Supermarkets and Traffic Lights Yay!
Trip Start
Sep 14, 2008
1
2
25
Trip End
Dec 15, 2008
Thessaloniki,
Greece
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Megan: Jared would have come on this amazing adventure, but since we don't have cell phones that work here and I didn't even know where his building was, there was no way for us to meet up. After attempting to find his apartment with no success, I decided to explore the neighborhood with my roommate, a friend of hers from school, and a study abroad student who can speak and understand Greek (he is very helpful in this city). We started our journey by crossing the street where street lights do not exist and walked a little further until we found our first ruin in the middle of a sidewalk; a large archway with images carved into it
Ancient Archway from Roman Period
. Across the street was a row of apartment building with stores and food shops underneath that leads straight to the bay. There are many old churches around here too, so we stopped along the way to take pictures and admire the architecture. Demetri, the student who understands Greek, lead us around some streets until we ended up at an outdoor coffee shop called Room 22. We decided to practice the Greek way of enjoying a meal and stayed for a couple of hours talking and just sitting back to watch all the mopeds drive by. One sad thing about the city is that is cluttered with stray cats and dogs that roam the streets looking for food. We probably passed twenty on them on our sightseeing tour today. We made it back a couple of hours later and relaxed into the apartment when I heard Jared calling my name from outside the building. Since we don't have air conditioning here, Allie and I have to leave our balcony doors open in order to feel any kind of cool air, but luckily it was open for another good reason today. When Jared and I met up, we immediately went over to his apartment building so that we will be able to find each other next time.Jared: So after I showed Megan around my extra small room (which consisted of walking three steps in and three steps out) we headed back to Megan's room to pick up some money and then head out for food. We wanted to be like the Greeks and wait to eat but on top of Megan not finding my building earlier and quiet hours from 3-5, I kinda skipped a few meals and was definitely ready for a quick snack
Shopping cart we "rented"
. We decided that we were going to find the supermarket listed on the map and along with Allie, Dave, and Demetri headed off on another adventure. The route we took this time lead off into a more habitated area and lacked as many ruins as the main strip does. There were signs for the larger churches (it seems there were only two in the area and they both seemed Greek Orthodox) and everynow and then I noticed guys dressed in what looked like a priest's cassock so I assumed it was very close to where we were. After trekking up this long slant of a hill, we made it to the supermarket which at first glance was a huge dissapointment. It seemed the size of a convenience store and I thought that to get everything we would need during the next three months would be coming from multiple places. But like I said, that was first glance. When you walk into the store it seems like it goes back a little bit and then ends, what you can't see is that it actually winds around on the inside and opens up into a huge area. What was also cool was that it was two stories! In the middle of the store there were stairs leading down and in here there was even a butcher in the back with seafood on display! It was cool to see the greek names for everything there, and of course it was written in Greek so it was a little more difficult to decipher, but we found everything we needed and packed up to check out. The cashiers actually sit on small little comfy chairs while they checkout your food which I thought was pretty neat, and you are actually supposed to bag things yourself
Megan and Allie under the archway
! Seems like Thessaloniki is a pretty independent kind of city. When we got outside Dave found carts that we could rent for 1 euro and take out stuff back to our apartment. Great idea until we saw how bumpy the roads were! It took three people sometimes to keep the cart from rolling down the hill away from us. Also, before we left the market we stopped in Roma Pizza which is like a fast-food chain and ordered two pizzas to be delivered back to the apartment. After pushing people off the sidewalk and keeping the cart from rolling away from us, we made back to Megan's building and started putting the stuff up. I walked out on the balcony and saw the pizza guy pull in a matter of seconds so we scrambled our money together and went down and paid him. We had a small get together in Megan's room with the pizza and planned our trip for tonight. We met a few more people, had Dave's iPod in the room playing music, and tried the Ouzo. And yes, it does turn milky white when you pour water into it, and yes that is how you are supposed to drink it. It has a really strong flavor of black licorice so Megan drank no more than a sip, but to me it wasn't half bad. We soon left afterwards to take a girl out for her birthday and sat at a bar on the waterfront where we met one of the owners, Angel, who took care of us for the night. It was a really good time, and we met some really cool people. Megan even used some of the Greek she was learning! But were pretty tired now and have a day long orientation in the morning so we'll blog ya tommorrow, goodnight!-Jared and Megan
