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| Platys Yialos beach on the beautiful island of Sifnos |
It's August, the hottest month of the year in Greece. The time where Athens is empty and all sorts of Greeks, from all walks of life and all budgets are crammed together on the country's many beaches, preferably on one of the many islands.
So here I am too, book in one hand, tanning oil in the other observing the phenomenon which occurs when about five million Athenians who, let's face it, haven't exactly had a great year, have left the mothership and are trying to unwind.
If you, like me, have nothing else to do on holiday but you have a beatiful beach in front of you, you try to spend every waking moment either roasting in the sun or just looking or should I say observing? And when you observe is when you discover shocking things!
A few feet away from me sits a family. The mummy, wearing the typical 35-year-old-I-have-an-ok-body yellow bikini, the daddy who is balding, has a bit of a beer belly and (to everyone's disgust) keeps slapping mummy's bum. Also with them are the two kids, a boy and a girl, usually named Kostas and Maria, just to be original. The kids' ages range from three to seven and they're fat, not the cute kind of baby fat, the proper kind that will stay there for ever.It's a result of both their grannies trying to feed them more than the other one and hey, they've done one hell of a job. And if that was not enough the children think that the whole beach is very much interested in their bowel movements or their need to go weewee in the 'big toilet' aka the sea so they keep shouting it out. Mummy keeps yelling at them to come out of the water and eat some fruit, but NO, they want something which will make them even fatter. So what do they do? They cry and they yell and they lie face down on the sand kicking and screaming until daddy, who's had enough of them, eventually buys them whatever it is they want. The annoying family kind are usually gone around 3pm, when the kids have had so much food that they now need to sleep.
That's when the next beautiful kind of beach goers arrive. They are the sexy ones. They are gorgeous and have fit bodies and they travel in packs of many so that they can all admire each other's hotness and make fun of others, less fortunate in the appearance department. They do not need sun loungers, they will lie on the sand. The women are wearing barely-there bikinis which luckily they can pull off and the dudes are muscly and to other people's eyes very hot. For me, their speedos are just a tad too much, especially when their package is blocking my sun. The 'sexies' will spend the whole day emptying bottles of tanning oil on each other, and will then proceed to drink several mojitos to cure last night's hangovers while preparing for the next one at the same time. They think that everyone one the beach is interested in their gossip and as a consequence I was very soon informed that the tanned glamazon next to me had pierced lady parts, cheers for that boys! They only go in the sea for five seconds at a time, they just want to freshen up and then it's back on the towell again for hours. They leave when the sun has gone down and they head to the hottest clubs to snog some more hotties that I didn't have the chance to see because they were annoying someone else on some other beach.
The last and possibly worst kind are the couples. Usually one of the members is excellent at nagging and usually it's a she. She doesn't like the beach/sand/sun/bar or it's that time of the month. Generally, I have nothing against people who are loved up, although I did get a teeny bit jealous of them this summer. However I have a serious issue with women who will purposely sit on their partner while he's not wearing all that much, will slap suncreen in a sexy,saucy way all over them and will then giggle loudly pointing at their partner's erect manhood while letting the whole beach now that said manhood is now erect, they won't call it his penis though, they have puke-inducing nicknames for those too. He tells her off, they play fight and off to the water they go to scare away the fishies and the little kiddies who snorkeling! After their dip in the water they will start chasing each other on the beach in an attempt for the dominant male to expose the female's breasts, she pretends she doesn't really like it but when she notices that old mr. Pervertson (who was probably good looking a good 50 years ago) is staring at the bouncing goodies in front of him, she reconsiders and might even let mr. Boyfriendson win. Joy to the world.
And last but not least you get people like me, who have actually got so much free time that they sit on a sun lounger the whole day and observe people. In my defence however, spying is so much fun, especially when you're hiding behind massive sunglasses which resemble the stained window art at Notre Dame in Paris. You get to know so much about people and you get to shape ideas and opinions of what you really (don't) want to be like when you're older and maybe even wiser. I am pretty sure someone, who was equally bored, is now typing away about the strange girl in the blue bikini who was looking at people and laughing by herself.
