It’s All Greek to me

It’s a cliché, but it’s true. I don’t understand a word of Greek. It has been a really long time since I arrived in a country without any knowledge of the language. In Peace Corps, I think we take it for granted a little bit that our language training starts right away so that even by the time we get to our host families we can mumble a few key phrases. Unlike Athens, where at every turn you heard people speaking any one of ten or more different languages (my mom described the crowds at the Acropolis as the Tower of Babel), in Thessaloniki, you hear Greek. I know that many people speak English and I have so far had no problems getting directions, ordering food or finding a place to stay, but the people on the street are speaking Greek and I’m not understanding a word of it.

I also realized that this may be the first time that I am traveling alone in a country where I don’t speak the language (my parents got back on a plane to the states this morning and I took a train to Thessaloniki). This evening I went out in the city to find some food and found the life of the town. This is a young city with several universities; at 10:00 many of the streets were still buzzing with people and I could tell that the night was only just getting started. As I walked with my sandwich towards the seaside, I thought about traveling alone. Tonight, I am staying with a couch surfer host. They are a Spanish girl and a German girl, my age, living here and going to school. I get the feeling that normally, these girls would be all about showing me around and hanging out, but this week happens to be exams and they are both justifiably busy. It is lovely that couch surfing exists, I’m glad I found it and it makes traveling much easier, cheaper and I think more interesting. But at the same time, there is strangeness in couch surfing- you enter someone’s home and life. When I am a host, I often feel the need to make my guests feel comfortable, but when I am a guest, I never want to impose on my host. I guess I make a good guest and a good host . . .

Out of Albania

And into Greece.

From Kruja last week we headed down south to the touristy heartland of Albania- Gjirokaster and Saranda. I spent nearly a week in Gjiro for this past Christmas, so I already knew about its cobble-stoned charms. But as it is the beginning of summer and the busy tourist season and I was traveling with my parents, this was a completely different visit. First, I noticed how many tourists there are. I mean, we get a few way word souls that decide to get off the beaten path and go to Peshkopi, but nothing like the south. When we went to Saranda and Burtrint (ancient Greek ruins- really cool), there were even more.

And then we came to Greece. I won’t even talk about the touristy-ness of Greece- you already know all that. I’m joining in on it- doing a double-decker bus tour with my parents, climbing up to the Parthenon, wandering through museums with my nose stuck in a guidebook.

What I’ve been thinking about a lot since I got here is the contrasts. You hear a lot about how Greece is a county of contrast- old and new- but for me, I see the contrast in another way. I see Greece as a major contrast to Albania. Albania has the old-new contrast too, but the new has been hard to come by and isn’t really working yet. Greece on the other hand is truly modern (at least the little bit of it that I’ve seen- Corfu (directly across a short channel from Albania) and Athens.) Athens is this crazy, busy, full city of course with amazing history. And it is so very different than anything in Albania. The thing is, that it is easy to imagine that 1000 years ago, 500 years ago, even 100 years ago, that wasn’t really the case. The Greeks and the Albanians have a lot in common historically and culturally (more than most Greeks would probably be willing to admit, probably). Maybe it’s not fair to compare modern Albania and Athens (for one, the city of Athens has more people in it than the whole country of Albania). Maybe I need to go out into the Greek country side to find the “real Greece” of villages and small towns and maybe these are still not so far removed from modern day Albania, but at the moment I’m really struck by the contrast between these two neighboring countries and amazed at the effect that some choices can make on a whole society (like what if Albania had gone in a different direction after WWII?).