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Published: September 17th 2011
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Wednesday (14-09-'11)
This morning Didier and Sigrid brought me to the airport, they stayed with me until the last possible moment. Saying goodbye wasn’t easy, I was glad I wasn’t going on the planeride all alone.
Past security I met up with Lora, Helena and Tanais. Our arrival in Athens was very pleasant, the weather was hot and we were greeted by my Greek buddy Akis who even got me a welcoming present. It was so nice of Akis to come get us at the airport! We didn’t have to worry about how to get to the center, he knew his way to all the places we needed to be😊. We met up with Lora’s Greek buddy and went to stayinathens to get the keys to our apartment.
Our apartment (mine and Tanais, our Spanish roommate hasn’t arrived yet) is prettier than expected. Everything is in place and it is relatively clean (hey, it’s Greece😉 a sentence you hear quite a lot here).
After unpacking we realized that we needed to go to a supermarket so we did, because we didn’t know our way around town yet and we hadn’t seen a nice place to eat, we bought some ingredients to
make spaghetti.
We went to drop some things off at Lora’s place and she has internet already (I don’t at the moment, but when you are reading this I clearly do😉 ). She had told me that our grades were going to be announced today so I thought lets have a look, not expecting that they would be on there already. I was pleasantly surprised to say the least when I realized that I passed all my classes! So yes, I can stay in Greece woehoew (for you who don’t know this, when I would have failed all of my 3 classes I would not have been allowed to stay in Athens). Of course, Lora passed too😊.
We celebrated with a delicious lunch in Thissio with the Belgian girls, a girl from the Netherlands Sharmaine and a German guy called Michael. Sharmaine had been to Athens before so she knew where there were nice places to eat. This was the first time I drunk a Greek wine and I have to say, I quite enjoyed it😊. The dish I choose was a typical Greek Italian salad with tuna, haha you know me living on the edge:p I promise I will
try a Greek meal next time I go out to eat!
We went to bed pretty early because we hadn’t had much sleep.
Thursday (15-09-'11)
We woke up around 10.30AM (yes, we were tired). So we had to hurry to get to AUEB (our university) on time for the tour. When we arrived we immediately got to know the Greek mentality, they were sitting around protesting/striking. The building is not very beautiful, apparently it gets painted once or twice a year but it was full with graffiti. Because the students are striking, our tour went something like this: “well, normally here is the cafeteria/secretaria/library/Erasmus office, but it’s closed right now due to the strikes. Our classes aren’t in that building, erasmus students have a building separated from the Greek students so it looks a nicer and there is air-conditioning😊.
Next, we went to play some games in the park to get to know each other and after that we went to a café to drink a typical Greek drink called ouzo, it tastes like ricard in Belgium so I didn’t like it at all:s
In the evening, we cooked spaghetti at Sharmaine and Helena’s place and after, we went
out for the first time which was a lot of fun😉
Friday (16-09-'11)
ESN had organized a city tour, a game in little groups where we had to run around Athens and solve questions. We had a lot of fun in our group but sadly, we ended one of the last in the game:p
In the evening Tanais and I cooked chicken with paprika, tomatoes and rice at our apartment. We were pleasantly surprised that the stove is working😊.
Afterwards, we went to Alexander and Ben’s place to drink some beer before going out, the alcohol in bars here is pretty expensive compared to Leuven. Then we went to a karaoke bar with all the Erasmus people, we sang a song by the spicegirls with some girls but that’s the end of my singing career at the moment:p. Next, we went to Gazi with some people, there are a couple of streets loaded with bars and clubs. I think it’s the nicest place to go out in Athens.
Xoxo Anne
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