Still no dagger - crete pt. 3

Thursday morning we headed to the town of Archanes, stopping along the way at a few small sites. Archanes is known for a grave site at the top of a hill, which we were told would be just a short hike. Right. Short hike. After an intense uphill climb we got to the site, which was definitely worth the work. The view was pretty breathtaking (there are only so many adjectives that I can use to describe the views around Crete...) and the grave sites themselves were pretty intact, and you could get some sense of how a burial ceremony must have gone. The town itself was pretty deserted, since tourist season is over, but we did find a delicious pastry shop for lunch. The stray dogs on Crete are much cute than the ones in Athens, and we made friends with one in particular that I was very tempted to take with me. There was also a small museum in Archanes that showcased what they found in the graves, including a few skeletons and a hilarious sketch of what the ancient people looked like as an earthquake hit the area.

After lunch we boarded the bus for Chania, which is the other major city on Crete. It's located on the southern coast, and is very, very touristy. However, as my friend Sam and I were exploring, we found a small synagogue hidden on a side street. When we walked through the doorway, it was like entering an entirely different place. The walls were all covered with vines and flowers, and the synagogue itself was old and ornate. We asked a man working there to tell us the story and this is what he said: It was originally built in the 17th century as a church, but the pirate Red Beard bombed the town and the structure was given to the 1,000+ Jews in Chania, who were ghettoized in that part of the city. By World War II there were about 300 Jews remaining on Crete, and they were pretty much left along even after the Germans occupied the island. However, towards the end of the war, the Germans decided to go after the Cretan Jews, and rounded up all 300 onto a boat which was full of other prisoners of war. The boat was flying the Nazi flag, and a British sub torpedoed it, killing everyone on board. There was one Jewish woman from Crete who was out of town that weekend, and so she was the only "survivor." After that, the synagogue was basically abandoned and used as a house or barn at various times. Finally, in 1996, it was put on the World Monuments Fund list of endangered sites and got enough funds to be restored. Today, there are around 8 Jews on Crete, and the synagogue has services every Friday. The man talking to us turned out to not be Jewish, but he had a remarkable knowledge of the culture and religion that we were quite surprised when he revealed this towards the end of our talk. Sitting there, I was struck once again by how difficult it must be to be Jewish in Greece.

We had dinner by the water at a so-so taverna, and strolled around the town for a little while. The market stalls had a ton of daggers, but I chickened out again.



View of the valley from the bottom this time.


The view from the grave site at Archanes.


Me attempting to climb around the ruins at the Archanes grave site.


A very pretty back street in Chania.


The altar in the synagogue in Chania.

Once you've seen one spectacular view from the top of a mountain, you've seen them all - Crete pt. 2

Wednesday started early with a visit to Phaestos, the site of another palatial complex. Phaestos had far less reconstruction than Knossos, which left more room to the imagination as far as what it might have looked like originally (an approach that I think I liked better, in many respects). Plus the view of the mountains and the valleys at daybreak was incredible. Phaestos is also where archaeologists found a round piece of stone with symbols, known as the Phaesotos disc, which is one of the earliest pieces of evidence of a written language. Consequently, the gift shop at the site is chock full of replicas that can be used as coasters or paper weights. I couldn't resist...

We got back on the bus and went to Kommos, which is an even smaller site by the sea. This site is believed to have been some kind of villa, as opposed to the major palace sites we had seen earlier. The differences in size were very apparent, and I can't imagine how a normal-sized person would fit in some of the rooms.

The rest of the day was spent at the beach in Matala, which was a very picturesque/touristy beach town. The water was clear and blue, as usual, and some of my more adventurous friends swam out to the cliffs, which were full of old caves. That night we stayed at a cute hotel that was surrounded by mountains and had pomegranate trees. To eat a pomegranate, you throw it on the ground to break the skin, and then you can get to the seeds. Delicious and full of anti-oxidants!



The view from Phaestos


Another view from Phaestos...


I unfortunately didn't take such good pictures of the site at Phaestos, but here's the best one...


The ruins at Kommos - note the sea in the background. Our professor said that archaeologists have a lot of trouble at sites like this because the sand keeps covering things up. Fun fact.

I need a dagger - Crete part 1

Our trip to Crete began Monday evening, when the entire program boarded the overnight ferry from Piraeus (the harbor of Athens). After an eventful evening of coloring books, the Greek version of Jenga, and motion sickness, we arrived at Crete early the next morning. I can't really say what my first impression of the island was, since I was half asleep when I got off the boat and onto our bus. But given the fact that I left the island thinking that it was one of the most beautiful places I'd ever seen, I'm sure I was wowed from the start.

The first site we visited, Knossos, is home to a very important Bronze Age palace site, and is one of the few remnants of the great Minoan civilization, which existed in the 3rd - 2nd millenium BCE. The site is intact enough that you can try and imagine what the palace as a whole might have looked like, although our professor made it clear that the site was actually a mix of original remants and modern-day reconstruction. We didn't get a chance to see the throne room, which is one of the most famous parts of the site, but it was definitely awesome to walk through the site and see passageways, courtyards, seating areas, storage spaces and evidence of some kind of infrastructure. There is unfortunately little sense of how the palace related spatially with where most of the Minoans (non-elite) lived, but the palace seemed to act as a mini-city of sorts.

After Knossos we drove into one of the main cities on Crete, Heraklion, and checked in to our hotel. The city looked a lot like Athens as far as traffic and cleanliness, but it did have a beautiful waterfront. After a lunch of gyros and sorbet, our group went to the archaeological museum to see some of the objects dug up in Knossos and around the area, which was nice, but I have to admt that we were all so exhausted by that point that we were anxious to leave.

Later that evening, before dinner, I decided to explore the market around our hotel, which was fun but pretty touristy. I almost bought a Cretan dagger (they are too cool - traditional Cretan men are known for carrying them), but then reconsidered when I thought about trying to get through customs with it. There was a coffee shop that smelled great, so I wandered in looking for some gifts. The two men working in the store were very nice, and insisted that I try to speak in Greek. After talking for a little while the owner offered to show me how to make Greek coffee, whch was absolutely delicious, and then we sat around for a while talking about politics in Greece and the U.S. They were both supporters of the New Democrats (the conservatives) in Greece, but only because N.D. isn't the party that had been in power for so long before that. They didn't have a whole lot of faith in the Greek political system as far as social reform, and explained how Greece was still really struggling after switching to the euro (they said that the core of the problem is that salaries have yet to rise enough to meet the rise in the cost of living).


The view of the mountains from the site at Knossos - I think that the one to the left is Mt. Ida, which is where the Greeks thought Zeus was born.


A surviving wall of the palace with a reconstructed doorway.


A real peacock! Just wandering around Knossos...


Me in front of some ruins and reconstructed columns.


Some of the storage vessels found at the site.

Post-feast

Break fast was great - we managed to somehow find bagels (sort of - they tasted like bagels, but were much thinner and were called something else)/lox/cream cheese and to make kugel (along with some other more Greek dishes). My friend Samantha had a recipe for the kugel, so on Friday we went to the supermarket to get the ingredients. The Greek language book I have had the phrase for "sour cream" in it, and I went up to a clerk and asked where to find it. She was completely confused, and had to call over at least two other people to try and figure it out. They finally went "aha!" and brought me over to the milk section and handed me a thing of yogurty-milk. Maybe they thought I could let it go sour? We used Greek yogurt instead and it turned out fantastically - Sam is a master chef!

I've found that trying to say something in Greek and mangling it is received much better than just going for it in English. With some stuff I just don't know what the Greek would be, but the salespeople like it when we say "please," "thank you," "how are you?", etc. in Greek.

I'm only here for the food

Today I'm fasting for Yom Kippur, and Athens is quite possibly the worst place to be doing that. I know that the minute I walk outside, I'm going to be hit with endless opportunities for cheese pies, pastries, breads, gyros, frappes, etc. Eek.

Services last night were good, even though none of us had a clue as to what was going on, since it was all in Hebrew and very fast. We got there late, since hailing a cab here is an event in and of itself, and as we were walking in we got stopped by a security guy, who asked us for ID. I was a little taken aback, but, remembering all the security measures at our synagogue at home, I showed him my passport. He commented to us that he could usually tell who was Jewish by their name, so I guess I passed the test. My friend Erika, who had been on a field trip to the Jewish museum that day, told me later that this synagogue, along with every other synagogue in Greece, had at one point or another been the victim of anti-Semitism, which explained the security.

Temple was much more crowded last night than it was the night before Rosh Hashanah. However, I was still very taken aback by how the women dressed and acted during services - some were dressed up completely, and others were in jeans and t-shirts. Everyone talked during services, although we were upstairs so I guess it didn't really disrupt services. Almost no one had a prayerbook, and people were arriving and leaving at all times. However, Erika also told me that their guide at the museum had said that Greece is a very hard place to be a Jew, and that most people in temple that night probably had to travel very far to be there. Thinking about it that way, it made sense that it was more like a social gathering (at least upstairs) than a service.

When mysogyny is a good thing

I got a cookie today at a bakery near school, and when I went to pay, the man just smiled at me and gave it to me for free. And then at a sandal store (I got Greek sandals! Now they'll never know I'm American, right?), the salesman was really flirty with my friend Natalie and me, but then dropped the price down for our sandals.

The honking and the whistling that almost all women here experience is a bit unnerving, but it has yet to get to the point where it actually bothers me. It's certainly an ego-boost sometimes, even though I know I shouldn't support such attitudes towards women. The Greek women just keep a straight face and walk past it all nonchalantly, so I've been trying to study/copy them since I got here.

TB-free!

Just got back after three hours at a hospital - in order to get a visa extension (the student visa is only for 90 days), we all have to take x-rays to prove we don't have TB. The program sent someone with us, but it was still pretty stressful dealing with hospital red tape when the people don't speak a whole lot of English. We took a bus there, which was a first for me (we take the metro a lot, but dealing with the buses is far more intimidating). It was rush hour, so we just barely squeezed in, and I had the good fortune of getting stuck in the doors as they opened and closed. Not the best first impression, but at least I don't have TB!

What an election day should be like

Fresh off the boat from Mykonos and still carrying my bag, I found myself Sunday night in the midst of a city-wide celebration following the day's presidential elections. Unlike in the U.S., where everyone stays home to watch the results and then goes to bed, the Greeks in support of the winning the party - in this case, the New Democrats, which is the conservative party currently in power - poured into the streets with flags, airhorns and a lot of beer. Despite the intense criticism ND got for its handling of the fires, they were re-elected with a surprisingly large margin (my Greek teacher explained that the major opposition party had been in power for 20 years, and were so plagued by scandals towards the end that Greeks were essentially picking whomever they felt was a lesser evil).

ND had a mini-headquarters in Syntagma square, so my friend Ian and I headed down there first from the academic center (naturally checking email was the priority after Mykonos). A crowd of ND supporters were standing in front of a large screen set up in the center of the square that was broadcasting election results, and it was cool, but not as crazy as we had thought.

So we started walking back towards Kolonaki, and saw that a much larger group of people were headed toward the ND's main headquarters, which was a few blocks from Syntagma. We got to the street around 11pm and it was PACKED. There were people everywhere, chanting and yelling, and after asking around we learned that at 11:30 (it was around 11pm at the time), the Prime Minister would come out. The press were set up on a platform opposite the entrance to the building, and they were also in cherry pickers above the street. We pushed our way into the crowd to get a good view, and when the PM and his wife (side note: my Greek teacher says that he was known for having affairs with men for a long time, and when he got serious into politics, he got himself a trophy wife and some kids...) came outside, the crowd absolutely erupted. All he did was wave and head inside, and everyone just went nuts.

When that ended, the crowd started moving back towards Vassilis Soffias, which is a main avenue in Athens (I walk on it from my apartment to school). All night there were dozens of cars driving by waving ND flags and honking, and at this point people starting running around in the streets, effectively stopping traffic. We went back to Syntagma for a little bit, which is where everyone was headed, and then decided that we were finally too exhausted to stay out any longer.

It was incredible to see how overtly passionate the ND supporters were - the whole thing made the political process a lot more exciting. The election was also a win for some of the smaller parties, which my Greek teacher speculated took some of the votes away from the main opposition party.


ND supporters in Syntagma square watching the election results come in.


Outside the ND headquarters - at this point someone yelled out something (in Greek) and everyone raised up their flags and starting chanting and blowing airhorns. This would happen every couple of minutes leading up to the PM's appearance.


Also in front of the ND headquarters, and you can see the press off to the left. The crowd stretched much farther down, across, and back than you can see in this picture.


More ND supporters driving around - at this point everyone was also walking in the streets.

All we wanted was grilled cheese...

This weekend we went to Mykonos, which is about a three hour (fast ferry) ride from Piraeus (the port of Athens, which is a 30 minute metro ride from where we live). The island itself is less picturesque than Hydra, but it was still very beautiful. We stayed at a hostel called Mama's Pension, but it was more like a B&B, minus the breakfast, than a hostel. There is actually a "Mama" and a Papa, and their son and daughter-in-law run the place now. We could walk to a small beach, St. Stefanos, from where we were staying, and our rooms had a spectacular view of the sea. Mykonos is technically known as the "party" island, but our hostel was on another side of the island (the beaches by all the clubs were pretty ugly, to be honest) while still bus/cab accessible to the night life.

After we had dropped off our stuff, it was time for lunch. Considering the fact that we had just gotten off a four-hour ferry ride, we weren't in the mood for anything heavy. After a little exploring, we were pleased to find a taverna by our beach that had grilled cheese on the menu. When the waitress brought out the food, though, we realized that "grilled cheese" was, literally, a hunk of cheese that is grilled. It wasn't bad, but definitely not what our stomachs were in the mood for. On Sunday we went back for salads, and the waitress made a joke about the grilled cheese, which led us to believe that we weren't the first Americans to make this mistake.

On Saturday evening I met Mama and Papa, who spoke very little English. Their daughter-in-law is German, and met her husband while traveling with some friends in the Greek islands. Turns out that the "Uncle" owns a taverna down the road, which we went to for dinner on Saturday night. Hands down the best, most authentic Greek food I've had so far (new favorite food: moussaka) - we were pretty much the only tourists there. The "house white wine" tasted similar to what I imagine turpentine tastes like, which was another indicator that we were truly eating with the locals.

As it gets closer to the end of September, the island season is ending, too. A lot of the clubs were already closed, and some were having their closing parties while we were there, which was fun (side note: turns out that Mykonos is also known for its gay night life, and we saw a lot of rainbow flags outside a few clubs - I didn't realize that was a universal symbol). The weather was sunny, warm and clear during the day, but by early evening it got incredibly windy and pretty cool, so we picked one of the last good weekends to go.


The view of St. Stefanos from our hostel - it was a much shorter walk from the hostel than it appears from this picture.


The infamous grilled cheese!


The pelican is a mythologically important bird to Myknos, and a few giant ones roam freely around the island. This one was hanging out in a taverna on Friday night.


There's a neighborhood on the island called Little Venice, and it's home to cute seaside stores and restaurants, as well as some very old windmills (not sure how old though...). If you click on the picture you can see just how windy it was.


The sunset in Mykonos - there are no words...

Finding Jews in Athens

(I haven't been able to post since last week, so I'll back track and start with Wednesday night, which was the beginning of Rosh Hashanah)

Wednesday night marked the start of Rosh Hashanah and a group of Jewish students on the program, myself included, wanted to experience a service in Athens. There are only around 15,000 Jews in Greece, but the program handbook had the address of an old synagogue in Athens, called Beth Shalom, which is Sephardic and Orthodox; knowing this, we all tried to dress as conservatively as possible, but discovered upon arrival that the dress code was all over the place (some were dressed up, some were in t-shirts). The service was all in Hebrew and Greek, and only last 30 minutes!

After the service, we were pleasantly suprised when the rabbi invited all of us (there were around 10 CYA kids there) to dinner. "It's really close," they said, and so we all (us plus a whole group of congregants) started walking. And walking. And walking. Part of the walk took us through what looked like an Arab neighborhood, and we felt nervous being in a group of what were obviously Jews (some of the men were wearing traditional Orthodox garb), but no one hassled us. We ended up a hotel, where it seemed like the whole congregation was having a big dinner celebration, and found ourselves at a table with an Israeli Jew studying in Athens, a French Jew studying in Athens, and a married couple from Israel (the wife was originally Ukrainian though) who had just moved to Athens. We had also met a Chilean student before services, but he ended up at another table. The prayers at dinner were pretty familiar, and it was crazy to look around and see all of us saying them together, but then going back to our respective first languages during dinner.

Happy New Year!


Temple Beth Shalom

A conversation on the anniversary of 9/11

Two nights ago, I needed some fresh air (our apartment is prettty small), so I decided to sit outside on the front stairs of the apartment building and watch the passing parade. Also on the stairs were three older men, who were just smoking some cigarettes, talking, and drinking diet cokes (or, as they say here, "coke light"). I haven't had a chance to really talk to any Greeks outside of the program, so I was very excited when, after I asked one of them for the time, they struck up a conversation with me.
"Where are you from?" the guy in the middle asked.
"The United States," I said.
"Ahh," he said. "I hate America."
I asked him how come, and he said that he couldn't understand why we couldn't just stay home and take of our own people ("we" meaning the government, he had no issue with most Americans). He talked at length about the Iraq war, and how Americans had no right to do what we were doing. He said that he has a young daughter, and is upset that when she grows up, the world will be a much more dangerous place, and a lot of the blame for that lies with us.

Even though I agreed with almost everything he had to say, I suddenly was extremely uncomfortable. I tried to explain that not all Americans support what our government is doing, and that the U.S. isn't all bad, but it felt like I was just making excuses.

We changed the subject to Greece, and he said that for all the improvements, Athens is still in very bad shape economically. I asked him to explain this more. "An example," he said, "is the Albanians." I said I didn't understand. The Albanians, he said, had been flooding into the country for years, and that they had very little respect for the rule of law (he's an ex-policeman). As he was talking I was struck by how his speech about the Albanians and how they were ruining Athens sounded almost identical to rhetoric in the U.S. about our own immigrant situation. I asked my Greek teacher the next day about all this, and she said that it was more complicated than my new friend had made it sound (I wasn't surprised). She said that after Albania opened its borders in the 1990s, they came into Greece, half-starving, looking for work and a better life. Because they had been literally isolated from the rest of the world for so many decades, they were distrustful of foreigners and were often very agressive in their pursuit of economic stability, which put off Greeks. They can't vote (franchisement is based on ethnicity, regardless of whether you're born here), but she said that it'll be interesting as second- and third-generation immigrants start to integrate more with Greeks.

Anyways, after he finished talking the guy stood up to smoke another cigarette. He pointed to a hole in his jeans and said to his friends and me, "Modern. They call this "modern" now in stores. This hole will cost 5 euros, and if I rip them up completely, 200 euros." We all laughed and I decided that it was a good time to go inside.

Fancy shmancy Kolonaki

Below are some pictures of my neighborhood in Athens, which is called Kolonaki. It's the nicest part of the city, and is full of beautiful apartment buildings, high end stores and tons of restaurants and cafes. Plus, I always run into impeccably dressed women walking frou frou little dogs in the middle of the day, which is always a good indicator of a neighborhood's economic situation.


The front entrance to my apartment building - to the immediate right is an adorable restaurant that serves amazing looking/smelling Greek food. I've yet to eat there, but I'm sure I will eventually.


The view of Athens looking down from my street - Kolonaki is at the top of a verrry steep hill. I'm standing on stairs, because at this point the street going up is too steep for cars.


This street is at the heart of Kolonaki, and is lined with little cafes and restaurants. I went looking for a cup of Greek coffee (my new favorite - so strong and so yummy), and some of these places were so chic that you couldn't get regular coffee, you could only get cappuccino.

Good morning to you, too

Just an update on the last post: Walking to class this morning, I found myself on the median strip of that street in the photo (the "walk" symbols aren't always coordinated on either side of a street). A small car was trying to pass a delivery truck, and did so by going up onto the median and going around him, as opposed to doing it like normal people on the road. I need coffee...

Beep beep!

This is the street outside the main academic building (we're on the right side), and I tried to capture what it's like as cars come hurtling at you, although I'm not sure how successfully. But basically drivers here are CRAZY. The motocyclists and guys on mopeds weave in and around cars and pedestrians, and drivers don't always stop for red lights. And in the middle of the afternoon, traffic cops come out to direct traffic, but they just ignore the traffic lights altogether, which makes it extremely confusing/dangerous for pedestrians.

Hydra!

The boat we took to Hydra - Flyingcat1. It didn't quite fly though...


The view of Hydra from the port where the boat left us


The houses on the hills of Hydra


Walking up a street on the way to the beach - we ran into a lot of donkeys coming down along the way


The view from the beach!

Was waiting for the wireless but...

Still no wireless in the academic center, so I'll just have to post with no pictures for now. :(

After a very long week of adjusting and all that, we decided to head out to an island on Saturday. Athens is about a 30 minute metro ride from the port of Piraeus, and we hopped on a ferry to Hydra, which is off the southeast coast of the Pelopponese. The ride was miserable (lots of rocking and tossing and such), but the minute I stepped off the boat, it was all worth it - it was BEAUTIFUL. The water was blue and calm and clear, and the hills were full of white little houses with blue shutters. Exactly like a postcard! We spent the afternoon on a small, hidden beach (no sand, just pebbles, unfortunately) that our friend somehow found, and then took the long route back to the port, where I got some delish baklava to bring back.

Across from the beach we could see the Pelopponese, and had we been there a month ago, we would have seen the flames, which is a sobering thought. I haven't been able to get my hands on any English-language newspapers yet (there's a weekly one), so I have very little sense of how recovery efforts are going. However, our teachers all say that the debates leading up to Sunday's presidential election have been all about it, and that it's definitely going to be the top issue for most Greeks. Apparently their debates are like ours (journalists ask questions, candidates get a minute or so to answer), and they pay as much attention to rhetoric as we do. One candidate didn't really grow up in Greece (his father and grandfather were both popular politicians in their own time), and my Greek teacher says that in the debates, he's been skewered for poor pronunciation. Sounds familiar...

All in all a fab birthday weekend. :)

Squawk

They have pigeons here! Everywhere!

Fresh fish!

I walked out of my apartment this morning to discover that on Friday mornings, they close off my street and there is a fresh produce market! The fish stand was literally outside my door, and there were stands of fresh fruit, vegetables, and flowers for about four blocks or so! The vendors were all shouting the names of their products in Greek, and everyone was talking and negotiating in Greek. Very intimidating. But the fruit and veggies looked delicious, so I walked over to a tomato stand and the vendor handed me a plastic bag. I found two good ones, and he weighed them and I said "How much?" (in English) just as he was starting to say "20" (cents, not euros) in Greek. He then said "40." (in English) Grrrr. He was very friendly, but I wish I had known how to call him on it. The other vendors were very nice and were patient as I tried out some Greek, although we usually ended up just having to communicate in English.


Fresh fruit at the market and lots of people


Anyone know what kind of fruit this is? Because I sure don't...


Olives!!


There were also teeny tiny fish that someone told me you can just bread whole, fry and then eat...intriguing...

The first gyro!

It only seemed appropriate to post this first entry as I eat my first gyro of the trip. I had always imagined that the streets of Athens would be lined with gyro stands, but I had to really hunt to find a place near the main academic building. It was definitely worth the walk. Yumm.

Athens is simultaneously dirty and beautiful. Wild dogs roam the streets (we even encountered a pack on the second night here - at first it was terrifying, but they ended up following us almost like bodyguards, barking madly at any man we passed) and they have a crazy amount of graffiti. But the Acropolis is more beautiful at sunset than I could ever imagine, the public gardens are lush and people-friendly, and the buildings are bright, cheery, and not too tall.

The main academic building here is in a neighborhood called Pagrati, and its mostly residential. We're right next to the Stadium, so there are also loads of tourists milling about taking pictures - the tourists are pretty easy to spot, and I'm sorry to say that I've already seen some Americans behaving badly: There are guards outside the presidential palace who are supposed to not move, a la the guards in the red coats in London, and the other day some Americans were trying to make them laugh and taking pictures with them (the policemen standing near me didn't look terribly amused) - I was on the other side of the street, but I still felt embarassed about the whole thing.

Otherwise things here are great - the people are very friendly and for the most part happy to try and communicate via a combinationg of some English, some Greek, and a whole lot of hand signals (although when I ordered my gyro in Greek today, the woman at the counter looked at me like I was nuts...). Pictures to come soon!