My Big Fat Greek Wedding

I'm not sure what's more offensive here: assuming the attendees were 'extra large' or complete and total disregard for copyright laws concerning a movie I've never even seen. In either case, the name is a total misnomer; everyone looked legit terrific. But there were plenty of people.

For those of you that don't know why I started in Greece, it was for the wedding of my college friend Jim (birth name Demetrios; family is from Greece) and his beautiful wife Milena (who is from neighboring Serbia). A Greek wedding is impossible to describe in words; to say it was quite the experience doesn't do it justice (pictures to follow). We were told the wedding started at 7:00pm, showed up at the church (a magnificent structure directly on the beach here at Paralia Katerini) around 6:50 and waited...and waited...and waited. Did Milena change her mind? Was Jim being left at the altar? No...but apparently the lackadaisical attitude that runs the Greek public transportation applies to weddings as well. Not a problem though; it's been the attitude that's dictated the pace of the entire trip thus far and I wouldn't change it for anything.

The entire procession was in Greek (which is a relatively unspoken language, believe it or not - while everyone I met from Serbia, Bulgaria, etc. was multi-lingual, very few actually spoke Greek). This meant, of course, that roughly 75% of the people there did not understand a word of what was going on, but we got the gist of it all. When the ceremony ended there were hundreds of passersby who stopped to see what all the hub-bub was about, which was incredible in it's own right (see pictures). Jim's cousin Joanna(?) was kind enough to drive us to the reception so we didn't have to walk over a kilometre (that's right, I'm European now). The reception was incredible. Major props to Jim's dad for putting it all together. Not too much dancing in the traditional sense, but a lot of group dancing in circles. I am obviously a natural at it. Again, it can't really be described, but the pictures should shed some light on this. I've also never seen so many people run up and literally throw money at the bride and groom - by the time we left, the floor was literally covered with $1 bills. Had our government not completely ruined our currency I might have brought my own broom.

When all was said and done, I looked at Rob and told him that every wedding I've ever been to (excluding my sisters' weddings - I was too young) or heard of always felt like a funeral (I guess that's what happens when your parents get divorced six times between them). The Greeks treat it as a big celebration and make it into one. I asked him 'what the point' of getting married was, and he pointed and Jim and Milena - both with huge smiles - and said "that." No argument here.

I've been invited to Belgrade (Serbia) by multiple people and am seriously considering that my next stop on the journey after Copenhagen. After that, a quick stop in Sofia (Bulgaria) to meet up with my new friend Hristo (sp?) might be in order, and then who knows, a flight to Iceland? Ireland? A train ride to Italy? Unknown at this point. But that's the whole idea, isn't it?

Quotes of the trip so far:
1) "I speak Bulgarian, he speaks Serbian, he speaks Greek, you speak English, but we come together and all speak the same international language: mathematics." (This was said during a game of beach volleyball)
2) "Look at that guy, he's a regular European Conan O'Brien"
"You mean the father of the fucking bride???"
"Uhh...yeah" (queues Conan O'Brien intro music)
3) "These chopsticks suck, they keep breaking"
"Dude, you're using breadsticks"

N.B. I'm not going to bash other cultures unless they really deserve it (apparently Albania has it coming?), so in regards to the Serbian national drink Rakija (their answer to the Greek's Orzo, apparently), I will just say it is 'strong.' And that's an understatement. It hits you like a ton of bricks and just keeps coming. Milena's father put it down like it was water before buying us all a fine meal at this local beach restaurant (thanks again, Mr. Pezelj), which was rather impressive. Also, thus far, I have not seen a difference between Greek food here and Greek food in America, except that the pizza has no pepperoni and like in Canada, bacon is actually ham. Not sure how all these countries keep mixing the two up.

One more thing. In my first blog I said Greek women were some of the most beautiful women in the world. Apparently they are trumped by Serbian women. According to Cali Rob, the reason for that is, and I quote: "once we started bombing them [in '99] the good Lord looked down on the beautiful ones and..." I stopped him right there. His logic was flawless.

We're not in Rockport anymore.

I have no idea what time it is. Okay, that's a lie, my computer says 12:48 so I assume it's about 7:48 local time? We're GMT+2...whatever that means. What a day, today. Rob comes into the room at 2:30pm like gangbusters while I'm sleeping with earplugs and an eye-mask (it gets bright here!) and drags me to the beach. Yeah, 'drags.' A beach where attractive girls outnumber attractive guys 3-to-1, at a minimum. By 2:45pm I'm playing in my first of three (six in total on the day) games of beach volleyball. In between the games I'm swimming in the Aegean Sea and being looked down upon by Mount Olympus which is about which is less than 40 km away (do your own conversion). And of course by 'swimming,' I mean 'floating,' because there was nothing strenuous about it. Oh, and the water is maybe 85 degrees? Have I mentioned how nice it is here? The one negative was that there was an abundance of seaweed and too many jellyfish for my liking. But it beats choosing between Scylla and Charybdis, no? Ten points if you get that reference. I was about to say I didn't see a single guy in a speedo all day, and of course, just now, sitting down with my laptop on some random sidestreet outside my hotel I see a guy walking around in just about the most revealing thing I've ever seen. Devastating. There goes another one. I shit you not. Now there goes a kid in one. Come on Mom and Dad. Do they have a DCF in Greece??

Well, the exchange rate is killing me. Freakin' Euro. Food is expensive (edit: food was cheap; everything else was expensive, especially drinks). Everything is, really. But dinner seems to be the only meal people eat around here, and that's after an entire day at the beach. Oh well. Life has it's little challenges. Time to go find myself another gyro. I would imagine these little blurbs are going to slow down since nowbody wants to read/write about the same beach activities over and over. But believe me when I say experiencing them over and over isn't all that bad. I'm excited for Scandinavia, but I'm in no rush.

N.B. I forgot two important things from yesterday. The first one is that we saw gypsies on our train. They had so much shit with them it took them five expletive-laden (Greek expletives are so much more entertaining) trips just to load everything on. What a riot. I was going to take a picture, but I didn't want my camera stolen/smacked out of my hands. The second thing was I tried my first gyro...at three in the morning. That thing is going straight to my thighs. I was also offered a hard-boiled egg at four in the morning by the creepy "overnight" guy at the hotel (I put "overnight" in quotes because there's literally nothing for him to do). I think he was watching fuzzy porno in the lounge when I came in (since the internet signal isn't strong enough to reach our top floor room). Very bizarre.

Okay, I've officially been up way too late.

Wow, what a crazy day. I'm glad all these random people on Facebook 'liked' my first post. It was basically me falling asleep at an internet terminal in Dusselforf International Airport telling you how much life sucked at the time. But it gets better.

So, we had a 7.5 hour layover in Dusseldorf. Good times. I had delusions of going out and exploring the city, but instead we (Cali Rob and I) decided to sleep like homeless people in an airport. Killer decision. I seriously think, between benches in and out of the terminal, we scored more than three hours of sleep between us. On the plane (an Air Aegean A319 for those of you keeping track at home), Rob slept in the middle and I took the window...as the plane bumped it's way to 35,000 feet. On the aisle was this German guy named Guido (pronounced GEE-do for all of you anti-Italians and anti-anti-semites; no picture, sorry) who was extremely friendly, and we talked all about Europe and Greece and all sorts of stuff. (Rob definitely dropped an 'n'-bomb on him by referring to Ryanair as "Nazis.") I'll spare you the particulars, but when we landed in Thessaloniki at 6:30 local time they didn't have jetways - you got off the plane and boarded this shady bus that literally took you 200 feet to the airport. Way to prove your technological savvy, Greece. There was literally no customs as we just walked into the country with all sorts of illegal narcotics (just kidding, John Ashcroft). I talked Rob out of taking an €80 cab ride and taking this shady train to Katerini where we received this 45-minute long language on Greek history and linguistics from this attorney named Michael (pictures to follow). Sounds boring, but was actually really, really interesting. Then we went out to a club and apparently I'm still up. I left for JFK at 2:00pm EST Wednesday - whatever time it is there (almost 10:00 at night Thursday?) I'm still up. It's well past 24 hours. And it's not going to get any easier - beach time starts at 10:00am local time (seven hours ahead). Good times.

N.B. All the rumors are true: Greek women are beautiful. Fate always comes up with a new, cruel way of messing with me.

Day one: Dusseldorf International Airport

Okay, so a bunch of people told me I should 'blog' about this trip. Of course it's 8:53am local time (2:53am EST), I'm typing all of this on a German keyboard (very difficult), and i feel like I'm going to collapse. Worst blog ever. We should reach Thessaloniki, Greece 6:15 local time (11:15am EST), and then we trek to the train station and off to Katerini to fight the Minotaur. More to come when I'm more coherent.