Monday, August 22, 2005

Grecian Formula #1



Spent the last week or so in Greece. It was my first time there and the last country in Western Europe that I can cross off my list, Liechtenstein notwithstanding.

For those of you have never had the pleasure of seeing it for yourselves, Greece is a fantastic blend of ancient and modern, East and West. The people are fantastic and alive, if sometimes a little smelly and hairy. I definitely feel comfortable there. In fact I think if there were 9 million people just like me they would build a country pretty much like Greece.

There are some great things about Greece:

feta cheese, olives, sunshine, sandals, ouzo, islands, wines, calamari, tsatsiki, moussaka, 30 degrees Celsius by noon, mountains, boats, beaches, and crystal blue waters.



We spent two days in Athens drinking in the shadow of the Acropolis and the island of Salamina (unfortunately no salami there) and six days in Samos, which is a small island in the Aegean next to Turkey where my grandfather was born. Samos is the place to go if you want to relax and be surrounded by Mediterranean beauty. It makes me wonder what the fuck my ancestors were thinking when they moved from that paradise island to landlocked Pennsylvania.



On the island we visited the cave of Pythagoras, where he lived in the 6th Century BC and invented strange drinking cups and geometry.

We hung out with an old friend Triphonas from London and Linda'a ex-roomate Stephanos, and Linda's sister P. and her new Greek bf Philipos, who looks a lot like me only even more Greek and anti-Bush.

It was great being in a country where people don't speak English. At all. Greece is the worst in Europe BY FAR at it. We are almost talking Mexico bad at English... like don't even try it. So bad they make Italy look like freakin' English teachers. This makes getting around fairly difficult. Oh yeah, and the Greeks who do speak English give horrible directions.

Too bad I got sick or I would probably not have left. I don't know what happened but I definitely got something. See you again when I recover. Until then, YIASOU.

4 comments:

Sloth said...

Apologies to Yvonne whose comment I erased. I got hit from a spambot and in trying to delete all the artificial comments I accidentally erased yours. Sorry and thanks for reading.

Tragic the Pixie said...

I really love Greece. My favourite was Rhodes (aside from Mykonos - which I don't have any coherent memories of except that there were birds).

Sloth said...

Pixie, there are birds everywhere!

Tragic the Pixie said...

Yes but these were pelicans (sp?) - which are very large - and I was a very, very drunk girlie .... and the other substances were also good. I think they talked to me. lol