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:

3. Cake with the coin or Vasilopita (Greek: Βασιλόπιτα). New Year`s cake with a golden coin baked into it. The recipe is very simple, even though some ingredients (e.g. nuts, orange pills etc) might vary.

Shortly after New Year`s midnight Vasilopita is cut and a piece is distributed to every member of the family and any house guests that are present at that moment. The person that gets a piece with a coin inside, is considered to be lucky this year and these days he also gets a prearranged present or some sum of money (depending on family`s traditions and preferences).

Every Vasilopita has letters “Χ” and “Π” on the top, meaning “Χρόνια  Πολλά” – “many years” in direct translation. This greeting si very common not only on New Year, but is appropriate on almost any celebration, e.g. Birthday, Names day etc.

Vasilopita (Βασιλόπιτα)

Vasilopita from inside (Βασιλόπιτα)

The name Vasilopita (Greek: Βασιλόπιτα) come from “vasilias” (Greek: βασιλιάς), meaning “king” and pita (Greek: πίτα), meaning “pie, cake”. So basically it`s a pastry in honor of Saint Vasilis (St.Basil). Wikipedia tells us a very romantic story about why Greeks bake a coin into Vasilopita:

According to the legend St. Basil called on the citizens of Caesarea to raise a ransom payment to stop the siege of the city. Each member of the city gave whatever they had in gold and jewelery. When the ransom was raised, the enemy was so embarrassed by the act of collective giving that he called off the siege without collecting payment. St. Basil was then tasked with returning the unpaid ransom, but had no way to know which items belonged to which family. So he baked all of the jewelry into loaves of bread and distributed the loaves to the city, and by a miracle each citizen received their exact share, the legend goes.

 

4. Huge traffic. There are 3.370.000 people in Athens + huge number of visitors. So no wonder if everybody would like to move from friend`s house to house or to the party and everybody is doing it by car or taxi – there is going to be TRAFFIC! So as all my Greek friends suggested – stay at home or friends` home to avoid it. I spend 2 hours in the car from Keratea to Imithos, most of this time was spend standing in the traffic jam inside the city.

5. And of course Greek dances!!! But this requires another chapter in this blog

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.

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!

Metro/train. Metro and trains (“proastiakos“) usually also have free entertainment. At any time there are people entering the your mean of transport and start to tell their amazingly similar story about 3 kids, ill mother, no income possibilities and beg for money.

Syntagma Metro Station

Sometimes they even might offer you to buy a pen for any amount of euro cents. Please, don`t get me wrong, I`m not cold -hearted. I believe that a part of there people are in real trouble an need help. But still there is this part of professional beggars, who just don`t do anything else or even don`t try to do.

As an example I will tell you one story, that my good friend told me. He is taking the suburban train every morning and everyday there was this guy, telling everybody that he haven`t eaten for 3 days now. The funny part is that every day he was saying “for 3 days”!!! The people taking the train are almost the same every morning, so even using a simple logic the number of days should either grow, or start from the beginning at some point (after the guy ate). One day my friend couldn`t take it anymore and came up to him and advised to change the speech at least from time to time )

On the other hand, the metro is extremely clean, because they wash it every evening like crazy! Besides it has very useful screens showing weather forecast and name days. It also has different music playing and information in English, that makes it a pleasure to ride metro (if you exclude the extreme crowded morning moments). Besides many stops have a theme and are very beautiful, but it`ll take another blog post to show you the photos.

Tram. Trams are more cultural. Why? Because the beggars on the trams always have musical instruments with them and they are mostly kids. I personally like trams, because, even though they are a little slow, they give you a beautiful ride along the shore in the south of Athens (S.E.F to Voula).

Transportation behavior during the rain. During the few rainy day in Athens please be aware of the following conditions:

• drivers are not used to the rain. They don`t pay attention to the sidewalks and laws of physics. Apparently they have no idea that if the car passes over the water next to pedestrian road, the water is going to splash and go over the people standing there.
• bus drivers don`t get more attentive either and  sometimes “don`t notice” wet people standing near the stop  under the roof waiting for the bus and they simply pass by.
• the rain drops, as everything in Greece, have passion! If one gets into your eye girls – the make up is fucked!!!

Useful links:

• Transportation in the Athens (route planning)
• Tram
• Bus
• Metro Green line/train
• Metro Blue and Red lines
• Trolley
• Suburban train (Proastiakos)
• Intercity train

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!

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

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”

I just found another his video – “Feta kai Psomi” (“Feta and Bread”). How much more funny-ridiculous his sings can get????:)) I was laughing for 10 minutes )

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.

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!!

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 ))