Today is the end of my first day in Greece. This trip was a bit last-minute. Just a month ago, we sat down on a Friday night and went shopping for tickets. I cleared some dates with the director of my school, and here I am, a mile or two from the Acropolis, looking forward to another 16 days.
We got in this morning and proceeded to crash in Dionysi's grandmother's place for about five hours before heading out into the city. This is probably the first time I've gone somewhere without doing substantial preliminary reading. I don't really know how many eras there were in Greece, or their corresponding architectural styles. The philosophy and rhetoric courses I took in college are stored in some foggy recess of my brain, and haven't been dusted in awhile. Instead, I've been studying the language for a couple months whenever I have a spare moment--on the T, waiting to meet someone, waiting for a break in the Boston rain under some corner bus stop, cooking a solitary omelette. I have stopped reading novels and poetry for the time being. My spoken Greek is still pretty terrible, but I can sound out written words and sometimes understand what's happening around me. As expected, I hear a lot of "Ela, pethi mou!" (yes /what's up /come on my child). My guess is that Rihanna's hit "Umbrella" must have been big over here, given the popularity of the all-purpose "ela".
So I've done no research, but I'm going to read the signs and ask questions and eat more than the recommended amount of fried cheese that one should consume in a day. Dio told me that "finite" is the best single-word description of Greece. It doesn't have the tallest mountains, or the widest variety of fruits, the strongest economy, the largest temples. We climbed the Acropolis this afternoon, and could see where Athens ends, confined by three mountains and the foggy sea port. Greece has moments of perfection, he says, points of precision which can be experienced in anything from an ancient statue of Apollo to a glass of your Grandmother's fresh orange juice.
2 comments:
ahhh man, jealous! it's cool that dio is your tour guide ^^
Eat a few extra portions of fried cheese for those of us who, though capable of making fried cheese for ourselves with the cheese and fat implements around our own homes, cannot morally allow it, since "midwestern obesity" is not a cultural definition we want to voluntarily continue.
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