The ordinary extraordinary

The funny thing is, what makes life here so extraordinary is that my routines are becoming to feel so ordinary. Walking to the Acropolis every day is routine by now; I can walk to it in my sleep. This isn't to say it's any less mind-blowing each subsequent time I walk up those marble steps, though. The Parthenon, the Erectheon, the Propylaia, the Temple of Nike--the Acropolis as a whole hovering above Athens--is not just one of those "good-to-do" sites to snap a picture of and check off of a list, at least not to me. It's beautiful and incredible, every time (evidenced by the number of pictures I take, only a tiny sample of which I will post):

Adding on to our daily walk, I've begun to run around the top of the Panathenaic stadium. No big deal...

The first week of classes have been a little hectic, sorting out schedules and being bombarded with syllabi and assignments. But I really like all of my classes so far (Aegean Art & Archaeology, Sports, Games, & Spectacles in Ancient Greece, The Ethnography of Modern Greece, and Greek- the language), and most importantly all of the professors seem to be enthusiastic and engaging. Ethnography is an extremely relevant and useful class when it comes to understanding the culture that I've thrown myself into. Our first assignment is to observe a public space and see what we can infer about Greek life based on the way the space is arranged. Totally up my alley, and a comforting dose of social-sciences within the overwhelming CLASSICS emphasis.

Greek (the language) class is a whirlwind of gestures and expressions and sounds (by the professor) and tongue-tied stumblings (by me). She is extremely enthusiastic and has an interesting teaching style, saying on the first day, "You will be like babies. Don't write anything down. Babies don't write. They listen." Unfortunately, my brain is no longer that of a baby's (and believe me, in this case I wish it were), and hearing a bunch of sounds and then "repeating" them--really just guessing and throwing sounds together at random--doesn't quite seem to do the trick. But the waiter at the cafe we went to this afternoon did compliment my Greek, so.. (I said all of "hello...one frappe, please...no milk, no sugar [but that part in English because I couldn't remember how to say it]...and thank you. Very impressive stuff.) Also some woman stopped me on the street and spoke to me and I managed to stutter out "I don't understand"...but come to think of it she may have been speaking some language other than Greek for all I know, seeing as I've never been mistaken as Greek by anyone else.

--

Last night I finally mustered up enough energy and motivation to make dinner--quite a feat when a delectable € 2,20 gyro is just down the block--and once I started chopping I realized how much I miss cooking. I kept the meal pretty simple (we have one knife, barely more impressive than a steak knife, two pots and two pans, a stove with four electric burners, one of which is, curiously, the size of a tea cup, and an oven that couldn't fit a large chicken in it). I made ratatouille with all of the fresh vegetables I had bought at the farmers' market, and felt very pleased with myself that finally I was having a healthy meal...until we started (and finished) a whole loaf of fresh bread from the bakery. But when there's olive oil and feta cheese to go with it, it's hard to stop! The feta is unsurprisingly, so much better than the feta in the states. The bread is, surprisingly, also excellent. I wasn't expecting to find such normal "French"-style bread...but then again, all kinds of expectations have been proven faulty (for example, I assumed I would be able to flush toilet paper down toilets, and find hummus in supermarkets/groceries. Apparently Greek plumbing sucks and hummus isn't Greek in the slightest). There is also no vanilla extract to be found, so too bad I didn't think to bring that along with my peanut butter and tampons! I don't think I will be able to do much in the way of baking here anyway, seeing as we have no ovensafe cookware and the oven probably isn't big enough to fit anything. Leading me to wonder what, exactly, the Greeks use their ovens for. I miss baking dearly, but more the activity of it than the product; surprisingly, I haven't really begun to crave any foods in particular (although I've noticed that when my friend Mary buys a milk chocolate bar and offers me some, I devour it painlessly, so either the milk chocolate here is better or I'm incredibly chocolate deprived. Or both)


But going back to things like grocery stores and toilets, I feel that I should take a few minutes to think of the things that are so very different here (and as I said earlier, this is harder to do now because, well, they don't feel so different any more). The first is the number of stray animals around--seriously the streets are swarming with them. Cats and dogs all over the place--and, unlike in America where these animals would be picked up and taken to the pound/animal shelters where they may or may not make it back out, people feed them and let them roam freely. (Ok now I can't resist putting a few cute kitty pictures here):

Driving protocol, while noticeably different from the US, doesn't faze me as much because the last foreign country I went to was China and in comparison Greek drivers are tame. In general, it's interesting that my most recent point of comparison--foreign or even just large metropolitan area (excluding Los Angeles because it's not a typical city)--is Shanghai/Beijing. I was talking to some of my friends and commented on how empty Athens seemed to be for such a big city, and they looked at me like I was crazy. But hey, there aren't masses of people everywhere you go all the time.

The craziest thing about driving is the moped culture: there are mopeds everywhere, being driven extremely fast and dangerously. The other day we were walking and saw a man driving a moped, with his wife sitting behind him who was holding on to a baby. With both arms. Leaving no arms to hold on to the moped with. I see why CYA made us sign a waiver swearing we would not go near mopeds/motorcycles.

--

Tonight we ate at a beautiful taverna, feasting on a meal of fried zucchini and tzatziki and fava bean puree and Greek salad and the taverna's signature "cheeseburger" which ended up being basically braised short ribs with Kerrygold cheddar (the waiter specifically said that, I don't have a freakish ability to determine brands of cheddar cheese or anything) melted on top, over french fries. Needless to say, it was delicious, if a little misleading. Highlight of the night other than the delicious food and wonderful company was the fact that I read the bill and caught the fact that they had over-charged us (I recognized the word "bread", which we hadn't ordered).

fried zucchini+tzatziki = yum.

the "cheeseburger"

Some snaps of the weekend

 The weekend has been something of a blur--haven't had much time to stop and just breathe until now. The goal for the weekend was to get to know the city that we'll be spending the next 4 months in: CYA divided us into teams and gave us a scavenger hunt with different landmarks around the city and other silly little challenges.

Like finding the coolest graffiti:

 

 Or acting out statues:

(Mary as Grecian warrior, Jenny as noble steed)

Picture with the coolest perspective:

Going to Parliament:

And the Panathenaic Stadium:

Monastiraki square, next to the Athens Flea Market:

 It was a great, fun way to guide our explorations--a mix of ancient and modern cultural aspects of a centuries-old metropolitan center in the 21st century.

Stumbled upon the first Greek McDonald's I've seen...even the McDonald's in Greece have spiral staircases!

Along with McDonald's there was a Starbucks, H&M, Gap, etc (ahhh globalization). One of the girls who I was with, Jenny, is a fellow Gap lover, and together we walked into the comfort of familiarity misty-eyed, with country music blasting into our ears from the speakers. Oh America.

And then we walked out of the store and there was this, at the end of the promenade of global chain stores, in case you had for a second forgotten that in fact you were in Athens. Oh Greece!

Other than running around the other neighborhoods of Athens, we spent some time exploring our neighborhood of Pangrati, which while not the finest, fanciest, chicest, hippest, or prettiest neighborhood, does have quite a few good things going for it...

Like the gorgeous, expansive farmers' market every Friday...

...and a great gyro/souvlaki place about five minutes from our apartments

Just look at that. 2,20 €. I could eat this every day.

...and some ice cream sold by a local vendor

We also went to the Acropolis and, being only slightly less awestruck than the first time, I took way too many pictures again (we plan on going as close to every day as possible...I wonder if I'll ever be able to go without my camera and leave without having taken at least 50 photos)

Scare tactics and garden parties

Rioting. Immigration sweeps. Detainment of US citizens. Pick pocketing. Illegal ATM machines…and the list goes on. Today we visited the US Embassy (back on American soil for a few hours! And oh how nice the toilets were), and during our visit they piled on all the possible catastrophes that could occur during our stay, frightening us as thoroughly as possible. According to the Regional Security Officer (a questionably racist man who made a comment that Greeks took the summer off from demonstrating because “Greeks don’t like to sweat…in many ways”, as well as another derisive comment about “Greek people”), this is “expected to be a big demonstration season” and we are likely to see a great deal of unrest during this period of transitory government. In fact, only a few hours later we got to observe our first demonstration, which was happening right down an alley from my apartment and right in front of the CYA building (this area being the marble Olympic stadium). This is not the normal place for demonstrations (Syndagma square, where Parliament is located, was used significantly in the past, and Ommonia square is apparently becoming another protesting spot.

Perhaps in a passive-aggressive attempt to prevent us from joining this conveniently-located demonstration, the president of CYA had arranged for us to attend a garden party at his house in one of the wealthier suburbs of Athens. So we loaded up on buses, and were driven far from any danger to Alexis Phylactopoulos (I do love Greek last names) beautiful house and expansive garden area.

I got my first real souvlaki (which I have finally learned differs from gyro in that it is kabob meat--or at least, what we Americans call kabob--as opposed to shaved meat, but is still served in pita with lettuce, tomato, onion and tzatziki and is delicious).

I got a hearty helping of mingling along with the food, and the evening blurred into a night (returned home safely well after the demonstration was over) of drinking and talking at a beautiful little taverna in our neighborhood with other kids from the program. Sitting in the taverna, chatting and sipping on wine until the wee hours of the morning, I realized that the Greeks may not “like to sweat” like the guy at the Embassy said, but they sure do know how to enjoy life. 

Taverna feasting

I need to write quickly, before the tastes dissolve from my tongue and my memory fades: I just ate a spectacular meal. This evening, the program divided us into groups of about 20 and took us to various taverna in the neighborhood, where we were presented with, well, a feast (worked out well for the owners of the restaurants, because we cleared out by the time local Greeks wanted to eat--by 10 pm, that is).

I'll get right to it:
Cool, smoky eggplant with green onions and diced peppers--the richness and flavor of baba ghanoush with a heartier texture. Fava bean puree. A couscous tabouli-like dish with pita bread chips. Diced tomato with a creamy Greek yogurt-feta mix, and croutons soaked in a vinaigrette, somehow flavorful and still crunchy. Tender veal, eggplant, and tomato stewed together on top of a nutmeg-laced bechamel. Pork tenderloin with thinly sliced zucchini and a light cheese and white wine sauce. Sausage with a tomato sauce and a sprinkling of feta cheese. Ricotta and feta wrapped in crispy layers of philo dough and drizzled with honey. And then a plate piled high with lamb, sausage, and what looked like falafel but filled with crumbled sausage, along with fried potatoes, grilled pita slices, and tzatziki. And as a palette cleanser, delicate and silky yogurt with grapes soaked in sweet, delicious syrup. One of the guys put it well when he said "If love were a meal, this would be it".

I vowed I wouldn't post anything without at least one picture to accompany it, but I wasn't going to haul out my huge camera to snap pictures of the food, and just I had to share the description of the meal so that I can drool over it again later.

Τζίνα, Xena, Vergina

I did learn the word for sorry: συγγνώμη (pronounced sing-no-mee). Also learned how to write my name:

They don't have a /j/ sound in Greek, so my name ends up being more like Zina. or Xena (Warrior Princess), which I'm definitely okay with.

I love Greek already. Not really the speaking part--it sounds like gibberish to me, it takes me a good 30 seconds to sound out a word and I feel like I'm a four-year-old learning to read, but worse because the same letters that I already know make completely different sounds (H makes a long e sound, Y makes a long e sound, I makes a long e sound, E doesn't make a long e sound, P makes an r sound, v makes an n sound...). But I do love writing in Greek; I've always liked writing in symbols, and while not quite as esoteric and cool as my brother's Elvish writing, I think it's pretty cool. I find myself wanting to write in Greek symbols as much as possible (just replacing the English sounds with the Greek letters).


After a long day of getting oriented--both mentally and physically to this great city--we got some Greek dancing lessons, which seemed to effectively disorient many. We all circled up in the cafeteria, and two young Greek dancers taught us four or five sets of dance steps that got progressively more complicated, and then turned on the Greek music. It was cool to watch a hundred pairs of feet moving as one (for the simplest dance step) and then to watch the feet begin stumbling and tripping over themselves as the dances got harder. A few guys waited until their part of the circle had shifted to the doors, and then made a break for it. But I thought it was a blast. Bizarrely enough, it reminded me of American line dancing--many of the steps were the same. But comparing the faux-country OC club where I've been line dancing to the Greek dancing venues is laughable.

After our Greek lesson, I ventured out for a night on the city with a few friends. At 9 pm. The "night" was dead, almost no one out and almost nothing open, because in Greece this is still evening and no one starts doing anything until 10 at least. Even so, our group (after foolishly letting my sleep-deprived self determine the route, which involved me making turns pretty much at random and ending up in the same place we started after about an hour) found a nice, quiet cafe/bar with a homey atmosphere indoors (backgammon and chess boards to use!) that opened completely to the outdoors.

Learning the Greek symbols earlier was helpful for reading the menu--in fact, I thought that I was doing pretty well, speculating to everyone else about all the different drinks listed, until the owner brought us a menu in English and it turns out half of the menu was food. Didn't guess that! But I did know the word for beer, so even without the English menu I would've gotten by alright.

Even though I sound like a total idiot trying to read Greek, learning some key phrases also proved very useful. As I predicted, συγγνώμη came very much in handy when I got a little too excited, laughed a little too much, and spilled my (very first legal and first Greek) beer across the table (the beer was cheap and tasty and translated in English to "Vergina", which makes the second drink containing my name, Orangina being the first).

In two days, I've managed to make a fool of myself twice. I'd say that I'm off to a great start--because you really aren't living fully enough in a new culture unless you embarrass yourself at least once a day. Or so I tell myself.

My bedroom, the way it looks to me after having gotten 5 hours
of sleep total in the past 3 days

And wraparound patio.

A view outside my room

        

10 seconds at the Acropolis, and my first 12 hours in Athens

I had been in Athens for all of 10 hours, and had been on the Acropolis for all of 10 seconds, when I felt absolutely certain that this was where I wanted to spend a semester. I woke up at 5 am this morning in Irvine, CA--a city more sterile than a doctor's office and desperately lacking a meaningful history--and by sunset I was in a place so rich with history it practically thickened the air, you could practically taste it, and its history was so strong and forceful that it had smoothed the marble beneath my feet. Okay so maybe it wasn’t “this morning” technically, but since I hadn’t slept since then, I figure it basically counts (one can bend the truth a little for dramatic and literary effect right?). Regardless, I found myself standing on top of the most incredible Greek ruins, treading on marble that millions of people had walked on before me, and had been for millenia. Though I clearly do not have the depth of knowledge that my Classics major roommate, Gloria, has (who gushed about the incredible and improbable architectural feat that we were looking upon, excitedly rambling on about how each block was unique and for the ancient civilization to have brought these stones up the hill and shaped them so perfectly and for it to have been architecturally sound and and and…concluded that “they were aliens. The Greeks, the Aztecs…all aliens”), it is impossible to not feel utterly swept away by these ruins. And more than that, they’re on the top of a hill that rises triumphantly out of Athens, overlooking the city and offering a panorama that is enough to take my breath away, ruins or no ruins. The rolling hills spreading under my feet, brimming over with beautiful white buildings, mountains rising up in the distance, and the Mediterranean gleaming in the setting sun—yes, I knew I had chosen my study abroad well.

In comparison to the Acropolis, nothing else about my first day seems very noteworthy, other than that I love the three girls I’m sharing an apartment with, our apartment is cute and functional and two minutes away from a promising-looking bakery (what more can you ask for?), and that Caroline (my other Classics major roommate) and I learned two important bits of Greek shopping etiquette: weigh your own bananas and bag your own groceries. Don’t be those asses from America! I hope tomorrow we will learn the word for “sorry” in Greek. But I look forward to making more embarrassing mistakes and slowly, slowly, being less painfully, obviously, foreign--and making a little more history to add to this historically magnificent place.

But for now, some much needed sleep.