se pezodromio!

In a lot of ways Athens is like Cyprus. The drivers are insane, the streets are narrow, cars are parked as if someone dropped a bunch of cars out of the sky and however they landed is how they stayed. One difference that we found out the hard way though is that apparently on SOME streets, ours included, you aren’t allowed to park with half the car on the curb/sidewalk. Coming from Cyprus, we thought this was totally normal. In Athens, we get an 80 Euro ticket. Ugh!

One step forward... (Athens, day 4)

Ahh, here I am again, in front of the computer, in a new country. Feels like just yesterday I was writing my Cyprus Day 1 blog. Crazy how time flies. I can’t help but compare what the first few days in Cyprus were like versus the first few days in Greece. I don’t feel that panicky sense of loneliness that I did in Cyprus. I think that with this being tour #2, it just helps to know that everything will fall into place eventually. When I arrived in Cyprus I was afraid I wasn’t going to have any friends. But now, I guess in a weird way, I am comforted to know that I will probably be making friends eventually, with whom in three years I’ll be crying my eyes out when we have to say goodbye.

We arrived on Friday which was nice because we had the whole weekend to relax and start to get adjusted to the time. We also used that opportunity to get familiar with the maintenance people already, when Barb opened the door to the bathroom, which then crashed into the light that was hanging dangerously low from the hall ceiling which then blew a fuse knocking out half the lights in the apartment including the power to the refrigerator (approximately 2 hours after returning from the grocery store with a fridge full of perishable items!)

The good news is we succeeded in getting our internet working, although in the process we broke our wireless router and lost our home phone connection. One step forward, two steps back. I just attempted to do some laundry but the washing machine and drier are in GERMAN, (why wouldn’t they be?!) so I can’t even use my Greek to get me out of this dilemma. I guess I’ll wait til Barb gets home from work and see if she can remember any of her German.

Last night we went over to Barb’s coworkers’ house for a welcome BBQ with about 5 other couples, 3 of us brand new. It was a good opportunity to meet some of the people Barb will be working with and their spouses. Seems like a nice crew.

I guess that’s all I have to say for now. We love our new apartment. It's literally right in the center of Athens, with a lot of stores and restaurants in walking distance (plus a metro AND the embassy). I miss you all and promise to keep these coming, if YOU promise to keep writing to me too!

My realization

When I moved to Cyprus, I was amazed at the lack of diversity here. Everyone looks exactly the same. The only people who look different are the people who work as housecleaners, nannies, or prostitutes. There are no black people. There are no teenagers walking around with green hair in a mohawk. I don't think I've ever seen someone with a piercing on their face and I've definitely never seen a transgendered person. I haven't even seen anyone who I could honestly says looks "openly gay." Barb and I have learned a new way of life. We don't walk down the street holding hands as we would in DC. We never give each other a small kiss before parting, or dance together at events, such as weddings.

I learned last night that there are no zoos in Cyprus. There are no aquariums or planetariums. There are very few "real" museums. You might be wondering what this has to do with diversity, and maybe the answer is nothing. But it made me realize something. Cypriots are not exposed to very much. They just aren't. They know their island and much of their lives and education revolve around the infamous "Cyprus problem," which most other people in the world know nothing about. Going abroad and going to a zoo is a big deal. (You can count the number of species who live on this island on two hands.) Cypriots don't see lakes and rivers. They don't see big open fields of grass. And they don't see diversity.

In many places that I've been, on the surface, people appear to be open minded and gay friendly. But then you dig deeper and find that they actually have deeper-seeded issues or prejudices. I've found Cyprus to be the opposite. You wouldn't expect people living on this little island to be open-minded. And I wouldn't blame them for being that way. Like I said, they are not exposed to such things on a day to day basis as we are in the U.S.
But I have to say my experience has been different. The straight friends that I have made in Cyprus are the most open-minded, welcoming, accepting people I know. Barb and I completely expected to not be treated equally and we were prepared to deal with that. We made gay friends as soon as we arrived in Cyprus, but I never expected to become good friends with other Cypriots.

My reason for writing this blog in the first place was to tell my Cypriot friends—and you know who you are—how grateful I am to have met you and to thank you from the bottom of my heart for embracing Barb and me in your lives. It may not have been a big deal for you but it really was for us. And even if we haven't told you this, or haven't told you this enough, know that we do talk about it to each other all the time and feel lucky to have gotten to know you deeper than just at surface level!

Life is simple when you live in a tent (our trip to JORDAN)

This past weekend was Orthodox Easter so Barb and I decided to take advantage of the 4 day weekend and go spend it in a Muslim country (no one does Easter like the Muslims ). But really, It was so nice to get out of Cyprus . Jordan is similar to Cyprus in some ways: the land is brown and the sea is blue, the ancient tombs in Petra aren't all that different from the tombs in Paphos, Arab music sounds like it could be Greek, just with annoying whining rather than singing (Ok, I'm biased). But that's where the similarities end. The people in Jordan were some of the nicest I've ever met. As our guidebook said, even though Jordan is bordered by the "hot spots" of Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Israeli and Palestinian territories, the Jordanians welcomed us with open arms, regardless of if we said we were from the US or Cyprus (which most replied "What's that?" even though it is less than an hour flight away!) The nicest being a small section of the Jordanian population called the Bedouins, who are probably the simplest people on earth. Similar to how I would imagine the Native American used to live, these people come from huge families who all live together in a single tent. Most have a surprisingly good command of English, which they've learned from tourists (most of them make their living by selling souvenirs in Petra ). And yes, they're definitely trying to rip you off (they have to make a living), but they're also the first to welcome you into their tent for tea and to tell you all about their people. As one guy told Barb and me, "We have our village and we have our mountain. What more could we want?"

Life is simple.

They're happy with the way life is. When you don't even keep track of how old you are, because it just doesn't matter, well, not much else does either. One guy told us that whenever he gets upset about something, or at someone, he just goes and sits behind a tree and makes a fire until he feels better. Maybe we could learn something from these people. (Although the most entertaining story this guy could tell was about the time his goats got mixed up with his neighbors' goats and his dad yelled at him)
Anyway, Petra was amazing. Breathtaking. Barb and I rode camels, took a hike to the top of a mountain to see a 2,000+ year old monastery carved into a rock ( Petra means rock in Greek). We even went to the Cave Bar which is literally a bar inside old tombs, for drinks and narghile.

Although we had budged 2 days for Petra , our sore legs told us that a day at the Dead Sea was needed. So we drove the desert highway (now there's an exciting road, let me tell you) to an expensive hotel on the Dead Sea where we agree to have a Dead Sea mud wrap at their spa and then got to use all the hotel's amenities and have access to their beach for "free." Floating in the Dead Sea is something I can't even describe, but since most of you have never been there, I'll try. First of all, it is called the Dead Sea because nothing (plants, animals, etc) can survive in it because of the amount of salt (30% more than in the ocean). Looking around it looks as if everyone is lying on rafts; you are so buoyant that you couldn't drown yourself in this sea no matter how badly you wanted to die. The salt and all the minerals are also really good for your skin so you feel soft when you get out, although you have to shower almost immediately because the salt cakes to your skin. The mud is also said to have healing and softening powers when rubbed all over your skin. We tried the do-it-yourself version first but then went to the spa for a more luxurious version. (Well, if you call being covered in mud from head to toe, then wrapped in plastic and a heated blanket and being left alone like that for 20 minutes luxurious!)

The last day, as we were loading the rental car to head to the airport, my brilliant girlfriend locked the keys in the trunk (its ok for me to say that, because I'm the one who backed the rental car into a wall ). Several Jordanians (hotel workers and some others that were in the parking lot) approached us to see if we needed help. Crime (and IQ) must not be very high in Jordan because everyone who tried to help us had the same "solution." They would come over and after trying to open every door (in case we hadn't thought of that) they would try their own car key in our car's lock! Then, when it didn't work, they would just stand there and look dumbfoundedly at the car as if to say "That's the weirdest thing... It works on my car every time!"

The Jordanians—not the brightest, but certainly the sweetest, nicest people you'll ever meet!

If you want to see more pictures, there's plenty here.

"skiing" in Cyprus

I use the term "skiing" loosely. Cyprus isn't exactly known for its big ski mountains, but surprisingly, the tippy top of one mountain does have real snow and a semi-real ski slope. We taught two of our Cypriot friends, Marios and Patrick how to ski. Well, kind of. Here are some pictures.

the elevator story

Ahhh, it's been a while since I've had a really good "Cyprus moment" to share with you guys. Well, not really, I guess I have them all the time - things I would've written big long blogs about when I first got here, but sadly these idiosyncrasies have just become part of normal everyday life so when it takes 45 minutes to get the bill at a restaurant and when I stand in "line" at the deli for a half hour, or get shoved out of line by a 10 year old at the bakery (they learn by example from their parents of course), or have the driver in back of me practically sitting in my back seat as they attempt to drive "through" my car, I don't even blink an eye anymore. Like they say, if you can't beat em, join em. So that's what I do. I've learned that "line" means a big mob of people casually pushing their way toward the counter. I've learned that when I want to go faster I just ever-so-gently touch the front of my bumper to the back of theirs and they will usually move over to the other lane. Yep, I think I've pretty much assimilated.

But every once in a while, I still have those "are you fucking kidding me?" moments. Like on Friday, for example. Barb and I were going to a friend's house for a party. On the way in, we ran into 3 others going to the same party so we all got in the elevator together. You know the type, the small European elevators; they aren't exactly the hotel suite sized ones we are often used to in American apartment buildings. In fact, we all sort of looked at it skeptically before entering but then remembered that we've been in a million elevators just like this since we've been here. After all, we ARE in Europe (hybrid with the Middle East), and we got in anyway. Doors closed, we pressed 3. We went up about 4 feet, then down about 2 and then it stopped. We pushed the button again. Nothing. Pushed some other buttons. Nothing. Frantically pressed the "open door" button, over and over again. Nothing. Then we tried the "alarm" button which made an ever so faint brrrring brrrrring sound…inside the elevator. Thanks. Just in case we didn't know we were stuck…

Barb's a bit claustrophobic so she's starting to panic a bit as she looks up and quickly identifies that there is absolutely no way out of the 5 foot by 5 foot square box 5 of us were packed into. She decides she's going to pry us out so she grabs the inside of the tinfoil looking doors and pulls them apart only to expose…the very thick bank vault-looking doors with levers and switches and wires all over the place. Somehow she felt a bit comforted. The rest of us, however then had the scary realization that those were doors that no one was going to be able to "pry" open. We noticed a phone on the wall behind a dirty little glass door that looked like it had never been opened (surprising because the elevator didn't look like it had never been stuck before!). The phone was green plastic and reminded me of a phone maybe my grandmother would've had in her kitchen when I was about six. Barb picked it up. Nothing. No dial tone. Nothing. We all have cell phones, but being that we're in a thick metal box, they weren't getting much reception. The little sticker thing on the wall above the buttons said maximum capacity is 400 kilos. For those of you who don't know, 400 kg is almost 900 pounds. That would mean we'd each have to weigh almost 200 pounds (and we don't)! The same stupid little sticker also had an emergency number. Perfect, we thought, and we had the native greek speaker call it and explain to them that we were stuck in an elevator in one of their properties, gave the address, with a lot of shouting and repeating, partly because there wasn't much reception and partly because the guy on the other end of the line was, well…Cypriot and we were bothering him, of course, because he thought for a minute he might actually have to do his job. But no, in the end, he didn't. Why? Well, as he explained to us, the guy who is in charge of the area that we were in was on vacation. And, once again, in true Cypriot fashion, didn't have anything else to say about that. He was away, and therefore, we must continue to be trapped in the elevator. Good-bye.

Then we heard a familiar voice outside the elevator as our friend Mark, who was also on his way to the party came up and pressed the elevator button only to hear 5 familiar voices on the inside. He thought he might have a crowbar in his truck, so went out to check and came back with an ax (yeah, I have no idea and didn't ask). I felt like I was in a horror movie as we saw the end of the ax coming through the crack in the elevator doors as he tried to pry it open with no avail. We were ok though, I had a 6 pack of beer and two of the others had bottles of wine, so we knew we'd be fine! Between us and the other greek speakers who were at the party, we called the police department, the fire department and the marines at the embassy, just so we'd have a lot of people on their way, hoping that maybe one would show up. By then, several people from the party had come downstairs to talk to us and keep us company. Finally someone told us they heard sirens! They actually used sirens to come rescue us. We're probably in the paper today, I haven't checked yet. (There's not a lot of news here!)

In the end, it was the fire department that came first. They used some little gadgets they had and managed to get the door open. We were so grateful, we offered them our beer and wine and our efharistoumes (thank yous). Did they smile? No. Did they ask if we were ok? No. Instead, in Greek, they told us that it was our own fault because we weighed too much. Assholes. Really. So then we went to the party and ate lots of pizza and drank lots of beer so at least next time we get stuck we can at least agree that it was our fault because we weighed too much. Like I said, if you can't beat em…