Daily life is peculiar here in regards to our everyday life in America.  Besides the obvious language barrier, its the little things that stick out.  First of all, People park on literally every inch of curb space available.  That means on corners, cars have wedged their way in.  There’s also no real rule of blocking an intersection if you have a green light but can’t really move.  People just honk if the light turns red and you’re stuck there.  As is usual in other European nations, Greeks love their “siesta,” or mid-day slumber, closing down businesses from about 2-5 pm, making it difficult to plan for food in between classes.  Restaurants are never busy when we go out, for people here don’t start to eat until 9pm.  We’re definitely be eligible for the early bird special wherever we go out to eat at 6pm.  

We did get a few walking tours of Athens our first few days, where we saw some aspects of the hustle and bustle of the city.  We saw Syntagma square, which, like College Ave and Beaver Canyon, has been in the news for the wrong reasons lately. In actuality, the similarities are quite comparable, since “rioting” is not the norm, but usually a relatively small portion of people (in respect to the 3.7 million living here) gathering to observe everyone else, while a few enraged and confused anarchists turn violent.  That’s really only happened a handful of times since June.  Their description of the few and far between demonstrations fit almost perfectly what I witnessed the night of the “riots” (5% of the PSU student body standing around on College Ave) downtown in the wake of the Sandusky scandal. 

As you can see, only pigeons frequently occupy Syntagma square.

We also saw the open air food* markets, where we learned that the birds and rabbits up for sale were not part of a pet shop…

A few of us tried out Greek coffee, which we were warned upon arrival is very different since the grains stay at the bottom.  When we went to order it, the man in the coffee shop stopped and apprehensively asked us if we had had it before.  In the end its not bad, but I hate regular coffee so my opinion hardly counts.  It’s very thick and frothy and sure enough..the grains come up quicker than you expect.  

 

We also went to dinner to celebrate Tim Kunkel, one of our roommate’s birthdays, where I ordered Octopus and let the others try it. Once again, they asked me to come to the meat display to show me what else was for sale, thinking I didn’t actually want octopus.  It too isn’t bad, very fishy, but not as grey and rubbery as you might expect.  Because it was a birthday, they gave us a complimentary taste of a drink upon paying.  The easiest way to describe it is a concoction consisting of tequila, gasoline, and nail polish remover.  Since it is complimentary, it is seen as a sign of rudeness to leave any on the table.  So we all painfully sipped our thimble full of liquid fire before departing.  

It’s hard to make an adequate judgement of living here since we are so naive.  The Athens Centre is absolutely fantastic, they have so many opportunities and such great professors.  It’s a small building on a corner but a family of people from all walks of life.  As the Greeks would say, Bravo to PSU for finding this program.  With some sickness and the lack of a sleep schedule, we havent done much exploring, so its hard to say what all is out there beyond Dikearhou street. We had our first Greek Class among others, so the language wall should be  starting to be torn down piece by piece.  

Great city, far from home.  A week in, and we’re all looking forward to the adventures that lie ahead.  

Until next time, 

Yassas!