Po Po Shut Us DOOWwwnn...

Where I come from, "Po Po" is slang for "the police." Around here "po po" has a different slang meaning, which I'll get into a little later, but to begin, we'll start with the Po Po.

When we first arrived in Greece, Chris issued a warning about the police: "Here the police are not exactly regarded as respectfully as they are in the States. They are more like thugs." Little did I know how true this would eventually ring.

Let me explain. The police ride around on scooters, two at a time, which is, frankly, just hard to take very seriously. Two dudes spooning on a scooter does not exactly command much authority. The Po Po seems to know this, so they try to intimidate by flashing their blue lights continuously. No emergency is needed and no urgency is required. They travel in groups of 9,000 and like to play with their "God" radios (you know, the kind where they can yell to the public via their vehicles). They'll tell jokes to each other across the highway. I even heard one singing once.

They can often be found standing on street corners with their arms crossed while yelling, whistling at and ogling any pretty girl that walks by (always in huge groups). Whenever the time comes for them to actually write a ticket, it apparently requires the entire platoon of them. One to write the ticket, one to guard the speeding driver, one to glower over the shoulder of the one doing the writing, and about 15 to stand around with their arms crossed in order to continue the ogling of the young women. Don't want to get behind on the day's quota of ogling just because one guy decided that justice needed to be done.

Don't bother asking them for directions. They will not answer. You're better off asking a kind old man who owns a store.

Around Thanksgiving time, my apartment was broken into. I had a small safe in my room that they had been cracked open, and the money inside was all stolen. Whitney was out of town when I came home to discover this, so I was all alone and a little flustered to say the least. Not knowing what to do or who to call (obviously the number for the police is not 911 here, and I didn't know what it actually was, but now I do. For any of you visiting Greece, the number for the police is 100.), so I called Alina, my only hope for some sort of liaison. She called the cops for me and told me that she would be on her way to help shortly. To my chagrin, the police arrived before Alina did.

There were two of them in my doorway. One spoke some English, one spoke none. They could not have been over 17 years old. They had no equipment, tools, paperwork or uniforms. They wore jeans and hooded sweatshirts. So, when I opened the door, and they said, "We are the police," you can understand why my internal response was, "Like hell you are." Luckily the voice that actually came out of me simply demanded some ID, which was produced but looked like a driver's license at best-- more like a fake ID that some college kid paid 80 bucks for-- that said POLICE in huge letters at the top. No shiny badge. I was skeptical to say the least.

They stepped inside the foyer and asked what happened. Without moving, they looked left, right, and left again as if they were about to cross the street with a small child, and declared that everything looked fine, so what was the big deal. Incredulous, I said, "Well, the problem isn't in the foyer..." and then I showed them the broken safe. They said something to the effect of, "That's too bad" and then gaped at me. I decided this was absurd and unnerving, so I sent them outside until Alina got there. With her help translating the rest of the "investigation" (never was there such an overstatement) went better, but she, too, was shocked to see two kids wearing sweatshirts doing the policing.

Apparently these two really had no purpose whatsoever because they told us that they were not authorized to write any sort of police report-- that we must go down to the station another day and do that ourselves. Bureaucracy at its finest. So, this is what we did. The man who wrote up my official report was wearing blue sweatpants and a Paul Frank t-shirt where the monkey's head was printed in the likeness of Satan. Half of the report session was spent with him asking me about my favorite music and showing me pictures of New York City on his iPhone, but I guess I can't complain too much because he got it done in the end, and it served its purpose well.

Which brings me to "po po." This is a Greek phrase that I'm not sure I can really define. It's something like, "oh no" that can be used in an endless slew of contexts. It can mean "I don't give a..." if said with a little bit of an attitude; it can mean "aww crap" (e.g., "It's raining! Po po!"); it can mean "look at that!" (e.g., "Check out those shoes! Po po!"); it can indicate overwhelm (e.g., "Po po! This shirt is expensive!" or "Po po! This dish is far larger than I expected!); or general disdain or disappointment (here it usually comes in a string: "Po po po po po po po po po po.").

So, dear police, perhaps you should try giving directions sometimes or carrying a notepad when you go to investigate a robbery. Maybe then I wouldn't start this story with a "po po" whenever I relay it. Po po, Po Po.