Category: Greek life

“Apokries” is essentially Carnival; the three-week celebration that leads up to Lent, the 40 days before Easter.  Literally, apokries (αποκριεσ) means “no more meat,” indicating the approaching Lenten fast. There are some significant days during this three week party — including “Tsiknopempti” or burnt Thursday, which is a last hurrah day for grilling and eating all kinds of meat before the Lenten fast begins.   There’s also apparently a cheese Thursday, but I sadly missed it. It was yesterday.

Apokries in modern times is mostly associated with the orthodox faith and the preparation for Easter, but the origins come from ancient traditions at this time of year that celebrated the end of winter and the coming of Spring — a big part of which was the worship of Dionysos, the God of wine and feast.

We had an awesome pre-tsiknopempti meat celebration of sorts last Saturday with Anna, Vasillis, Giorgos and Katerina.  We went to a taverna on Mount Parnitha, one of the three big mountains that surround Athens on the Attica peninsula. In ancient times, Parnitha was home to a bunch of fortresses for the Athenians to defend themselves from invaders.  In Byzantine times, several monasteries were built.  Tatoi Palace, the 19th century summer palace for the royal family, sits near the bottom, but it’s been abandoned for many years.  Today, much of the mountain land is a preserve for various animals and some 1,000 species of plants grow here.  The taverna was terrific and it was packed with families, couples, and motorcyclists heading up or down the mountain.  Some kids had costumes and masks. We had a great table by the window, feasted on chicken, pork steaks, braised pork, potatoes, tzaziki and panzaria (beets).   We looked at their excellent NYC Christmas pictures and watched the fog roll in to Athens. We left the taverna, played in a park, and had a coffee in Varibobi and then drove into Athens for Mina’s name day party that she and Theodoris were hosting at their house.  We were the first to leave at 11:30 pm.  It was so nice to meet their friends who  we’ve heard about and the whole party was lovely.  The food there was terrific too – lots of homemade dishes from Mina’s mom, plus pizzas, really good wine, champagne and the most beautiful cake ever.

This weekend is the ‘big’ weekend for Carnival festivals and parties.  Each neighborhood in Athens has its own celebration: parades, street parties and the like. Plaka does something different than Psirri which is different than what Metaxourgeio does.  In Voula on Sunday, there will be a little party in the Voula plateia, with games and mask making tables and also some kite-making supplies to prepare for Clean Monday.

Feeling slightly gypped out of Halloween in October, Peter and Michael are elated to make up for it this week.  A friend of Michael’s had a costume birthday party last Sunday.  They were all a sweaty mess after running (and running and running) around in their polyester, non-wicking costumes.  But man did they have a blast.  And today, the school asks that no backpacks come, only kids in costume ready to party.  They are both Star Wars characters of course, and they hopped on the bus with money in their pockets for the souvlaki that will come to school around 11:30.

Funny enough, if you type αποκριεσ into Google translate, it comes back as ‘Halloween.’

These last couple of weeks we had our first Kessaris basketball game, did some indoor climbing, worked on fun art projects, tried on many costumes and made Valentine cookies for Papou and Sandy, our neighbors, teachers and school bus drivers. I didn’t have a rolling pin or a mixer so decided to make valentine shaped M&M cookies. And yes, cookie scraps with heart angles are just as delicious as full cookies.

Demetri headed off to Korea today for the second half of the Olympics.  He’s got a long flight ahead – Athens/London/Seoul, but having tickets for women’s downhill should be worth the trip.

Oh sure, the subject line of this post sounds like the bigger, badder bully cousin of the lung infection we all dread.

In fact, it’s what is growing on the trees outside of our building. (Singular: lemoni; plural: lemonia). Today I picked so many that I froze two ice cube trays with freshly squeezed juice and still have 2/3 cup of juice and 7 whole lemons left. (See photo above of our kitchen counter).

Winter here is nice for many reasons. This is a big one.

And PS, they smell best at the moment you snap them from the tree.

Mageirevo is the greek verb for “I cook.”  Mageireia, according to my Greek teacher, is a very old word they don’t use anymore.  It’s a place where the food is cooked in the oven or on the stove, as opposed to on the grill.  Now Greeks just call this place a taverna.  It’s kind of like the prepared food counter at Whole Foods … but everything is hot and ready to serve immediately.  And the dishes are less varied; he’s got 5ish things a day and that’s it.

Papou introduced me to our local mageireia here in Voula.  His name is Manoulis.  He likes American music from the 60s, like Nancy Sinatra, and he keeps albums behind the counter. He often shows me this or that, and I don’t know any of the female singers.  He says I look like Jane Fonda. (I don’t.)  He has a great staff — a younger fella I think might be his son who speaks a lot of English, and a really friendly delivery guy.  He has maybe 4 tables, and when I stop in there’s usually one or two people having lunch, but it’s his takeout business that is fantastically busy.  After cooking all morning, he opens at noon.  But if you go at noon, it’s not a sure thing that everything will be ready.  The magic time is 12:30 until about 1:15. After that, he pretty much sells out. I think he closes at 3.

I love going there.  I tend to go on a Tuesday or a Thursday when the boys come home starving at 5:00 and I can fill plates immediately. In my very broken greek, I tell Manoulis that I could work for him or live in the shop, whichever he prefers. He doesn’t speak much English, but he understands when I say “the best.” He almost always has roasted eggplant with olive oil and tomato sauce.  He also almost has yemista, stuffed tomatoes and peppers with rice and ground beef.  (They know I’m American because instead of mincemeat, I say ‘ground beef.’)  He often has pastisio, a pasta with meat sauce dish which the boys love. You can get roasted chicken or rooster in tomato sauce with spaghetti or rice.  You can get soutzoukakia (meatballs) with spaghetti or rice.  Sometimes he has more traditional, old school dishes like tripe.  I can’t bring myself to try it, but Papou sure loves it.

In the winter, he makes a few soups and stews. Greeks don’t really consider soup to be a food, but heartier stews appear acceptable.  Revithia is a good one – chickpeas in broth.  So are his lentils.  His gigantes, giant white beans, are different than the traditional dish with tomato sauce and dill; he uses a bunch of herbs and olive oil.  Last week he brought me around the counter to have some gigantes that were cooking in a giant caldron behind the counter.   My favorite, though, is laxanadolmades with avgolemono, stuffed cabbage with ground beef or pork, rice and herbs in an egg lemon sauce.  We also love giouvalakia, meatballs with rice and mint in egg lemon sauce.   Spring is coming and the artichokes are starting to appear … I can’t wait to see what he does with those.

His tomato sauce, though, is pure magic. I tell him this in English.  He chalks it up to really good ingredients, which I of course believe, but I’ve never had tomato sauce like this.  And lucky for me, he uses it in everything.  I think lentil soup is fine.  His lentil soup has this tomato sauce as the base and we buy 3 portions and eat it for days.  He makes fazoulakia, a summer dish of green beans in this sauce.  In the winter he roasts okra in it.  I don’t know his secret. I wish I did. I have a pretty great fazoulakia recipe that I make often and everyone loves, but it just doesn’t compare.  Papou told me to prepare myself to never make fazoulakia again after having the ones from Manoulis.

Sometimes I think about having my own mageireia in Denver.  But where will I get the tomato sauce?

It’s only Wednesday and what an exciting week. All public transportation workers were on strike Monday in protest of legislation about austerity measures and reforms that was being voted on that day.  There were no services on the Athens metro, the tram, the city buses and one of the commuter railroads.  Some schools were also affected as teachers staged walkouts in some places.  Flights were cancelled from noon until 3 as air traffic controllers walked out during that time as well.

We don’t watch the news much … so Demetri and I were astounded at the amount of traffic on our way to Greek school on Monday.  It normally takes us 50 minutes or so; Monday was 1:20. Even though I noticed a completely empty metro station we pass along the Attiki Odos (the highway on the outer loop of the Athens metro area), I thought nothing of it. We got to school and learned the reason.  It was a banner day for taxis.

Strikes are fairly common here.  Demetri, who has been caught mid-strike trying to leave Athens for the US at least once, has a longstanding theory that most people strike on Friday or Monday to facilitate a three-day weekend.  What’s lucky is that the strikes are announced ahead of time, so you can sort of plan around it … if you watch the news, that is.  We’re glad we weren’t flying on Monday.

The legislation in question — and under significant protest downtown on Monday — has to do with the EU bailout from the ongoing economic crisis. Greece is slated to end its bailout program later this summer in August but is promising its creditors more austerity measures because it wants more favorable repayment terms on the loans from the EU and IMF.  There’s a meeting next week of EU finance ministers to determine whether Greece has done enough to curb its frothy spending habits.

There does seem to be a bit of blue sky lately, though: a few weeks ago Greece did its first open market bond in 10 years and it was completely oversold.  This year saw a budget surplus.  And, there’s been an increase in GDP.  All significant and good signs of recovery.

Monday’s legislation wasn’t without drama though.  Protesters sprayed police with red paint, there were cries of ‘heresy’ and ‘dark ages’ from Members of Parliament opposed to the measures, rocks were thrown and pepper spray was used.  The bill passed.

Monday night there was an earthquake – “o seismos” in Greek. It was a 4.3 magnitude recorded right outside Marathonas, which is, of course, 26.2 miles from Athens.  I asked Demetri why the building was shaking as I watched the crystals on the chandelier bounce and felt my chair vibrate.  No injuries.  Everyone probably knows this – I didn’t – the USGS monitors all earthquakes and there are several around the world each day.  Kansas also had one Monday; it was a 1.8 on the Richter scale.

Demetri had a PRP injection in his ankle, so today he wasn’t in shape to go to Greek school.  I drove myself all the way to Marousi (it’s like driving from Parker to Westminster) which was quite a feat if I do say so myself.  Athens traffic is beyond insane.  People don’t want to wait in line to turn left (or for anything else) so they pass the turn lanes and swing in front of them to wait in the intersection so they can turn left first.  No joke. I want to tell everyone that anarchy is not a free for all, it’s being mature enough to care about yourself, others and the things around you to be mindful and act appropriately.

The genitive case in Greek is going to be the death of me.  Oops, the death of mou.

This past Sunday we hosted a December birthday (Demetri and Papou) and name day (Anna and me) party with our whole family — 15 of us.  We did a traditional “American” Christmas meal: a rib roast, Gma’s patrician potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, salad and veggies. Desserts were traditional Greek cookies: kourabiedes (tea cookies covered in powdered sugar) and melomakarona (honey cookies with cinnamon, cloves and walnuts) … plus a lemon souffle from Papou, a galaktoboureko (custard wrapped in layers of kataifi dough) thanks to Katerina, and a Revani (cake with walnuts) compliments of Mina’s mom.  Greece is a dessert lover’s dream come true.

We had the same sort of party in November for birthdays (Thodoris and Michael) and name days (Katerina and Katerina). For that one, I made a tacos carnitas spread, which was Michael’s idea.  Much to my my delight I was able to find all the Mexican ingredients I needed except for fresh jalapenos.

School for the kids and Greek school for us is winding down this week for a nice, long, two-week break. The homework has been a little lighter this week for Michael which has allowed us to go do holiday stuff. Last night we went to Glyfada (the next town over) with Papou to its Christmas fair.  The boys and I ice skated for an hour, then they jumped and flipped on these big trampolines and played a little air hockey.  Peter was a total trooper skating, he fell the entire time but giggled and got back up.  There was a guy on duty there who must have picked him up 20 times.  We had dinner at an awesome place with all kinds of games and activities for the kids and lots of tables for eating. It was chic and modern but also warm and cozy and a place like this would kill it in the US.   Greece is wonderful for letting kids be kids.

Demetri’s homework is still pretty tough; this week he’s moved into present perfect continuous and past perfect continuous verb conjugations. His comprehension leaves me in the dust. I still only know verbs in present tense, which is probably some sort of cosmic advice about living for right now instead of worrying about the past or micromanaging the future … so I’m embracing it.

We found a super botanical garden on the west side of Athens thanks to our friends the Staals. It’s the largest arboretum in all of Europe and has a rare selection of plants from around the world.  Demetri was excited to see a deciduous cedar tree. There are great trails for hiking and walking and lots of really neat gardens and ponds.  And of course there’s a playground near the entrance for the kids.  The back of the gardens leads into some huge open space and we hiked as high as we could to get a view of the city — and we could see the Acropolis way out in the distance.  Michael said he thinks Greece is perfect … you can hike in December and not be cold.  The only other thing he says he needs are his friends from home.

Tomorrow night we are heading to Budapest for a proper Christmas market (we missed them by a few days in Belgium) and then onto Italy.  We are determined to find the statue of Perseus holding Medusa’s head and to our surprise, it’s housed in Florence instead of Athens.

Kales giortes  = happy holidays.