Siga-siga: The Greek Art of Ignoring the Clock

Anyone visiting Greece for the first time and arranging to meet at 6pm quickly learns an important lesson: 6pm means roughly 6pm. Maybe 6:30. Nobody gets worked up about it, nobody rushes to apologize. Instead you'll hear a relaxed "siga-siga" – literally "slowly, slowly". What can look like carelessness to outsiders is actually one of the oldest philosophies of life in Europe.

Behind it lies an ancient Greek distinction between two kinds of time: Chronos, the measured time of the clock, counted in seconds and minutes – and Kairos, the right, lived moment, which can't be captured in numbers. Siga-siga is basically Kairos applied to everyday life: a conversation ends when it's finished, not when the clock says so. A coffee gets finished when it's cold – not within some fixed break.

You see it everywhere in Greek daily life: roughly between 3pm and 5pm, many places observe "mesimeri", the quiet afternoon rest, during which you don't call or bother anyone. A coffee at the kafeneio can easily stretch to two hours without anyone glancing at the clock or waiting for the next guest. And when a repairman says he'll come by "siga-siga", that doesn't mean "never" – it simply means: whenever the moment is right.

What's interesting is that exactly what Greece has been living for centuries is now being rediscovered in the West as "slow living" and celebrated in glossy magazines – deliberate deceleration, mindfulness, living in the moment. Except in Greece it never needed a movement with its own hashtag. It was simply always there.

The same goes for us: siga-siga. Nobody rushes you from the table, nobody brings the bill while you're still on your last sip of wine. Enjoy your meal for as long as you like. And calmly said: only 4 days left until our Drachmen Fest on 29.09. – live music, prices like it's 1960! And mark your calendars already: from 04.10. to 15.10. we're closed for our annual break, and from 16.10. we're back for you.