When we arrived, we hiked up to the acropolis of ancient Sparta, which really wasn’t so much to see. However, from the acropolis we could see a beautiful olive grove at the base of the hill.
After seeing this there wasn’t much to do, so I went down to the track at the end of our hotel’s street (past the massive statue of King Leonidas) to run. Within my first few laps I fell into step with an older man who spoke no English whatsoever, but as we weren’t running at different paces, I tried to give my Greek a go. It was especially funny to find a comfortable pace for both of us using the words for “slowly, slowly,” “come on,” “I’m ok,” and some sign language. Here is what I *thought* I understood after our 30 minute jogging conversation:
His name is Niko. He works as a chef in a taverna named Varlas in Sparta, but there is also a second location of Varlas in Athens. He has been to Canada. He runs marathons, ran THE marathon possibly last fall, and is preparing to run a marathon to Tripoli from Sparta. The reason he can run so fast is because he drinks red wine. He is 50 something years old. He does not speak any English.
With my baby Greek, I think that we talked about my program, the itinerary for my weeklong trip, where I was from, Greek food, marathons, track and field events (apparently they don’t have pole vaulting in Sparta…).
After rallying a group of friends to find Varlas, I learned that I should not be so confident in my Greek. I asked the servers at the taverna if they knew Niko, and, first of all, they barely understood my question. By the end of the meal we had found someone in the restaurant who spoke both English and Greek, and through a few conversations it turns out that Niko had merely RECOMMENDED this taverna, and that he did not work as the chef. Silly me. Either way, I made it through a 30 minute conversation in which I didn’t speak any English!
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