My trip to Greece

After the stop-over at Zurich (Switzerland/Schweiz) from Nuremberg (Germany), we took the flight to Athens (Greece), which flew over a bit of Italy, Croatia, Macedonia, et al and it took around 2 hours to reach that place. Greece is usually very hot in the summer and mild in the winter. At this time of the year, it is usually mild (or a bit hot), but we were anyways worried because, the last week, there was a surprise for Greek folks as it snowed and disrupted the normal life. It usually doesnt snow in Greece. So, it was surprising or a bit shocking news. I always wondered how countries with certain climatic conditions will cope up (in terms of infrastructure and other normal activities) when the nature shows its fury or the climatic conditions show abrupt change. So, this was an example, apart from the similar kind of thing that happened in China, recently.

The trip to Greece was for a couple of days and so, I had no plans for rushing up and looking around places. By the way, Greece is also under the 'European Union' and has 'Euro' as its currecy (although the cost of living is different from Germany or any other countries with good economy). Here are some pics that I took when the flight was about to land at Athens

Greece is bordered by 'Aegean Sea' on the East, 'Sea Of Crete' on the South and 'Ionian Sea' on the West. The rest of the boundary is shared by Albania, Macedonia and Bulgaria. In the above pics, I guess the sea that you see in the pics, is the 'Aegean Sea'. 

The trip to Greece was particularly special because, the memories came flooding back from the childhood (when I was in school)..specially the history classes and all the names of famous Greek people like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, et al. Also, not to forget 'Troy', the famous 'Trojan War', Achilles, Paris and sundry other characters. The history of 'Troy' and 'Trojan War' belong to Greece although the location of Troy is said to be in Turkey (at the Greek border), in the present day. As for the history classes, I was always interested in reading history stuff, but not studying and remembering all those dates pertaining each and everything. But after travelling enough around Europe, I feel like stuffing a lot more info on all these things, as its interesting and a learning experience. Greece is also said to be the place, where the European history began (being one of the oldest civilizations).

Coming back to my trip details, we landed at Athens airport (which is nothing special) and took the metro to the main train station in Athens, which took us an hour, because the aiport is located outside the city (but in the Athens metropolitan region). After that, we checked into our respective rooms in the hotel and since I was tired and it was late anyways, I dozed off, looking forward for the next day.



The next day, we took the metro train from the nearest station to some old parts of Athens and walked around that place. There are some typical markets and shopping centres in/around some old parts of Athens. These markets somehow have some kind of aura (or maybe because its totally new and different for me) and was interesting to look at some souvenir shops, musical instruments, etc stuff. Also, with the narrow lanes and typical music, it somehow resembled a bit Arabic in style. Infact, there's a bit of influence from Arabic and African stuff, because its close to Arabic countries and Africa. Also, because of a lot of immigrants (legal and illegal) from those places. I also got to know that there are a lot of immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh (many of 'em being illegal immigrants, who came for greener pastures). After a bit of window-shopping and looking around, I bought a chess board with old Greek characters as players (So, Alexander's gonna be my Horse..haha). Here are some pics from that place:

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