Halkidiki

My friend Kyle came to visit me in Greece this weekend. She's the one I met up with in London and is studying in the Netherlands. I showed her around Thessaloniki, we went to a taverna and got our 5 euro all you can eat deal, and I finally went in the White Tower (the city's most noticeable landmark) after over three months of being here. We walked to the Old City and to the markets, all things I've mentioned before at some point... 

A group of us from school decided to go to Halkidiki for the night and stay in a villa that you can rent for fairly cheap and cram as many people as you feel comfortable in it (we managed to fit 14). Halkidiki is south of Thessaloniki and consists of three penninsulas. We went to the closest one, near Kallithea, about two hours away by the public bus that runs to Halkidiki. We got there early on Saturday and headed straight to the beach. It was nice, even warm enough for a swim. It was funny seeing a group of Americans laying out in their swim suits and then some local Greeks would walk down the beach still dressed in long sleeves, and even a few winter jackets. I swear they never wear shorts in this country. It was not cold at all! The water (the Aegean Sea) was a little chilly, but we didn't mind. Chilly water wasn't going to stop us.

What did put a damper on the fun was the sun. I managed to get quite the burn. Kyle was worse than me though. We were fine on Saturday, but we woke up on Sunday morning in lots of pain. We went to the beach again, but kept our shirts on, afraid to expose our skin to anymore sun. Guess we learned our lesson. Although I say that every summer and yet I go through this every year at the pool. Maybe I haven't really learned... We went to get the two o'clock bus and of course since we are in Greece it just didn't come. Then the four o'clock came late. But we made it back and would have liked to have collapsed from the excessive sun exposure, but we had tickets to the Poak soccer game.

           

Poak is one of Thessaloniki's three local teams and all of the grafitti around town is usually something having to do with them. Soccer is a huge deal here and the reason for a lot of the riots. Just the other day some guys were blocking the street toward my building by dumping trash and burning it in the street because one of the teams was demoted to third division because they owed money. Anyway we got tickets for the crazy section at the game. Flares go off at the beginning of the game and smoke obscures your view for a good part of the first few minutes. Then they go off again when Poak scores, which happened twice. Everyone was chanting and singing/screaming the whole game. US sporting events do not compare to this at all. Poak ended up winning 2-1. Lucky for us. I'm not sure I would want to see this crowd of people's reaction to them losing. It was a fun weekend overall. The beach was beautiful, game was exciting, and it was good to see Kyle again. Plus it was nice to be in Greece for the weekend for the first time in a while.