csb: Was in the Athens airport waiting for a flight. We were camped out in a crowed little airport cafe and an OLDER couple looked in hopefully to find a seat, but there was no room. I told them they could sit with us if they liked and they gladly accepted. I had the kids scrunch down the bench and we managed to get all 6 of us seated around the small 4 top. The couple was quite old but clearly well travelled and they asked about our trip. At one point I mentioned how in the Peloponnese the road sign and the city names never seemed to match up and it was slightly confusing. But I also said that Greek seemed like a difficult language to learn and it probably wasn't worth the hassle. With a rye smile the old man proceeded for the next 5 mins to tell me all about the benefits of learning ancient Greek. (who knew there were any!) Evidently he was an antiquities/language professor of some sort at Yale. Which was cool because I had had the kids watch Kagan's Yale course on the Peloponnesian wars. He got a chuckle out of that.
PS the difference in the city names on street signs is if they are in Greek/Byzantine Greek/ or some other regional dialect of Greek. But they are used interchangeably.