It's all Greek to me

Its funny how even on the most calm of days when you're traveling something always seems to happen that is worth writing about. That was true on one of our last days in Crete. We'd had a pretty straightforward day. Quite a bit of driving, a little bit of sightseeing. It was easy to tell we were winding down the vacation. We arrived in the town of Agia about 5:00. I wasn't that impressed with the town at first look (or really after we'd been there a while - although I will say the people were really nice). We decided to stay the night anyways, didn't feel much like driving on and it would definitely be cheaper then go on into Iraklion.

We stopped at a hotel mentioned in our guide book and spent about 5 minutes trying to figure out where to go to see if they had a room available. Rang the door bell a few times and were standing there looking lost when a little old lady came up and asked "rooms?" (I think that was all of her English) A stream of Greek followed our "yes" and she proceeded to ring the bell a few times, knock on the door and yell "Magaurite." When she didn't get an answer to proceeded to give what I thought were directions to another place, only it turns out that she wanted to get in the car and show us. Now getting directions from someone who only speaks Greek, even when she's sitting in the front seat (I squashed myself into the back because it just seemed easier) is not that easy. But we managed and ended up parked where she wanted. At which point she led us inside, exchanged a patter of Greek with another little old woman, who yelled upstairs to her husband to show us the room. Never mind that the couple only spoke Greek as well, we ended up with a room for the night. Tiny but clean, at this point I was just happy to have a bed.

Sadly this wasn't it for my Greek-English in-communication for the night. When we came back from dinner we realized that our radiator was not working and our room was cold! We dithered back and forth over whether the blankets would be enough to keep us warm but finally Dee convinced me to go back downstairs and try to talk to our landlady (since she was already tucked up under said blankets). Right. How do you tell someone that can't speak your language that you have no heat? You tell them you're cold...by pretending to shiver and then pointing upstairs to the room. Spurt of Greek...which I think was her repeating what I pantomimed in actually words, and if it wasn't I agreed anyways. It got her to come upstairs at least, where she felt the radiator and agreed there was no heat then shrugged her shoulders as if to say "I don't know why." She went back down to get her glasses, came back up, yelled for her husband again. When he came up some long interaction in Greek took place, which also involved them tramping in and out of the room several times (never mind that there was hardly room for two people to stand up at the same time, much less walk past each other). Judging by touch, they exclaimed in happiness when the pipes begin to heat up. As did I. My bumbling attempts to communicate without a common language were over. I am a little amazed at how much you can get done without being able to exchange a common word. I will say that living and traveling abroad has made me much better at listening for a general idea instead of listening for words that I can recognize.