Friday, 22 October 2010

Why I Can't Walk on Sidewalks

Okay, the title of this is a little bit of a hyperbole.  Realistically, it is more like "why walking on sidewalks is a huge pain in the butt sometimes."  Dogs and parked cars have caused all kinds of problems in this department.

So I get out of class and I am walking back to the apartment.  It is a beautiful day, about 70 with a slight breeze.  The middle of October.  I've got a big smile on my face, bobbing my head to the music from my iPod and life is just great.  Of course, because I'm feeling so good, I'm looking around and taking in my surroundings.  Great.  Wonderful.  Then, disaster.  My sandal sticks to something.  I look down, see nothing in front of me.  Turn around and there it is, basically laughing at me: a gigantic pile of dog poop that was just sitting RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SIDEWALK.  Because stray dogs are everywhere here, logically there is lots of dog poop.  And sure enough, there is!  It's great!  All the dog feces you could ever want!  But seriously, this wouldn't really be that big of a deal if I hadn't stepped in it.  I'd avoided all the piles so many times, and the one time that I finally take my eyes of the sidewalk...squish.

Now the other problem with walking on sidewalks is randomly finding cars parked right in the middle of them.  The thing about Greece is, if you can find space somewhere, it should be a parking place.  Doesn't matter if it is going down the wrong way on a one-way street or if you leave absolutely zero room for pedestrians to get by.  Yesterday I was forced to walk halfway into the street because a van "parked" (and I use the term loosely) in a spot...that stretched across the entire sidewalk and into the road.  Silly Peter, and here you thought sidewalks were for people not in cars!

When we asked our adviser what the rules to parking and stopping your cars are in the road, he replied: "There are none."

Yep, talk about a little bit different.


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