Weddings: Thessaloniki

End of August seems to be the new wedding season. On our way to the house of our friend, the bride-to-be we passed three “wedding cars”, those with the far too expensive flower decoration (Remind me to use a humble donkey to get to my own wedding, if it ever takes place).

Weddings as festivities score top marks on environmentally hostile celebration list. Lots of useless plastic and cloth decoration, just to make sure that the world is aware of the bride’s home location. Needless to mention that all the guests were frequent in that very house for the past 10 years the least, so no need for signposting…

In this celebration of modernity, some traditions were kept. The urban monster of modern Greek culture did not swallow them all.
The bride’s girlfriends helped her put on her wedding gown while singing (very badly) traditional wedding songs preparing the bride for the first wedding night… You know the stories about the snake that goes into the cave!
All the unmarried girlfriends got the chance to find out which one would be married first, by writing their name on the sole of the bride’s shoe. Whichever would get erased first is the lucky one. I refused to let luck dominate my life so I asked for my name to be on the upper part of the shoe meaning.. no contact to the floor. But knowing my friends reputation of dancing many nights away… I was sure that no names would be legible by dawn.

The rest of the wedding followed the bourgeois rituals of Thessaloniki’s middle class.

The ceremony took place on the church yard depriving the eager of all religious warmth. New dresses and designer shoes where on display without the annoying singing of the priest. I was the only one without my hair professionally done. That combined with its pink colour deprived me from much of the “desired” networking.

Ice cream sorbet was distributed to keep the guests cool while waiting for the necessary evil (the actual wedding ceremony) to finish. The nasty organisers included stone hard sweets in the rice that was thrown to the couple, that only by some miracle avoided concussion.

The reception was set in a magnificent garden with a swimming pool. One of those my academic salary will never be able to afford. But no worries. I won’t miss much… the food was not exactly memorable (thank God cause I would end up with nightmares).

Not being a banker was a real issue at this wedding. Since the couple both work in a bank all their guests were bankers. The first question after what’s your name, was not “what do you do?” but “Which branch are you in?”. My non-banking nature was a real bore to them and soon they lost interest in me turning to a fellow banker to discuss credit cards and loans.

Suddenly the bride decided to incorporate the Hollywood introduced tradition of throwing the bouquet (obviously not the original one, but the one specially made to waste on single friends). Stupid me went with the bunch.
And the bouquet fell with force on my head.

I was supposed to catch it, but it caught me instead… by surprise. I wonder what that is supposed to mean.
The jealous eyes of all the single girls were on me. How could I apologize?

So I went to hide behind my wine glass.

Finally a cute guy in purple shirt came to congratulate me. Who said weddings are not a nice place for fashionable acquaintances?

4000 years and 1600 miles in a day

I left Southampton as a modern Titanic, all happy and full of hope, at 4.30pm on Sunday afternoon. Fair weather, no rain, no problems wearing my sandals (my only defence against the anticipated heat in the place of destination).

3am Stranded in Athens, I find myself unable to sustain warmth in my body. There is only one thing that is efficient in this country, and that is air-conditioning. The specific one in the El Vel (greek attempt to mock El Paso) airport can create arctic condition in central Greece mid August…

6.30am The Nomad has landed in a field disguised as Airport. Heraklion in magestic Crete. And from the fridge I end up in the oven. To make the most of the relatively cool temperature I head to Knossos in search of the Minotaur. I arrived there just on time for a spinach pie and a coffee, to feel like home again. Looking for a mythological beast without sleep requires at least a magic potion. Nescafe Frappe with ice (Greekness in all its Magnificence)

Knossos, the ancient Minoan capital was build to confuse. It did not contain Daedals’ labyrinth. It WAS the labyrinth. Thus I decided to hire a guide. Infallible Greek logic informed me that I needed to find another 13 people to share my enthusiasm and the fee for the guide. The lucky 13 never arrived and there was no recorded guide either.

So I ventured in the labyrinth alone searching for the Minotaur without even Ariadne’s clue to anchor me to reality.

The palace’s ruins were partially rebuild according to the imagination of the English archaeologist Arthur Evans who discovered them. Inevitably his imagination is part of the exhibition, mainly because he was wrong.
I sneaked in different groups of people to listen to the appointed tour guides contradict one another showing how archaeology is as bad as interpretation of literature.

Full of European firsts, Knossos is not incorrectly considered by the Myth the motherland of Europe. First staircase, first multi-storey buildings, first cooling and heating system (better than the El. Vel. Airport) first sewage, first amphitheatre and first road (which I walked on!).

Europe daughter of mighty king Minoa was seduced by Zeus in the shape of a white bull who kidnapped her, crossed the Aegean sea and brought Europe… to Europe.

American tourists dragged to the site from their luxurious cruising ship kept asking where they can see the Minotaur. Mythical beasts, half human half bull, are more interesting than boiling ruins in the heat.
Truth is I could not see the reason why the bull was so important and sacred in this civilization. Crete’s ecosystem cannot sustain herds of such big animals (which the current population consumes like there is no tomorrow… long live Mediterranean diet!). The bull appeared everywhere. But even the size of the amphitheatre did not allow much acrobatics on the back of a running bull either. Somehow the scalling did not make sense…

It might have been the lack of sleep or the massive change of temperature but by 10am I was hallucinating. Under pine and olive trees listening to the familiar “home” sound of cicadas jumping from stone to stone… For a moment I thought I saw the Minotaur. He was there, ignoring my presence with only one target. Devouring the place. Short attention spam, heat and boredom made him irritated. He did not even notice that he was transformed into a queue of tourists.

I had to escape to the familiar city buzz of modern Crete.