I found out later. He said that once he even tried to negotiate with a nun in a monastery for the price of a poster! I called him crazy if it was true, but since I didn't believe him then, it didn't matter.
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We visited one of the icon factories in Trikala near Meteora after visiting the last monastery. There was a Greek Orthodox monk (97% of the population in Greece is members of the Greek Orthodox church) who learned the Byzantine art since very young age, like seven. His family was very poor, too poor to educate him, so his father sent him off to the art studio to be a living-in understudy, and now he is a head artist of the factory studio. The monk gave us a good lecture and presentation, showing how to apply pure gold to the wood, stuff like that. We learned that the wood has to be dried out for two to five years to be used for icons, and apparently making the religious icons is a very big business in Greece. There are so many churches and temples that need to be restored and good artists are in great demand everywhere.
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I decided to buy an icon for a friend back home. I don't go to church but I have a friend who is a devout Christian, and I thought that she would really appreciate the artwork. So I picked one with St. Mary holding baby Jesus and had the artist sign it with my friend’s name on the back of the plaque. When I was ready to pay Michael came over and said, "I will get you a discount on that one." I said "No way. Nobody gets discount in a place like this." Then he said, "You just watch me". I thought, "Oh, no, he is going to embarrass me and I am going to be an international laughing stock."
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Michael went over to the counter and said to the clerk (also a monk, I thought) "I promised this lady (that's me) that I would get her some discount. You don't have to give ME any discount, but you probably don't want me to be a liar to HER in a holy place like this" with a smile on his serious looking face. The clerk looked down for a while almost as if in pain then said, "I will give her 15% off." I could not believe it. After that I used one more time of his service to buy a 2500 year-old silver coin set in gold for my son. He got me 25% discount for it after doing some equally funny stuff.
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Sorry, my posting got so long again. Maybe I will do better next time. :-)
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Rambee
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