Greece

Ok so I am writing this entry from Israel, not Greece, but let's pretend.

Greece, as a whole, was a great vacation. There were some minor glitches…but in the end all the logistics went relatively smoothly.

I arrived in Athens at 9am Sunday morning. After checking into the hostel, I went off to the National Archaeological Museum. This museum is huge and has the complete range of Greek antiquities: sculpture, pottery, grave stelae, etc. I think I saw almost every single exhibit, and as always it was exciting to see pieces that we had studied in Art History 105/106. After the museum I took the walking tour laid out in my Lonely Planet guide book. It took me around to all of the major archaeological sites in Athens, and was only a few hours long. Spent the rest of the evening wandering the streets of the Plaka near my hostel. I was sharing a room with a couple from South Carolina and a woman from somewhere else in the US that I can’t remember.

Monday morning I just read in the National Gardens until Josh got in from the airport. The National Gardens are amazing, every major city should have them. Josh needed to sleep for a while when he first arrived so I went to the Jewish Museum of Greece. This was one of the best museums I have ever been to, and I highly recommend it to anyone going to Athens. It was very small, about small levels, each with a different theme. They had many artifacts left over from the Jews who lived in Greece before the war. The population was a mix of Jews who had come to Greece straight from Israel at the beginning of the Diaspora, and Sephardic Jews who had immigrated after being kicked out of Spain. Greek Jews lived mostly interspersed with their gentile neighbors; the museum repeated many time that they were not in a ghetto. When the war started and Greece was invaded by Italy and Germany, 87% of the Jewish population was killed. This was one of the largest percentages of any European country. On the top floor of the museum was a temporary exhibit featuring memories of surviving Greek Jews of what life had been like before the war.

We went to the Acropolis finally that afternoon. It was amazing to finally see the Parthenon and the Erectheion in real life. The Parthenon is covered in scaffolding though, so it doesn’t look as pretty as is does in pictures.

The next two days we were on Mykonos. It was a good representation of the quintessential Greek island. White washed houses with colorful doors and windows, winding paths through town, beautiful views of the Mediterranean and surrounding Islands. One of the days we went to Delos which is a small island a half hour ferry ride away from Mykonos. It has the ruins of a very important city, and there were so many that it was easy to imagine how magnificent it had once been. Josh rented a scooter so we were able to use that to get to and from town and to the beach. Our hostel was so cute! We were in a little house that had a little kitchen area, a couch, and a tv. Reminded me of our cabins at Quisi. The owners were very nice too.

We took the ferry back to Athens on Friday and ran into a girl named Caroline while we were disembarking. She was traveling on her own but was about to go meet her boyfriend in Italy. We took the metro back with her to our hostel. We were nearly pickpocketed on the metro though. One guy actually got my wallet out of my purse, but I saw him holding it and calmly took it back from him. I didn’t have much time to be relieved my wallet was not stolen, because I then realized that I didn’t have my passport. We went back to the hostel and I told them I thought my passport was stolen on the metro. He told us I’d have to go to the embassy tomorrow and talk to them and get clearance to fly back to Israel. I checked me email since my Dad was emailing me a copy of my passport, and there was an email from the hostel on Mykonos saying they had my passport since they had never given it back to me after we paid. I hadn’t really been thinking about my passport since the 2 hour flight to Greece hardly seems like traveling internationally. The owner of the hostel said she would put the passport on a ferry and I’d get it on Saturday. So I changed my flight and got to spend an extra day in Athens before finally flying home at 2am Sunday morning. I spent the extra day just wandering around the new part of the city where all the fancy clothing stores were. Again, it was nice to be somewhere that reminded me of New York.

I got back to campus at 7am and made it to the breakfast they were having for the new people at 8:30. I saw Jordana finally! It’s so nice to have another Vassar person here  I moved to my new apartment, which is much bigger than my old one and we have a real oven and a tv in our common area. My window not looks out to the mountains. I’m living with my friend Sara from Denmark and an Israeli girl. Sunday we had orientation which was mostly stuff I had heard already, but that night we all went to the beach to have some International School bonding. I had met a guy from Brandeis, Jeff, who plays on the ultimate team there so we got a game started on the beach which was a lot of fun. They gave us falafel and we were all able to get to know each other better. It’s mostly Americans here now, a few people from Germany, Netherlands, and Denmark. I’ve already met a bunch of new people, but I’m just glad to have Laura back and not be alone on campus any more. The three weeks off were a bit difficult since all the friends I had made disappeared after Ulpan. Greece worked out pretty well though and when I was on campus I was able to get reading done and I even ran almost every day in the national park across the street. We have a lot more vacation time coming up. We have a week off from Rosh Hashana, 2 days for Yom Kippur, and then a week for Sukkot. I guess we’ll get some traveling done during the time off but I wish we were starting a more consistent schedule sooner.

I will write again after this week of class is over!

---

---