Archive for June, 2010

The Heat! The Heat!

June 16, 2010

So It’s 95 degrees outside right now and I’m afraid to leave this small air conditioned classroom. Don’t worry though, there’s another 5 degrees to go today as the high is 100! Don’t be fooled by the sun going down, the low for tonight is a warm 75.

75! That’s not even the high back home! All of you appreciate not having your clothes stick to you when you walk outside. Get me out of here! I want to go home now!

Both of my big final papers have been written and turned in today. Now all I have to do is a Greek written and oral final along with a small theater performance and a presentation of my creating impressions book that I made. Friday night after the book presentation is our farewell dinner and then I get to do my last minute shopping and packing on Saturday. My flight is at 6:30 am on Sunday morning so I’m thinking of taking the metro to the airport late Saturday night to avoid the 60 euro night cab ride. I’m going to look like an idiot with two duffel bags on the trolley and the metro but it’s worth paying 1/10th the price.

I didn’t buy a metro ticket last Sunday when I was out with Dana on our way to Gazi for lunch since she already had hers and I haven’t been checked in the last 3 months I’ve been here. Of course my last week in Athens would be when I get ticketed on the metro. Or any public transportation for that matter. I got a 30 euro fine for not having a 0.50 euro ticket and even though I showed him my other 10 tickets from other times he refused to let me off with a warning of any kind. I took the ticket to Rosemary at the Athens Center and she said that it had to be paid in 20 days so it would be alright if I just went home and didn’t pay it. Yay! I get to be a fugitive! I’m really not worried about it though because they only have my name and birthday on the ticket. I didn’t show them my passport or even my Oregon ID, they just looked at my student card which has nothing of real value on it.

Live and learn. Boy have I been doing a lot of that the past three months. I am SO EXCITED to come back home and see everyone! Love you and miss you all!

The Detailed Tale of Γιώργος

June 15, 2010

It was the same greeting I hear every day from shopkeepers trying to invite me into their store. “Hello! Where are you from?” I usually answer just to be nice since I don’t like to ignore people. “America,” I said, “from Oregon.” The next question I would never have expected anywhere outside of Oregon. “Are you a duck or a beaver?” I stopped mid step. “Beaver,” I replied, stunned that someone in Greece would know the two state university mascots. The middle aged man was sitting on a small chair outside a jewelry shop on the main street in Olympia, Greece. When he smiled up at me I saw that he was missing two teeth on the top row. “That’s in Corvallis, right?  I’ve never been there, been to Portland and Eugene though,” he said.  I felt gravitated towards this man who seemed so familiar so quickly. He spoke in perfect English and yet had just the right thickness of accent for me to know he was a native Greek. He was wearing a plain orange polo with some simple tan slacks and reminded me of someone that would actually fit in back home. It was also the first time I’d seen someone wearing the color orange in Greece. It turned out that his name was Γιώργος (the Greek version of George) and he owned the little jewelry shop.

He asked me after a few minutes if I wanted to sit and have a coffee with him. I hesitated, not sure how far we would be going in order to get coffee, but then he pointed to the café right next to his shop. I took about 5 steps to the left and sat down at a small table. He took the seat across from me and signaled an older man who appeared to know Γιώργος quite well. Γιώργος asked me if I wanted a beer or a coffee and I must have looked puzzled at why the choice was necessary. “It’s around noon,” he said, “maybe you were looking for a beer.” I told him that a frappe was fine and he seemed impressed that I knew of such things. He ordered a bottle of water for himself and I scolded him for not getting a coffee with me like he said. “I’ve already had three today,” he explained, so I let it slide.

When I asked Γιώργος if he was born in Olympia he was very proud to inform me he was a 7th generation Olympian and everyone else in town were just Albanians or “fake Olympians” to him. I could tell he had a lot of pride in his town so I asked him what there was to do here; I figured he ought to know best. I wanted to find a place for dinner that the locals went instead of the tourist trap restaurants that charge too much for too little. He told me there was a place nearby that he liked to eat at for dinner if I wanted authentic Greek food and then asked me if I’d like to have dinner with him there that night. I was shocked, so I stumbled over the question, pretending to not have heard his invitation. Instead, I asked what it was called. He waved his hand off into the distance and told me it was down and around the corner. I changed the subject and asked him if there were clubs in the area and what the nightlife was like in Olympia.  He mentioned there was one club that I shouldn’t go to because “things” happen there, but another club in town would be really great to go to that night if I wanted to. He gave me the name of the club and then the conversation focused more on him.

We talked about his job as an engineer in the states and why he had visited Oregon. He had actually gone to school for a couple years at UCLA and then traveled all over the US for his job as a civil engineer. He told me that his favorite place was New Orleans, Louisiana. He ended up coming back home to Olympia because of his family and stopped his career as an engineer because he would have had to live in Athens to keep that type of job. Now that he was back in Olympia he takes care of his family and works the little jewelry shop because he likes the tourists. We talked about Greek culture and what Athens is like compared to the islands or places like Olympia. He recommended an island or two that I should go see before leaving Greece, or maybe coming back to visit in the future.

When the topic of what I had purchased so far in Greece came up I told him I had been buying a lot of jewelry. I said my favorite piece so far was a blue opal ring I found in Crete. He asked some detailed questions about the ring and when he wasn’t satisfied with my answers he suddenly got up from the table and went into his shop. He returned a few minutes later holding a ring on a small stand. “Does the stone look like this?” he asked. I replied that it didn’t and he frowned, saying, “This is what real blue opal should look like. You didn’t get the real thing.” He waved for me to follow him into his shop to take a look at his wares. I then found a bracelet with a large turquoise stone in the middle that was beautiful and he had me wear it around for a while. He wrote the price down on a small piece of paper and set it down on the counter. “Guess how much it costs,” he said, “I won’t change the actual price just the price on the paper.” I was flustered and guessed something higher than I actually thought it was to avoid offending him. He laughed when I guessed, “70 euros.” The price was only 30! I finally decided to buy the bracelet as a memento of this strange coincidental meeting. Γιώργος gave me his business card with my little bag and showed me the back of his card with some common phrases in Greek such as “thank you – efcharisto” and “good morning – kalimera”. He said he put the phrases on there in the hopes that tourists would keep his card. I thanked him again for the bracelet and started to make my way out the door when he asked me to dinner again. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said, “and I think it’s good that you think like that, but look around, I promise you it is safe here! This is a small town, it’s just dinner so we can talk more about America and about Greece.” I told him I would think about it and asked when he was planning on going to dinner. “10:30,” he said, “after the shop closes.” I left him that afternoon not quite sure if I’d be going back to that jewelry shop again.

A few hours later at a café with some friends a man came to our table and gave us a business card telling us we should all come to his club that night. The name on the card wasn’t the same as the name Γιώργοςhad given me earlier so I wondered if this was the club he had warned me not to go to. It was our last night in the Peloponissos, however, and a couple of us really wanted to go out that night. I resolved the afternoon’s issue of going to dinner or not by inviting my friend Dani to join me for dinner to give me a reason to leave in order for us to go to the club afterwards. I decided it would also be useful to see Γιώργος again to ask him about the nature of this club we were invited to.

Dani and I met Γιώργος that night just as he was closing shop and he seemed very happy to see us. He also had another American to question now and they talked most of the way to the taverna. It was a small place with some locals eating dinner already and we sat down at a table outside. Γιώργος asked us if we knew what we wanted for dinner and we quickly realized just how “local” the place was since there was no menu to be had. He waved his hand and said not to worry about it; he would get us some authentic Greek things. I thought I had tried everything in Greece after eating at places for over two months but I was wrong! A spicy cheese dip was accompanied by a loaf of bread along with what appeared to be a Greek form of bruschetta. The appetizer was a round piece of wheat bread layered with chunky tomato and topped with feta cheese cut into moist pieces. Since Dani and I had eaten only a few hours previously we were hoping that this was the end of our meal. We were stuffed now that the bread and dips had been consumed over conversation about our life in Greece the last couple months.

Just as we were hoping to turn the conversation into us leaving for the club we got a large surprise in the form of meat. I had just finished asking Γιώργος about the club we were planning on going to (it turned out it was in fact the one he had warned me against visiting) when a gigantic platter of different meats and French fries with tzatziki was set on our table. I looked wide-eyed at the platter of food and seriously considered calling up the rest of our group to come help finish it so we wouldn’t be there all night. At that point our hopes of going out on the town had been dashed and we settled in for more food, wine, and conversation. It was 2 am before we decided we couldn’t eat another bite of the sausage, lamb, chicken, or pork. The tzatziki hadn’t even been touched! Γιώργος paid for our meal entirely and wouldn’t even consider us helping him with the bill. He walked us back to our hotel up the road and we bid him a good night knowing we probably wouldn’t be seeing him again. The night was truly wonderful and I’ll always remember my time in Olympia, Greece when I wear my bracelet. Γιώργος was a great example of the Greek hospitality I’ve grown to love and I’ll always smile when I think of him and his two missing teeth.

The Sheer Cliffs of Meteora

June 12, 2010

Meteora was in one word: Astonishing.

One of the monasteries on a cliff in Meteora. I insist you click and look at the rest!

I came to Meteora without ever having seen pictures of the cliffs or the monasteries on top of them. Even if I had seen pictures before hand I don’t think it would have prepared me for such sights. I thought it might have been what my mom experienced going to Santorini and seeing the caldera for the first time. She thought it would just be a quaint little town on top of a cliff perhaps not much different than the one I live on in Bend. I never experienced anything so breathtaking as the cliffs of Meteora though. Not just large mountains, but sheer cliffs falling off into nothingness below. I’m used to mountains, I have lots of them where I grew up but this was something totally different. I don’t think pictures can really do it justice since there isn’t much to compare their size to other than the monastery on top. There are 6 monasteries left in Meteora and only a couple still house monks, the others are very catered to tourists now. The 5 of us ended up going to two large monasteries and then since it was 90 degrees F decided to go explore town instead of walking the long way down the road to another.

I am so so glad that I decided to travel this weekend instead of staying in Athens. It really made me realize that I’ve only seen a portion of what this magnificent country has to show me. Besides Meteora I have yet to really explore anything north of Athens ( look on a map, that’s a HUGE amount of land) or any of the islands in the Ionian Sea. I have a renewed feeling of excitement for being here and think that I’ll have a great last week here in Greece! I still look forward to going home in a week but still feel like there is more to do while I’m here!

Tomorrow I get to interview the cook at Vyrinis for her coconut chocolate recipe and maybe some others so stay tuned for that as I work on finishing up my book on Vyrinis for my Creating Impressions class! Love you all!

The Last Weekend Hurrah!

June 9, 2010

So this weekend will be my last time visiting somewhere outside of the Athens. My homesickness is mixing with my guilt of not wanting to be here anymore so I think this will be a refreshing little vacation to Meteora. 5 of us are going for just one night and then we’ll be back on Saturday to get some work done before finals next week. I think the amount of work I have to do before I leave here is just making me want to leave even more so I don’t have to do any of it. I forget sometimes that I’m not here just for fun, I’m also getting grades while I’m here. Mostly useless grades for my major/minor, but grades nonetheless.

I have to say that what is bumming me out the most is not getting to see my friends graduate back home. I’ve been taking classes for 4 solid years with them and now I don’t get to see them walk and receive their hard earned diplomas. It’s crazy to think that I won’t ever have another class with some of them. I don’t get to sit in the back row with Tyler and make fun of our teachers. I don’t get to have another potluck with Kelsie and Phil in our apartments. Luckily not ALL of my friends are graduating. Some are like me and taking 5 years to finish our degrees. I still get to hang out with Matt, Ben, Joe, and others. I also have a bunch of friends that are Juniors this year such as Lance and Madicken. I miss everyone that I have just mentioned SO MUCH as well as the rest of you. I can’t wait to come home and dish out all of the presents that I had to buy a whole separate duffel bag for to bring home. I’m going to look like a fool carrying two duffel bags onto the bus/metro at 2 am along with my backpack and purse. Yes, picture that for a second. Stupid tourist.

It really does feel like things are winding down here. I spend more time in my apartment, not having the energy to go out at nights and party it up like in the beginning. We have no more school trips planned, just class after class. I looked today in my Greek book in class and realized we were on the third to last page. How did through it so quickly? I feel like I should be using Greek more than I do in everyday life. I know SO MUCH more Greek then I actually give myself credit for. The problem is getting myself to say it and make it feel as natural as it feels writing it. The ironic part is that when I get home I’ll know the most Greek. I wish we had done as much Greek in the first two weeks of being here as the last two weeks.

This Sunday I have a date with the morning cook at Vyrinis to get her recipe for the coconut chocolate cake I promised! Mama Vyrinis will be there to translate for me because apparently the cook doesn’t know English. Once my book that I’m making for my Creating Impressions class finally comes together I’ll feel much better. Oh yeah, and those two 5 page papers I need to write…. I should get on that.

Off to go be productive! Love you all!

The Birthday Bash in Detail!

June 7, 2010

Υεια μας! A shot of Raki to finish off my birthday dinner! Click for the rest of my pictures from my 22nd birthday in Athens!

I owe it to my mother to thank her again for making my 22nd birthday so wonderful. I also wanted to post the pictures from the event for you all to see! The 11 of us were comprised of my mother, her friend Rino from Paris, her two friends from Bend that had been in Egypt for a month, 5 of my friends from the program here, and Tricia’s sister Leslie who was here to visit for two weeks. We were basically the only group at the taverna the whole night until much later since people really don’t eat dinner here until around 10. We started meeting at Vyrinis around 8 pm and I can’t even remember when we left… it was late… and I was intoxicated. I blame the 4.5 kilos of house red wine that we drank as well as the pitchers full of Rakomelo that was all on the house! Rakomelo is Raki (a spirit made from grapes that’s about 60% alcohol) mixed with honey and spices such as cinnamon. Everyone said it tasted like apple pie and I had to agree with them. But that was much later on in the night.

First I should mention the 10 appetizers that I ordered for us throughout the night. We had two Greek salads, two eggplant salads (it’s a dip similar to babaganoush), one fava (bean dip), one tzatziki, one plate of giant baked beans, two dolmades (meat and rice wrapped in grape leaves), and some stuffed peppers. As if that wasn’t enough (yes it probably would have been) we also got some entrées to share and really stuff us all up! The chicken and mushrooms is amazing at Vyrinis and it even comes with French fries! They unfortunately only had 4 of them to offer the 6 orders we had intended on placing so two of us settled for lamb and French fries instead. Just as delicious in my opinion! I’ve had their whole menu a couple times over by now.

When it was time for dessert they brought me a piece of their delicious coconut chocolate cake with a candle on top. It was so special to have everyone around me singing and even Alex and Francis who work at Vyrinis were there behind me to wish me a happy birthday. A couple more desserts were passed around the table for us to try but I can’t even remember what they were at this point. The whole focus was on the coconut chocolate cake. I promised my mom that I would talk to the cook and get the recipe because she said it was the best cake she’s had in her whole life. The cake is really very simple, it is coconut cake soaked in honey with chocolate on the top and it just makes for an amazing combination. The cake is not too soggy from the honey and not too sweet either. When I get the recipe maybe I’ll post it online and you can try making it if you want!

The group of us at Vyrinis taverna in Athens, Greece! Click for the rest of my photos from dinner.

You should definitely look at the pictures from the night and see the bottle graveyard we created on the table. It’s really quite impressive. I think by the end of dinner we were all feeling pretty happy as we walked back home. So thank you again everyone for a wonderful night and we should all do it again before we leave this magical place!

Duck or Beaver?

June 7, 2010

It was the same greeting I hear every day from shopkeepers trying to invite me into their store. “Hello! Where are you from?” I usually answer just to be nice since I don’t like to ignore people. “America,” I said, “from Oregon.” The next question I would never have expected anywhere outside of Oregon. “Are you a duck or a beaver?” I stopped mid step. “Beaver,” I said, stunned that someone in Greece would know the two state university mascots. The middle aged man was sitting on a small chair outside a jewelry shop on the main street in Olympia, Greece. When he smiled up at me I saw that he was missing two teeth on the top row. “That’s in Corvallis, right? I’ve never been there, been to Portland and Eugene though.” I felt gravitated towards this man who seemed so familiar so quickly. He spoke in perfect English and yet had just the right thickness of accent to tell that he was a native Greek. It turned out that his name was Γιώργος (the Greek version of George) and he owned the little jewelry shop he was perched in front of.

He asked me after a few minutes of us talking if I want to sit and have a coffee with him. I hesitated, not sure how far we would be going in order to get coffee but he just pointed to the café right next to his shop. I basically took about 5 steps to the left and sat down at a small table. He took the seat across from me and hailed over an older man who appeared to know Γιώργος quite well. He asked me if I wanted a beer or a coffee and I must have looked puzzled at why the choice was necessary. “It’s around noon,” he said, “maybe you were looking for a beer.” I told him that a frappe was fine and he seemed impressed that I knew of such things. He ordered a bottle of water for himself and I scolded him for not getting a coffee with me like he said. “I’ve already had three today,” he explained, so I let it slide. We talked about his job as an engineer in the states and why he had visited Oregon. We talked about Greek culture and what Athens was like compared to the islands. He recommended an island or two that I should go see before leaving Greece, or maybe coming back to visit in the future.

When the topic of what I had purchased so far in Greece came up I told him I had been buying a lot of jewelry. I told him my favorite piece so far was a blue opal ring I had found in Crete. This was when he got up from our little table and asked me to come and look at his jewelry. I found a bracelet of Turquoise that was beautiful and he had me wear it around for a while. He wrote the price down on a small piece of paper and set it down on the counter. “Guess how much it costs,” he said, “I won’t change the price, it’s on the paper.” I was flustered and guessed something higher than I actually thought it was as to not offend. He laughed when I guessed, “70 euros?” The price was only 30! I finally decided to buy the bracelet as a memento of this strange coincidental meeting. I’ll always remember my time in Olympia, Greece when I wear it and I’ll smile to think of Γιώργος and his two missing teeth.

Catching up!

June 2, 2010

Ok, ok, I know I need to do this. The problem is that I’ve started feeling like I’m writing less for myself and more for class. The feeling of “needing” to post here makes it more of a chore and less enjoyable. One of the classes that I’m taking here requires us to keep a journal of our time here in Greece and according to the syllabus I need to write three times a week. I liked that I have motivation to keep writing, it just makes it feel like all of the things I could write about are looming over my head. I’ve spent over a week without more than a couple minutes of internet and most of it without my laptop. This doesn’t present a great writing environment for me since I like to type and not write on paper to type later.

Ok, enough complaining. I’m in Greece after all! My birthday was an incredible experience at the local taverna and I love everyone that works there dearly. It was so great to have my mom here with me in Greece to share my 22nd birthday with me. Nothing like that will ever happen again! After my birthday my mom and Rino were planning on visiting Naxos and Santorini and leaving me in Athens. I decided this wasn’t going to happen, I was going to go with them! I played hooky from school like I’m so good at doing and sailed off to Naxos last Tuesday. I only found out from Facebook pictures later that I had secretly had a cake and cookies waiting for me at the class I skipped on Tuesday night. I only got to spend one night on Santorini this time but I still managed to make a whole slew of new friends!

As soon as I got back from Santorini on Friday night I was off again. I got back to my apartment at midnight on Friday and then hardly even unpacked since I left at 8 am on Saturday for a class trip to the Peloponnese. We spent 4 days touring around with most of our time spent in Nauplio and Olympia since those were where we spent two of the three nights. The other night was spent in the tiny village town ofAndritsena that had maybe 10 people living in it. In Olympia I ended up meeting a 7th generation Olympian at random and spent that afternoon and night talking with him. I’ve been asked to write a paper about a Greek that I’ve met while being in Greece so I’ll very soon be writing and posting a paper about him.

Mycenae and Olympia were the two most grand ancient sites to me that we visited. Mycenae for its grand display of war and defenses, and Olympia for its display of competition and society. I find that I have a hard time writing about the ancient places that we visit though. I’m not sure why but it isn’t something I can describe with any accuracy. It’s kind of like when I first visited Santorini and didn’t feel like my words could do it justice. I will try to let pictures do the work for me but I haven’t uploaded them quite yet. My favorite thing to do with my camera at these places is to let Photoshop make panoramic scenes for me so I will upload those soon.

I don’t have enough time to delve into everything that has happened over the past 7 days so I’ll get some more detailed writing in later with lots of pictures!

Love you all and I can’t wait to come home!