Wrap-Up

So, I am no longer in Greece. We left July 31, to return to the US. It was a great 6 months and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

I thought I would leave you with some pictures from our summer adventures.

My 30th birthday trip to the island of Skopelos
(yes that is the church from Mamma Mia! in the background)
Wandering the streets of Skopelos town:
The view at Delphi:

Tim and his Mum on top of the acropolis:

Tim during our unbelievably amazing trip to Santorini:

I could tell you the name of the fabulous, yet relatively inexpensive hotel we stayed at in Oia, but I'd have to kill you. (Just kidding, let me know if you'd like to know.)

On our odyssey in the Southern Pelopponese:

And finally: Beatrice, the world-travelling dachshund, on the beach at Tsapi in the Pelopponese. Happy doggy.

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you are moving/travelling to Greece and have any questions. I am happy to offer advice.

In the meantime, please check out my new blog: bythecard.blogspot.com where I unearth great Etsy finds, wonderful things for your wedding, and all things pretty and crafty.

Τα λέμε!
(see you later!)

Thing #3 I Like About Greece

I know, I know, I am such a terrible blogger!!


But I promise to make it up to you over the next couple of months.


Starting with thing #3 I Like About Greece: frappes.




Powdered Nescafe, a little bit of milk, a little bit of sugar, ice, and a blender: separate, they not much, but together, they are a winning team. They are the unofficial Greek national drink, and they are delicious. Hell, they even have their own Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_frappe_coffee.

I drank so many they started making me ill, and I had to go to frappe rehab. That nescafe is surprisingly strong stuff. Now I'm only allowed to drink half of the frappe before I have to give it over to Tim.

Update to Civil Unrest

So, courtesy of the International Herald Tribune, here's what I ran into yesterday:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/03/26/europe/EU-Greece-Firefighters-Protest.php

I'd thought those protesters were all kind of oddly dressed....turns out they were firemen!

So, not too bad. All is quiet this morning. Looks like we're headed for a gorgeous spring weekend!

χαρούμενα γενέθλια Bea!

On a very different note:

χαρούμενα γενέθλια to Bea!
or
Happy Birthday to Bea!

(It's pronounced ha-ROU-men-a gen-ETH-li-a)

Today is her second birthday. How time flies!

We put her some feta cheese on her dog food for an extra special Athenian birthday dinner:


YUM!

You can also say χρόνια πολλά (pronounced HRO-nia pol-LA) which means may you live for many years, or something to that effect.

Unrest

I just went out to the post office at Syntagma Square, only two blocks from our apartment, to mail a few things. Where, to my great surprise, I encountered a riot, or a protest, or some kind of civil unrest involving lots of policemen in riot gear, loud chanting, and what looked like tear gas in the air.


As you may know, in December 2008 Greece was in the headlines for a week of severe rioting and civil unrest, triggered by the fatal shooting of a teenage boy by police. Things calmed down before Christmas, and since we've been here we've seen some signs of the violence that was recently here, but it still seemed like a distant occurrence. Every once in a while I might encounter the cracked and smashed large glass display windows of a store, usually foreign (Zara, the clothing store, seems to be a frequent target), done overnight by gangs of youth equipped with sledgehammers. And then there was the day it finally dawned on me that the reason a group of police was always hanging out in one of the main buildings surrounding Syntagma was not because there was a police station, but because they were guarding over the reconstruction of a burned out goverment office there.

In any case, the post office seemed to be safe territory, right on the cusp of the action. I could easily see inside and business seemed to be going on as usual, and people were going in and out with ease, as it was still quite a distance from any rioters or police. So, I bought my stamps, mailed my letters and retreated back to have a look from the safety of Nikis Street. (Don't worry mom and dad, I promise I did not at any time put myself in danger. There were people with kids going inside the post office. Anyways, I am a scaredy-cat and would never have gone if it looked dangerous!)

Here's a little map I made to give you an idea of the layout:




As you can see from the area designated "weirdly normal safe zone", only a few blocks people kept on going about their regular business. I had to pop into the store and buy a few things for dinner on my way back, and on our cross street, Apollonos, things were basically operating as usual, I bumped into a young man buying produce at the market and he smiled and apologized as if everything was normal, and his peers weren't chanting and staring down police just a few blocks away.


Sure, people were definitely standing in the street, watching and whispering to each other, but for the most part everything seemed very oddly calm.


I haven't seen anything in the news yet to determine exactly what is going on, but I think Tim and I will most certainly stay in tonight; we've been feeling a little under the weather anyway...

One Month, or: Don't Let An Onion Get You Down

This past Tuesday (St. Patrick's Day!) marked one month since our arrival in Athens. It's really flown by. I haven't been updating the blog as much as I'd like lately--I think partly because we've become so entrenched in the day-to-day here that the idea of sitting down and writing about "life" has become more difficult. It is much easier, when you are on vacation, to write a postcard home with "Hey! I'm having a great time! Saw the acropolis today! Wish you were here!" It's a lot harder to document a month's worth of interactions and experiences.

I also fault myself for not being as open and exposed to Athens as much as I should be. I stay in the safety of our apartment too much, watch too much American TV, read too many online gossip columns, and have developed a rather unhealthy obsession with this seasons' American Idol. I tell Tim that it is because I am just trying to "stay connected to American culture". But the simple truth of the matter is, it is hard living in a new city, with a new language, and a new culture, with only a couple of familiar faces around, thousands and thousands of miles from everything and everyone you know, and it's much easier to hole up and gravitate towards the familiar. Not that I didn't expect this to happen to some degree, and, don't get me wrong--I am really enjoying being here and wouldn't change it for the world--but all of the little difficulties sometimes add up.

This evening I decided to go out to the supermarket. There are little markets in our neighborhood, but they tend to be Broadway Market-style priced (for all of you non-Cantabrigians, that means expen$ive). To get to our Shaw's/Star Market equivalent is a 15 minute walk through the very heart of Athens, Syntagma Square, past the fanciest hotels and down embassy row, through a throng of real people. It was dusk and as I walked I thought how silly I have been every time I get frustrated with our Athenian adventure. It is amazing here! Everything looks beautiful with the moon coming out! The city is pulsing with life and I am a part of that! I feel more confident as I navigate the city streets; I mean, I even know the timing of the crosswalks by now. (The true measure of knowledge of a city, as far as I am concerned.)

And then the comfort of a grocery store. Everything is organized neatly in sections: produce, dairy, frozen, home goods. I know my way around here; I can do this! The store is busy and I pick a checkout line, unloading the contents of my basket on the running belt. The checkout woman picks up my onion. "βάρος?!" she demands. But I don't understand. "Weight! Weight!" she yells. Weight? You mean, I am supposed to weigh my own produce before I get to the checkout line?? And then remember the weight of everything and tell it to you on the spot in line??? I'm sorry--I didn't know. The long line of people waiting behind me starts to glare as I hold everyone up while she gets someone to weigh my onion for me. I am feeling very, very un-Greek right about now. I clumsily bag up my own groceries, bright red, pay up, and head back into the Athenian evening. The walk back is far less enjoyable. I am disappointed in my level of acclimatization, wondering, almost ready to cry, "why is everything so hard?"

I arrive home and Tim helps me put away the groceries. I tell him my onion story, and he pulls it out of the bag: "Nine cents? They should have just given it to you!"

And I laugh like hell.

About Our Σκυλάκι

Σκυλί (pronounced 'skee-LEE') is the Greek word for dog. But I don't think our dachshund Beatrice has been called that once since we've been here. The moniker she usually gets on the streets of Athens (as well as inside our apartment) is σκυλάκι (pronounced 'skee-LA-key'), which is actually the diminutive form of the word dog, i.e. "little dog". (The Greeks do this a lot, apparently, your 'souvlaki' is actually a diminutive of 'souvlos', the lamb served at Easter.) Our first few days here, Tim passed by an old woman on the street who called her a ψυχούλα (pronounced 'psi-HOO-la') or 'little soul'.

We weren't quite sure how Bea would be received in Athens...we had heard that dog ownership was becoming more popular, but this is a city known for its population of stray dogs.

Stray dog in a square in central Athens.

There are quite a few stray dogs in the city, however not nearly as many--and not nearly as scary--as I had imagined. For the most part, they seem pretty content. All look well-fed, and many have collars. They can often be seen lying lazily in the sun on a patch of cool marble in the middle of rush hour. (I am not condoning stray-dogness by any means: you should spay and neuter your animals!! I just mean that they are not the vicious roving packs of feral animals I had pictured.) When we initially took to walking Bea in the National Gardens near our apartment, we were wary of the several strays that seemed quite territorial there; we were even "barked away" out of one area of the park. We've now however figured out the parts of the National Gardens, that are basically stray-free and where almost all of the dogs you see are on leashes.

Bea comes face to face with a goat in the National Gardens' little mini-zoo.

Bea has met quite a few fellow furry friends--including Hermes, the shyest little terrier you've ever seen, and fluffy and furry friends of all shapes and colors. (There's even a large chow chow we've seen a few times in our neighborhood.) Bea is also not the only dog in our six-story building (which is actually composed of half apartments/half offices, making it nice and quiet on the weekends). While we haven't met the dog yet, we've met the owner of a labrador on the first floor, who was very excited to meet Bea, and complimented her "beautiful nose". I told him that Bea had a labrador "cousin" back in the US--can a play date be far behind?

But what about dachshunds? When we first arrived, Tim and I decided that Bea must be the only dachshund in all of Athens! But our first suspicions that this might not be the case were aroused when I went to the pet store near the American School--near the cash register was a wall of pet pictures, presumably from local dog owners, and, yes, one dachshund! Could it be? At the pet store, I purchased a box of treats called "Markies" (which incidentally, Bea has decided are the most delicious things she has ever eaten. Seriously, she goes absolutely nuts for these things.)

The coveted Markies box.

When I got home, Tim noticed that the recommendations for daily feeding on the side of the box list a ντάχσχουντ as an example of a small size dog. 'ντάχσχουντ' is the Greek transliteration of dachshund: it is literally pronounced 'DACHS-hund'! Hmm...we were getting really suspicious. Were there other dachshunds in Athens after all?

A few days later, we were walking Bea on a Sunday through the Plaka area, when we ran into a family exiting the Children's Museum. 'Σκυλάκι λουκάνικο!' ('skee-LA-key lou-KA-ni-kou') a little girl screeched. Tim began to laugh.

"What's so funny? What did she say?" I asked.

"She said: 'sausage dog'!"

And then, it happened. Tim arrived at the apartment breathless. He had seen a dachshund! On our very street! Yes, it's true--I've since seen it myself, although Bea has yet to come face to face with her own kind here. There is a little dachshund puppy living in our very own neighborhood. They are actually bred in Greece (see here and here), although judging by the reactions of delight Bea continues to elicit in Athenians on the street, they are still not very common!

So far, my favorite term for Bea is λουκανικάκι ('lou-ka-nee-KA-ki') or the diminutive form of sausage: 'little sausage'.

All in all, it has been quite an easy transition for our little one, and she seems quite the happy little sausage!

Fast asleep in a patch of sun in our apartment.