This is the map I went by
Posted on 09/27/2005 10:05:14 AM PDT by NYer
No Greeklish this time, so whatever you did worked.
You know what they say -- a Mac makes everything easier for you...
The only way to post Greek on FR is to call it "symbol" in the HTML tag because FR won't recognize a true non Latin alphabet but will recognize "symbol" (tip of the hat to Kosta). Symbol is in Windows; maybe it isn't in a Mac?
I have Symbol but it does not appear in the postings.
It looks fine. "Echo dikio" is Greek, the rest English on my IE.
small Greek village
My familiarity with Greek comes from a Greek communist exile in Bulgaria who gave me lessons (in modern Greek); a year mixing concrete by hand around Lavrio Attikis; a year selling souvenirs at the Plaka and books at Efstathiadou book shop on Academias, both in Athens. And jabs at the Agia Graphe here on the Religion forum. So if I sound like a Peloponnese fishermen, that is the reason: poor, haphazard education interrupted by hard labor (sobs, fades away).
Slivovitz!
From what I hear, the Antiochians have put a stop to some of the EO's wilder tendencies. Metropolitan Phillip will only tolerate so much.....
Of Course, being ROCOR, my branch of Orthodoxy has NEVER approved of such goings on :)
hehehehe :)
Sorry, I could never use a computer named after a piece of FRUIT! :)
Once you are in the text edit window type the following exactly as it appears here:
Then click on "Preview". You should see "Petrosius" written in Greek in the center of the window.
Unfortunately, the "Symbol" set does not contain the Greek "s" at the end of the word byt only "s" or any of the accent/expiratory/inspiratory markings.
Ooops, I goofed...please go to the Private Mail.
The slivovits is known as slivova rakia. There is also grozdova rakia, -- grappa. Bulgarian version of ouzo is known as mastika.
The communist teacher had loosely fitting false teeth which gave his explanations a somewhat mysterious flavor: -- Trogo, I devour. Xanatrogo, I devour again. I wonder if he is alive. He is probably still petrified that the "junta" will catch him in his Sofia apartment.
The souvenir shop was closer to the Syntagma end of the area. I don't remember the streets. It was a respectable looking square with cafes and fur shops. We had "fox" rugs, very authentic blackfigure vases and alabaster kitsch. The Tower of the Winds was a few blocks away. Is Metropolis where the train stops? It is the opposite end then.
In my time Athens were inundated with Poles. I knew exactly one Russian, legal, married to a Greek. I was treated like a space alien.
Lavrio refugee camp had a large number of Iranians, and peshmerga Kurds of varous hues of red, who had Marxist shrines and knife fights (they must be now our staunchest allies). The runaways from the Soviet block were a floor in the Iranian building. The Bulgarian gang I hung around with were mostly Bulgarian Turks escaping Zhivkov's bulgarization campaign. In Greece they discovered that their newly given by Zhivkov Christian names came handy too, as no one would hire them as Turks. I am sure that now, with the impending membership of Turkey in the EU, such prejuduce is a thing of the past.
One guy had traveled in the wheel assembly under a freight train. Another had crossed rivers, barbed wire lines, and a mine field. All had a good sense not to surrender to police in Northern Greece and to get as far south as they could manage, walking or hitch hiking. Bulgarian authorities were known to reward Greek villages along the border with cattle for returned fugitives.
We had no work permits, so to get any cash at all one had to do day jobs. Mostly construction. I dug ditches, planted light poles, cleaned up junkyards, helped sell watermelons, and then got hired to take care of a beach in Punta Zeza. Next year I migrated to Athens and discovered that shops would hire me for my English. It was fun time.
I should take Ann and the kids and go visit Greece one day.
" Is Metropolis where the train stops? "
No, you're thinking of that square down by the train station in Monastiraki. I think you were right near the place I'm talking about, where the Cathedral is. The fur shops are quite nearby and Syntagma is just up Ermou from there.
"In Greece they discovered that their newly given by Zhivkov Christian names came handy too, as no one would hire them as Turks. I am sure that now, with the impending membership of Turkey in the EU, such prejuduce is a thing of the past."
Uh, nope!
"We had no work permits, so to get any cash at all one had to do day jobs. Mostly construction. I dug ditches, planted light poles, cleaned up junkyards, helped sell watermelons, and then got hired to take care of a beach in Punta Zeza."
That's still the way it is for most immigrants there, legal or otherwise. The conversion to the Euro has meant great things for most Greeks, but for day laborers of any ethnicity it has been a financial disaster. They simply can't earn enough in a day to make, even working in the gray labor market.
"I should take Ann and the kids and go visit Greece one day."
You really should...and you won't recognize the place. Athens has actually become not only clean, but truly beautiful.
And then left. I think is is not far from Adrianou and Mnesikleous.
You were about two, maybe three blocks up the hill from the Cathedral. Mnesikleous, I think, actually runs into Metropolis Square at the bottom and Adrianou runs about one block behind the Cathedral. Doesn't Mnesikleous run up almost to the Acropolis from Plaka?
This is the map I went by
There was no need for them to escape Bulgaria. They were given the option of going back to Turkey if they did not want to "become" Bulgarians.
They just didn't want to go to Turkey, because Turkey sucks for the lack of a better word. That's like Albanians who were flocking illegally into Kosovo for decades under Tito's regime in Yugoslavia, because the Serbian "repression" was a lot more attractive than Hoxha's Albania.
So, you were Russian Orthodox living in Bulgaria, then found your way into Greece, then decided that Orthodoxy is not your fancy? Did Greece have anything to do with that?
All of us who came from that part of the world did manual labor. I worked in Canada on construction and realized that selling encyclopedias was not something an immigrant from communist countries should so, although commissions sounded really great, but the mindset and the language were not helping.
My brother worked in a steel factory, shoveling pretty much what one could call "dung". He used to quip that when he was in the "pit" doing his work, in chemical suit and gas mask, he realized he can't go much lower, so he found hope in that misery because, as he said, "from the bottom one can only go up". And he did. He went on to become a doctor and do a lot of good, God bless his soul.
You got it, my friend. If one stands in front of the Cathedral with your back to it, diagonally across the square to the left is where that Zacharoplasteio is. When I'm in Athens, that's where I go for my morning coffee, light up a Karelia and assume an air of Hellenic disdain!
I found religion and converted several years later in the States. I was baptized into Orthodoxy as an infant but never had a Christian upbringing. My mother was repectful and curious about religion, but not a practising Christian. We had a collection of icons though, and I grew up among artists and icon restorers. At least one of them is now a working iconographer and is in demand. Funny thing is, he is a Spaniard who converted to Orthodoxy.
The Turks were never viewed as foreigners in Bulgaria. Entire regions are Turkish and have been for centuries. The bulgarization campaign was completely out of character in Bulgaria, just another idiotic communist government program of citizen harassment. It was not just about names and dresses, -- the government goons would just enter houses and loot stuff.
I hasten to add that to the extent that a similar harassment program was aimed at the Gypsies, it was popular. Those people are thouroughly and apologetically hated. But the Turks were, generally, respected.
I was not complaining about manual labor at all, other than in jest. I loved every minute of it.
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