Weekend

Thursday was the first day of "Carnivale". The best way I can describe it is a two-week long Fat Tuesday. The whole city is decorated in a marti gras-like fashion. In the next week, there will be several parades and celebrations before the start of Lent. I will be doing my Carnivale celebration on the island of Crete next weekend, so I opted to stay in Athens this weekend.

On Thursday, I ate taverna-style with a group of 8 other students. Greeks dine in large groups and share several plates of food, so that's exactly what we did. Traditionally, they eat meat on the first day of Carnivale... We did that, too.

I took a long walk up Lykavitos Hillon Friday afternoon. From the top you can see all of Athens, and the view is breathtaking. I took it all in with a cup of coffee at a cafe there. The picture below is of Lykavitos as seen from the city. As you can see, it is quite a climb to the top, but well worth it!


Later on Friday I hopped on the Metro with a friend and we got off at a stop near Piraeus, a large port out of Greece. We found a restaurant next to the water and, of course, had seafood.



On Saturday morning I visited a Byzantine Art and Architecture museum. Strangely enough, they had an exhibit of work by contemporary Spanish artist Salvador Dali. We spent quite a bit of time looking at his work, but the Byzantine art was great, too.


Close by the Byzantine museum is a Cycladic art museum. (The Greek islands are referred to as the Cyclades.) I will post pictures from there in a couple days.


Today I visited the Orthodox Church at the end of my street for their early service. It's quite different than the Lutheran services I'm accustomed to, but similar to Catholic mass (I think). I will return later in the semester, after I've learned more about their practices in my Orthodox class.


This afternoon I went to yet another museum - the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art. I won't bore anyone with the details, but it might be my favorite museum so far.


The weather is rainy and gloomy, but I feel fortunate - I'll take rain over snow, and I heard that North Dakota and Minnesota have been pretty cold lately :)

Week in Review

I haven't updated in awhile due to difficulty accessing the internet... but here's a short version of what I've been up to.

A week ago Saturday I went to a wine tasting at the ritzy "Hotel Grand Bertagne". A 5 Euro entrance fee got us a glass and samples from several Greek wine distributors. I certainly don't know the art of wine tasting, but I pretended by following the actions of Athenian wine connoisseurs. It goes something like swirl, smell, sip, swish, spit. I tried some great wine, but I couldn't tell you any names - the labels were in Greek (obviously).

Most of my week was spent just going through the new class routine. When I had some spare time, I did a little exploring. It is fun to arbitrarily pick a bus/trolley and just see where it takes me. Experimenting with the public transportation is a great way to get acquainted with a new city. The metro (subway) system in Athens is great, too - it was recently redone for the 2004 Olympics. In a city like Athens, renovating an underground subway system also requires an archaeological excavation. Archaeologists learned a lot more about ancient Greece in the process, and the metro stations are amazing - they double as museums of the artifacts that were found.

On Friday I went to the island of Halkida. I believe it is the largest Greek island. It's also the closest to the mainland - so close that a bridge connects the two, so we were able to took a bus the whole way. Guide books don't typically suggest spending a day there, but we found enough to do. Highlights included beautiful water, seafood on the boardwalk, a castle, and an Orthodox church whose priest let us in to look and take pictures.

We ate dinner at a "Taverna" and waited over an hour for our food. My patience serves me well here, but others were more frustrated. Customer service and punctuality aren't exactly high priorities in Greece, but I'm getting used to it.

I am going to attempt to upload a few pictures, finally!