Generosity in Greece: See Cultural Differences When Your Travel to the Mediterranean

Just like most Americans, I was brought up believing that, because the United States is a melting pot of different backgrounds, we were a hospitable nation. On my journey to the island of Crete as a dependent of an active service member of the U.S. Air Force, I found out that Americans have quite a bit to learn about being courteous and hospitable.

When my husband and I arrived in Athens, it was without our luggage. It had been given an extended vacation in Paris. (In other words, our luggage had mistakenly been held at the airport in Paris.) In order for us to get to the island of Crete where the Iraklion Air Force Base was (now closed), we had to go to the taxi stand across the street from the international airport and get a ride to regional airport. We had less than an hour to catch our flight.

As we were walking across the street, a man in dark 3-piece suit was struggling with his luggage cart; trying to get it up over the curb without tipping all of his suitcases into the street. My husband rushed over to help him. After he got the man's luggage balanced on the cart and up onto the sidewalk, we smiled at the man and then got in line to wait for our turn to get a taxi. We didn't give the man another thought and, instead, turned our attention to the length of the taxi stand line. Judging from how long it was, we knew that we would be missing our flight to Crete.

Up ahead of us, someone started yelling. We couldn't understand any of it though seeing that the voice was speaking Greek. Within minutes, we saw that the person yelling was the very same man my husband had just helped and he was yelling at a police officer. Both of them were walking towards us. The man kept on yelling the whole time. My husband and I looked at each other with a puzzled expression. What did we do? We've been in Greece for 20 minutes and it looks like we're going to jail.

The police officer motioned for us to follow him, all the while the man in the 3-piece suit continued to talk loudly. My mind was racing! What had we done? What Greek law had we broken? I kept hoping that we'd have the chance to speak to someone from the American Embassy so that this could be straightened out.

The police officer walked us past all the people standing in line waiting for a taxi and led us around the corner to where a guard was ushering people into taxis lined up on that street. He spoke to the guard for just a few seconds, motioned to us to stand next to the guard, and then left. The guard blew his whistle and the next taxi drove up to us. He opened the back door of the taxi and ushered us in. All of a sudden, we were riding down the boulevard.

The taxi driver asked us, in English, where we were from and where did we want to go. We could hardly believe what we were hearing. My husband told him that we were Americans and were on our way to Crete. He also asked the taxi driver to explain what just happened if he could. The man assured us that he would do his very best to get us to the airport in time for our flight. He also explained about the situation we had found ourselves in. Apparently, my husband's gesture of help was toward a government official. The man was yelling because that's what Greeks do when discussing something they feel is extremely important. The government official wanted to return the kindness my husband had shown to him so he was trying to help us reach our destination.

We did make our flight to Crete and we can owe it all to the generosity of the man in the 3-piece suit.