Ho!Ho!Ho!

Christmas is wonderful. Christmas is perfect. For the “SantaClauswillbringme” ages.

Because anyone above that age lives under the threat of the global conspiracy, with the code name “Christmas holidays”. We all know that everyone hate their guts with this story. But as if a deadly menace is hanging over our heads, no one will ever admit it. We do all the appropriate shopping, and all that red decoration, we cook as if there is no tomorrow, we generously give away smiles, and wishes and “oh-we-are-so-happy” looks. As if someone from above checks our Christmas mood level, and no one would ever like to be found with a Christmas mood below the generally accepted limit.

I know no living creature being brave enough to refuse to buy the slightest gift, to eat fish instead of turkey or other fleshes slowly cooked in absolute harmony with mushrooms of a nominal value standing at 25€/50 g. And all that because the day is special. The day is special only to the guy who pocketed 25 € for selling three funguses! This Christmas holiday thing equals to violation of human rights and should be seriously checked by the competent authorities. At both national and international level.

I’m escaping Christmas bringing to my eyes images of the world at this very moment. A Buddhist monk, no more than 12 years old, is shaving his head at Angkor, Cambodia. He does it skillfully, almost ritually, and I’m impressed that he uses no mirror. - A young woman helps her husband aligning multi-colored processed leathers. The leathers must stay under the sunshine for a while before finding their way to the bazaar of the town of Fez, Morocco. A heavy smell is in the air. – A barefoot bunch of children is chasing a ball in the pastel streets of Puerto Limon, Costa Rica. – A cormorant and his owner are having some rest at the banks of Lee river, near Yangshuo, China, after a long day of fishing. These cormorants-fishers are precious in China. A ring obstructs their throat making impossible to swallow the fishes and thus they deliver them to their owners. – The fountains and artificial lakes behind India Gate, New Delhi are crowded with boys and girls having the time of their life as they play with the dirty water. There is even a band playing!

It’s comforting to know that the world is still spinning around. It is comforting to know that the world will go on spinning around. That our personal highlights and dramas are not so important after all. And Christmas is not special because someone named Christ was born. There is no such thing as Christ and there is surely no such thing as virgin mother. You can say that Christmas is special because lots of us have extra free time. And this is good.

I will keep a sense of melancholy for the days. I will remain un-glamour and bleary. I will keep in my mind the people whose only reason to celebrate is that they made it through one more day. Santa Claus is a fat man in his middle age crisis, with serious problems of regression to childhood, and allow me to say, with a very suspicious attitude with his wanting to take all children to his lap. I will decorate my balcony with a hung Santa. With sparkling lights around the rope. I will let the passengers wonder: Was it suicide or murder?

All I need is a bitter song

I heard you. You were standing in front of me. In the bus, Tuesday morning. I heard you because you wanted to be heard. You have the impression that you are dignified enough to express powerful opinions, such as the one that caught my attention: “If he were a nice boy, he wouldn’t be hanging out in a place like that.”

Your brain is a small as a peanut. And your hair is oily. Women with oily hair should be spending more time using hair products than expressing opinions. What makes Exarhia an area with strong heartbeat is that you, and your super market and laiki agora friends, and your miserable skinny husband and your castrated son, and your daughter who will never be married to a doctor because she is a slut, and you know it, have never passed below my window. And my window is at the gates of Exarhia.

My sadness those days is so thick you could cut it with a knife. All I need is a bitter song, to make me better. There is no anger in me. Anger is for those who are lucky enough to be 15 years old. Hearing them screaming out in absolute orgasmic unison “Μπάτσοι μουνιά σκοτώνετε παιδιά” was like all angels and cherubs chanting in the central square of paradise. It’s divine to see so much anger in so beautiful creatures. Anger for the young and painful sadness for those who were once young, is to me the proof of being alive and healthy.

I have been accused to take things personally. Hearing that a young life probably deserved to be extinguished, seeing my neighbors swiping the relics of their properties, trying to fit myself in the categories of a stereotyped world, is personal. It is personal to live in the terror of a dozen of men who keep their faces covered only because they have this little problem with the size of their penis. Come on, guys. Show us your faces, size is not everything after all (yeah, right…).

If only we could try to retain stupidity at the lowest acceptable levels. If only we could see politics beyond the terminology of political parties. Be curious. Be touchy. Our times call for involvement, participation, information and knowledge. I want to respond to the murder of a kid, by being a less frightened person. Even a better person. I will start by smiling to the Pakistani living next door. I cross them ten times a day and one of them has the best hair style ever. I will start buying my coffee from this little cafe risking to close down, although what they serve is hardly a good coffee. I will be polite to those who are, and bitter to those who are not, but always with a smile on the face. What If we all did the same?

Because as an old friend used to say, I believe we can be extraordinary together, rather than ordinary apart.

Merci, beaucoup

Grenoble is my personal turning point into adulthood. And by adulthood I don’t mean that I suddenly started being mature, reasonable or responsible, but I certainly became more future-oriented. Isn’t that what being an adult is supposed to be?

Grenoble got me seriously suspicious that outside motherland Patra, there was actually a world. And to say the entire truth even a better one. I even felt constraint to find that the famous Greek saying “At the time we were constructing the Parthenon people in Europe used to climb up the trees to feed themselves with rotten fruits” had something of a slight exaggeration.

Grenoble is not a place to live if you take sea for granted. It is a place that made me feel claustrophobic. Being the capital of French Alpes, it is surrounded by mountains which in their turn are surrounded by other mountains and you go on and on and on …. It makes you want to search for an emergency exit. Although you are sure not to need any type of exit in a place like that.

The mind of the 18 year old scared, lame puppy that myself was at the time, formed the impression that Grenoble, was actually the city of the crippled. So embarrassing to admit such a thing now. But seeing so many wheelchairs on the streets, in the university halls, literally everywhere was not a sight to which I was used, having grown up on the holy grounds of Greece. We back at home are healthy. We all walk standing. What are they doing to you people??? It took me a while, but I finally got it…

And I was yet to discover the pleasure of having a pick-nick with a friend in the near-by park, the killer wind blowing on the bridges over the Isère River, the thrill of meeting people from around the world (my Japanese fellow students had a really hard time to come to believe that we have mountains, and winter with proper rain and snow! My American fellow students were pretty convinced that no such place like Greece existed anywhere in the world and that I was a fraud having invented a country as well as a language), the excitement of living with nuns (what kind of young girl is excited living eight entire months with nuns??), the art of stealing apples in the super markets, the art of stealing whatever in the bookstores, the art of stealing spoons in the cafés, the romance of eyes playing in the launderette while pretending to be reading a book, the ingenuity of living without a fridge, the bitter-sweet feeling of being lonely, and alone.

Grenoble is the place where any parent would like their children to grow.

Though, and here I am asking for your attention :

Grenoble, as happens with the entire country of France, is inhabited by French people. Rude French people. Who throw you to the lions for not pronouncing Merci well. If only I could ever find the courage to scream at one of them “I have read Proust in the original you bastard!”. French people who speak French all the time. What can one expect from a nation that has invented “four times twenty and sixteen” for 96? Snobs, who in their justification, however, have plenty to be snob of.

Maiden posting

A Lila Pause bar of chocolate made me want to travel. It was the prize of a school geography competition of which I was the winner. Fortunately it was large enough for me to share it with my other classmates, not to say that I wanted to hide as much as possible the fact that I was a nerd, vehemently struggling to be the winner.

Drawing down the globe map in something less than 3 minutes and writing down all (and I mean ALL) countries with their respective capitals in less than an hour, is certainly something to be pride of.
Luckily, at that time USSR was one single, unified and powerful country with just only one capital, and not that jungle of train-lettered countries with equally train-lettered capitals probably all ending in -stan.
Not a chance of my winning such a competition, nowadays.

So, these are the first lines of this blogspot of mine. Ever since this general blogspot mania came to surface I wanted to do it. To talk about what being “intrip” means to me. To talk about the handful of trips I have made. And those I am dreaming of making. It is not that I am the Greek equivalent of Megan McCormick, nor the poorer version of Maya Tsokli. No, no far from it. I can’t say that I have been off the beaten track. I have mostly done all that is touristy in a destination. But I would really like to become a traveler. I want to place myself somewhere within a bigger frame. You see, within the borders of the microcosm I live, my ego grows to gigantic dimensions. And traveling makes me feel small. It’s nice to feel small. I think it helps me complain less.

I think I will be writing in English – for the most part at least. A credible explanation for this would be that I have a number of non-Greek friends who I think would like to read me. But it wouldn’t be a true one. I have not that many non-Greek friends, let alone non-Greek friends who would like to read me. A semi-true explanation would be that I am more relaxed in a language that is not mine. Words feel less “binding”. However, a nothing but the truth explanation would be that I am americanizing myself day by day. I don’t say «παίξε-γέλασε» for something that is easy, I say “piece of cake” or even worse «ένα κομμάτι κέικ».
I have also caught myself drinking milk straight from the bottle.
Standing in front of the open fridge.
In the middle of the night.
Feeling sorry that the bottle does not have a comfortable handle.
Like in the USA.
I have never been to the USA.