Athens

So Athens. I’ll preempt this post by saying that man, am I glad I chose to study and live in Thessaloniki instead of Athens. It makes me sad to imagine all the people that visit Greece and only see Athens. If you want to see the real true Ellada, don’t go to Athens. It is a very large, americanized city. You can’t even go to a taverna in Athens that isn’t in the touristy section. It’s huge, dirty, confusing, and very easy to get lost in – I would know. Thessaloniki is a lot smaller, a lot more Greek, and nearly impossible to get lost in. I know the city a lot better now, but even in the first few days I felt like I knew exactly how to get back home from anywhere, and not even have to take a taxi to do it. I also feel a lot more welcomed in Thessaloniki, but maybe its just me. People that live in Athens are accustomed to tourists and therefore aren’t at all interested. Yet, when I meet people in Thessaloniki, they seem to very interested in where I’m from and why I’m here.

So we started on our journey not nearly early enough on Friday morning. If you have a 8 hour bus ride ahead of you why in the world would you start at 10:30 am? Anyway, 2 buses each filled with 60 college students and their stuff left the wonderful city of Thessaloniki to begin a very eye-opening weekend. Greek law, or the law of the bus company requires busses to stop for a ½ hour every 2 hours on the road. Ouch – made the journey an even longer one. After some marathon napping, chatting, and even a movie we finally arrived in Athens around 7:30 pm. We had a nice dinner at our hotel on the waterfront and made plans for the night. It was my friend Florida’s birthday on Sunday, but she was running the Athens Classic 10K, so we decided to celebrate on Friday instead. Imagine trying to get 30 or so kids to the same place in a city that no one is familiar with. Can you say disaster? We split up into a bunch of cabs and all told the drivers the same thing. Somehow though, people ended up all over the city. Eventually we were able to get at least most of the group together in some sketchy neighborhood that we later found out was actually not supposed to be sketchy at all – interesting. To sum up the night, we got shooed away, the boys almost got into a fight with these greek men, and Kyle, Alex, and I got lost on the way home and ended up miles from our hotel at 4 am, even though I’m pretty sure we did exactly what we should have done to get home.

On Saturday we started the morning with a bus tour of the city and saw the Olympic Stadium, the university, the temple of Zeus, and made our way up to the Acropolis. I was psyched to see it – literally almost jumping out of my skin to see the Parthenon and the temple of Athena. When I got up there however, I was unfortunately under whelmed. While it is a great site to see and experience, there were tons of people and there was scaffolding on the Parthenon that really took away from what I was expecting it to be. After a few hours at the acropolis we walked down to the Ancient Agora, which was a little more on par with what I was expecting from the acropolis. Afterwards we had lunch in the touristy taverna neighborhood and had some free time to wander the city. Not wanting to wander too far, we pretty much stayed in the same neighborhood for a few hours and then headed back to the hotel for a nap. I fell asleep at 7 pm, woke up at 9 for dinner and a little socializing, and was back in bed by midnight.

The next morning we had the choice of going to the archeological museum, the folk music museum, or to have more free time around the city. I chose to go to the archeological museum, which was a great decision on my part. They had exhibits from all over Greece and even from Egypt. They had statues and jewelry and vases galore and it was really interesting to see artifacts from different time periods and places. After the museum we all got lunch at a different taverna and then left at 4:30 for our journey home. I was hoping to nap, but ended up playing cards with Kaci, Alexa, and Luke for most of the way. It certainly made the time go a lot faster.

I have to say one of my favorite parts of the weekend was that everyone in our program was together for the vast majority of the time. The NUin kids all know eachother really well because they all live in the same building and have to take special classes, but the rest of us regular study abroad students are split between 3 apartment buildings and aren’t in that many classes together. While I’ve met everyone and spent time with everyone, it was so nice to get to know a lot more people a lot better. We all expanded our horizons this weekend, and I think a lot of us needed that change from what we’re used to. I think we’ve all also gotten a little homesick in the last few weeks, but after being in Athens for 2 days, everyone was overwhelmingly excited to get back to Thessaloniki, a city we’ve all come to know and love.

I’m really excited for the last month here in Greece after this past weekend. Next weekend I might go to Bulgaria with a couple of the guys from one of the other buildings – that would definitely be an interesting trip if it ends up working out. Sophia, Bulgaria is just a cheap train ride away, and I know some people who’ve gone and really enjoyed it.

Classes are going great except for econ, but that’s not a surprise. My professor is really just a terrible human being and I wish I was a more aggressive person and that I had stood up for myself in class the other day. I guess I’ll just save it for the evaluation at the end of the semester. She really just sucks at life. I really wish I had known that I could have taken either macro or micro econ to fulfill Stonehill’s requirement, I definitely would have chosen the other one. Oh well, life goes on, and luckily the credit transfers while the grade doesn’t, so all I have to do is pass.