A charming but alarming city

In the summer of 2001 Sofka Zinovieff accompanied her husband, Vassilis — first met when he was press officer to the Greek embassy in Moscow — on a posting back to Athens. This book is both an account of her enthusiastic, if often balked, attempts to transform herself into a Greek, and a vivid evocation of a city in a chaotic ferment of change.

That change is at once demonstrated when the couple find a flat, undistinguished except for a tremendous view, in Vouliagmeni, 18 kilometres from the centre of the city. Some 60 years ago, when I used to visit Vouliagmeni before a direct road had been constructed to it, it was little more than a village, with a glorious crescent of a beach backed by a few simple cafés and tavernas. Now Zinovieff can refer to it as ‘Athens’s version of a Riviera’.

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Pensioners, it’s your turn to cough up

Zinovieff finds a relentlessly garrulous Greek maid, who, in the manner of Greek maids, within a few weeks transcends her domestic role to become both mentor and confidante.