Mount Ida and Arkadi

Here are some photo updates from the past two weeks. 

This is one of our three teachers Yannis, or in accusative form ton Yanni, as with all Greek names. He is friendlier than what this image conveys but also depicts the intermittent ruthlessness in the classroom.

One fun-fact from studying in Crete is all the partying together with teachers. We've all shared several shots and beers with our teachers and to some extent they're more hardcore than us students.

This is a stone igloo from the hills of Crete. I forget its name but when shepherds and the likes have to spend all day on the slopes they can retreat to these stone igloos for shelter and to cool off. Even under the Cretan sun the interior was surprisingly cool. 

This is just one of the many tavernas that frequent the local villages of the mountains. They serve awesome local cheese and today I realized that it becomes even better when they're dipped in locally produced honey. Whooptie-doo.

This is Norwegian Daniel (see earlier posts). Behind him you see an artificial water reservoir from the slopes of Mount Ida, the highest mountain in Crete and also home to Zeus' birthplace. Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries when entering the cave of his "birth". Actually he wasn't really born in cave, as you may recall from Greek mythology classes, he was brought here after his birth to hide him from his father, Chronos, who used to engulf all his successors.

Less known are the surrounding mountain peaks whose names I forget but basically mean "The Drummer" and "The Nourisher" representing the mountain that drums loudly while Zeus, as a baby, cries so to drown out his cries so Chronos doesn't hear him. And The Nourisher naturally takes care of him during his upbringing.

 A strong majority, if not all, EILC participants. A related topic is that holding up your thumb is basically equivalent to giving somebody the finger here... hitch-hiking isn't the easiest.

Benjamin and Eszter repeatedly hog my iPad having succumbed the addictions of Angry Birds. It has come to give their lives meaning.

This is the Arkadi monastery in the Arkadi region of Rethymno in Crete. It is an Eastern Orthodox monastery and gave thus a whole new insight into Christianity than before known. You can read more about the Arkadi monastery on Wikipedia.

What you see is parts of the archeological site of Eleutherna - rated as one of the world's 10 most important archeological sites. It flourished during the Greek Dark Ages and thus basically having roots all the way back to the Minoan times. The excavations is not today open to the public but our guide knew an archeologist who opened it up for us and gave us a tour.

Allegedly Bejamin had said that the tour would have taken half the time if I didn't ask so many questions... but the area was fascinating and the archeologist explained how some discoveries were explained by the use of Homer's texts. Just to put it out there - anything that requires you to use Homer's texts in order to find an answer has got to be pretty awesome.

This is the EILC gang again (take away me) and the Eleuthernian necropolis to the left that we weren't actually allowed to photograph since much of the excavations is still under research and hasn't been published yet.

One happy news for all Swedes is that you can take the European Highway 4 (E4:an) all the way from Mid-Sweden to mountains of Rethymno.

The dimensions of this photo seems to be a bit strange - but that's probably because Polish Arkadiusz (compare with the region's name: Arkadi) is on it. Jokes aside, the village of Margarites is renowned for this pottery and inside this shop I found some of the most amazing engineering skills applied to simple pots.

I bought two Cups of Justice - and will be sending them home to Sweden to my parents. The challenge to my parents is three-fold and you'll have to post your findings/answers as a comment to this post below:

1) What does the Cup of Justice do?

2) Why is it called the Cup of Justice?

3) How does the Cup of Justice work?

University of Crete and Elafonisi

University of Crete Campus Rethymno is kind of special. Not as modernized architecture as one would think seeing that it was built as late as in the early 1980s. Many of us students want to find its architect and slap him/her. It is a campus full of mazes and if you choose the wrong road you'll get lost. This part right outside our classrooms has been built like a pantheon.

We're usually up late every night rarely going to sleep before 2-3ish - even during weekdays. So even though the people below may seem tired, they're a very happy bunch. We're about 45 students divided into 3 classes à 15 students in each class allowing closer interaction between teacher and student. 

The University is located at a height of 285 meters above sea-level. Quite the climb every morning! The view from the cafeteria and other locations across the university can be very stunning. This is basically our view every lunch!

After lunch, around 2 o'clock, it's time to catch the bus back to town. Since we're never sure exactly what time the bus comes (something like a floating schedule) we spend some time in the sun by the bus stop.

On Friday we had a hardcore night out - together with our teachers! Good fun and good lack of memories for some, for instance the Norwegian Daniel (see earlier post) who downed 13 Tequila shots, 4 Vodka lemonades and a couple of beers. At 1€/shot you weren't really given much of a choice...

A night out that started at 9pm didn't finish until 6:30 am. While others were pretty much still out of it I had strategically found a red bull in my fridge and presto, I was re-energized to pack my bags and help others to pack their bags - at 7am we had to catch a bus!

From Rethymno we took the 7am bus to Chania from where we changed bus to Elafonisi. We were going to spend an entire day on Crete's, nature-protected, southern shore.

We were unfortunately met by some severe winds on Saturday - the sand penetrated your skin!

But the scenery was awesome and Sylwia took some impressive photos of the place...

Kuba tried out some new fashion adopting to the windy environment.

Even though Elafonisi is an island off the coast of Crete you can actually walk to it when the weather allows for it. This was one of those days.

And now it's time for homework again... 

Sucking up the culture

On Saturday it was time for our first obligatory excursion. It was part of the EILC course and was a great way to get to know one another better and learn about local culture and a crash-course in Minoan history. The bus was packed with 45 students and off we were to Heraklion and the Museum of National History.

Here is Sylwia taking pictures of the sea right outside the museum. Next stop we hit up the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion. A pink-headed lady who works for the Ministry of Tourism and something something and is a linguist/historian guided us through the museum and educated us on the symbols of the double-axe, the labyrinth, the bull etc etc and linked the historic artifacts to greek mythology which was kind of fun. This trip was a prerequisite to follow her in-depth guide at our next stop - Knossos! The oldest known Bronze Age excavation and also home to the world's oldest theatre.

Dan Watson (a British anthropologist) wants me here to include a picture of the pink-headed lady:

And some pictures from Knossos

The last stop for the day the Cretaquarium - more or less an ordinary aquarium so it wasn't that exciting. Got some pretty pictures of some pretty fish though!

This is Dan Watson btw being philosophical over some fish. This was the man behind the phrase: 

‎"My name is Dan Watson. I enjoy getting disappointed. If I go an entire day without getting disappointed I get disappointed. I'm always happy."

Back in Rethymnon some of us went out for a nice Staurday dinner at Καλια Μαρια (Kalia Maria) and I tried out the Cretan local drink Ρακι (Raki). It isn't the best thing in the world but hell it's strong and it's cheap. The guy furthest in is Daniel, a guy from Norway, who has blown me away with his superior alcohol-consumption habits. He makes the Polish people here look bad.

Fun night though! After dinner we went to these French girls' hostel and continued drinking where Daniel got us thrown out due to a severe inability of keeping his voice to a minimum and then we met up with the other EILC gang who were on their way into the city after a pre-party on the beach. We then browsed the town for clubs but ended up in different bars. At 3-4ish the evening drew to an end at the beach where we saw shooting stars - one after the other. How many wishes are you allowed to make?

ξενία

Hello I'm back!


After 2 weeks in the U.S for Umang and Karolina's awesome wedding and also a quick visit to Montreal to see Gwendal and Kevin - I'm back on track with Greece.
I have to point out that I did cut it fairly close. Our transfer at Heathrow on the 10th was like 45 minutes (well one hour minus my bathroom stop for number two) and while my sister and I barely made it, our luggage didn't. This wasn't the best since I was leaving for Crete the next day and I needed to pack.
My luggage did finally drive at 10pm and I then packed frantically for 3 hours before going to sleep and getting up at 5 o'clock to catch the taxi to the airport.
My flight, a Boeing operated by Norwegian, did feel sort of empty...

 I flew from Arlanda to Chania, Crete. Chania was pronounced as a normal "Ch" sound and I evidently believed that to be it's accurate pronunciation. Big mistake... it's actually a sound that I can't really describe over the blog but similar to the Swedish "sj"-sound. So in Swedish it ought to actually be Sjania.
Anyhoo, the bus from the airport into Chania bus terminal was a pain in the ass - such insane traffic!

Some Swedish family's kids on the bus were talking about poop the last part of the journey and I had to mess with them by discretely mentioning how to take care of the problem - in Swedish. 
From the bus terminal I bought a bus ticket to Rethmynon which was my final destination and that bus ride was like an hour long.
Well at Rethmynon I was stubborn enough to assume I'd be able to find my way to the university guest house by myself. I had gotten the address, the Roman address, Sof. Venizelou 16 but the map I bought only had Greek letters! Excellent. So there I am for half n' hour in the blazing sunshine working out where I have to go. Luckily, my limited Greek studies this summer made me work Σοφ Βενιζέλου,  mind you it took me like half n' hour to both find it and "decipher" it.


The guesthouse called Xenia, coming from the Greek concept of hospitality, is sweetly situated right by the sea. I'll give you some pictures from my room later but here's some perspective:

I have now settled into a room that I share with a German, Benjamin, a friendly and interesting Business student with a background in Ancient Greek and Latin studies as well as having served in Afghanistan for a while. I feel kind of dead on contributing interesting stories around him!

Benjamin is the guy to the left and Daniel, a Norwegian economics student, to the right. Daniel and I have been having fun by speaking Swedish vs. Norwegian with one another. We get hyped up when we realize there's a word that doesn't exist in the other language, such as: "käka" in Swedish is called something like "spisa" in Norwegian making no sense to me.


Finally we had our first Greek lesson today at the University of Crete campus - up on a hill and more or less built like a pantheon. I'll give more photos later but for now check out the panaramic sea-view from the cafeteria:

Well I didn't get a panoramic view in that photo...
The actual lesson was indeed intensive. I thought my brain was going to explode towards the end. And the teachers were very keen to both keeping to the lesson outcomes, making sure we learnt it AND finishing on time. But after 4 hours I've learnt the alphabet, pronunciation, the different accentuations, and being able to read "simple" words. Learning Greek really does put the entire Roman alphabet into perspective.
From the hill top you can see Rethmyno. What you see furthest away on the left-hand side is the fort (Fortezza) where we went to a concert tonight.

Impressive Cretan-style concert with traditional dance and music. Many locals were there so it felt kind of authentic.

Excuse the sound, I'll fix it till next time!


Now i've only got a couple of hours of sleep before I gotta get up and am off to a guided excursion to Heraklion. There's some ancient Greek ruins there that we have to know about for the course...

Xenophilia

Xenophilia

noun - an attraction to foreign people, cultures, or customs.

It's a bit strange how thanks to Facebook all of us 40 students who will be taking the language course together are getting acquainted even before we've physically met one another.

We're getting to know each other by discussing accommodation issues, administrative issues, counting down, and finding out when everybody's getting to Rethymno. In fact, I've never looked forward to taking a course as much as I am to this one!

Regarding the actual language course I'm not really sure what to make of it but it does seem interesting:

TEACHING PROGRAMME: Classes will be held from 10.00 am to 14.00 pm, for five or four days a week (the exact schedule will be announced on the student’s arrival). Total: 100 hours AIM: To introduce students to the Modern Greek language. By the end of the course, students should be in a position to handle everyday communication in Modern Greek.

TEACHING METHOD: The communicative method will be adopted, with additional instructions in grammar and vocabulary. Students will learn to use language within the context of everyday life and will be introduced to Modern Greek literature, culture and history. In addition to classroom instruction, minor projects will be assigned. At the end of the course, an oral and written test will be administered to assess students' performance.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS: No previous knowledge of the Modern Greek language is required.

A personal favorite is the cultural component of the course:

The excursions will be guided in English and students will be given the opportunity to get acquainted with the history and the archaeological sites of Crete. 

Attendance of different events during the Renaissance festival. 

Lectures on Greek history and civilization.

So we'll see how it all goes!

Let the adventure begin

"It may prodigious, but it's all Greek to me!"

- Hergé

Following up my academic year in Montréal 2009/2010 (CanaDAMN!), I'm set to depart on my next adventure - Athens!

During the past year I was back in Linköping and despite the respect I have for Linköping as probably the best place in Sweden for an engineering degree in a modern society it does kill some of the adventure I believe life ought to be to a certain extent. So when yet another opportunity comes where the Swedish State pays for you to gather cultural and educational experiences abroad do you take it or just let it pass?

Studies abroad in Greece is somewhat different to that of in Canada. Well firstly, before leaving for Canada I didn't need to visit the Linköping university administration building every other week to find out what would happen to me if the country went bankrupt while I was there.

Secondly, In Montréal I stood on a somewhat solid French foundation to be able to follow lectures and tutorials in French, to converse with friends and strangers in French and to enjoy Montréalian nightlife in French. Prior to Greece I've had to study Greek this summer and Greek history if I'm going to manage any type of integration with Greek society this fall. 

The Bologna promoter at my Greek university told me that my choices of courses has gone all the way up to the university rector who is currently negotiating with professors whether or not they can consider offering the courses in English or not - keeping my fingers crossed! However, I'm lacking faith in their decision-making process where my worries are reflected in the chart below with respect to their current financial crisis.

So - before I start studying in Athens I will be taking an intensive Greek-language course in Crete (oh no!) together with 40 other students in the same situation as me with pretty diverse European origins ranging from western Spain, France and Germany to eastern Poland and Ukraine and not to mention quite many nordics from Norway, Denmark and Finland but strangely enough I'm the only Swede.

Regardless, I'm sure I'm going to have a great time!

But before Crete I'm heading to New York so I've got to unpack my Linköping gear, plan the coming 6 months, and pack again. By the way - I hate packing!

Calendar:

July 28 - August 10 (New York)

August 11 - September (Crete)

October - February (Athens)

Stay tuned from Greece!