Green Neon

7 Four days to full moon

The next afternoon, Tom made his way to the siblings' apartment, which was only two blocks away. When Georgios opened the door, the German boy thought he'd landed in a Donald Duck comic. Georgios wore the sailor's uniform from the day before, but today white canvas shoes, Sophia a blue pleated skirt and a white blouse.

At first glance she seemed quite serious and a little shy. Her black, straight hair was parted in the middle and fell to her shoulders. Black horn-rimmed glasses dominated her narrow, pale face. She was slightly shorter than Tom and, unlike her brother, almost skinny.

A few moments later her friends Dora and Maria arrived, two lively girls who, unlike Sophia, chattered non-stop. They carried a large, woven straw bag with their beach essentials. After introducing themselves to each other, the five youths boarded the bus to Athens.

What was an everyday bus ride for the Greek teenagers turned into another adventure for Tom. The blue and white Athens city buses were several years old and the hard wooden seats were uncomfortable. Many buses listed to the rear right, which was probably due to the fact that at peak times there were crowds of people hanging out in the open rear entrance.

At the rear right, there was also the seat of the conductor, who sold passengers small thin strips of paper as tickets, which were paid for with lepta coins, which were strangely light and had a hole in the middle. Tom mentally calculated the fare and came up with a sum of less than 20 pfennigs for a bus ride that lasted almost an hour.

When they only had to shell out a few aluminum coins again at the entrance to the beach in Vouliagmeni, he gradually realized that with the 400 marks he had taken with him for the four weeks, he obviously had a small fortune for Greece.

The beach was two kilometers of coarse sand and thatched parasols lined up 20 meters from the waterline. People were lying or sitting under a few of them, and Tom noticed that almost all the women were fully clothed.

It was around two o'clock and most of the Greeks had already left to rest at home and escape the worst of the heat. A few children were splashing about in the lightly rippled water, and a few boys were playing football at the west end of the beach.

Sophia, Dora, and Maria headed for one of the unoccupied straw mushrooms, spread out bath towels and sat down. Georgios pulled a bag of pastries out of the big bag and one of the girls ran to a stall to buy a bottle of lemonade. While chewing on the hard, sweet biscuits, Sophia and her friends struck up a conversation in Greek, while Georgios asked Tom in English about last night.

Tom was just mentioning that his new friend from Agios Andreas had promised to join them when Nikos appeared at the entrance to the beach area. He ran to the group under the parasol. Georgios had to be content with a short "Yassu" while the girls were greeted in detail. Tom watched with interest as Nikos looked each one of them deep in the eyes and made witty remarks, evidently compliments, as Sophia blushed a little and grew shy about looking at him.

Nikos greeted Tom in Greek, who thought he recognized the word "philos" several times. Realizing that he had spoken Greek, Nikos repeated his greeting in English, which enabled Tom to guess that the word "philos" meant something like friend. Nikos took off his pants lightly stained with cement and his shirt and stuffed them into his canvas shoulder bag. Instead of swimming trunks, he wore shorts that had once been black but had faded quite a bit from frequent saltwater bathing.

The others also took off their everyday clothes. The girls all wore full blue bathing suits which Tom thought they had either agreed on ahead of time, or perhaps blue was the current fashion. Bikinis had been banned by the military government, Nikos explained to Tom in German.