Okay, he must be told, so I spent the next few mornings waiting for him by the front door, half asleep. But he never showed. Is it just me who thinks postmen come very early in the morning? I was at my post at nine o' clock the first day, at eight o' clock the second day, at seven o' clock the third day,  till I was convinced the postman was a ghost!

Totally frustrated, I continued to collect my mail, dirty and messed up, from the pavement, until the day the letters stopped arriving. And that was really strange because I have exchanged letters with pen pals for years, instead of emails, and now the letters have stopped coming! (Well, easy for a letter to be lost, when it is on a pavement).

I decided to go to the post office and report that my letters stopped coming. "Well, that’s because you probably don't have any," a clerk answered rudely, which sent me storming to her supervisor, explaining, once again, my plight. "Well, that’s probably because the senders have written wrong address," was his ridiculous answer. Apart from the fact that he insulted the intelligence of me and my pen pals, I told him politely about the letter box, about the pavement, about the loss of my mail, finally asking him politely to speak to the postman.

A few days later, I spotted something in my letter box! Overjoyed, I hardly contained myself as I opened it. And there was the mail…mine as well as that of every other resident in the building!

Well, is he totally stupid? Can’t he see my name outside? I thought furiously. When this continued to happen every day thereafter, I wrote a note with big black letters and I glued it outside: "ONLY LETTERS FOR MARIA DASKALAKI INSIDE, PLEASE." Guess what? He ignored it! Apart from stupid, was he blind, too?

Then, one day as I was returning home around eleven in the morning, I spotted him from across the street stuffing everyone's mail into my box. I tried to be calm and polite and, after I told him Kalimera and introduced myself, he looked at me aggressively and said: "So you are the smart one that complained to my supervisor!" I was speechless.

Yes, dear readers, this is Greece, my country! The country where you are always wrong and unreasonable if you expect the "understood"! The country where one person will send you to another and then another . . .  and you will never find what you are looking for, or even get one believable excuse! So, my postman continues to fill my beautiful new mail box with everybody’s letters…and I continue to be calm and polite. At least, I rationalize, it's better inside the box with all the others than on the pavement.