The Giant Oat

April 17

I am sitting in bed watching yet another film about Jesus. That makes around five or six, I would say, that have been on over the last 24 hours. I even got to watch a movie about St. Paul while eating in a fast food restaurant. Greeks are BIG on holy week.

Today was spent visiting lots and lots of churches. It is Greece, and Holy Week, and I am with a theology student and a priest/theology professor, so what can I expect to be doing? I visited St. Demetrius and Hagia Sophia, and the church of St. Gregory of Palamas. My favourite was St. Greogory;s, as teh animated cantoring amused me, but was also very well sung.

In the evening, churches were packed for Good Friday services. I ran into a marching band and crowds of people on the street at about five, well before any services would have started, I thought, but it was already a procession through the streets with the shroud, surrounded by military, priests, schoolgirls in uniform, and women in regional traditional costume. I have videos and canàt wait to show them. As the procession passed by the very commercial parts of town, shop workers came to their doors, stood reverently, and crossed themselves as the shroud was carried past them. Definitely a first for me to see this degree of popular and outward expression of piety. That being said, teh stores WERE open for business.

Later in teh night, there were many processions and marching bands on intersecting streets, and it was a veritable zoo at times, with people running from one street to the next to catch different processions. People stood on their balconies with candles lit to watch as the band and the shroud and the thousands of people walked by.  

April 16

My first impressions of Thessaloniki were not that great…but they improved. At first, I thought it was just another big city, dirty, smelly and under contstruction, full of cheap shops selling plastic things (I donàt know what was wrong with me, but man was I ever moody…maybe it was the ten PM dinner time that threw me out of whack?). Then I found my way to the pier.

There is a very beautiful, very long pier alng the harbour in Thessaloniki. I spy loads of cafes, the White Tower, a lovely park with lit fountains in the night, people selling roasted nuts and balloons, a klesmer band belting out tunes, a couple dancing happily, a crew of young men flying a kite, lovers walking slowly by as the sun sets beyond the faraway shipyard, loafers hang their feet over the concrete edge, and a young and good looking musician sits ten feet from me, picking out a tune on his guitar. I wish I could hear him, but with the surf, the clarinet, and the cars competing, I can only make out the highest of notes.

I stare at the starry sky, watch nocturnal birds skim the surface of the sea, and see a plane flying low, and I wonder if birds get inferiority complexes from airplanes. I think I was a bird once.

I have noticed that gypsies in greece sell candles in front of churches, adn I marvel at their adaptation to each environment.

ENTER KOSTAS

The guitarist asks me what time it is. I tell him. He asks why I was just laughing to myself. I tell him about the birds and inferiority complexes, adn he doesnàt laugh. I scoot over to chat and I realize that the way to have an authentic experience in Greece is to meet someone named Konstantinos and get him to tell you how very great Greece is.

He extols Greece and all her virtues. He tells me of her history. He went to Greek school, has only Greek friends, and loves all things Greek, but he was born and has only ever lived in Germany. He tells me with absolute joy (this guy is in love with his country) that in two months he will move to Greece and never leave. I invite him to join me and my cousin for dinner, and I get another hour or two of Greekophilia. He is so sincere it makes me melt. He takes me and my cousin for Gyros on Pita. It is the best gyros I have ever had (and I practically lived on the stuff in university). Here, the gyros come with fries INSIDE the pita, along with ketchup, mustard, adn then the usual tomato and tzatziki. I enjoy every bite as we eat, the three of us, sitting on an ancient wall of the ancient roman market, talking about how great Greece is.

Kostas tells us he has two dreams. One is about to be fulfilled, and that is to live in Greece. The other is to be a famous musician in Greece. I guess it is good to keep it simple, and I try my hand at it. My ambitions for life are twofold, and like his, mine are interrelated. I want to always have family and friends near to celebrate the major and minor events of life with me, and I want to join myself to someone with whom I will experience all that life has to offer – joys and sorrows alike.

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