The Orthodox Gambit

One of the prevalent aspects of culture in the Balkan region is the largely prevalent Orthodox faith. Orthodoxy is a branch of christianity and is divided into individual churches by the country it is practiced in (Greek Orthodoxy, Serbian Orthodoxy ect.) each of which is lead by a patrician. It is not a faith which I know much about besides that it involves a great deal of icons and many small churches and monasteries. However on the train from Thessaloniki to Skopje I was lucky enough to share a compartment with a Serbian Orthodox priest who was wuite happy to share some insight on the Serbian church, culture, language and current political issues. He was returning from living in a monastery on Mt. Athos in Greece to live in another one near Belgrade and spoke good if somewhat broken English. Some of the things he was most incessant in telling me were his disappointment in the Serbian Government for instituting new passports which contain chips which allow them to track him, his disappointment in the Russian church which he claims has degraded a great deal in recent years and his disappointment in the tourists visiting Mt. Athos for breaking many of the monk's rules there (No smoking, no shorts, no travelling during certain times , and most importantly no women). He was positive as well though he seemed quite happy to discuss the finer details of Serbian pronunciation with me and shared a number of tales from Serbia including one King who led the Serbians to victory against the Turks and established a reputation of justice by executing his own brother when that man had been accused of rape.

HE gave me the ame of a Russian bishop to rad in order to understand the faith better but as I have not yet done so I am forced to go by only what I see. And as I do not spend much time in churches (at least not when there is mass going on). However one of the most visible of orthodox practices is the practice of crossing oneself before a number of activities including eating sleeping and starting a journey. Of course there is a wide spectrum of distinction among practitioners as to how much this is necessary for example the Orthodox priest crossed himself before eating a handful of peanuts and one old woman in Thessaloniki crossed herself for the entire duration of a bus trip lasting at least twenty minutes.

The Backpacker's Dream

Every backpacker, myself included (though my claim to that title may be dubious) has had at some point the dream of running a hostel themselves, perhaps in some small, peaceful village near a tourist attraction or perhaps in a major city. Regardless the dream pervades the culture. I have now had the pleasure of seeing that dream become reality firsthand as Nina, the owner of the Backpacker's Refuge in Thessaloniki did just that. She bought a flat near the centre of town and renovated into a small (six bed) hostel and has been running it for just over a year. not only is the hostel a great place (clean firendly and with all the trimmings) but she has made it into the newest edition of Lonely Planet's travel guide ensuring her a steady stream of budget minded travellers like ourselves in the foreseeable future. Open arrival in Thessalonaki we gave her a call as the guide suggested and she directed us onto a bus and met us at our bus stop to guide us the rest of the way. Upon meeting us she noticed, in David's hand, a copy of the newest Lonely Planet guide to Greece, something which is strangely unavailable in Greece itself. Turns out this was the first time she had seen it and that we were the first guests who had been directed to her hostel by it. She asked if she was in the book and upon hearing that she was asked to read it, the reveiw of her hostel was prominent and very positive and after reading it she exuberantly rushed off to buy candy for everyone in celebration. It is not often that I get a glimpse at the other side of the hostel buisness and to see it work out so well for someone certainly nurtures me own version of the backpacker's dream.

Greece in a Week

It has been some time since I have last updated, this is due to a string of smaller towns which neglect to build internet cafes. I brought it up with the proper authorities but they still seem recalcitrant. We are now in Thessaloniki a much larger city and are staying in a very interest little hostel which seems to be someone's house with a dorm room. The owner is very friendly and the place seems great. We spent the last couple days going through the major tourist sites of Delphi and Meteora visiting the ancient temples and somewhat less ancient moanstaries respectivly. Having spent some six days in greece so far we are due to leave its comforting if expensive embrace tomorrow when we will (hopefully) depart for the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia by train. I'm not sure how readily available interent access will be there nad though i'm sure that internet cafes abound in Skopje, its capital, there may be somehwat fewer in the smaller towns where we intend to stay and since some of these lodgings will be in pilgrim's quarters in monastaries I expect it will be patchy at best.

Athens

Well another summer another trip and another blog, well the same blog really but you get the idea. We have just startted our trip and already it seems that I'm already behind with the blog as I started last year's the day before I left. Regardless this year's trip is composed of Greece and the Balkans... and then Romania. We don't have too much of a plan as of yet 'winging it' as David loves to put it but so far things seem to be working out. The flight here was, as always, an adventure in and of itself this year getting to Munich was no problem at all, I would rank it as one of the best flights I have ever taken with no noisy children and plenty of films avaliable for me to catch up on my movie watching. The connection to Athens however was another affair altogatrher; due to the large ash cloud from the m ost recent reruption of a volcano on Iceland our plane had to take a somewhat more circuitous route than otherwise and thus were some 30 minutes late. Now this would normally be no cause for concern but given that we had only one hour to make our connection in the firstplace and that included getting our bags checking them back ion and going throughn security again those 30 minutes became somewhat more valuable. In the end we were at the ticket office 10 minutes before our flight departed and were being given a list of other flights we had been put on standby for when the ticket agent got a call and ltold us to grab our bags and run to the gate as the plane had been delayed for some reason. Cut to David and I dashing through the airport ridiculously oversized backpacks bouncing around on our backs and arriving in time to board our original flight, there was some brief confusion over our possession of bags which were ludicrously oversized for carry-on but we managed to fit them into the overhead bins regardless. The second flight was shorter than the first and the only other propblems with it were the number of hours that David and I had been awake by this time so after some expert navigation of Athen's subway system and somewhat tangled, narrow streets we have arrivefd at our first hostel.