Weekend Trips

So far we've been here about a month, and we've only been in Athens one weekend. The first weekend was our orientation trip to Nafplion, the next week was Delphi, and then last weekend we went to Thessaloniki.

I really enjoyed our orientation trip to Nafplion. It was fun because the entire group was there and we definitely got to know each other better. The best part about the weekend was our hike and exploration of the old fortress/castle that sits above the city. It was absolutely beautiful. We spent the whole day discovering the entire area, which was complete with steep cliffs and sloping fortress walls. We had to climb 999 stairs to get to the top! It was tiring, but definitely worth it.

That night we had dinner covered by the program which was a nice change. They took us out to an amazing little place that was decorated with hanging lanterns. The dinner consisted of a lot of little delicious appetizers. Later we checked out the nightlife, which proved to be a difficult task because we were traveling in a group of about 40 Americans. Alayna, Kristin and I actually had a bit of a negative experience during a conversation with two Greek guys that proceeded to tell us they loved "Saddam" because he flew planes into the twin towers. I've never personally been verbally confronted with such strong anti-Americanism before so I was a somewhat taken aback. I asked my Greek Society professor about the incident and she said that oftentimes people will purposefully say something controversial to you to provoke a response. Nevertheless, it's difficult to have a conversation when there are already such strong cultural biases.

The trip to Delphi was also a lot of fun. It wasn't sponsored or paid for by the program, but they organized it for us. There isn't much to the actual town of Delphi; it basically consists of restaurants, gift shops, and hotels, but the archaeological sites are amazing. We visited the ancient site of Delphi and the Temple of Apollo and Athena. We saw where the Oracle sat in ancient times, and had the chance to visit an old ampitheatre and stadium. It was relatively cold while we were there so we didn't spend as much time at these places as we might have liked, but we definitely saw the majority of it. Surprisingly, the food there was not too great; on multiple occassions people got tough and overcooked chicken, and I personally got some rather untasty vegetable soup. I suspect that the reason for this is because the restaurants mainly cater to tourists, who will basically eat anything that is put in front of them (us included).

Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece, but it's very different from Athens. It's in the north so it's much closer to the rest of Europe (the people actually look different), and the young people there seemd to dress more chic. There are tons of Roman ruins, and also beautiful churches and towers from the Byzantine and Ottomon empires. We visited a Byzantine Art museum (the largest besides the Vatican) which was very tastefully put together. There is also a Jewish Museum in the area, but we didn't get to visit it because it's not open on Saturdays. Thessaloniki was host to a large population of Jewish people before WW2, but apparetnly 95% of their Jews were wiped out by the Holocaust. There are still a few synagogues left, however, and one of them was down the street from our hotel. One of the main attractions is the White Tower, which was built by the Ottomons. Apparently it used to have the nickname the Bloody Tower because they would execute people by throwing them off the top and then blood would drip down the sides. Ew! There are also a plethora of clothing shops which are much more reasonable than Athens. Overall the city reminded me a bit of Miami's South Beach (minus the Bloody Tower, of course), where there are tons of open air restaurants and bars with the looming presence of the ocean in the background.

In other news, my team won the puzzle contest!!!! I should explain. The program coordinators decided that for a semester long project we would put together the largest puzzle in the world and then donate it to the children's ward of a hospital. They decided to make it into a competition and split the group into five sections, with about 10 people working on a different part. The first team to put their section of the puzzle together would win a free weekend trip to an island!! Needless to say, this was incentive enough for everybody to be working on the puzzle 24/7. My team had some extra hard and talented puzzle people (our team leader Kim and Tony were among them) so we had the lead almost the entire time. We were neck in neck with another team for a while, and the last hour that we were working on the puzzle was intense. It took about two weeks to put our part together. What I've discovered from this particular experience is that I am not good at puzzles; it took me about two hours to put ten pieces together. Not exaggerating. If you saw this puzzle, however, you would understand. It's literally the largest puzzle in the world. Despite my lack of talent, our team won!!! We're not sure which island we're going to yet, but I'm definitely excited about it.