Eurydice Street
Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens by Sofka Zinovieff is an honest account of what it’s like to move to Athens and live as a foreigner, learning Greek customs.
Eurydice Street
Eurydice Street, subtitled A Place in Athens, is a rare insight into life in the city beyond
what the tourist sees. The author fell in love with Greece as a student, not knowing that years later she would marry a Greek man and go to live with him in
his native city, Athens.
As a foreigner, she had a lot to learn about Greek customs,
and what it was like to live in Greece’s capital city, and not just visit.
However, she wasn’t alone. Her husband was returning after being an expat for
many years, so he too had to adjust to how life had changed, and how he was regarded
as a native Greek who had chosen to leave and live elsewhere.
It’s an amusing dichotomy, as some people wonder who in their right mind would want to leave Greece, while others wonder who wouldn’t want to leave this crazy country if they had the chance. Some people think both at the same time.
From two reviews of Eurydice Street
Living in Athens
The author, who has Russian ancestry but grew up in the UK,
soon discovers that living in Athens is very different from visiting it. She
very quickly learns that punctuality is not a Greek trait. Everyone assumes that
everyone else will be late, and as long as you’re all playing by the same
rules, it works. Otherwise, if you arrange to meet someone in a restaurant at
9pm and you turn up at 9pm, you’ll be on your own for quite a while.
Zinovieff also learns that if you want to get a taxi, it’s
no use doing what you do in other cities, and stand on the sidewalk waving your
hand at a passing cab. In Athens, taxis are shared, a system brought in to
compensate for a lack of taxis in the city. If a taxi already has one or two
passengers, it’s going to be headed in a particular direction, so you have to
dash into the road, lean over, and yell your destination at the taxi driver. If
it suits him, he’ll stop, otherwise he’ll keep going.
Where is Eurydice Street?
Where is Eurydice Street?
If you look at a street map of Athens, you won’t find a
Eurydice Street (despite the apparent street sign above from the cover). Or at least I haven't been able to find it. The author must have changed the name, and presumably also details of her
neighbors, whose lives she describes in some detail. She is also an anthropologist, so has a
trained eye to observe sometimes small but telling details about people.
You might say she’s being diplomatic, which is fitting as
her husband works as a kind of minor diplomat, as a Greek government employee
(they met when he was the Press Attaché in Moscow). They already have two
children when they move to Athens in 2001, so this gives another angle on life
there – through the eyes of their children, and how they get by as parents.
The Athenian Year
Eurydice Street
The author’s account covers her first year in Athens, and it starts in August. Having spent a fortnight in Athens in August, during a heatwave, I definitely sympathised with her. It’s no fun tramping through city streets when the temperature is over 100F (38C) for hours on end and for days on end.
The book is written chronologically, but for each section
the author focuses on a particular topic, like Christmas, or a feast day, or
Easter. It’s a clever device for giving a structure to the book, while going
into detail about a particular aspect of life in Athens, but also moving their
personal story forward as her husband deals with his job, and she deals with
her own life and their children.
One thing she learns, by the end of the book, is that if a
Greek becomes your true friend, he or she will be an undying friend, and will
stand by you no matter what. She gives moving accounts of this kind of loyalty
that she finds. The author is a gifted writer, who describes people and events
in a way that makes you feel that you know the person, or were in the room at
the time
It’s no wonder this book has stayed in print long after it
was first published in 2004. If you really want to get an inside look into life
in Athens, or in Greece generally, it’s well worth reading.
Other Greek books pages
The very thorough A-Z Guide to Santorini by Tony Oswin is now in its 15th edition, a sure sign that the guidebook is both popular and kept up-to-date.
Heaven on Earth is a collection of 19 travel pieces about Greece by Mike Gerrard.
If planning a trip to Greece, what are the best books about Greece to read before you go, or to take with you, to give you a sense of place?
A Thing of Beauty by Peter Fiennes describes ‘Travels in Mythical and Modern Greece’ and places the Greek Gods in the context of modern-day Greece.
Greece Book Reviews on the Greece Travel Secrets website with reviews of the best guidebooks to Greece, the Greek Islands, Athens, Crete and elsewhere.
Taverna by the Sea is an account by Jennifer Barclay of her summer spent working in a taverna on Karpathos and a welcome new book of Greek travel writing.
Wild Abandon by Jennifer Barclay and published by Bradt Guides is A Journey to Deserted Places of the Dodecanese islands in Greece, including Rhodes and Kos.
The Summer of My Greek Taverna by Tom Stone is a memoir of his time on the Greek island of Patmos in the Dodecanese, running a restaurant.
The Bradt Guide to Northern Greece is a detailed guide to Thessaloniki, Halkidiki, Macedonia, Thrace, The Pelion, The Sporades and the rest of Northern Greece.
Greece Travel Secrets reviews the photography book Monemvasia with extracts from works by Yiannis Ritsos and Nikos Kazantzakis.
Mermaid Singing by Charmian Clift is a fine example of 1950s travel writing about the Greek island of Kalymnos in the Dodecanese.
Margarita’s Olive Press is a modern gem of a book of Greek travel writing, in which the author falls in love with and renovates a property on Zakynthos.
The Lonely Planet guide to the Greek Islands is a thorough and helpful guide to all the Greek island groups, with Athens included.
The latest edition of the Lonely Planet travel guide to Greece is a comprehensive 750-page guidebook to the whole country.
Lonely Planet Crete is an excellent and thorough guide of almost 300 pages to the largest of the Greek islands.
Ikaria by Meni Valle, brings together the best and healthiest Greek recipes with an evocative travelogue about Ikaria, one of the world’s Blue Zone places.
Peel Me a Lotus by Charmian Clift is a Hydra travel writing classic, describing her family’s life on this tiny Greek island near Athens in the 1950s.
There are many great Greek poets, with two authors winning the Nobel Prize for Literature and names include Sappho, Cavafy, George Seferis and Odysseus Elytis.
Fire on the Island is a romantic thriller novel by Timothy Jay Smith set on a fictionalised version of the town of Molyvos on the island of Lesbos.
Greece Travel Secrets reviews the book Culture Trails by Lonely Planet, which has a section on Artistic Athens and 51 other perfect weekends for culture lovers.
The Bradt Guide to the Peloponnese is the best book on the Greek region which includes attractions like Mycenae, Epidavros, Olympia, Monemvasia and Nafplion.
The 2022 edition of the A-Z Travel Guide to Kos is the 15th edition of the best and most comprehensive guidebook to Kos in the Dodecanese islands of Greece.
A Rope of Vines by Brenda Chamberlain is an evocative memoir of the author’s time living on the Greek island of Hydra in the early 1960s.
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