I left home exactly three weeks (plus one day) ago and haven't managed to get this blog started. So today will be the day I get things this page up and running; you can thank the rainy weather in Delphi for that. So much has happened in these weeks that I may be about to set the world record for longest blog post - bear with me. I will try to break it up into manageable pieces!
Who am I and What am I doing (and why you should read this):
I am a junior working on a horticulture B.Sc. at Virginia Tech and am spending the spring of 2013 in beautiful Greece. i am doing a bi-lateral exchange with The American Farm School in Greece's second largest city, Thessaloniki. I am going to *try* to keep this blog updated once a week for anyone back home wanting to read about my time here. It will be a documentary of the places I go, things I see, what I do, how I feel, and more. And for anyone wanting to see more my time here, please check out this page where I'll be posting more or less pretty photographs. I also hope this blog can be of some use to any one thinking about studying abroad themselves, Hokies or anyone else for that matter.
The Packing and Goodbyes:
I guess I should start at the beginning, but since that is a lot longer than three weeks ago, I'm going to skip right to the packing. If you want to know about what it was like to plan this trip shoot me an email or post a comment and I'l give you the details of that adventure.
Well I put off packing, and even thinking about packing until it was almost time to go. Which of course leads to the inevitable rush to cram things in a suitcase the day before your flight, to decide what you just can't live without, what you really want to take with you, and what is best left at home. I ALWAYS forget something when packing, but I am happy to report that I managed to get everything I wanted this time. I am not quite sure how that happened but it did and I am thankful.
I was also putting off saying some goodbyes. I had mixed feelings in the days just before leaving, mostly excitement, anxiety, and sadness. I had been looking forward to this trip for a whole year and it was a long time in the making. I have always wanted to go to Greece and everyone always says study abroad is "the best thing I ever did in college." So naturally I was excited to get things started. I was a little nervous because my Greek is not very good, and by that I mean it is nonexistent. I have a new found respect for anyone who comes to America not speaking English, it is very intimidating to walk into a country like that. I am very lucky that most Greeks, at least in the cities, all speak much better English than I speak Greek. I was also getting nervous about classes. I had a bit of difficulty getting all my desired classes approved for credit by VT. Then, as the date to leave neared, I received word that half my chosen classes were cancelled. I chose some different ones and hoped they would transfer in the end. Then a second time I found that several of my classes were no longer being offered. So hopefully I'll be able to get credit for all the new ones. If not, I'll have another extra semester in college, which while not all bad, is also another years tuition and lost wages.The sadness was from having to say goodbye for 3 months to my family, friends, girlfriend, and apartment. None of these were easy to walk away from, but I know I'll be back before too long.
Overall though I was very glad to be leaving home. I had been home for winter break and everyone else had gone to school a week before i left so things were getting pretty stale around my town.
Outbound:
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| Bill (left) and my pops (right). Acropolis in the background |
My plane was scheduled to depart the early afternoon on Jan 23rd. I was traveling with my father and his BFF, Bill. They met in high school while living in Athens and were both probably as excited for the trip as I was. The plan was to fly to Heathrow and transfer for the second leg of the trip to Athens. I can not understate how being flexible is important to traveling. After boarding the plane, we learned that our co-pilot had slipped on the ice during pre-flight checks and broke his ankle. British Airways had no one else to fly the plane and after a tedious wait on the plane, we were released and told the flight was canceled, please come back tomorrow. We were on kind of a tight schedule, after two days in athens we were all flying to Thessaloniki where I would be deposited in a hotel until classes started and the two old men would fly home together. Luckily my dad, the experienced world traveller combined his know how of working the airlines and his favorite blue tooth headset to get us booked on a flight that let us make the connection in London. Shackleton saved the day, literally. British Airways evidently hated its passengers so we had to go and get my luggage from baggage claim, and then stand in line to check-in, check my baggage, and then go through security a second time. We dashed to the terminal and got to the plane just in time. Finally we were on our way. It was a miserable overnight flight in bad seats with all the typical obnoxious airplane trip accoutrements: crying babies in your ears, knees in your back, springs in your butt, carts banging your elbows, and for some reason that airplane ready curry dinner complete with the world's worst cheesecake and some kind of syrupy wine that I thought I should eat. Upon arriving at Heathrow the next morning with zero hours of sleep, we were herded through security once again before being allowed to eat some breakfast. The flight to Athens was blessedly brief, and before I knew it I was stepping off the plane into the Athens international airport.
First Impressions:
Three things are impressed on my memory from those first few moments in Greece. 1) There was a smoker's booth as soon as you got off the plane. It was essentially a glass cell, about 5x5 ft in the middle of the floor with a sliding glass door. Through the thick haze you could just make out the dozen or so people smoking each others cigarettes. 2) The first images I saw were two large advertisements for the national beers of greece: Mythos and Alpha. Let me tell you, neither of which should ever be consumed by human beings. 3) Lastly was the coca-cola vending machine. So this was Greece? Of course greece has more in it than soft drinks, bad beer, and cigarettes. But it does have a lot of those things.
My father decided to hire the most expensive car service, George the Famous Taxi Driver, to transport us to and from the airport and around town for a day. Two of George's sons came to our hotel at 7 am, we climbed into the back of their mercedes limousine and started a tour of the city. I had never ridden in a limo and was a little uncomfortable with all the looks we got. We visited the acropolis, toured the different neighborhoods and saw the changing of the royal guard. Our driver navigated the narrow streets with ease while throwing loads of ancient history at us. There was a lot of Turk slandering*, Brit slandering and basically any-other-people-besides-Americans slandering. He had his tourist game down pat, and I'll admit it was a little fun to him spit at us. He even took us to all the places "only locals go" (read: all the places his relatives own) to eat.
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| Temple of Poseidon, The Acropolis behind, and one of the many strays in front |
The most interesting of the stops were the Athens Archaeological Museum and the New Acropolis Museum. My childhood was spent in a school with fake pillars and reproductions of classical statues everywhere. I studied Ancient Greek history and mythology in the 4th grade for a whole year and took latin for two years in junior high. The classics were kind of a big deal there. In high school I continued my study of latin for a few years, and I have never grown out of my fascination with the ancient world. So getting to see firsthand the history I had learned so much about and seen so many pictures of really was an unbelievable and indescribable experience. I could talk forever about seeing things I only ever dreamed of seeing, but I'll only mention a few. The first is the death mask of Agamemnon. It was something i hadn't been thinking about until I walked into the exhibit and it was staring right into my face. I was stunned. I once made a replica in middle school art class. The second is the Antikythera Mechanism. Now, if you haven't heard of this do yourself a favor and read about it. It is an analog computer. This thing is about 2000 years old, and yes, it is a computer.
Lastly are the kore. There was a hall full of them at the archaeological museum. There is something I find mysterious and compelling about them. They are a mixture of raw primal figure and divinity. These things really got me.
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| Sometimes the graffiti was good |
On another note something else that really stood out to me was the graffiti. It was everywhere. Literally. i am still pretty shocked as it is also just as prevalent in the smaller towns. It was funny/sad and really a shame to see "merkel die" painted at the base of the steps leading to the acropolis.
*I expected some anti-Turk sentiment, but was surprised to find it in the museums. On the anti-Brit point, the whole point of the New Acropolis Museum was the attempt to repatriate the Elgin Marbles. The museum experience culminates in a short film about dastardly Lord Elgin and the stolen history.
On my Own:
Once we flew to Thessaloniki I was feeling nervous again. It was time to be on my own, and my Greek hadn't improved much, I had progressed from nothing to hello and thank you. I was lucky enough to be staying in a hotel overlooking the Roman Forum and a short walk from the city's most happening down town strip. Just past that was the sea and a long boardwalk of sorts so this was a comfortable place to be in. The rest of the city is vaguely like new york minus skyscrapers - lots of stores, especially clothing stores, and lots of people. I mean like millions of people.
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| White Tower |
I get tired of the city in america after about two days. Thankfully this city had enough to keep me happy for a little longer. I soaked up the local cuisine and culture. I found great places to eat and visited the biggest museums and landmarks. I also did a LOT of walking. My two biggest moments of triumph the first week were finding and buying a pay as you go phone and finding needle and thread to sow a button back onto my jacket.
The white tower is the dominating landmark of the city. The byzantine art museum was cool, but its not my favorite period of history, and definitely not my favorite type of art. The real gems were in the Thessaloniki Archaeological Museum. The Gold of Macedon exhibit there was unlike anything I have ever seen. My favorites were the solid gold laurel branch crowns. Also really cool was the oldest and pretty much only papyrus scroll to have survived in Greece from antiquity. The massive Derveni Krater was also a jaw dropper.
When i was finally starting to miss home, i ate at the tgi fridays. I wouldn't have guessed that would make it half way across the globe. It was just as mediocre and overpriced as it is in america. one nice thing about it was the sam adams and newcastle. Greek beer is bad. They have fantastic wine, especially the pine resin flavored retsinas. Getting an authentic glass of ouzo is also an experience you shouldn't pass up. However, I went on quite the beer hunt for a couple days. I researched online and found some candidates, even a place called BeerArt. I was filled with hope, but it turned out to be false hope. BeerArt serves only amstel and amstel light. eventually i found a belgian beer bar and store and managed to get a delicious dark import. It was a real godsend, but at over 6 eu a beer I decided this place would not be an every night watering hole.
The Oregon Trail:
I mentioned eating at a lot of places. Well, one of these places i should have skipped because i got sick. really really sick. All i could think about for a week was the old oregon trail game telling me my wagon train journey had come to a tragic and abrupt end and "You have Died of Dysentery." It was a rough week. i didn't leave the hotel much and was feeling pretty blue. By then i was also getting sick of the city. The constant noise outside my hotel window was getting to me.
I had planned to be traveling for most of the time before classes started, but, despite my banks assurances, my ATM card is useless here. My dad's cards couldn't get any cash in Thessaloniki either. So back in Athens he mailed me enough cash to feed me until my Travelex card arrived. So traveling was not an option the first week. Then the second week I was laying in bed. Thankfully, after a lot of water and room service chicken soup I started to feel better. I was itching to get started on my list of places to visit.
Now i had lost a whole week (I had planned to be in Meteora and Delphi). For the coming week I had istanbul plans. I had been stressing a lot about the trip while I was sick, not being sure I could manage the bus ride, or to do any sight seeing once there. I finally decided to cancel it all. Much to the relief of my mother (the recent suicide bomber at the US embassy in Ankara and murdered American tourist in Istanbul were weighing on her) I spent one more night in my hotel in Thessaloniki and work out an alternate trip. I decided that I would do Meteora and Delphi instead. Meteora was, after all, priority number one for me.
Meteora:
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| I felt like one of these goats climbing up the mountains, and probably smelt like one of them too |
All my traveling has been through KTEL, the private Greek bus system that operates on a public transit model. It's fairly reliable and tourist friendly if you go in to get tickets in person. Two buses away from the city and i was at my first destination, Kalampaka, a town at the foot of the much photographed meteora mountains and their perilously perched monasteries. I had also learned some more greek "που πασ;" it only took my bus driver asking me 3 times before i figured out that it meant "where are you going?" - very useful since everyone asks this at a bus station.
Once i got to Kalampaka I walked up the street from the bus stop and taxied to Also's House. The owner was very friendly and even brought his friend to play bouzouki during breakfast one morning. I stayed for two nights.
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| view from my hotel balcony |
The first afternoon there i hiked a shorter route up to the top of the mountains and saw two of the famous monasteries. The next morning i bought a .90eu loaf of bread and some water to picnic with after visiting the remaining monasteries. Each was a unique experience, and the whole hike was quite a pilgrimage. They all had their holy icons and artifacts. the two biggest even had some mummified saint pieces. But more impressive than any dried feet cased in silver shoes were the chapel wall paintings. These things were terrific. Mostly they are scenes of martyrdom; all were brilliantly detailed, many highlighted with gold, and every one of them hundreds of years old. In one of the monasteries a monk gave some of us visitors a tour of the chapel complete with a lesson on the theological basis for the architecture and subject matter of the paintings. It was truly informative and had a strong impact on my appreciation of the rest of the chapels I saw. After visiting all but one of the monasteries (3 monasteries and 2 nunneries in all), taking hundreds of pictures, and stopping for lunch on a cliff, i took the long way home. I picked up some Greek worry beads to have a toy to play with on my long hike down the mountain road, through the neighboring town of Kastraki and back to Kalampaka and my hotel. I really enjoyed the time there.
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| weather the second day was perfect for hiking, and taking pictures |
Delphi, getting here:
I am almost caught up to the present day! Read on and you'll be there too. Getting to Delphi was a real adventure. I left meteora early. I rode the bus to Trikala, but I missed my connection by five minutes. The next bus wasn't leaving for 6 hours. It was a very long afternoon. Luckily i had used kindle for mac to borrow some library books when I was sick and I settled into a couch near a window to escape the cigarette smoke. After the 6 hours was up I went to wait at my platform. It was time to go but there was no bus. A ktel worker ran out and told me and a few other people the bus was coming to a terminal on the other side of the station. After standing around at the new spot for a while, the same guy walks over and tells me there is a problem and that my bus is "damaged." Now what he meant is that I was the only person going to Delphi that night and it made no sense to run the bus. So he stuck me on another bus, going to athens, but through Amfissa where i could change buses. He left me in the care of two kind young women who promised to make sure I didn't wind up all the way in Athens. It was 7:30 when the full bus rolled out of the station. Eventually we made it down from the perilously steep mountain roads with few guardrails and steep drops and into the tiny bus stop area in Amfissa. I said goodbye and thank you to Nana and Angela and once inside the station a woman explained to me that there was no Delphi bus. While i was assuming that my plans were finally grinding to a halt, she then told me she was calling a taxi and ktel would pay my fare! 20 km later i was at the closed delphi bus station. thankfully delphi is a one street town, and my hotel was on that street and so was the bus stop. A few blocks of walking got me to my bed. It was a hassle, but i got here and i could not have managed without ktel. my few mega bus experiences in the US were way more negative than this, so im happy to be taking ktel back to Thessaloniki on Friday.
Delphi:
Yesterday morning i was sitting in a cloud. The view i was assured to be good the other night in the dark has been mostly just white. It rained for a while yesterday and when it finally let up I made my escape and walked the short km to the delphi archaeological museum. Inside I admired the decorations of the center of the world. Then i toured the ruins themselves and saw where the oracles sat.
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| the twin kouros (male counterparts to the kore I was so enamored of) Kleobis and Biton, they come with a really cool story |
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| The original seat of the pythia, misfortunate virgins who sat huffing natural gas all day and babbling unintelligibly |
It was really cool. centuries upon centuries of history. a huge stadium and theatre, treasuries, and some treasure. notably a life sized bull made out of silver sheets pieced together with silver nails and of course countless votive statues donated through the ages to the oracle.
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| remains of a giant silver bull |
When i was leaving another storm rolled in. I was drenched but got some great photos of the clouds coming in and going out.
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| post storm |
Finally Caught Up:
Now that I am finally caught up to today I will try to keep it that way. Once a week is the plan.
When the rain breaks, the view is pretty spectacular. I can see the sea and some smaller towns, as well as some magnificent mountain tops from my balcony. Most of the town is closed since it is not tourist season, and it rained too much to do any good hiking nearby, so I relaxed, worked on this post, and ate probably the best meal I've had in Greece for lunch. I had roasted feta with spices, olives, bread, rabbit and onion stew, some baklava, a glass of local retsina, and a pomegranate digestivo. Now I've gotten myself hungry again and am going out to find dinner.
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| view from the hotel |
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