Day 155 - Katerini - Sort of in the middle bit, by the sea

My initial enthusiasm for Greece has abated somewhat in the last few days. The landscape is very nice, the people are, on the whole, very friendly, the food is good...but nothing happens! The height of excitement in all of the nightlife I've seen is when someone orders another iced coffee. They don't drink, they certainly don't know what draught Guinness is, they don't listen to music (well, not decent music), they don't dance or make fools of themselves, they're not particularly open to conversation. They just sit around drinking iced coffee, or playing computer games and smoking.

I have found one bar here - a 'Rock Bar'. Regular readers may remember Day 56, somewhere in Spain. That involved a Rock Bar aswell, along with enough vodka and bacardi to render my legs, amongst other things, useless. That was a proper Rock Bar. This Greek one is a bit different. It has all the hallmarks of a proper rocker's bar, standing out from the surrounding neon lights, trendy sofas and well-groomed patrons of the normal cafes with its dark, gloomy interior, pub-style chairs and tables and, of course, heavy guitar music booming out. The front tables are filled with fat guys with long hair, goatees and black t-shirts with things like 'Theatre of Destruction' printed on them. They look sullenly on the passing 'normal' Greeks making their way to their chosen trendy-cafe. Unfortunately that's where the Rock Bar, and typical rocker-mystique, part ends, because they all sit there sipping delicate glasses of iced coffee through straws! The barman does smoke a pipe, however, so he gets a bonus point.

I go to Thessoloniki soon, the second biggest city (after Athens, obviously), so maybe that will change my view a bit. It can't be any worse than the third biggest city...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i418VMypaI