"Clean" Monday

Bright and early monday morning a bunch of study abroad kids headed to the town of Tyrnavos two hours away for a festival celebrating the start of Lent. We had the day off from school for Clean Monday--a day meant for fasting (no meat, dairy, eggs). The city each year holds a festival in honor of the god Dionysus, the god of fertility and wine, to mark the start of fasting in the Greek Orthodox Church before Easter. This famous Phallus festival as it is called is known throughout Greece, and drew quite a crowd despite the bad weather (cold, snowy, damp in general). And let's just say that it was quite the spectacle. There was good food (no meat though) and deserts, as well as a spinach soup called bourani that men make in cauldrons on the street and try to force you to eat. Everyone was munching on bread in the shape of phalluses that the bakeries made since bread was technically just about the only food you were supposed to eat today. The funniest part was how into the entire event the old men in the town got. They were dressed up and chasing people down with all sorts of inappropriate objects... I'll leave it up to your imagination and my photos to explain. Needless to say I'm sure I'll never experience anything quite like this again. Of course we all stuck out as Americans, but we had fun attempting to Greek dance in the street. Many Greeks tried to show us how to do it--not many really caught on, but it was a sight to see. It was some of the most fun that I've had in Greece so far. The Greek Church, however, doesn't really approve of the festival due to its celebration of a pagan god. And I'm sure also because it's a little irreverent and generally inappropriate. 

At a taverna in Tyrnavos with a couple Greek students (Giannis and Nantia)  from Aristotle University

BUT (there's always a but), getting home turned out to be some of the least fun I had in Greece so far. We took a bus from Tyrnavos to the town of Larisa and from there we were supposed to catch another bus back to Thessaloniki. I made the mistake of saying, as we sat on the warm bus drying from the snow (yes SNOW in Greece, who would have thought?), that in three hours we would be home, warm in our beds. WRONG. First we learned that they had overbooked our bus back and since we didn't check in ahead of time we would have to wait for the next bus. Tomorrow morning. Five minutes later they said we could sit on the stairs/in the aisle for the two hour ride home. We agreed because we didn't want to spend the night in the town. Twenty minutes into the ride the bus is forced to pull over. We have no clue why because no one speaks English, but everyone was pretty worked up (Greeks yell a lot--or talk really loud and it sounds like yelling). We sat for over an hour in the blowing snow, not going anywhere. Finally we got going, but drove only ten minutes. The police were on the side of the highway yelling at all the drivers to turn around. They closed the roads for half an inch of snow! Greece can't handle any bad weather apparently. So we drove back, unsure what we were going to do now. We spent over two hours on the bus and ended up back exactly where we started. Luckily we met three very nice Greek girls who were heading to Thessaloniki as well, and served as our translators. They got us a taxi to the train station, tickets to Thessaloniki, and on the right train headed home. If we didn't have them helping I would probably still be stuck in Larisa... So around 12:30 a.m. we made it back to Thessaloniki tired, a little grumpy, and only five hours later than we had wanted to get back. Some of my friends and I like to joke that we do things "for the story." I think that this is one of those days that was all done for the story. 

Earlier in the weekend, which starts on Thursday (or sooner) the celebrating continued before the start of Lent (carnival never ends). We didn't dress up this time, but many other people were in costumes. We did manage to grab some streamers that were flying through the air and add a little decoration to our outfits.