Friends will be relieved to hear that we have left the troubled nation of Greece. All of their emails cautioned us to avoid the riots which have dominated the news lately. But the unrest is mostly in Athens, and only around the government buildings, far from the Acropolis and other tourist destinations. Even when a strike is called, they give a day or so of advance notice. And we have been far from Athens. It's a bit like worrying about friends who live in, say, Kalamazoo because of riots in Detroit.
The Greeks we have met have been like Boy Scouts; friendly, courteous, kind, cheerful, maybe not so thrifty, but mostly clean and certainly reverent. They smoke too much but are otherwise pretty nice. Of course they are concerned about the financial situation in Greece and the austerity plans being instituted, just as Americans are worried about conditions in the US. On the bright side, the euro has dropped versus the dollar.
We flew to Sofia this morning. Bulgaria is John's 60th country and number 80 for Connie. It is a bit of a shock to go from sunny Greece to chilly and wet Bulgaria but we will survive. I could fill volumes with what I don't know about Bulgaria. Put another way, it wouldn't take too many matchbooks for me to cover what I know, beginning with the cyrillic alphabet. But we will figure it out. Stay tuned in.
