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.
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...
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:
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...
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