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.