blogs about Greece

Erratically Hellenic, yet Unexpectedly Arabic: Index

jani — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 08:09:08 -0700

An index of a miniature odyssey through Greece (Athens, Hydra) and the United Arab Emirates (Dubai, Abu Dhabi).

Erratically Hellenic: Epeisodion δ

jani — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 03:29:31 -0700

Alas, my time in Greece was cut short, so instead of a full-fledged epeisodion this will only be a capsule summary of the two places I had time to visit.

Erratically Hellenic: Epeisodion γ

jani — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 23:45:29 -0700

The Greek language or, more specifically, its script fascinates me. Membership of the club of scripts that remain in use and essentially unchanged for 3000 years is pretty exclusive: off the top of my head, I could only think of Chinese, Greek, Tamil and Amharic (Ge'ez), and checking with Wikipedia shows that Ge'ez and Tamil actually only barely scrape past the 2000-year mark. (Hebrew, that resuscitated zombie, doesn't count in my book.)

Erratically Hellenic: Epeisodion β

jani — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:05:00 -0700

My first night in Athens, I set off on a quixotic quest for a quintessentially Greek food: souvlaki. I do this more often than I should, fixating on something that I think should be representative of local cuisine and usually finding out after hours of searching that, in fact, it's out of season or, worse yet, totally out of fashion.

Erratically Hellenic: Epeisodion α

jani — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 06:44:23 -0700

Unfortunately, my flight landed half an hour too early. Dawn was breaking as we descended, but the islands of the Aegean were only visible as dark blobs speckled with the occasional lighthouse, and before I knew it we had touched down at Eleftherios Venizelos International, Athens.

Book review: Shinya tokkyu (Midnight Express) by Kotaro Sawaki

jani — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 23:44:39 -0700

Suddenly I thought: wasn't coming to this place the reason I had continued on my journey for so long? I was brought here by a countless series of coincidences. Those coincidences did not need a word like "god" to explain them; no, it was just the wind, the water, the light, and yes, the buses. Thanks to public buses I was brought here...

There's no stoppin' the Cretans from hoppin

lisap — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 21:00:00 -0700

I managed a few hours of fitful sleep on the ferry (which is reassuring as I'll be taking it again on Thursday night) , and my arrival was mostly uneventful... mostly. I was perplexed by the announcements declaring our arrival at the port of Souda, but I assumed that perhaps the port had a name.

I've been waiting

lisap — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 21:00:00 -0700

In an internet cafe in Athens, up on the second floor (by myself, and not getting pickpocketed), I've got the Afghan Whigs on the iPod, and I couldn't be happier.