Greek Food

Turns out if you eat 10 gyros a week, drunk eat, and get dessert you are going to spend a lot of money. So I have made a pledge to myself to try to stop spending money by not eating out for at least the next couple of weeks. I also want to put my mothers worries to rest, and show her that Jeff and I can cook, so here is some pictures of the stuff we've made:

First off we have an awesome pita breakfast dish that I came up with. It contains pita, with tzatziki, feta, spinach, a fried egg with oregano drizzled over the top....patent pending on that one, pretty sure I hit a home run on the first pitch.

Next we have the typical Greek lunch. You got you pita with tzatziki and a little oregano, some olives, tomato and of course feta (feta can be crumbled on the pita or on the side)

Here is one of our dinner dishes. Fried rice, with curry, sausage, onions, peppers, spinach, and feta. Delicious

This is your standard chicken and rice with a pita covered in tzatziki, nothing too special here. I did add tabasco to the rice and obviously oregano all over everything.

Saved the best for last. Baked salmon with home made marinade, rice, and potatoes...Favorite food so far, it's gonna be tough to top this one.

Just a little peek at what we have been cooking up, obviously there is a main theme of tzatziki, pita, and feta but we are in Greece so except some more combinations of those three main ingredients....See mom told you I can cook.

Riot Riot Riot

Just experienced my first protest/riot....its was nuts. It was as if I was in Egypt, everything was out of control; people yelling, throwing rocks, holding banners, cops throwing tear gas unbelievable. I learned that tear gas sucks but after a while it goes away, and then after only fearing for my life I decided to go back to the apartment and lock the doors. Shit was crazy

Here are some videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JVuINdIJMk

Protesters and cops getting into a disagreement......what you don't see is the cops beating up some kid and the protesters response is to hurl marble stones at them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZA-W9UPkzA

In this video I got tear gassed....sorry mom

Acropolis Museum

Took advantage of a rainy day in Athens and went to the brand new acropolis museum. Unfortunately no pictures are allowed to be taken in the museum so here are three that I was able to take from outside. Not much to say about museums, prob top three in my book (pretty sure I've only been to three maybe four tops). Any way its a must see if you are ever in Athens real legit.

Acropolis Museum

Sweet picture from the roof cafe of the museum of the Parthenon.

Museum at night right when we left....looking straight gangster.

Long Awaited Tour of our Apartment

So here it is our very own Athenian hole in the wall. Here is your very own guided tour please keep all your belongings in mind you are probably going to get pick pocketed throughout the tour.

First stop foyer...very lavish as you can see our internet router in the corner...like most Athenians it loves to execute its right to strike and seldom works.

Second stop on the tour is the kitchen...okay not too spacious but we do have marble counter tops and I'm not gonna lie I have the same amount of cooking talent as we have space so it works out.

The reverse angle of the kitchen just so you can look at our huge stainless steel sub zero fridge....

Hallway connecting the kitchen to the bathroom and then to mine and Jeff's room....Notice the full body mirror to the left, key for the roommate from Queens

The bathroom..a picture is worth a thousand words....just want to point out that the weird little table thing is our washing machine and our water heater which is not pictured rests on the wall above it....again, like most Greeks, it only likes to work for short periods of time then takes long breaks before deciding to working again.

Finally our room....not too dirty aren't you proud mom?.....all the mess is Jeff's and he ruined my perfectly made bed, sometimes that kid is too much.

Our double doors connecting to the next bedroom...uh I mean single door so we could fit both desks in our room.

Our roommates spot...notice how they got the TV, balcony, and air conditioning....I think Jeff and I might have dropped the ball on room selection.

The view from the balcony...nothing says Athens like an abandoned building and a side street right?

This is the view directly from our window which is in mine and Jeff's room...Its been dead since we got here as soon as the smell starts to kick in I'm moving into the Parthenon, at least I know that won't collapse on me.

Last minute España travels

On Wednesday night I was looking at Real Madrid's schedule. Real is my favorite soccer team, and so it was one of the things that I have on my bucket list while here. There were only 2 chances that I could go. So, I looked up tickets to the game, flights, and a hostels. I was trying to convince people to come with me. However, we were suppose to go skiing this weekend and many people didn't wanna change their plans. Thankfully, my roommate James decided to come with me. So Thursday, we booked our flights for the following day, along with a hostel to stay in. I was trying to get tickets to the game all day long. I would get to the payment page, plug in all my information, and it tells me I have entered the wrong information. We had 5 credit/debit cards between us, it didn't like any of them. Not only would the website not work, I tried calling their phone number and it will ring once and say "You are NOT allowed to call this number." What the Hell is that suppose to mean? While I am trying my hardest to buy tickets Mike's yelling at me to cook his fat ass dinner.

Thursday night nobody plans on going out, but then almost everyone goes out, and happens to come back to our apartment at different times. I think I woke up about every hour with people coming back, and then people leaving for their ski trip and then my trip to Spain. Needless to say I didn't get much sleep.

We catch a bus to the airport at 6:30am. We arrive at the airport no problem, and then get to security. Europe apparently has different travel regulations on what size liquid you can and can't bring on to the plane then the US. So my perfectly good contact solutions which has on it TSA Approved, is not approved by Europe standards because it was all of 18ml over their limit. The guy who is checking the solution asked me if I have a prescription for it. Yeah dude I cause I have that with me all the time! or ever. Anyway, the plane ride was just what I needed... 3 and 1/2 hours of sleep.

As soon as we landed in Madrid, we went to Santiago Bernabeu (Real Madrid Stadium) to get tickets. We got the cheapest tickets in the stadium for a whoamping 40 Euros (about $57). After we went to an Alexander the Great Museum, and checked into our hostel, if you wanna call it that. The Hostel itself was not labeled-was just in the basement of an apartment building, the owners only spoke Spanish, and apparently the room that we booked was not what we thought. We ended up getting a room with no heat, just one double(?) bed;(where half of the bed fell off the slats and wouldn't say on if your were sleeping in it and you sunk/curled into a little ball), a "private" bathroom with no door or hot water, a toilet that couldn't hold water in it's tank so you had to turn the water on and off every time you wanted to flush it. So we wanted to spend as little time in the hostel as possible. That night we meet up with Mike's girlfriend Megan and her friends. We went out to this little bar that gave us free Spanish food with our Sangria's.

On Saturday we did all of the touristy things like, went to the Plaza Mayor, Archbishop's Cathedral, Palacio Real de Madrid, and walked around the city. At night we went to the Real Madrid game. The Stadium was really nice, and had heaters in the room so you weren't cold, if anything I was way to hot. I had on a undershirt, fleece, my Real Madrid jersey and then a rain jacket. Will never do that again. Good news is they Won! and I can Die happy.

Plaza

Cathedral

Palace (and James)

Attempting to be artsy

That night we meet up with Megan again, and this time we meet them at a Bridge before we went out for the night. Apparently that's what the Spanish people do. I thought I was going to need my rape whistle trying to get to this bridge. Sunday, day to leave, if we make our flight.... There are two different subway stops for the airport, naturally we choose the wrong one. Then we need to hop on a bus to a different terminal. Guess what? WRONG AGAIN! We have an hour to find check in, go through security and get to our gate. Third times the charm. This time we can walk to the correct terminal. We find our airline and get through security this time with no problem. We are walking quickly to get to our gate and are out of breath, dying for some water and food. To find out that our plane is delayed 15mins.

Needless to say after a great, fun, busy, crazy weekend, I need some sleep. Until our next adventure.

Turns out you can Ski in Greece 2-18/11

Good news about having to wake up at 430 in the morning to catch a 510 bus for the mountain is that you don't have to wake up if you're already awake. Yep pulled pretty much an all nighter, got to the bus crashed for about half an hour and then could not fall back asleep to save my life. The trip itself was close to three and a half hours which was even tougher since I could not fall asleep for more than twenty minutes at a time; it was pretty cool though to see a different side of Greece as we crossed over to Peloponnese. The mountain was located near the city of Kalavryta which fell victim to the Nazi occupation during world war two. Driving through the city you can't help but notice the massive memorial in the center of the town to mark the remembrance of the Nazi massacre which killed 1,200 men of the village.

On a lighter note passing the memorial meant we were very close to the ski resort. So after what seemed to be the longest trip in my life we were finally there. Snowboarding down the mountain was fun but the conditions were not the greatest, turns out it had not snowed in over two weeks and the management was getting worried about the rest of their season. The lack of substantial snow for boarding however did not bother the massive amount of school children who apparently come up on field trips to play in the snow and sled. I have never seen so many people just taking the lifts for fun and then riding them back down. After a long day of boarding it was time to head home. Starving, our driver said we were stopping at McDonald's, this was my first European McDonald's experience thus far this trip and it did not disappoint. Not only can you buy beer with your meal but they also have Heineken on tap, something I think we could use in the US. I can just see it now, even more hobos and bums lying outside McDonald's waiting for enough change so they could go get another Heineken draft from inside....ahh the American dream.

After getting back on the bus I was finally able to sleep for the rest of the trip, guess all I needed was a McTasty to put me to bed. I ended up arriving home at 8pm and passing out until 945am Saturday morning, a much needed sleep binge. All in all the ski trip cost 37 Euros (50ish dollars), thats with bus, rentals, and ski lift ticket.....amazing in the US a ski lift ticket alone can run you from 35-60 dollars. Great day for not the much money I was satisfied.

Gyro Count...Getting Ridiculous

Full week in.....

Mike 10 - Gyros - 1 Souvlaki

Jeff 8 - Gyros - 2 Souvlaki

Best Weekend In Athens

So besides having the Awesome wine festival on Saturday, Sunday was even better. We started off the day with going out to the Acropolis which is free on Sundays for now, so naturally we were was all over that. It was a beautiful sunny 60 degree day with not a cloud in the sky. We got some awesome views of the city, and the buildings. Then we found out that the museum is free to students all the time, so we decided to save that for a rainy day, if they ever have them here (knock on wood). Then we went to see the changing of the guards, which was interesting, found that their walking and feet motion represents, the old days of the Greek military having knifes in their shoes, or when horses are running free (take your pick of which you want to believe.)

Then of course we went back to the Wine festival to get some more of the delicious free wine. Mike and I found our favorite winery (of Greece.) Vinidro, is the wineries name, they are a new company that makes only about 3,000 bottles of each wine, and they distribute it themselves. They said that we can order from their wine from them and they will send it anywhere in crates or gift wrapped. When we first went to their table yesterday the main guy knew we were Americans because we will drink all of their wine. We tried all of their wine both days and even took a couple of pictures with the guy, along with many other wineries. Those of us that went have a bet going on how many different wineries websites we will end up on.

Funny things that were said or happened at, or because of the Wine festival:
1) Mike " This is better than Disney World!"
2) Michael Rietveld " O! I had a bad bagel I need some wine to wash it down"
3) Kolby losing her glass 3 times in two days
4) Getting Pizza Party pizza for dinner
5) Terrible Bagels have never tasted so good when drinking wine
6) Getting dared to drink Ouzo, Which we got from someones personal collection.


Then we went to a Panathinaikos soccer game but more on that later.

Athens Wine Festival

Today was day one of the Athens wine festival, for 10 euros you get to sample over 10,000 wines over a two day period. Of course being Americans we decided to try all 10,000 in one day.....the result was my second hangover of the day at 11pm. The festival was probably one of the best experiences of my life and I can't wait to get old, retire and travel the world from wine festival to wine festival. Well time to go puke....

Gyro count

5 Days in


Mike: 6 gyros and 1 souvlaki
Jeff: 4 gyros and 2 souvlaki

2/10/11 Kiwi Vendor History 101

Today at the fruit market my kiwi vendor decided to quiz me on my knowledge of America. His first question was, "Do you know what America means?" I explained to him that it was the name of Amerigo Vespucci the man accredited for discovering our home land. He blankly looked at me and gave me a stern "No". Then told me America was a Greek word, which means beautiful land. He also proceeded to tell me that the Greeks were the first to land in North America with Hercules over 7,000 years ago and that almost all the states names come from Greek words. For example, Arizona which was given by the Spanish through the Greeks. Confused? I sure was; good thing I decided to buy my produce from this guy or I would have been misinformed for my entire life.

Hike up to St. George

Gyro count..... Courtesy of Michael and Jamie

4 Days in

Michael 4 Gyros and 1 Souvlaki

Jeff 2 Gyros and 2 Souvalki

First Day in Athens

Lets start from the arrival. We landed in the Athens airport where we were meeting one of the program leaders, and everyone in the program. There were 13 of us on the same flight. Everyone  but 2 girls who missed their connecting flight because their plane in the US had to be deiced one of the girls got their luggage lost. In total there is a total of 21 people in our program, and almost everyone brought two carry ons, and 2 checked bags. The bus that was bringing us to our school, didn't have enough space for all of our bags underneath the bus, so we had to put them in the isles and even in some of the seats. On the ride, no one was talking; everyone was either looking out the windows seeing the outer part of Athens and the sea or sleeping.

When we got to school we had about 5 mins. to put our bags down, and look around our apartment before our orientation started. During the orientation we had 2 members of the student council bring us around the older part of Athens around us and showed us a good place to get gyros.

As it being the Superbowl the first night at 1am.  Two of the people had emailed an owner of a bar and found out that they were showing it. However our roommate's girlfriend is also studying in Athens, and she knew of another place that was suppose to be showing the game as well. We took a 7 euro cab ride to the bar where they were suppose to be showing it, and of course when we get there, we found out that they weren't showing it! So we took another cab ride back to where the other bar was suppose to be showing it. The one cab dropped half of us off in the wrong spot so it ended up taking us 20 mins to find the bar, which caused as to miss the whole 1st quarter.

The bar was packed with mostly Americans, some students, and some older people. There was a group of both Packers and Steelers fans so it made it a good time. The Bar was not suppose to be open past midnight, because it was Sunday so the bartender told us so we had to be semi quite. I ended up talking to a guy who works for the OSU in Kuwait, and was visiting his daughter who works in the US, as a half way meeting point.

At four in the morning, which was just after the third quater,Mike, our other roommate James and I decided to leave. This is where our First adventure of Athens began. We walked out of the bar and started to go one direction which turned out to be the wrong direction. We walked around for about 30mins in the wrong direction before we even realized that we were going the right way. Fortunetly we had a map but we had to find where we were on the map which was quite difficult. There was a stray dogs following us the whole time, until we pasted what we are convinced of was two transvestite hookers, where the dog decided to stop following us. We final reached a main street, and Mike asked every taxi  driver that we saw the way to get back to our apartment. We finally made it back to a part of Athens that we remembered. We got back to our apartment at 5:30am, and had to meet with our group at 11.

Alitalia Sucks....

....the title sums up our flight into Greece, the plane it self was from 1962 and there was about enough room for two midgets to sit comfortably. Luckily for us, people have realized how much alitalia sucks, so we were pretty much the only ones on the plane which this allowed us to move around and spread out. After seven and half daunting hours we finally made it to our connecting flight in Rome. The ride was more of the same from the airline but thankfully it only took as and hour and forty-five minutes to get to Athens.

Upon arriving at the airport we had to take a forty-five minute bus ride to get to the center of Athens where our school is located and where our apartments are. The ride ended up taking over an hour due to our first encounter with heavy traffic in our congested city. After finally arriving in Sytagma Square (main square next to our school/apartment) we were able to go check out our apartments for the first time..........not exactly what we were expecting to say the least. It's like a flash back to freshmen year of college when you are cramped into a tiny room for the first time except this time there are three other people living with you instead of one. Luckily for us our bedroom is equipped with a large closet which came with twelve hangers and five drawers....yep five not six but five. The bathroom is very old school and contains a water heater which must be turned on an hour before you shower if you want two minutes of scolding water and five of ice cold water. The kitchen only fits one person at a time but at my current gyro consumption rate of two a day cooking does not seem like its gonna happen any time soon. i feel as if the apartment was made for those midgets who fly alitalia...