The other end of Greece — Thessaloniki

Because of the surprise of Greek Orthodox Easter, we had to skip out on the traditional Greek experience of going to a picturesque island.   Instead, we spent four days in Greece’s second city, Thessaloniki, which is in the state of Makedonia.  It’s incredibly close to Turkey, Bulgaria, and Macedonia.  We got the idea of going there first from some travelers we met in Vietnam.  Then Jon read a book about how cool the city is, so we had to go.  The train ride from Athens to Thessaloniki was beautiful, passing by Mt. Olympus and lots of small towns.  We met a really friendly Greek Cypriot on the train; it’s always fun to see who you meet on trains, because you often learn the most from them.

Thessaloniki is a solid city; you’ve got tons of culture in the museums, ancient ruins, and old city walls.  When it comes to fun, they’ve got bar after bar and cafe after cafe along old cobblestone streets and all along the sea.  The feeling of the city is both young and old, with Aristotle University and dominating old churches spread over the city center.  It doesn’t take four days to see the city, but we had no problems taking relaxing strolls through the old Turkish quarter (we saw the room where Ataturk was born!) or practicing our limited Greek with coffee shop workers (Efharisto! Parakalo!).

apartment buildings loom over ancient ruins

The most memorable thing about Thessaloniki for me is the Jewish Museum.  The history of Thessaloniki itself is fascinating, as it was ruled and fought over by Turks, Bulgarians, Romans, Greeks, etc.  It’s in a complicated little place in Europe, and lots of people laid claim over it.  But somehow in that turbulent history, many Jews who had been driven out of their homes found refuge in Thessaloniki, especially Jews from Spain.  For hundreds of years, the city was known as the most important Jewish city in Europe.  But I’m sure you can guess what came next: nearly all of Thessaloniki’s Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.  Only 4% of them survived.  Out of all of Europe, this city had the highest number of Jews killed.  In just a few months, the hundreds of years of Jewish culture was wiped out, the gravestones in the cemetery broken down and used by the Nazis to build other things.  The museum is only a few years old, so for decades there was no significant acknowledgment of the Jewish city that stood in that place.  But now that the museum is open, it does a great job attempting to explain life in Jewish Thessaloniki, and what a tragedy it is that it exists no more.

cute little church in town...not many synagogues left

Now taking suggestions

We’re due to return to the states in four weeks, but now with this swine flu, maybe we should keep traveling. Any ideas of where the swine flu will not hit? I’m thinking Greenland…

Fireworks, candles and red eggs in Athena

I’m in Europe, and it’s weird.  I know I only spent 10 weeks in Asia, and in the grand scheme of things that isn’t very much.  But something about being here is strange to me now.  I’m in Greece, where I have never been before, but it’s somehow still familiar.  Things are easy now, like walking into a cafe and ordering a sandwich, or brushing my teeth with tap water, or finding places by using addresses.  And as much as I love being in Europe, it’s showing me that I really didn’t have enough time in the East.

Temple of Zeus, the most photogenic and my favorite of the sites in Athens

But Greece was the perfect place to start our European leg.  It’s close to the Middle East and shares a lot of culture with Turkey (though I cannot say that to a Greek) so the food and music here is similar to what we had in the UAE.  There are cats and dogs lounging in the sun and begging for our food at outdoor restaurants.  But it’s still very European, with tiny winding streets with cafes running into each other and churches filled with candlelight and little old ladies.  We arrived in Athens after a strange stop in Cyprus, where our plane had to refuel.  So if you look at the “where are we” map that Jon created, you will see a stop in Cyprus, but we didn’t actually get off the plane; we just sat there wanting to get off!

Hadrians Arch at the end of a street in Plaka, the hood near the Acropolis

I was struck immediately by the beauty of Athens (in Greek they call it Athena, which I think it much prettier!)  Every picture you take looks like a postcard.  How could it not?  You are surrounded by hills, palm trees, orange blossoms, churches, and ancient ruins.  From all I had read about Athens, I expected it to be a dirty, cramped city with little charm — but it’s the exact opposite.  Why don’t more people talk about the beauty of Athens???  Anyway, we saw all the major sites and ate at many picturesque cafes, stuffing our faces with feta and tomatoes.  (Jon ate the olives; I still think they taste like cough medicine.)  But by far the coolest part of our time in Athens was Greek Orthodox Easter.

The Roman Agora (like a market) as seen from some of the little cafes on the street above

Now, in my Catholic-centered Christian mind, I never considered that other forms of Christianity would celebrate holidays on different days.  So I thought Easter was on April 12, and that was that.  Nope!  Turns out we decided to go to Greece during the most important weekend of the year.  That gave us some challenges, like many things were closed on Sunday and Monday.  Plus the transportation was all booked up with all the Greeks traveling, so we weren’t able to spend the weekend on an island as we had originally hoped.  But the benefits outweighed that: Most sites were free that weekend in honor of the holiday, and we got to witness the beautiful celebrations of Greek Easter.

The Good Friday procession to church; a bit blurry, but you can see the flowered throne near the door of the church

It all starts on Friday night with a candlelit procession marking Jesus’s death.  Every church has its own procession, but the one by us went like this: In the front was a marching band playing very somber tunes; behind them were a bunch of men carrying a throne covered in flowers; behind them was a priest with a huge beard (think Dumbledore) blessing the crowds with a large cross.  And behind all that was the crowd of churchgoers, candles in hand.  The streets are blocked off and they march toward the church where they have a service.

inside of our Easter Sunday church; the murals covered the entire thing, in much brighter colors than my camera could capture

But Saturday night is where the real fun comes in.  Everyone goes to church around 11pm, and when that’s over, people set off fireworks and hang out in the streets.  At this point we were staying in a different neighborhood in Athens, a purely residential and awesomely grungy one, so we went the opposite way of the crowds to find the church they had come from.  In doing that, we found the biggest and most beautiful church that I have seen, maybe ever.  It was surrounded by hundreds of people outside, and inside it was filled with smoke from all the candles.  We went inside to see hundreds more people lining up to kiss the Bible that the priest was holding.  The church had an enormous dome and was completely covered in paintings of saints and the Holy Family.  The priests were chanting and the crowd was whispering, and it was amazing to witness it all.

Jon with our red Easter eggs in front of our church

The next morning, Easter Sunday, we went outside for a walk.  An old lady ran out of her house and handed us two red eggs.  She didn’t speak any English, but showed us that we were supposed to bang them together and then eat them.  Easy enough.  But later on we read that whoever’s egg doesn’t crack will have good luck for the year.  That was me!  Our Easter Sunday was spent on a train from Athens to Thessaloniki, but on our ride we could see families across Greece having picnics in the street and in their yards. We met a really nice Greek guy our age who told us a lot more about Greek Easter and what an important family holiday it is.  And a note to all who want to come to Greece but don’t want to fight crowds and sweat your brains out: Come in April!  It’s so lovely and most of the tourists are Greek.

Jon and I with the Acropolis in the background

Sand in your pita, sand in your ear

Our time in the Middle East was very different from the rest of this trip.  Instead of carting our bags across a country every few days and spending hours walking around cities, we stayed with my Aunt Lenny and Uncle Joe in the middle of the desert outside of Abu Dhabi.  We ventured out either by taking road trips with them, or by hiring a taxi to take us to a destination or two in the city.  It was very relaxing, very hot, and very culturally challenging.  I had to get over the heat and keep my shoulders covered out of respect for local dress.  Almost every woman we saw in public (which is not many — some areas you will not see any women at all) was completely covered in black.  These outfits, called abayas, at first made me uncomfortable since I could not see their faces.  But after a day or two, I got used to them, and I started noticing the high heels they wore underneath, or the flash of gold jewelry, or the designer handbags swinging off their arms.  This is unique to the wealthy country of the United Arab Emirates, for sure, but these women were not suffering underneath those robes — except maybe from the heat — but instead they were the most elite.

me at Abu Dhabi's Grand Mosque -- yes it was really hot in that dress

The craziest thing about the UAE (beyond the construction EVERYWHERE) was the lack of contact with the locals.  Over a two-week period, we never spoke to an Emirati.  That’s because anyone who works in hotels, shops, etc, are from India, Pakistan, the Philippines, or other Arab countries.  Locals only make up 20% of the entire national population, and they are taken care of by the government so that they don’t have jobs that are below them (like pushing the baby carriage at the mall — that job is reserved for Philippina nannies.)  We did get to see where the locals lived on our fun drives along the coast of Abu Dhabi — huge palaces with multiple sets of gates and lots of very unnatural greenery.  And we got to spend a lot of time at the local hangouts: THE MALLS.  Oh, the malls.  Fake thunderstorms, ski lifts, aquariums: I could go on and on!  There are so many other strange things we learned about how the UAE works — the laws that don’t really apply to everyone, the way decisions are made — thanks to my aunt and uncle’s knowledge from living in Abu Dhabi almost one year.  It really gave me a great perspective on how the opposite of a democracy works.

Uncle Joe and I with our fancy drinks at the Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi

So beyond all the cultural modifications like wearing a fake wedding ring when Jon and I were out alone, we did some neat touristy things, too.  In Abu Dhabi we went for tea at the spectacular Palace Hotel, lounged on the “family” beach, ate tons of hummus and tabuleh, covered up at the Grand Mosque, and met camels both wild and domesticated.  In Dubai we saw the tallest building in the world (Burj Dubai) and the craziest hotel in the world (Burj al Arab) and were part of one of the last audiences of Dubai’s Cirque du Soleil.  We traveled to Al Ain, a smaller city in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, to see their museums and oasis.  Our most Arabian adventure was to the Liwa, a part of western UAE with a group of oasis towns surrounded by rolling sand dunes.  Jon got to fullfil his dream of running up enormous sand dunes and then rolling down them (I have video).  He had sand in his ears for days afterward.  We picnicked on the dunes and ingested lots and lots of sand.

Burj al Arab hotel in Dubai, changing colors through the night

farmer and his camels, right before asking us if he can come back to america with us

When we were in the Empty Quarter of UAE, we were about ten miles from the border of Saudi Arabia.  Nothing scares me more than actually going to Saudi, but the fact that I can get that close is pretty cool.  Instead of crossing that border, we decided to take a couple days to explore the capital of Oman: Muscat.  What a beautiful country!  Oman sits on the Gulf and is full of mountains and rolling desert.  Muscat is a quiet city with lots of old white buildings and a big, pretty palace.  It is ruled by a sultan who everyone adores, because the country has come so far in the past few decades.  We walked along the harbor and through the 1000-year-old bazaar.  We stayed in a mostly-Indian neighborhood where there was not one tourist to be seen.  After only a few days there, we decided we must return to Oman to see the rest of the country.  Beyond Muscat, there are coral reefs, sea turtles, and many other historic cities and fishing villages.  Oman is my new secret awesome place, so don’t tell anyone!

along the port in Muscat with the mountains coming right up to the street

beautiful gardens by the Sultan's Palace in Muscat

Hibernation in the desert

We went from this:

Massive Chinese tour groups in the Forbidden City

to this:

Uncle Joe on top of the dune and Jon taking a rest in the Empty Quarter of UAE

Going from China to the UAE, we experienced a very special kind of culture shock.  We learned two very different versions of chaos and confusion.  We went from winter coats to swim suits.  And now we’re off to Greece, but more about UAE and Oman is coming soon…