Domestic life: adventures in a Greek kitchen

Came home from work on Wednesday to find this:

(there used to be a faucet there...)

But generally, I have a lovely (half-underground) home:

The front gate to the little cottage "in the woods"

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This weekend I stayed in Athens--a much needed break from work, and a chance to:

Go to a lovely laiki (farmer's market):

 Gorgeous produce, and astoundingly cheap!

Where I was able to buy all of the ingredients for:

A tasty and refreshing orange, fennel, red onion, and mint salad

And since I had the time, I also embarked on a culinary adventure: bacon and leek risotto. The challenge was threefold:

1) Greece does not have chicken broth, so I was left with only this:

2) I had to trust in the 2 euro bottle of Greek white wine whose label I could not read:

And 3) Greece does not really have what we Americans would call bacon

Things did not start off promisingly when I dumped the "bacon" into my (regrettably not nonstick) pan, and it immediately proceeded to form a thin crispy coating of bacon glued to the bottom of the pan, while the rest of it refused to cook. But after pulling out the uncooked bacon and instead nuking it in a microwave for at least five minutes (until the sound of crackling grease became too disconcerting) and hacking away at the adhered bacon on the bottom of the pan (which resulted in some very tasty bacon dust), things turned out quite successfully.

And also became an even more indulgent leftovers meal when I fried up the remaining risotto to crisp it up (and topped it with a pouched egg)--a perfect ending to a 12-hour day of work!

Aegina (insert name pun here)

After a hard one-day week at work, it was a relief to escape to an island! Along with 10 (of the 11) other fellows, I sailed off to Aegina, the closest island to Athens.

Sunrise at the port

(this seemed novel at the time, but since starting work I've seen the sunrise every morning)

Island traveling requires little explanation in words, and much in pictures....

Our dinner spot--perfect location and delicious food:

The Temple of Aphaia

 (on top of a mountain on the island, and a view of Athens)

And a sunset on the way home to round it out!

Back again

I've been torn about whether or not to blog this time around, mainly because:

1) My blog has always been, first and foremost, a photo blog--and I decided not to bring my fancy-shmancy camera with me this time, rationalizing that I didn't want to wear that bulky TOURIST sign around my neck when I was trying to establish myself as a resident of Greece, not just a temporary visitor (although I personally think that the number of pictures I have of the Acropolis, from countless visits--and the number of ticket stubs, which surely is greater than the number most Greeks have accumulated--testifies to my love of the city and my desire to capture its beauty, not as a tourist but as a general appreciator). Not to mention, with my suitcase weighing in at 49.8 pounds I simply lacked the luggage space for the camera.

1a) I have realistic expectations for this year, and as such feel fairly sure that I can't outdo my semester abroad in terms of jaw-dropping pictures of most of the incredible highlights of Greece. Not to say that there isn't plenty more of Greece to see, but... I saw a whole lot last time. And had a whole lot of time on my hands; I wasn't working 40+ hours a week. And so: if you want to see beautiful pictures of spectacular Greek sites, I recommend all of my previous posts!

2) I (naively) thought that I wouldn't have much to say. This, of course, was an underestimation of both my verbosity and Greece's unpredictable and entertaining nature.

Which brings me to now. I can't promise the pictures will be as stellar, the posts as often (or as witty!) but ultimately I would be disappointed if I didn't have some preserved memories from this time.

Just keep in mind all of these photos were taken with an iPhone camera.

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Today marks the 14th day since leaving the states. A quick recap of these last two weeks:

I couldn't resist taking at least one picture of the Parthenon (which is still glorious)

And the marble stadium

And the National gardens

And my favorite Greek pastry (bougatsa)

But along with the old (ancient) and familiar, there is so much new:

My eleven fellow fellows, with whom I have begun this adventure

Our new stomping grounds (this is the humble high school building, "Benakio", which I live next to)

And new places to discover

 The Temple of Poseidon

 

and the lovely beaches of Cape Sounion

The sunset is supposed to be extraordinary from these cliffs, but alas the clouds rolled in around 5. If we had stayed for the sunset, though, we would have missed the exciting bus ride home on which a Romanian young man gave the bus ticket collector a counterfeit bill.

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First day of school, or what I'm calling "Charter-bus Chicken":

The morning started bright and early at 7:25, when I, along with the three other fellows heading to the elementary school, waited at the corner for our "school bus"--which turned out to be the nicest school bus I had ever seen, when it showed up 20 minutes late.

 The 20-minute-late arrival turned out to be the least of our difficulties; after boarding the bus, we were faced with this:

as you can see, a road clearly not wide enough for two buses...not that that stopped them:

After a 15-minute stand-off including a lot of honking, both bus drivers getting out of their buses and yelling/gesticulating, and angry moms joining in the fray, the opposing bus had three more buses behind it and we had clearly lost the battle. After some incredible auto-batic maneuvering, our bus turned down a side street, which would have been wide enough for the two lanes it offered if cars hadn't parked along the curb clearly marked with no-parking signs. After an hour battling traffic and the narrow streets of the neighborhood--and picking up a grand total of 6 children--I turn to the window to see the familiar stone wall and gate of the campus where I had stood an hour and a half earlier.


Other than the fact that we arrived an hour late to our first day of work, the school day went without a hitch.


After getting on the bus at the end of the school day, Courtney (another fellow) turned to me and said, "It's going to be a joke how much faster we get home!" And a joke it indeed was, though not due to the speediness of our trip. In fact, after cruising down the highway and turning onto an overpass, I noticed that we were stopped for what had to be longer than even an Orange County stoplight's cycle. I would say that we had "pulled over" but that would imply that we were in some kind of shoulder, when in fact the bus was just stopped dead in the right-hand lane. After 15 minutes of waiting and trying (in vain) to parse out the rapid Greek being spoken, Courtney and I enlisted the help of a bilingual second-grader to translate for us. It turned out that our bus had left the school prematurely--without a few children. We waited there for another ten minutes, until a second bus pulled up next to ours (still on the overpass), and dumped the children.

The day really took the phrase "riding the struggle bus" to a literal level.




But ultimately I love Greece for its inefficiencies, its quirks, its peculiarities--and for its gorgeous produce, feta, and olives.