one last quick post before...

OKTOBERFEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In case you hadn't guessed, I'm flying to Munich tonight/tomorrow morning for Oktoberfest. And by tonight/tomorrow I mean that my flight is at 6:45am but because literally EVERY mode of public transportation was on strike yesterday, we are gonna leave some time tonight probably for the airport. In addition to the taxi, bus and metro strikes, there was also a huge rally held by the POLICE the other day. Way to protect and serve, fellas.

Anyway, things I've done this week:
1. Took a Greek cooking class. I even touched raw meat. We made domades-something. Basically cabbage stuffed with minced meat, rice, dill, and maybe something else. We also made fresh french fries and baked feta with green pepper and tomatoes. It was pretty good and I managed not to slice my hand which apparently someone did the last class. We're gonna sign up again and try and learn how to make tzatziki and zucchini balls (i.e. the best things in the world).
2. SURPRISE GREEK TEST. Well, not so much a surprise, but wow was it hard to come back from Crete and go straight into that.
3. Make (and unmake) tons of travel plans. I'm officially going to Madrid and Barcelona for Fall Break, Istanbul (and Troy????) for Thanksgiving Break, and hopefully Prague Nov 3-6 and Amsterdam Dec 2-4.
4. Found out I have a paper due next week. Whoops. Guess I'd better work on that a bit tonight cuz I spaced and didn't do it yesterday.
5. Bought hippie clothing! Yay maxi skirts!
6. Visited the travel agent (see #3)
7. Took a Greek dance class. Thank god for free wine and cheese. One of the women who works for CYA came in, saw that we had started dancing without drinking any of our wine first and scolded our instructor that you can't dance without wine. Love her.
8. Burned my hand trying to see if our (electric) burner was still hot or if I could put the cover back on. 9. Didn't sleep (thanks, burned hand) so now I'm actually posting this before my 9:30am class.

Sorry there aren't any pictures, if I have time and find any good ones I'll add them later today.

Κρήτη

I am currently so tired it's a little ridiculous, so my apologies if my blog this week doesn't make too much sense. I've basically spent all of today in bed (looking up possible flights to Amsterdam, Rome, Paris, Prague and Budapest) since I haven't really slept more than an hour or two for the past week. Yesterday, we got back from Crete at about 6 in the morning and got to Athens around 7ish but I decided to stay up for the rest of the morning which turned out to be a terrible idea when I fell asleep at my friend's apartment for a movie marathon/birthday pregame next door.

Crete was absolutely incredible. I didn't want to leave until I remembered that I'm going to Munich next weekend (assuming the air traffic controllers aren't on strike still). There was so much to do and see: archaeological sites, ports and fishing villages, shopping, great restaurants, bars, shopping, lighthouses, castle-like places, shopping, etc.

We got there at around 7:30 in the morning and my bus went immediately to the site of Knossos, probably the most important site for Minoan culture.

A lot of it is reconstructed and it's super crowded so it's basically like the Disney World of ancient Greek sites. It was interesting but so filled with tourists and none of us had slept on the boat ride over so it was a little tough to enjoy. After Knossos, we went to the town of Heraklio and had lunch and visited the Archaeological Museum which housed many of the famous artifacts and frescoes found at Knossos.

 Minoan art was often unstructured, asymmetrical and naturalistic like this octopus vase.

 The famous snake goddesses found in a store room in Knossos.

 A boar's tusk helmet (similar to the ones described by Homer in the Iliad)

 The actual fragments of the bull leaping fresco (there's a reconstruction where they found it in Knossos)

Statues of Hades with Cerberus and Isis/Persephone. These two goddesses were often combined and both the placement with Hades and the headdress (half-moon is a symbol of Isis) show aspects of each.

Of course, my favorite part of the museum? The friend I made outside:

After the museum we went on a walking tour down to the harbor and were released from there to do whatever. We went back to our hotel for siestas (one of my favorite parts of Greek culture) and to clean up for dinner. While we were hanging out in our room though, we kept hearing all this barking. I looked out of our glass doors onto our 5th (American 6th) floor patio and found a puppy!

We had absolutely no clue how it had gotten there but it was trying to get to the dogs across the street. She was adorable and played with us for a while. We eventually figured out that there was a random shirtless man skulking around on the roof next door and that the dog was probably his but he wouldn't respond to us when we called him. Eventually he came and got her though and we just made sure to lock our doors that night.

After dinner, we went into a bar a few girls had stopped into earlier in the day and hung out there. It was just a few of us at first but as the night progressed, more and more CYA-ers showed up and we took over the entire bar. It was really fun and I made best friends with the bartender. Also, the bathroom was basically the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets:

(I'm holding the Elder Wand -one girl got in a sword fight with the bartender with some decorations which is how we got the wands- in that... Yeah we're nerds)

The next day, we went to Phaestos which is another major Minoan site. We were supposed to go to Gortyn and Kommos also but as it was the first day of fall (the wet season), it started to rain and we were spared.

Instead, we went straight to Matala for lunch and swimming. Matala was really cool and is apparently somewhat of a hippie colony. Hippies used to gather and stay in the caves up in the cliffs and they still come back each year (although now the head of archaeology has sectioned off the part of the cliffs with caves in them). We got to go swimming which was fun but resulted in numerous near drownings for me because of the huge waves.

Afterwards, we had the evening free and hung around in Heraklio some more although this time only my bus was left. The other two buses had already moved on to the next town. The next day it rained again so we saw one museum and one site, although we were supposed to go to Archanes, Fourni and Vathypetro. I'm actually not sure which place we saw (whoops). We had lunch and shopped in a little touristy town though which was nice.

(this is a wine/olive press from the one site we did make it to)

And this is the view. Basically all of Crete is this epically beautiful.

Afterwards we went to the Arkadi monastery which isn't ancient but is basically like the Cretan equivalent of the Alamo. It's really interesting but I'm too tired to explain its history and significance to Crete but here's the wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkadi_Monastery.
And here's a picture:

The next day we were supposed to go to Samaria Gorge but because of the rain it was too dangerous. This was unfortunate because it would have been really cool to go but also it meant that we didn't have to be woken up at 5:30 in the morning and hike like 10 miles. So instead, we all got our exercise by once again going out and taking over all the clubs in town. We danced basically all night and my legs STILL hurt. The next day, instead of going to the gorge, we went to a Pirate port(?) and then were let go for lunch.

Then we had the rest of the day free to wander and shop until our 7pm ferry ride. My friends I shared a cabin with and I all wanted to go up and explore our boat (the one we rode on the way over was really cool and had bars, shops and a casino) but as soon as we sat down in our beds we passed out. Thankfully, I woke up at around 4:30 and turned off the lights and remembered to set an alarm (we were supposed to get there by 6am).

So, that's my Crete trip pretty much. Now I just have to make it through one more week of class and then I'm off to Munich!

Andros continued...

So I should have finished that post up earlier because now I can't really keep the trip straight in my head but I'm supposed to be writing an article report for tomorrow right now so this is my procrastination.

After the trip to the archaeological site and an archaeological museum, we went to a beach for the afternoon. In the evening, we explored the Chora (name for the main town on many Greek islands) and visited a Greek Orthodox church. It was around then that my fever started to get really bad so I got to enjoy the neat experience of going to a Greek pharmacy and miming my symptoms to the pharmacist in order to figure out what medicines to take.

 (the main town of Andros)

( the statue of the unknown sailor (Afanis Naftis) )

The next day we went to a monastery up on one of the mountains. Here, we met some of the monks who lived there and explored the grounds. I, of course, found the gift shop but sadly hadn't brought my wallet with me so I couldn't get any souvenirs.
Here's the view from the monastery:

After the monastery we met a local fisherman (pictured below) and went to another beach that required an absurd climb first up a mountain and then down a cliff in order to get to it. It was breathtakingly gorgeous to be sure but SO windy that it really wasn't worth the near death experiences it took to get there.

(our fisherman friend showing us which nets he uses)

Meanwhile, there was a taxi strike across Greece so after climbing mountains when we wanted to go into the main town for dinner we had to walk there and back to our hotel, meeting some curious goats and sheep on our way. We were left to our own devices for dinner and afterwards we sat at a table outside of a bar and people-watched until we decided it was time for bed (at an embarrassingly early hour by Greek standards, but we were exhausted).

On our last day, we explored a couple of archaeological sites (mostly churches from around the 11th century AD if I remember correctly) and visited the main town's archaeological museum as well as its modern art museum to see both their permanent display and a temporary exhibit on a local artist. One of the best parts of the archaeological museum was probably the view (and breeze) from its roof, but there were also some interesting sculptures on the ground floor (the top floor was mostly pottery shards which get pretty boring after the first dozen or so you see).

(top: view from the roof of the museum. bottom: a marble statue of Aphrodite dating from the late Hellenistic period)

We went to a beach for the afternoon and had one last group meal together before catching a late ferry back to Piraeus and busing back to Athens.

Since then:
I had another week of classes, including a quiz in modern Greek. I booked tickets for Thanksgiving break to go visit Istanbul and I'm currently planning a day or two-day excursion to the site of Troy. Now I should be finishing up my article report due tomorrow (with an absolute deadline of a week from tomorrow) and packing for Crete but instead I'm writing this blog. I think already here I may have written more than I have for the article report. Whoops. Anyway, I'm gonna get back to that now and then pack for Crete because we leave tomorrow night! It'll be an overnight ferry ride and then I'll be there for the week. I can't wait, it should be amazing. Apparently Crete is like the Texas of Greece? We've been told they love their mustaches and guns. But also they had one of the earliest and most fascinating cultures of ancient Greece. And the minotaur.

mountains and fevers and strikes, oh my!

So I meant to post before I went away for the weekend but of course I forgot and now things are all jumbled in my head (not that that's any different than usual, but still). A lot's been happening since I last posted. I had my first week of classes and am now starting my second class. I broke my camera. I got a new camera. I went on what I had thought would be a relaxing weekend trip to the beach but turned out to be much more. I got a cold.  Then a fever (somewhere in the mountains of Andros, that broke). Now my lungs make lovely gurgling sounds. I learned some interesting tidbits (for example, Greek phalanxes used to curve towards the right* and they did NOT get this from the Romans**). My entire schedule was reworked. Taxi drivers went on strike. Taxi drivers went off strike. Airport personnel went on strike. Taxi drivers went BACK on strike. And so life goes.

Anyway, to begin with: classes.
I'm only taking four classes this semester (thank god): Modern Greek, Art and Archaeology, Latin and the Development of Athenian Democracy. Modern Greek is fun but difficult (and we have a quiz already this week). Art and Archaeology should be really interested but I can't wait to get out of the classroom and to actually explore the ancient sites. I think I'll really like Athenian Democracy (we don't have real textbooks and are sticking instead to primary sources). Latin, however, has been my favorite so far. I made quite the entrance on the first week when I tripped on my way up the stairs and shouted an unladylike expletive or two that was apparently quite audible from the classroom. Either way, my professor reminds me a lot of some of my teachers from St Ann's (which is probably the highest compliment I could give a professor) so I'm sure it'll be a great class.

Andros!!
This weekend was the first trip I took with CYA. Departure time was 6:30am on Friday. This would be tough for me on any day in the US, but it was even worse in Greece where you are typically stumbling home from a taverna or bar around then. By some divine act or miracle (Dionysus, I'm looking at you...), my roommate Kayla and I made it. One of our friends who we'd seen not an hour or two earlier sadly missed the bus. After a nap on the bus we awoke in Pireas, the port of Athens, just in time to board our ferry to Andros.

That is the sun rising over the Mediterranean. Something I don't think I'll need to see again for a while. After a somewhat brutal ferry ride, we finally made it to Andros. We climbed a mountain to go see an archaeological site. This was extremely difficult for the numerous students who were still not quite recovered from the night's festivities but was worthwhile for the stunning views (and rocks and stuff):

There were also a lot of fig trees at the site with plenty of fruit that our instructors encouraged us to try. I have never seen a fig outside of a Fig Newton. I have also never been somewhere where it is acceptable to pick something off a tree or bush and (without washing it extensively first) eat it. But if there's ever a place to eat a miscellaneous fruit handed to you by a stranger, why not Greece. It was... interesting. Not the best for those suffering from Veisalgia*** but it was an experience.

I have to run to dinner now so I'll make a second post about the rest of the trip later on...

*The phalanx was a military formation used by the Greeks where the each man's right side must be covered by the man next to him. So, as my professor explained to us in class, each soldier would start moving closer towards the man on his right and the whole formation would go off to the right unless the men on the end held the lines.
**A girl in my class asked if the Greeks learned this battle formation from the Romans.... No. Rome won't be powerful for a few more centuries
***Thanks, David, for teaching me this word. From the Norwegian kveis (uneasiness following debauchery) + the Greek algia (pain).

To the Acropolis!

So I've been in Athens for a couple of days now and already some of my new friends have put up photos of the Acropolis, the Roman Agora and countless other historical sites and ancient wonders that are the reason I am spending this semester here. I, on the other hand, as of this morning had taken about four pictures since I've gotten here, most of amusing bathroom signs.

(it's a hologram (?) thing with one image looking like the normal women's restroom sign and the other has the woman squatting. the men's room had the normal man standing and then he grabs himself... I LOLed)

ANYWAY, today I was finally guilted into going to explore the Plaka and climb up to the Acropolis. I also found a famous custom sandalmaker whose shop was near the Acropolis that I wanted to scout out for later. My roommate and I mapped out a path that would take us through the National Gardens, to Parliament and Syntagma Square and then on to Monastiraki Square and the shoe store before heading back by way of the Acropolis.

We made it through the gardens and to Parliament (no protesters, just tourists and pigeons) and Syntagma square. We wandered around and found an amazing shopping area surrounded by ruins and the occasional church. We found a Starbucks within sight of the Acropolis where a drink that would be 4.50 dollars in America was 4.50 euro and settled instead on getting fredditos at a local coffee shop for less than half the price. We explored the flea market and found interesting shops and adorable cafes. Finally, after getting a bit lost (my bad, I led us down the wrong street for a while), we found the sandal shop.

This is not just any sandalmaker. Pantelis Melissinos is the "Artist Sandal Maker" (his father was the Poet Sandal-Maker, as the banner outside explains) and runs the shop founded by his grandfather in 1920. The shop (website here: http://www.melissinos-art.com/eng/contact.html) carries around 27 different styles of shoes that are altered to fit each individual's feet by the sandalmaker himself (some other men helped me in the beginning, but Pantelis himself came out to do the finishing touches and make sure the sandals fit me perfectly). Some of the shoes are even named for the celebrities who have bought them over the years (for example: Jackie O, Jeremy Irons, John Lennon, etc). I ended up getting two pairs, the Aeolian 2 and Theta (number 27). They're really really cute and fit PERFECTLY. Basically, I'm in love. I may need to go back for another pair (or three).

By the time my shoes were finally fitted, however, my roommate Kayla and I were close to fainting from the heat. The journey to the Acropolis was abandoned yet again with the assumption that one (or all) of our classes would take us there at least once.

This adventure into the heart of the city sadly did not pass without incident. I pulled a Marilyn Monroe in Syntagma Square and once again in the middle of the flea market (thankfully I was able to catch it both times and Kayla was the only one who saw). My favorite sunglasses fell victim to a bus and flock of mopeds. They fell off my head and as I spazzed and tried to catch them mid-air, I of course knocked them directly under a car and watched Athenian traffic (which is even worse than New York's) crush them. Thankfully I anticipated something like that happening and bought a second pair two days ago. I also fell in a ditch and almost took Kayla down with me. Good thing I brought a first aid kit...

This weekend, I'm planning to return to Spetses and Hydra and will take actual pictures!