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...