Snow in Athens

Late Friday night (well, early Saturday morning), I was out with some of the fellows in "Gazi" (sort of like a theme park full of bars in downtown Athens). As we walked from "Soho" to "Tora" (means now in Greek, not a jewish bar), it began to snow. It came like a light rain at first, and all the flakes melted as soon as they hit the concrete. The snow continued all day yesterday, in fluffier, chunkier flakes, and now the mountain I look towards out my window is white. :)

 (There's no snow on the ground in Halandri though, because we're at a lower elevation.)

Rather than play outside in the snow, I went out to lunch with Laura, one of the teachers in my department. We had originally planned to just get coffee, and ended up getting Margaritas and Burritos instead. The whole setting kinda cracked me up: Here I am in Athens Greece, getting tipsy at 3 pm on a Saturday with my colleague, sitting in a Mexican restaurant decked out in Christmas lights, and watching the snow fall.

Laura's husband is Greek, and this got me thinking about romantic relationships between people who don't have a common mother tongue. Because his first language is Greek, I imagine that when Laura's husband thinks, he thinks in Greek first. It's well known that there are certain words or expressions that just can't be translated from language to language - (did you know there's no Greek word for Hangover?) - and I wonder how this applies to matters of the heart. Whether certain things are different in such couples, what's lost and what's gained.

(Just a thought).

The snow came quite abruptly - up until a few days ago, the weather was still in the 70s, and I was beginning to think winter in Greece didn't really exist. Last Monday I walked to work in a sleeveless dress. And then suddenly, within two days, the temperature dropped 30 degrees.

The cold and the sight of (though fleeting) snow has made me VERY excited to go home for Christmas. These last few weeks have just felt like a push til the end. I can't wait to go home, sleep, speak English without having to politely ask whether the person I'm speaking to speaks English as well, see my family and new dog, and eat home cooked North American food. I don't mean to diss Greece, but right now I'm ready to get the hell out. The inefficiencies are driving me nuts - for example, the reason I did the nearly hour long walk to school last week was due to a transport strike, which happened again today, and will happen again on Wednesday as well.

I've also realized that making Greek "friends" is not only difficult, but sometimes not much fun, either. I've met plenty of Greek people, and they've been very kind to me on the whole, but they're usually also:
a) much older than me, so I don't feel like we have much common ground
b) male, and not really that interested in just being my friend
c) not native English speakers, so I can't understand everything they're saying and they can't undesrstand me either. This totally kills the humor part, which is all I really want anyways.
d) Eager to tell me all the best things about Greece, which I've heard over and over again from all the other Greeks I've met.

So! Feeling a little dejected about making new Greek friends. I do really love my colleagues though, and am feeling closer and closer with some of the other teaching fellows.

I feel like my Greek is improving, and I'm still really enjoying learning it. Every time I sit down for a few hours and really study it I feel like I make huge progress. So I need to do more of that. Hopefully by the time I leave I'll really be able to speak it. The problem now is that because everyone speaks English, I hardly ever get to practise my Greek.

Last weekend Mandee and I went to ancient Corinth and saw the castle there. That was pretty damn cool. Inspired me to keep exploring greater Greece when I get back after Christmas.

Brussels

Because Canadian and American Thanksgivings fall on different dates, I've felt a bit out of touch with Thanksgiving since I started living in the USA, six years ago. My parents, in Toronto, celebrated it in October, and when Alex and I came home in November, we'd often end up having chicken instead of Turkey.

This year I strayed even farther from the holy Turkey dinner - I rang in Thanksgiving in Brussels, with chocolate, french fries, and beer. While my American travel companions (2 guys, 2 girls) complained of missing a proper Thanksgiving meal, I was quite content.

Belgian chocolate, in my opinion, really IS that good. I bought an embarassing amount, and have finished all of it which I didn't immediately give to my coworkers. Sorry Mom, but none of it will be making its way home for Christmas.

I fell in love with this little sweetshop, "La Cure Gourmande"(it's a chain), where I bought three cookie tins and an excessive amount of chocolate. I filled one tin with cookies, but the other two I bought simply because the boxes were so pretty.

Cookie Tins

Beer: both nights we went to a bar called Delirium, which has over 2000 beers on tap. It was a riot. Three floors, jam packed with people (who were dancing! Greeks don't dance), loud classic rock.

Belgians are notorious for being the most boring people in Europe. I'd like to say "I couldn't disagree more," but the truth is, I didn't meet many Belgians in Belgium. I did have a lovely time with the French and the Brits, though.

The second night, I struck up a conversation with two French guys dressed in drag (one as some kind of red mixed religion drag queen). I thought maybe there was an occasion, but when asked why they were dressed up, they responded, "Why not?"

"Why not?"

We also met a group of British blokes and ended up chatting and dancing with them until 4 am, when Delirium finally closed. Some of them had such thick cockney accents that I couldn't understand half of what they were saying, so having a language in common wasn't such a wonderful thing after all.

*When I say we, I mean, me plus the two other female teaching fellows who went on the trip. We somehow managed to spend almost no time with the boys.


What I loved most about Brussels was that it put me in the Christmas spirit. Although Athens is doing its darndest to be jolly (there are TONS of Christmas shops), the still seventy-five degree weather somehow makes it quite difficult to get into the cheer. Brussels, on the other hand, was f-ing freezing. It was a major shock to the system to walk out of the airport into such frigid air. But it was invigorating.

The Grand Place

There was a fantastic "light show" in the "Grand Place," Brussels' main square. This square has some magnificent architecture, and the light show mimicked the building whose facade it played onto exactly. Thus it looked as though the building were lighting up from the inside... err, kindof hard to describe. Maybe you had to be there.

I loved speaking French again in Brussels. It reminded me how little Greek I know, which is funny, because in Budapest, hearing hungarian reminded me how MUCH Greek I know. I do think French is a beautiful language and I'm thankful I studied it all through gradeschool and highschool. Id like to go back to it at some point.

Manneken Pis

In terms of sight seeing, we went to the Magritte museum, which was nice because Magritte is pretty weird and out there, but I find his work easy enough to understand. After one museum, we were museumed out, and spent most of the time walking around and eating. Of course we saw, "Manneken Pis," which is very, very small. It was rather underwhelming. 

Part of me felt like I should've taken advantage of my time there and gone to as many tourist destinations and museums as possible, but a larger part of me felt like the best way to see and enjoy a city is to just walk around. And eat waffles. 

Now, back in Athens, back to reality: I had my first full week of school in over a month this past week, and I'm exhausted!!! And I have three more full weeks to go before Christmas break. Aye aye aye.