Visiting Syros and Some Success with Greek Bureaucracy

It's been a busy couple of weeks. We enjoyed a week on Syros, ate a belated Thanksgiving, and accomplished a few notable bureaucratic things here in Thessaloniki.

We followed our landlady's advice and flew to Syros. It's two short hops including a stop in Athens and flying takes much less time than any of the other travel options. Curiously we noticed that every woman flight attendant had her hair tied back and bundled in a bun (but most likely a fake hair bun). The only male flight attendant did not have a compulsory man bun. Interesting. In the Athens airport, we waited at a gate between flights and watched a panicked traveler (toting his little caged pooch) freaking out about his departure gate. Turns out he was flying to Paris but had gone to the gate for Paros (Greek island). At the gate, the Greek gate attendant said directly but politely to him, "Why are you so stressed?" The Athens airport is quite compact--it's not like O'Hare or Heathrow, etc. so it's easy to get almost anywhere in short order. She got him to calm down, had him let his dog out of the box for a stretch, and she and a colleague made adoring sounds about his dog. Somehow this seems quintessentially Greek. Travel--whether it's taxi rides, airports, ferries, or buses--is generally pleasant here and staff often genuinely care about your experience.

Syros is in the Cyclades, probably the most famous island chain in Greece, but it doesn't look like the other Cyclades which have whitewashed cube houses. It's got an Italian character with pastel-colored houses climbing up the steep hills. It reminded us of Procida, a cute island in Italy near Naples. Roads on Syros are paved in marble and there are medieval-like sections where cars can't go but which are packed with houses. The place we rented looked like it could be in Venice. The house was literally next to the sea and we could walk out from the front door and hop into the water in about 20 feet. And despite it being the end of November, Sam swam twice and I swam once. Some locals were in the water every day, despite some rough conditions on a couple days. Good for them! We had some nice night skies and on clear days and nights we could see many of the other Cycladic islands, including Tinos, Mykonos, Naxos, and Paros. The views are breathtaking and it was cool to see ferries chug past our window on the way to those other islands. Part of why we went to Syros is that it's an island that Greeks claim doesn't shut down in the off-season. And yeah, it's not shuttered, but plenty of places were closed. Island life has an appeal to us, but it's good to check out what that might be like in the off-season. It's a lovely island but our heart still belongs to our favorite, A. But we're still eager to check out other islands to see if any can compete. Things are changing on our favorite island; maybe we need a backup island or two in case it gets twee. We hope to check out a few more places in the coming months.

It felt nice to return to our apartment in Thessaloniki. We decided that we missed having Thanksgiving food so we went to the Kapani Market here and bought ingredients to make a mini holiday feast. Sam even found fresh cranberries at one of the shops (the woman at the shop said "good for woman problems"--so it seems like that's why they eat them here). We befriended a nice butcher, Vasilis, and bought Italian turkey from him. We went back to his shop a couple days ago and his son was there, too. As often happens to us, we got introduced to the shop owner's kid and were told proudly "I've spent a lot of money on English lessons for him!" and so Sam initiates a cheery chat with the teenager who feels squeamish and bashful about talking in English with a middle-aged American. But it's clearly a momentous occasion for the parent who wants to see if their heavy investment is paying off.

We've had so many experiences here where we've benefitted from the services of true craftspeople. The same professions used to exist in the US, but have generally gone by the wayside for a variety of reasons. Vasilis the butcher is a skilled artisan and he clearly enjoys his work at his poultry shop. It's impressive to watch the passion he brings to his work. Butcher shops--or two or three such shops--are on almost every block here. I got some shoes resoled the other day by a proud cobbler, eager to show off how he improved my footwear. And Sam befriended Kosmas, the owner of a great bakery near us, who will tell you every ingredient in his delicous baked goods and how he makes each one. Did I mention the place that makes sheep yogurt from a herd outside of the city? Recently, I told the woman working there that the shop has great yogurt and she cheerfully said "Our yogurt is perfect." She's actually right! But then there's the woman who runs the goat milk store nearby and brings in fresh goat yogurt from her farm. It's perfect, too! Maybe part of what makes Greece so nice is that many people have tangible, manual jobs that give them satisfaction even though they work very hard and earn less than most Americans? Money isn't everything. [On a related note, Sam recently read a book called Bullshit Jobs and it's gotten us thinking a lot about the loss of meaningful work in the US. Sam highly recommends the book for understanding why our country has so much pent up anger and frustration.]

We also made progress in getting a booster shot here. You need to have a number that's sort of like a US Social Security card to get vaccinations. They've made it possible for foreigners to get temporary numbers, called AMKA numbers, for vaccinations. Sam got her number quickly but mine took a bit more time, but we finally got it the other day. We scheduled appointments thanks to the help of some nice women at the citizen service center. Soon we should be able to get a European vaccination certificate because they also imported our American vaccination information into a Greek database. Of note is that we had to tell them which arm we received each dose in!

Last night we walked, as we often do, along the waterfront at sunset. We heard some young women with American accents and Sam asked them why we often hear American youth in this particular part of the waterfront. Turns out they were freshman from Northeastern University and their first semester(!) in college is being undertaken overseas. They haven't even been to Boston yet for college and speculated that they were overseas because of dorm shortages. Sam started talking to them in a bit of Greek, but they quickly said that they don't know any. They're all taking brutal, tough classes like, Greek art, history of Thessaloniki, and Greek design. And then spending weekends in Budapest, Amsterdam, London, etc.. Tough life for these youngsters!

The city is getting absolutely covered in Christmas decorations. We're not into Christmas but it's surprisingly fun to see the zest people have for it here. Amid this decorated city, we had lunch with our landlady today. She took us to a sushi place near her shop and we ate outside with her. And despite our protestations, she bought us lunch and insisted on buying us coffee afterwards. We can't yet crack the code on how to pay for meals with locals--they are aggressive about paying for you--but maybe we can help Greeks in other ways until we do crack the code. Sam's still hoping to volunteer at a nearby school. Yesterday we set up a quasi-professional movie studio and made a video of one of Sam's Greek language tutors in hopes of drumming up more business for him. Sam will also be (English) tutoring the teenage daughter of a friend-of-friends (and hopefully Sam will get to practice her still very bad Greek on this poor, unsuspecting teen). If we can't always pick up the check, at least we return favors in other ways.