More from the International Trip: Thessaloniki

This begins on our first morning in Thessaloniki, the night before I had pretty much fallen into bed, so I didn't really know much about the city. I did know that we weren't staying smack in the metropolitan center, sort of on the outskirts of downtown.
Day 6: This was Friday morning (to put things into perspective). Prior to coming to Greece we had learned a lot about the Thessaloniki Jews during the holocaust (Somewhere around 90% of them perished in the concentration camps) so the Jewish community there was a pretty big focus. A little bit more background: Thessaloniki was once called the Jerusalem of the Balkans, and Thessaloniki had the largest number and ratio of Jews in the community as compared with anywhere else. It used to be that when you were walking down the street every other person was Jewish. Now there are less than 3000 Jews remaining.
On Friday morning we walked to the synagogue in the center of town and met the Rabbi. The congregation there was Sephardic and on the walls of the synagogue there were plaques commemorating all of the prior Jewish communities that has existed in Thessaloniki (there were more than thirty no longer existing synagogues). We also toured a second synagogue that is used solely on High Holy Days. There we, as a group, were taught a Ladino (Hebraic Spanish) song by the Rabbi that would become almost the theme song of our trip and group (We actually sang it last night on Shabbat 11/27).

The Rabbi of the Thessaloniki Community

After the synagogue we visited the Jewish museum of Thessaloniki which was pretty interesting (it had a large focus on the effects of the holocaust) and then we were free to find our own lunch. I ended up at a seafood restaurant, and had shellfish! Which I hadn't had since leaving the United States due to the Kashrut of this program. Later that evening we headed back to the synagogue for Shabbat services and then had dinner at the community center there (the food was quite terrible).
Day 7: Shabbat morning. We walked back to shul for morning services. Some of the male members of our group were reading Torah. (This synagogue was an Orthodox Sephardic community with a mechitza). Following services we had lunch at the community center, then had time to do as wished, followed by Havdalah back at the hotel, then dinner back at the community center, then the night was ours to spend as we wished. Honestly one of the things I'm going to remember about Thessaloniki was the number of times we walked back and forth between the hotel and the synagogue.

Day 8: We woke up, packed up our bags and prepared to leave Thessaloniki. On our way out we stopped at a Byzantium architecture museum an a Greek archeological museum. The Greek archeological museum was much more interesting than the former, it had all of this ancient gold jewelry that was incredible to look at. From there we went to the Old City of Thessaloniki and looked over the city and the ocean from an overlook.

Views From the Old City

From there we visited the Holocaust memorial in the main square of downtown. The sad thing about the memorial was that it was next to a parking lot. There was much attention given to it by anyone in the city, and most people don't even know it exists. It was truly a beautiful memorial, it was this metal twisted sculpture with human forms and flames, and it was sculpted as a hannukiah.

Holocaust Memorial

From there we had free time for lunch, and then we made our way to the train station to board the six hour train to Sofia Bulgaria.

Greece [and Bulgaria]: Continued

Day 4: We had spent the night in Delphi, a small town that consisted literally of two streets, most of which were cafes or hotels. We had some time to walk around the previous night, but in all honesty the time we had exceeded the amount of things to do.

Delphi

The place we went to dinner the night before was incredible. It was right across from the hotel, and they served us all of these interesting dishes including fried cheese, stuffed peppers and then this amazingly delicious desert called loukoumades which were these fried donut balls drenched in honey, powdered sugar and cinnamon. Okay, so this morning we packed up again and went to the Delphi museum and the Temple of the Oracle. The museum was pretty cool, with all these remnants and pieces from the original temple but the Temple was ten times better. It was on this sprawling hillside, and had all of these half destroyed columns and partially constructed buildings. Again the pictures can do a better job explaining then I can, and they still don't capture entirely.

Views from Around the Temple of Apollo

From there we had a picnic on another overlook in Delphi, then we headed for a very long bus ride to Metiora, where we were going to spend the next night. The goal was for us to arrive to Metiora after dark, thus eliminating the possibility of seeing the view, which we were told by Peter (the founder and director of KIVUNIM) to be unreal. Metiora is sort of like the New Jersey of Greece, very industrial and car dealership and auto shop one after another. So on this point, there wasn't anything to do in the town, so it was a pretty quiet night.

Day 5: We woke up, packed up and left (sensing a theme here?) and headed to the Metiora monasteries. The monasteries were nestled into these huge geological cliffs that had occurred after years of erosion, and earthquakes. Once again the pictures of this will speak louder than I am able, but do know that it was absolutely incredible.

The Monasteries

After the monasteries we were en route to Thessaloniki where we were going to spend the next three nights, but on the way we stopped in a small town called Veria. Veria once had a thriving Jewish population but after many years, as well as the Second World War there are virtually no Jews remaining. The current mayor of Veria has taken it upon himself to restore the synagogue there and to try and keep Jewish locations in suitable shape as a monument to the prior Jewish populations. We visited the synagogue and had a brief service (the only time the synagogue is ever in use is when KIVUNIM comes once a year) and then we went to clean up the Jewish cemetery in the town. The sad part about the cemetery is that in the sixties the town built a sports complex over the graves (there are literally graves and tombstones beneath the basketball court). There are still some tombstones along the side of the hill but the whole place was littered and unkempt. Again, every year KIVUNIM comes and cleans up the cemetery and says Mourners Kaddish. It was an eerie sort of feeling with this dichotomy of headstones and athletics on the same plot of land.

After the cemetery we headed to Thessaloniki. That night we had dinner on our own again, and we were all somewhat exhausted from the day that we went to pretty much the closest restaurant. The thing about Thessaloniki more so that anywhere else we had been to yet in Greece, was that a very small percentage of the people spoke English. It was really weird actually. I mean I knew I was in a foreign country, I mean Israel is a foreign country but the language barrier had never been nearly as striking as it was in Thessaloniki. It was a moment were it hit me, sharply, that I was in a foreign country, with a completely different culture. Which was not a bad feeling don't get me wrong. But anyways, dinner tonight illustrates this point. The restaurant we went to had zero English speaking staff, so trying to order and additionally trying to figure out what some dishes consisted of was a struggle. My goal was to not order meat (I ended up ordering stuffed potatoes, which had ham in it, I didn't eat the ham) and it was near to impossible to communicate this idea. Regardless the food was delicious. From there we headed back to the hotel, too tired to go exploring.

Greece [and Bulgaria]: The beginning

This will be one of many blog posts about my recent trip to Greece and Bulgaria. To preface the next several posts, the trip was absolutely amazing. Every place that we went to was unlike any other places I've ever been to (this was my first trip to Europe).

Day 1: We left Jerusalem as about 3 o'clock on Sunday morning (the 8th of November), in order to get the airport for a 7 o'clock flight
When we arrived in Athens we were all a bit bleary eyed, and the realization that we were in Greece hadn't quite sunk in. On our way to the hotel, our tour guide realized that today was the day of a major marathon, and the main streets (on which our hotel was located) was closed. This posed a little bit of a problem, and we had leave our luggage behind for the time being, and take the Subway to the hotel. The train station is Athens was one of the cleanest stations I had ever seen, it was quite beautiful. We finally made it to the hotel, had lunch, then walked to the Acropolis and the Parthenon. The view, the sights, the building, everything about it was incredible. It was unreal to be standing at the foot of the Parthenon, and have everything I've learned since 6th Grade came flooding back. This is when it hit me, that we weren't in the United States, or Israel. We were in Greece and we were standing at the foot of history (The pictures do not do it justice).

The Acropolis

View of Athens from the Acropolis

After the Acropolis we went to the Greek museum, then to dinner, but by this point everyone was pretty much faded from all the travel, and it was an uneventful night.
Day 2: Today we visited a couple synagogues, one Ashkenazi and one Sephardic. Both were spectacular but the Sephardic one had just been recently remodeled, and was new, and wood paneled and very beautiful.

Newly Remodeled Sephardic Synagogue

From there we went to the Jewish Museum of Athens. This museum contained the entire history of the Jews in Greece, going back centuries, dating pretty much up until the present. There was a small section on the Holocaust as well.
Background Information: Close to 90% of the Jews in Greece perished in the Holocaust. Most of them were from Athens and Thessaloniki (which we would visit later in the trip). Due to this, the Holocaust section of the museum was very somber, and was a sort of dim lit room with a lot of personal artifacts.
From the museum we went up a cable car to the top of a mountain and ate lunch over looking the entire city of Athens. Then we returned to the hotel, at which point we were on our own for dinner. I as well as some friends, on the advice of the hotel staff, went to this small family style Greek restaurant that was delicious.
Another thing to mention is that our hotel had a 9th floor restaurant that had a completely breathtaking view of the Parthenon lit up at night. So, that evening I spent some time up there.
Day 3: We packed up and left Athens, our end destination for the day was Delphi, but there were several stops along the way. First we went to Chalkida a small city about 1.5 hours away from Athens. Chalkida has a Jewish population that dates back 2,000 years. We met with two community members at the synagogue there, and they told us a little bit about the community and the congregation. Because of Chalkida's proximity to Athens many Jews in the area go to Athens for regular prayer, and go the Chalkida synagogue for High Holy Days. Due to rain, our stop at a Jewish cemetery had to be canceled and instead we had lunch on a pier in Chalkida right on the water (which was also gorgeous) and then made our way to Delphi (Home of Apollo the sun god, and the Oracle of Delphi) for the night. Along the way we stopped at this overlook, and although it was completely freezing the view was incredible (you may notice a theme, that everywhere we went to was so incredibly beautiful. I'll put pictures up, but they don't do it justice).

Skyline from overlook on the way to Delphi
City (Not Delphi) On the Side of the Hill (From the overlook)

After all my trip posts are up I will post a link to a Picassa web album with more pictures.