Between Parkland and Pagkrati

Anonymous So today was the first full day for us in Athens. As we awoke from the much needed rest this morning we had a free morning to experience whatever we wanted to in Athens. Most of the group met for Coffee at the local Kafe as it would be called there like it is back home just with what I think is a K and some other letters I have no idea how to pronounce. The coffee that we had was extremely strong and I think was a surprise to most the people in the group. I however, as one of our classmates Ted put, was "A man with that coffee". I downed the entire "mud" of coffee grinds that was at the bottom of the cup of joe. I love strong coffee and I would love that coffee to be common here in the US. After our coffee and pastries we splintered into smaller groups and started exploring more in depth what we had seen the night before.

Kudos to Ben Fox who is the man when it comes to directions. He has visited Greece before, so not only is he a stand up guy but a pseudo tour guide for us. I hope he didn't get annoyed with all of our questions (mine included). We then preceded to eat lunch at the place we had gotten kabob's the night before (pretty much a Gyro, but truly not a Gyro). The food was excellent. I tried the local hard alcohol drink which is called Ouzo. It is very black licorice tasting which I was very fond of at first but then my interest in it tapered off. There we met some different things than back home. Portion sizes are quite small. However the food, even if it is cheap in price, is excellent and you find yourself feeling satisfied in quality not quantity. Tastes of foods are also very different. Herbs and spices like cinnamon were in my beef that I had which gave it that Mediterranean taste that you come to expect from Greek food,

I noticed some other differences as the day went on the can highlight the blog title for today. We stopped at the Flea Market in Athens. It was very cool to see that something that I am familiar with was right in the middle of the city rather than being in an old drive in movie theater which seems to be the norm back in Washington. The Flea Market was right in the heart of the town and it was refreshing that the people and industry that was in the Flea Market were not looked down upon in my perspective from what I saw. Back in the US I am very aware of the stereotypes that come to mind when you think Flea Market and I did not feel any of those nor the buy in from the people who were running their stands. Cars are smaller here and you will not find hardly any big trucks, cars, or suv's; although we did see one brave Greek driver of an Escalade trying to get through the alley ways. There are different models of cars that you will not find in the US from the same manufacturers that we have. There are a lot of nice European luxury compact cars driving around (we're in Europe... obviously). Much more differences could extend the whole page but those ones were highly obvious to me. Not bad nor good, that is a matter of opinion, just different than us. Different identities.