Καλή χρονιά! Happy New year!

BUT! What kind of New year is that??? No real Christmas trees, no 40 min long fireworks, no meat (Russian) salad, no toasts and no president`s speech!!!

Instead: breaking of pomegranate, singing and playing New year`s carol (Greek: “Κάλαντα Πρωτοχρονιάς“), eating a cake with a coin inside, huge traffic on the streets and every party finishing with what? Right, Greek dances!

But still it was fun!

Want an explanation for all the crazy thing I wrote above? Here you go

1. Breaking of pomegranate. This fruit from ancient times considered as a symbol of regeneration, fertility and prosperity. Shortly after midnight Greeks throw it against the porch and the more small pieces it gets smashed into, the more luck the family will have the next year.

2. “Κάλαντα Πρωτοχρονιάς” or New year`s carol. The traditional song kids sing when they go around the houses singing songs and asking for treats. Moreover this song is also many times performed by families shortly after New year using handy instruments. So far it seems to me every Greek family has at least one musical instrument at home, e.g the simplest tambourine.

Here is the carol:

The new project Brand Greece is here! They made an amazing presentation and I really hope that not only crazy people like me will get inspired by this. But also normal Greek people will rethink their idea about their own country and will just start feeling the MAGIC!!!

 

The Magic Collection “This is Greece” I found on Felix BNI facebook page. It`s truly magical! All the small things I love so much about Greece and the thinking behind. The photos are also so beautiful!

Watch. Enjoy. Share.

This is Greece.

Note 4. Public Transport.

The Greek behavior in the public transport is funny.

Bus. If the bus is full (or seems to be, because people are squeezed to the doors), there is often a part of the bus, which even has FREE  seats, but for some reason (which I haven`t established yet), Greeks don`t move!!! They just stay squeezed to the doors and new people barely can come in! Can anybody explain me this?

Besides there is always somebody on the bus, who wants to argue just with anybody! Mostly those are Greek older men (sometimes with the bag on the wheels), desperately looking for someone to accidentally kick it, so they can start cursing them and involve half of the bus in the argument.

In addition, sometimes you can meet literally crazy people on the bus. Few days ago I was horrified, cos on my way home there was a man on the bus with me, who was sitting and talking to himself very loud. It would be ok, if he won`t be screaming in that scary horror movie voice and saying “Aλβανοι!!!… Kομματι κρεας!!…” (Translation: “Albanians!!!… Piece of meat!!!…). I really don`t know what he had against those people, or what they had done to him, but I was totally scared of what he might do.. I got home safe, so now I can blog about it

And important: while on the bus/trolley stop – DON`T FORGET to raise your hand when you see your transport approaching the stop! Why? Because no matter how many people are on the stop, if nobody pressed a stop button to get off that bus/trolley on the stop you are standing , than it WON`T STOP without your waving hand!

Greece never stops to impress you with food and drinks it has to offer.

What I`m about to post, might seem very normal for some. But for a girl coming from Latvia, it`s not

So let me introduce you – MANDARIN JUICE IN PACK!

Believe me or not – I have never seen mandarin juice, especially not in the tetr-a-pak By the way it is very tasty and I was drinking it all last week!

Enjoy!

Dreams do come true!

 

I moved to Athens It might sound crazy, even impossible under current conditions, but I DID!

To make a long story short, I got a job in Athens. A telesales job in an American company with some great benefits and ok salary for Greece. But all this job related things hardly matter next to the fact that I LIVE IN ATHENS NOW! I even managed to find a place already and I`m moving into a flat in Neos Kosmos next week.

Athens treated me nicely so far. Sun every morning, which makes me happy happy happy! Besides all this Greek language around me and Fredo  Espresso every morning!

Actually this post is suppose to be the last on of this blog (read the “about the road” section), but it won`t, cos I love it too much. I`ll keep it running and tell you how is it going to finally LIVE in Athens

Stay tuned

Parliament guards in Athens

Greeks try everything. Every hour you check news from Athens and there is something new coming up, changing. Referendum, no referendum, euro, back to drachmas, default, not default, new government and so on.. there is still no solution or decision taken, so keep reading.

Here is a blog post explaining a lot of what`s going on right now, written by a great friend of mine and a smart Greek girl:

“5 Voices on the Greek Crisis”

OMG! Guys, I`m sorry for posting this, but I couldn`t hold myself ))) I still don`t know if I hate this video or love it, cos it`s true true true, but the guy is just soooo crap The singer, So Tiri (aka Billy Anastasiou), and his song “Eimai stin Ellada” (“We are in Greece”) was featured on Mad TV and the song produced by Hefty Kid Entertainment. I guess the guy lives (or lived) in US.. But he is great in making fun of Greek pop songs

While yesterday, 20/10/2011, the Greek government approved new austerity measures in order to get another package of financial help (8 billion euro loan) from EU, the streets of Greece where full of people protesting against it. New cuts include the suspension of 30,000 civil servants by the end of the year, a 20% cut in pensions and a lowering of the tax threshold on salaries from €12,000 (£10,500) to €5,000. People say “dramatic”, government says “necessary”.

The protests have gathered at least 70,000 people on Syntagma Square in front of parliament in Athens. It was probably one of the biggest and craziest protests in Greece since the crisis started 2 years ago.

While Greece is struggling through riots, Germany and France are fighting to agree how to pull Europe together. Read more here.

I got kinda inspirational and that`s what appeared on a piece of write paper after a little while:

My selfcreated Greek man

I got an idea to create a comic book about him It`s gonna be little political, little traditional, hopefully funny and experimental. I`m trying to find a name for him, so please help with ideas!!

 

Guys, I just run into this article this morning and I`m still trying to figure out how true or not true it is. So please, don`t hesitate to leave any info about the subject in the comments!

Greek banana

Barry Newman (staff reporter with The Wall Street Journal) made a trip all the way down to Greece to find out about… BANANAS. Yes, yes, you read it right, yellow, shiny and tasty bananas. Apparently Greeks struggle to import proper bananas and smuggle them from everywhere they can. At the same time there is this Cretan banana farm in the village of Arvi, where Greeks cultivate this fruit and sell it around. The problem is that due to the climate those bananas are twice as small and twice as less tasty as the bananas we are use to.

It`s a really interesting research I think and I never knew anything like that about Greeks I mean, when I was small, bananas were something very rare and precious. But I was born under the covers of Soviet Union, so we had nothing imported, only illegally smuggled. But Greece??

Here is the article itself, so give it 5 minutes to read and I hope you won`t go bananas after ))