It's Albanian to Me :).

Friday the 13^th of May we spent the night in Albania! Before coming to Greece I wouldn’t have even been able to locate Albania on a map, but since then I’ve learned quite a bit about that small Balkan country. As I’ve said before, one of my classes was ‘Greek-Albanian Regional Tensions’ and a project for that course was the purpose of travelling there. We wrote 10-page research papers on a modern issue involving Greece and Albania and were to interview both Greek and Albanian students on our topics. My paper focused on worker’s rights and the problems that lead to many Albanians immigrating to Greece to find work and I found that these countries’ relationship is a bit like the US and Mexico, but not exactly. I interviewed some Albanian graduate students studying English at the University of Gyrokaster. Honestly the animosity between the two countries is kind of ridiculous because they are so similar in culture and even geography. Traditional clothing and food at least are pretty much identical. Greece is more developed, so it was less clean and advanced than what I have grown accustomed to, but Albania was surprisingly beautiful, with mountains, fields and the ocean. Small towns would be hidden up in mountain valleys with the main valley open for agriculture.

After interviewing the students, who were all extremely nice and helpful, we visited a nearby  castle, still fully equipped with cannons, tanks, cannon balls, huge iron statues, and a crashed airplane from WWII. It had a great view of the entire valley. The next day we visited an Albanian beach town called Sarande, which actually reminded some of us of California, with the lined up palm trees and shops lined up on the waterfront. Initially I wasn’t all that interested in visiting Albania or even learning about it at all, but I am thankful for the unique opportunity to visit such a different country.

Journey to the center of...this one hill in Ioannina :).

Now that I’m just chilling on the beach on Athens until Sarah and Yana arrive early Thursday morning to start our 3 week backpacking trip, I finally have time to catch up on my blog! I have about an entire month to write about so here goes nothing:

During the week of May 2^nd the excursions were to the Perama Caves and Lake Island in Ioannina and we also went to the town Arta to see some byzantine churches. I’ve come to the conclusion that they never let you take pictures in the coolest places, so I couldn’t take any photos in the caves, but it was amazing. (this is a photo i took of a poster.) The caves were the first in the country to be opened to the public and were initially discovered by locals who used it as a hide out during WWII. I usually get a bit freaked out in claustrophobic situations, but the caves were so beautiful that I just didn't focus on fact that I was underground walking through tiny passage ways. Everything looked so cool that we all agreed it seemed more like a ride at Disneyland rather than real life. I learned a lot about caves, like that stalactites and stalagmites are the same thing, just crystallization of water, the first from the ceiling down and the former grow from the ground up, from the dripping of stalactites. The only living creatures that actually live in the caves were tiny scorpions and not so tiny spiders that we found out about because a big one jumped on Kacey’s back! They weren’t harmful to humans, but it was still a bit creepy after that surprise. Due to the difference in air pressure, every step in the cave was equivalent to 3 steps on the surface, so it was a bit tiring even if we didn’t actually walk all that far. If you’ve never had the chance to go inside caves like that before I would really recommend it because the experience is difficult to explain clearly.

Then we took a boat to the Island in the lake in Ioannina, which is famous because the leader of  the area during Ottoman occupation, Ali Pasha, lived and was assassinated in his home there. Unfortunately it was a bit cloudy that day but we enjoyed ourselves nevertheless. We visited Ali Pasha’s house which has been turned into a museum. Even though Ali Pasha was a Muslim Ottoman Turk ruling an area that was majority Greek Orthodox Christian, the Greeks still liked him because he wanted the Muslims and Christians to work together in political and civic life. After the museum, a group of us were brave and decided to sample the island delicacy, fried frog legs. I’d never tried them before so it was an interesting experience. It was a bit creepy because they just looked like frogs with batter on them. There wasn’t much meat on them obviously but it felt like fish meat but tasted more like chicken then seafood. They actually tasted alright, but probably one of those things that I just needed to try once :)

Later that week we drove to Arta where we visited several Byzantine churches including the Church of the Paregoretissa and the Church of St. Theodora. I saw relics from the 13^th century of Queen Theodora who became a nun after her husband dies, displayed were some bones and things recovered from her tomb which is still in the small church. The Church of Paregoretissa was much larger than the first one, with 3 stories. At its founding, it was the metropolitan church of the entire area. No longer utilized as a church, today it is just a museum. It was interesting to explore this church, we could go where ever we wanted including the places like behind the altar area which is prohibited to see in an active church if you aren’t a priest or altar boy. Later we visited the bridge of Arta, made famous in a legendary folk ballad which made fun of how long it took them to build it, saying “all day they were building it, and in the night it would collapse.” Sounds like some of the construction on the uw campus to me ;) After that we went to another beach town, to have lunch. We would pretty much have the exact same thing for most every meal: bread, appetizers made of fried filo/feta/spinach combinations, greek salad, potatoes and some kind of meat, usually grilled chicken, souvlaki or calamari. I never used to eat squid, but I managed to get used to it here and its at least better than frog legs ;)

Santorini Sunshine :)

The rest of my Easter break was spent on the gorgeous island Santorini! Kathryn and I took a 7  hour tippy ferry from the port at Athens. We stayed at the best villa, it had a kitchenette, a beautiful view and the owner cooked us a couple delicious meals free of charge! It all reminded me so much of Hawaii, since we mostly just relaxed on the beach and explored different towns right on the water. The weather started out cloudy and windy every single morning, but luckily we braved it out, would head to the beach and then the sun would come out just for us :) We hung out at Mamari and Perissa beaches which are both black sand because the island, including the surrounding islands make up one volcano. It was the best to just relax on the beach in the beautiful Greek sun.

 Our most exciting day included a boat excursion to the active volcanic islands from the port in Fira. We sailed to the larger of the volcanic islands and hiked up to an area that has an active crater. There were amazing views of the main island from the top of the volcano. Then we headed to the smaller of the volcanic islands where I dove off of the boat into the Mediterranean Sea and swam into the island’s hot  spring. The ‘hot’ spring wasn’t all that hot because it opened up directly into the sea, which was also pretty cold, but the swim was so exhilarating and such an amazing memory! Once we got back to the main port, we had to make it back up the crazy switchback stairs to the town, which had taken half an hour to walk down. So I rented a donkey for the ride up! There weren’t any reigns so I couldn’t really steer him at all, which meant I would sometimes almost trample tourists walking down the steps. My donkey was pretty spunky because when the other donkeys would just stop randomly in the middle of the steps, we booked it up the stairs and passed about ten other donkeys! Then we went to the town Oia, which is where part of Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants was filmed. It was fun to see places that I had seen in the movie and the town was so beautiful! All of the buildings in the entire town were all white with blue trim and roofs, just like in all the pictures. It was sad to pack up and head back to reality and school, but it was such an adventure that I’m especially never going to forget and that’s within my once in a lifetime experience of studying abroad.

My Easter with Athena :)

For Easter break, I bussed down to Athens on April 20^th to meet up with my friend Kathryn, who has been studying abroad in Dijon, France. We stayed in Athens for four days including Easter weekend. In the Greek Orthodox Church, Easter is the most important, biggest holiday of the year, more so than Christmas. They have mass almost every day of holy week and then the real celebrations begin Saturday night at midnight. We visited the most famous sites in Athens, including the Acropolis, National Gardens, Manastiraki Square, Parliament building, and the Olympic Stadium. Sites had shorter hours because of the holiday, but entrance into the Acropolis was free since it was Good Friday :) It was amazing to finally see the Parthenon in person since it’s such a universal symbol of Greece and ancient civilization. One of the coolest things was that we then visited the New Acropolis Museum, which has a full size model of the Parthenon with pieces of its statues that had been taken down. Then I was able to imagine what this grand temple of Athena actually looked like when it was built thousands of years ago. We also walked up Mars Hill, sat in the Theatre of Dionysus, and shopped in the famous tourist districts Manastiraki and Plaka.

 It was awesome to walk around the Panathenaic or Olympic Stadium and imagine all of the  ancient athletes and gladiators that competed in the first Olympic Games. Later we went to Syntagma Square with the Parliament building and watched the changing of the guards. They wear traditional Greek clothes and march with a super weird high step :) We attended an outdoor  midnight candle light mass on Easter Saturday at ‘The Cathedral’, the head church for the Greek Orthodox Church. The priests started chanting, led a processional out into the square and began lighting the candles of the crowd. The original flame comes from a church in Bethlehem and is flown to Greece and then spread to all of the churches in the entire country, so it was a pretty interesting tradition to take part. Our breakfast was Easter bread, kind of floral tasting bread baked into a circle with a red Easter egg in the middle. They do paint Easter eggs here, but only red to represent Christ’s blood and they also don’t have the Easter bunny. For dinner we accidentally went to ‘God’s Restaurant’ :) They were roasting lamb on the spit out on the street, which I got a chance to turn for a while. We ate a traditional Greek meal of a Greek salad, lamb, potatoes, baklava and ouzo, but didn’t try the Easter soup which is made from lamb intestines. The waiters were very entertained by my attempts at speaking Greek and that Kathryn didn’t speak any at all, so it was a fun meal. My Easter this year was a bit different than it would have been at home, but it was really interesting to experience another culture’s way of celebrating the holiday. Also it was great to have an extra break from school for a week and half, just because Easter is a national holiday ;)

Alexander the Great's Dad's Tomb :)

On April 15^th (I’m obviously trying to catch up on blogging at this point) we bussed to the Archeological  Museum in the city of Verginia on the site of 3rd century BC Macedonian kings. One of the tombs has been determined to be King Phillip II, father of Alexander the Great. You could tell that the site was interesting because there were a ton of Greek people there too, not just tourists :) We couldn’t actually take pictures inside the museum, which was a bummer because the tombs were really impressive. Archeologists found the burial site in a hillside and they just built the museum into the hill. Several of the front tombs had been sacked, but the most important ones, including Phillip II and possibly Alexander IV, son of Alexander the Great were left undisturbed upon their discovery. You would walk into a separate room and down a set of stairs to the entrance door, with the tomb towering overhead. All of the artifacts that were found in those tombs are displayed in the museum; mostly weapons, coins and armor, that would be buried with the kings. It still amazes me to see things that were made 1000's of years ago, coming from such a rich history that I haven’t really been exposed to before this trip.

Then we went to Thessaloniki, the second biggest city in Greece and an extremely important port in the region. I always like it when we do visit larger cities since Ioannina is so small - it’s about a quarter of the size of Seattle. We mostly just walked around the waterfront and checked out the ‘White Tower of Thessaloniki’.  Built by the Ottomans, it was originally named the ‘Red Tower’ or ‘Tower of Blood’ because of a massacre from when it was used as a prison. When Greece regained the city they renamed it the more pleasant present day ‘White Tower’.  I’m really glad that these excursions are included in my program because Thessaloniki was a 4 hour drive away from Ioannina, so I probably wouldn’t have been able travel there on my own :)

Nuns on the Edge…of Cliffs :)

We visited the Ioannina Archeological Museum on April 6^th, which contains findings from the region Epirus between the Paleolithic era until after the Roman period. It was kind of more of the same thing from the first museum at Nikopoli, but more specific with the area around where I’m staying. I saw tablets that were inscribed with questions for the Oracle at Dodoni which I already visited! Some of the questions were kind of funny, like “Will she have children if she is partnered with me?” or “Am I the father of her children?”. It was a really cool feeling to actually see the questions that I had read about and then actually seen the place where they were used.

Then on the 8^th we had an all day excursion to the monasteries of Meteroa and the mountain town of Metsovo. Meteroa, which means ‘suspended in the air’ in greek is a significant grouping of Greek Orthodox monasteries built on the tops of standstone rock pillars. Originally hermits lived in the caves in the cliffs and eventually some monks got together and started building the monasteries. No one really knows exactly how they got the building materials and boulders all of the way up the cliffs, which is really mysterious. So all of the buildings are precariously placed on the tops of cliffs, which makes them difficult to get to, but they have an amazing view of the surrounding mountains and of the nearby village of Kalambaka. We visited the largest of the monasteries, Holy Monastery of Great Meteoron, inhabited by monks and also the Holy Monastery of St. Stephan which is run by nuns. All of the girls had to wear skirts over our clothes before entering and then we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside of the church building, which was unfortunate since that was my favorite part. Every single space inside was ornately decorated with biblical and relgious imagery, all of the way up the vaulted ceilings. Detailed paitings of martys and saints ordained the entrance room, which was actually a bit disturbing even though it was beautiful since it depicted their gresome deaths. Intricate pictures of animals and plants detailed every piece of woodwork, from the walls to the chairs. Also there were some relics of saints, so I saw some really old bone, skull and skin fragments, which the Greek Orthodox people would kiss the glass covering them and then cross themselves, which they actually do the opposite way from Catholics.

After climbing back down the 109 steps from the top of the monastery we went to lunch at the foot of the cliffs, which was amazing just like last week’s lunch. They served us multiple courses of appetizers, greek salad, and souvlaki (hunks of meat roasted on a skewer) with potaoes and rice. Once we finished lunch we all went to the cute ski town Mestovo and chilled for the afternoon. It is definitely a tourist stop because the entire town square was filled with buses of people visiting the town. The town reminded we a lot of Ioannina since it was surrounded by mountains, but much, much closer to to town. They are known for their cheeses so Kacey and I bought some, which was delicious even though we weren’t quite sure exactly what kind of cheese it was actually. We just explored the town and shopped before heading back to the university.

School is in full swing now, and I’m actually in class longer than  I would be at UW, but the work load is much easier. I’m learning so much Greek! Just hearing other speak it all of the time and my language class is now better suited to my previous knowledge base. I’ve been taking advantage of the nice outside track they have here even though its about as far across campus as you can get. I’m starting to feel a lot more comfortable here and its only been 2 weeks so far! This Friday we’re going to Thessaloniki, which is clear across the country but I’m excited to see more of the country. Γεια σας!

The Entrance to Hades...duh, duh, duuuuh :)

On April 1st we went on an all day excursion and went to several awesome sites. First was the Archeological Museum in Nikopoli, which had a ton of ruin from the Roman period when the city was at its peak. This is where Octavius defeated Antony and Cleopatra, so they called the place 'Victory City' or Nikopolis in Greek. The museum was full of statues of emperors and gods, clay pots, coins, and tablets, but the coolest part was the section of sarcophagi, which was one of the main exports of the area. Walking around the huge sarcophagi was kind of creepy, but treatment and fascination with the dead was really important to the ancient Greeks, which has to do with the next place we went to on the excursion.

Next up was the Nekromanteion, the supposed location of the Gates of the Underworld. Luckily it was a sunny, beautiful day in paradise over here, or else this excursion would have been super creepy. The Greeks believed that at this entrance to Hades one could communicate with the dead. So people would travel to the temple, get drugged by the priests as to be in a state to communicate with the spirits and then hopefully talk with their dead loved ones. Kind of crazy, right? However the purpose of the conversation was usually not to catch up with the dead person, but rather to try and discern a prophet from them as it was believed that the dead could tell the future. The temple above the actual underground entrance area has been worn down over the years, just fragments of walls with no ceilings remaining. Entering the actual underground temple wasn’t all that exciting, since it was just a set of metal stairs leading into the ground, but the room was pretty cool. I felt like Indiana Jones was going to storm in and find some secret passage way or something. It was pretty dark down there, but the flash on my camera obviously takes that away from the image.

After that we headed to Preveza to have lunch, which was amazing! The lunches on the Friday excursions are prepaid for as part of the program and so far they have been delicious. I look forward to them all week long :) We ate at a restaurant on the edge of this cliff on the sea and we were the only people there too. The view reminded me of Hawaii so much. We had fresh bread, an appetizer plate, Greek salad, and juicy hunk of chicken with potatoes. They really like their potatoes over here, since it’s pretty much served with any dish. You even get french fries in gyros, which I love! After that we just spent the afternoon in the beautiful beach town Parga. I put my feet in the Ionian Sea, which was kind of cold, but definitely warmer than the Puget Sound would be right now J We just wondered along the beach and through the town, which was pretty empty, but that was during siesta. Pretty much everything shuts down here from 2-5pm for people to rest! We did find one souvenir shop that was open and I had a good long conversation with the owner entirely in Greek, which was exciting and fun. During the couple hour bus ride back to the university most people just fall asleep, but I’ve been trying to stay awake on the rides to see as much of this beautiful country as I can.