Athens- it’s a tough city – locals say living here is hard. Unemployment is running at around 25 per cent. It’s chaotic, frantic, in your face, and indifferent to opinion.

This little city-state was the home to democracy and some of civilisations greatest thinkers.

It might have been a tiny city-state then, but once you climb the Acropolis, it is apparent that this city spreads out forever.  Almost four million of Greece’s 11 million, live in Athens. Most of them ride motorbikes or mopeds.  I don’t know if it’s because there is a general love affair with the motorcycle – or, as seems more likely, it’s just the easiest way to get around.

There were old bikes, new bikes, battered bikes, bikes shining and new and bikes one splutter away from the bike graveyard. There were BMWs, Suzukis, Hondas, Paggios, Yamahas, San Yang and a whole range of other names that meant nothing. They come at you in waves from the traffic lights.

The smell of petrol is ever present, and the smog hangs so heavily that for once I believe that you can cut the air with a knife.  

Mix it with the heat and its uncomfortable, challenging, confronting. We wander towards some markets, and you notice a sense of decay. There are a lot of closed shops, boarded up windows and graffiti everywhere.

Some have set up shop on the footpath, selling goods that look a bit like a bad garage sale. Someone pulls up in a truck, parks blocking half the traffic and proceeds to open shop.

He is still there several hours later. The beggar children come at you, not asking for money but more like demanding it.

There is a confrontation with a cafe owner and a beggar; the kid must able all of about 12 going on 50. I cannot understand a word, but from the kid’s tone, you would have to think this dance has been played out a lot before.

It was strange to sit on top of the Acropolis looking at evidence of the classical architecture that I had learnt about in the isolation of a WASP town. St. Arnaud was white;  Christian; the Scots brand of Presbyterian, the cold and austere one; it was us. The closest you came to cultural diversity was Con’s fruit shop, run by a Greek family, and a small dingy general store at the bottom of the main street run by an ex-market gardener, Louie Ho who sold the best ice blocks.  Con was never called upon to talk to us about Greek history and classical architecture. But here I am, the boy from the bush whose idea of having dinner out was a mixed grill at the local pub, looking at the Parthenon, a site celebrating the worship of the gods. The day we were there, it was the time for Muslim morning prays, floating over the temple of the gods, while all around tourist had themselves photographed at one of the centres of political history.

And for me, it is a matter of trying to match those events and influences which shaped and moulded our lives with what we ended up being.

Often, along the way, and usually for good reasons, the ambitions, dreams and hopes that we had and nurtured as young wannabes, got trampled by life’s realities.

For me, this has been a chance to match that which fed the dreams and ambitions with realities. It is not always a comfortable mix.