Today I wished I had a camera with me. I was meeting Roxani in downtown Athens. I took a taxi from my place. My driver was Kyriakos, 43, from Agrinio. His slim and attractive lover, Valentina, 40, (father from Andros, mother from Moldova) was riding in front with him. I sat in the back next to an elderly blind woman, a periodic client. (To non-Greek readers out there, it is common practice for taxis here to pick up multiple clients, if they are heading in roughly the same direction. Yes, it is illegal.) Our route took us into Athens via the national highway, through areas I rarely get to see. The architecture along the highway and in the poorer urban areas is so distinctive. After we dropped off the blind woman, Kyriakos started talking about his relationship with Valentina. (”We are friends; not just friends — we are also romantically attached, but we are friends. It’s a peculiar relationship.”) He told the story of how Valentina, in love with him, spent three days sleeping on the floor of his attic with just bread and water, in an attempt to catch him with a woman and see for herself what gave him “his reputation”. She said she saw nothing. Then she said what she saw disgusted her, something she never expected to see. There was no elaboration. I loved it. When I got off, Kyriakos took less money than I owed him, and threw one Moldovan leu in with the change. Roxani and I ate in Kolonaki. On the way back I took the Athens metro. I enjoyed experiencing the mix of people. Greece’s till-recently-predominantly rural culture is so obvious in this crowd, especially when it’s compared to the riders of the London subway.