Parade Silliness

Hello to all my faithful readers! How's it going? All is well on my end of things. I'm going to Berlin on Saturday so I'm rather psyched about that.... I also got to go to Xanthi for a parade in celebration of Clean Monday (start of Lent in the Greek Orthodox church). Xanthi is a town northeast of Thessaloniki (for the curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthi).

We took a 5 hour train ride north east from Thessaloniki on Sunday morning at 7 a.m. which wasn't too bad. It was only 7 Euro (approximately $8.75) for the trip there. We had "standing room" only seats though, which basically meant that we could sit down until someone came along with the actual seat numbers we had taken and kicked us out. That didn't happen until about 3.5 hours in to the ride so I only had to stand for 1.5 hours!

The parade was crazy! Energetic and silly are the best words to describe it. Confetti is thrown from all people all the time at everything and everyone! Other people were spraying silly string and something that looked like foam (I'm still not really sure what it was). The people in the parade come at your face if your standing near the barrier and put streaks of paint on you. The whole parade was basically a bunch of people dressed up in silly costumes dancing down the street. There were "sections" and they each had a particular costume set. I think these sections may have been community clubs and organizations, but I couldn't read any of the signs (they were all in Greek).

There was a group of the squirrels from Ice Age, a group of beer, a group of pirates, princesses, Indians, smurfs, raggedy Annes & Andys, something that I think was supposed to be Mary Poppins and the Chimney Sweep guy, hippies, and many other random things that I can't even remember any more. Each section had what appeared to be the designated "male" and "female" counterparts per each costume. For example, the princesses were with princes. The fun part of it was that not all males wore the male costumes nor did all females wear the female costumes. It was totally random. Also, most of the people in the parade were drinking and smoking. Many just had a bottle of wine in their hands. So I thought that was rather interesting... It is definitely a family event! I love the Greeks...

It was hard to get any good pictures at this parade because there were just too many people and it was random craziness the whole time. But I got a few.

The only other excitement at the moment is that I am starting to plan my spring break! Another girl and I are going to travel together, mostly taking the train through much of the European countryside. We're going to fly to London, then Dublin, then from there go to Barcelona, Paris, Geneva, and lastly Venice. The problem with Greece is that it is expensive to travel outside of Greece but once we're out in Western Europe, travel becomes cheaper. I'm taking a flight from London to Dublin on Ryan Air for $5. Seriously, 5 US Dollars TOTAL taxes and all. I'm pretty psyched about that! I've heard so much about Ryan Air and I really wanted to give it a try but they don't fly any where near Greece!! For those who do not know, Ryan Air is known for SUPER CHEAP flights around Europe and is a popular choice for many college students.

That's the news from this end of the world. It's starting to warm up a bit here, so that's nice. Hope all is well back home.