Friday, September 07, 2007

Ya sas from Crete! We've made landfall in the land of Zeus and we are now getting used to our surroundings. Here are just a few observations so far after day 1 (well, technically, day 2, since we spent day 1 on a plane). 1 - The Greeks are very proud people. Almost every building is painted in the Greek colors of blue and white; the same goes for all the signposts, restaurant interiors, chairs, walls, etc. We couldn't imagine the US getting away with the same things. I'll bet even Americans wouldn't tolerate the same thing at home. Being here in Greece, I'm surprised they didn't color everything right down to the toilet paper (although, if there is a country that has a brown and white flag, then I believe that I did them justice). 2 - The Greeks are hospitable. Now, I'm not one to speak in generalizations and of course, we didn't speak to every Grecian for me to come to this conclusion, but, obviously we don't have the time nor the means to stay with old Mama Nikodopolous and see how the "real" Greece lives and acts. However, I do believe that you can get a good sense of the people from just the merchants that the normal tourist would interact with (away from the metropolitan areas). Our rental car driver was the first Grecian whom we spoke to and he was very nice and very direct. He spoke openly and honestly, but not in a crass way. He gave me his opinion on his personal life, tourism on the island and even baseball and the Yankees. 3 - To drive like a Greek is to drive like a crazy person. I ended up renting a standard shift car for our time here in Crete and Santorini. I've only driven a stick shift a few times so this was very much a trial by fire and, unfortunately, these fires are pretty damn hot. The drivers like to tailgate you to get you to move faster and if you don't pull to the side, then they just pass you on their one-lane roads. It's also nifty how the motorcyclists drive at night without their headlights. I am probably over-exaggerating as we have been making our way around pretty well but I haven't driven during the busy times, yet so that is yet to be discovered. I guess with any country if you drive safely, you'll avoid any problems. 4 - Many "colorful" smells. Already passing through some areas of Europe, I've noticed a thread that binds European Community countries, and that thread would be a smelly one. The stories are true about body odor and I just get on my knees and thank God for our soap. Please, don't extrapolate my views to the European population as I am just speaking based on my experiences with a handful of European tourists, but body odor does exist and it exists in large doses here. 4 - Greek food is great. Not only that, but the local Cretan liquor is extremely strong. I think it's called raki and when we tried it, it almost burned our throats. I think we'll need a few more tries in order to get used to it. After all we can't offend the locals, right? We've been enjoying an excellent honeymoon so far and we'll try to post pics on here when we can. The architecture is beautiful here. Our hotel is on the beach and Nikos, the owner, is very friendly. Hopefully, I'll have more stories in the next post.