This book originally lent to me by Orestis from uni. In fact, if I recall correctly, he’d borrowed it from someone else first. In a weird twist of fate, I have become that shadowy person responsible for lent books gone AWOL. The person everybody loves to hate.
It’s not hard to get what this book is all about: it’s 366 maps that are much more infographics about human life on Earth than they are maps.
Greece doesn’t rank high in almost any of these expected or unexpected lists and their respective cartographic representations, apart from the follwing two, which stuck out for me—links are to the book’s source website, Worldmapper, which contains all 366 maps included in the publication for your viewing pleasure).
“The Asian regions (Southern Asia, Eastern Asia, Asia Pacific and Japan) are where 65% of mopeds and motorbikes are driven. Mopeds are less powerful than motorbikes, having slower maximum speeds because of their smaller engines. Some mopeds can also be pedalled. This form of transport has an advantage over cars in that motorised bikes can be taken on narrow roads and paths. On the other hand the rider is more vulnerable to injury.
Malaysia and Greece have more than one motorbike / moped for every five people. Considering that some people will be too young to drive, this could be one bike per three people in the relevant age group.”
If this book could have always up-to-date info, and not stuck in 2008 at best, it would earn its 5 stars. But I’m sorry review, I’m afraid I can’t do that.
Once again, I feel so relieved someone else did the more descriptive, general write-up for me. *dons sunglasses, throws self in hammock set up between chestnut trees*
The youth exchange we were preparing and waiting so much took place in Rijeka on 6-17 October. 30 young curious and talented people from Croatia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, and Spain came to learn, act and have fun. And they did it!
The aim of Grow Creative is to empower young people to be successful and creative, to find their dream jobs. The participants went deep inside to discover their inspirations and values, and they flew high to share their dreams and plans for the future. They worked hard morning through evening to enhance their problem-solving and communication skills, and even tried themselves as entrepreneurs.
Many things were happening every day. We learned some NLP and coaching tools, and had many interactive presentations and discussions.We played different roles,and had new exercises and energizers every day.Many activities were created and led by the participants. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us!
We used many different ways of communication, mingling and cooperation. Our mutual understanding and unity reached ones of its highest peaks during the cultural evening. Each country presented the best of its culture: artistic performances, traditional dances, national habits,and delicious cuisine. And we saw creativity boosting! Altogether it made the event so intense, exciting and remarkable.
All these 11 days Dharma Hostel was our home, sweet home. It provided us with beautiful Adriatic Sea view, comfortable rooms, vegetarian food, yoga classes in the morning, and very friendly and hospitable staff.
We also went out to explore Rijeka, and it was a lot of fun with some unexpected discoveries and surprises.
Sometimes the things were not easy, and we needed support of each other. Sometimes we went out of our comfort zones, but always came back to our Cozy Area. And eventually team work proved that everything is possible, we got impressive results and had a great time together!
Thank you to all the participants for making this exchange so special and inspirational. We hope to see you again and wish you beautiful adventures ahead.
And here we go, ready to take off with new projects and ideas!
My remarks:
Everybody set challenges for themselves during the training. Mine was “move and function from love, not fear”, inspired/taken/stolen from the phenomenal book I read a few months ago already, Conversations With God
All in all, I found this exchange very motivating and inspirational. I had the distinct feeling it was just what I needed, the right thing at the right moment together with the right people etc. The Greek team, the Spanish guys, the Czechs, the Croatians and the EVSers working with them, българите…There was a lot of synergy in the group and we bonded faster and stronger than I expected—though this feeling is a typical high you get during youth exchanges and one that unfortunately doesn’t last that long once they’re over. I’m still trying to figure out whether that feeling is artificial compared to “normal” intimacy with people. Maybe it’s just our society and way of life that have taken so much out of plain old human connection.
Anyway, I felt great clarity when I was envisioning my future and describing my present situation, my place in life and where I wanted to be. I felt amazingly relaxed letting out the words but not caring whether they would come to pass, or even if anybody would understand; I realised that whatever happens will be right, if only I focus on what I want my life’s meaning to be, so to myself as to the people I meet on the way. No, scratch that actually. No matter what you do, no matter what happens, everything will be alright. Including, I don’t know, the destruction of the Earth itself.
One such moment of touching core meaning was was when I gave a half-hour workshop on the Enneagramto the group and it went super smoothly. Almost nobody had heard of it before, and it resonated with a greater part of the group than I had expected. It felt right and in fact I received positive reinforcement in everything I attempted to do differently, as related to coaching (a big point of focus of Grow Creative in general) and working with people.
The feedback I get during exchanges is so different from what I’m used to hearing in “everyday life” that I must admit I find it addictive, scary and thought-provoking in equal degrees. Many people in Grow Creative found me and what I had to bring to the team—the Enneagram, the games, my honest sharing, my attempts to be an active listener and competent talker—“inspiring.” I was just making a point to be moving from love, not fear. And it made everything so much easier, so much prettier. Opening up and, as cliché as it sounds, letting go—that is, letting go of who you want others to think you are—felt good in a very pure sense.
That said, I can’t recall the last time anybody in Greece called me inspiring. Apparently, I project quite different personalities to the people I’ve known for a long time, who have certain expectations of me, and to those I’ve just met. Quite contrary to what used to be the case, I’ve become much more eager to meet and get to know new people, and find it increasingly harder keeping up with older friends, acquaintances, relatives… I like to think it’s because of expectations and that it’s impossible to make everyone happy, in other words, “best just to avoid having to deal with expectations entirely”... But could it be another sign of my underlying need for infinite novelty? Well, in Grow Creative, for the first time in a long while, I felt as if I took the first step in getting over that too. But maybe not, either, and it’s not very important, really.
A big thanks to the Life Potential team who scored big with their first exchange.
Και άλλες φορές που ήμουν έτοιμος να το κάνω και δεν το έκανα, του Έλικα πάλι ήταν το ποστάκι.
Αυτό καθαρά για το γαμώτο του “shit’s getting real”. Welcome to the 21st century, when human kind first learned that the kind of life the “developed world” enjoyed during the end of the 20th was an illusion, a fluke, not the “end of history”, nor the beginning of humanity’s golden age, just the temporary side-effect of it consuming its host. Καλωσήρθατε στην αποβιομηχανική εποχή!
Είναι άραγε αυτός ο όρος «δόκιμος»; Στα αγγλικά υπάρχει το deindustrial, στα ελληνικά όμως έχουμε μόνο το μεταβιομηχανικό (post-industrial), το οποίο σημαίνει μεν ότι η κοινωνία δεν είναι πλέον βιομηχανοποιημένη, αλλά υπονοεί ότι έχει αντικατασταθεί με κάτι ανώτερο.
I’m very happy to say that yesterday was the first time in my entire life I saw fireflies with my very own eyes! They were so pretty. Completely magical. I will upload the videos I took soon, although I severly doubt they will show anything that might capture even 10% of the magic of the moment.
We were in the mountains for the Latvian midsummer celebration together with – you guessed it – Latvians. A bonfire, crowns of flowers, homemade cheese, copious amounts of beer – that one not Latvian, unfortunately)and brave attempts to pull an all-nighter were made, as traditionally, if you don’t stay up to see the sunrise, you will be sleepy for the rest of the year. In Latvia it’s much easier to pull an all-nighter on that day, when the night is 3-4 hours long; in Bulgaria it was a slightly different story! At least I got to sleep in a hammock. Really, if you’re ever looking for a hippie pagan nation, Latvia is it. Great people all around.
Greece tonight also got through to the second round of the World Cup. I was listening to the match from NERIT’s webradio (I still hate that name. I wonder whether people have already forgotten what happened last year), and the moment when Samaras scored the penalty kick was one of those moments when I get why football is so well-loved around the world. I don’t really know or care if they deserved it or if Ivory Coast deserved to win instead, and neither do I believe that it means much, but I’m happy, because people in my environment are happy, even just for a moment. That’s my interpretation as far as why I wanted Greece to win. It’s not that I’m proud of the team – it’s not me who is playing – or the fact that the players are Greeks. It’s nothing like that. It’s the fact that people, other Greeks, the group of people I identify most with – for better or worse -, or one of the most important things I have in common with some of the people I’m closest to, think it’s important and are influenced by it. Or maybe they don’t really think it’s important and are like me a little bit, wanting everyone to be happy. So I want us to all be happy, even if the reason is silly and inconsequential like our national team winning a stupid game.
This is getting too complicated and I don’t have the mind to think or try to explain my thoughts. I’ll stop now.
A journalist for a Dutch newspaper wanted to do a write-up on Athens. She found me through Spotted by Locals and I volunteered to answer some questions… This is the result:
My name is in there and I can curiously understand a fair amount of the article – thanks, German – but the whole picture, apart from “cheap is cool” (something I support whole-heartedly of course) eludes me.
It was in our on-arrival training, from Nasko, that we first heard about this place, the Seven Rila Lakes:
There aren’t seven of them in this picture
but you’ll just have to trust us.
Our Lithuanian EVSer friend Rasa, who we also met on the on-arrival, really wanted to see the lakes, so she motivated us to go see them this weekend. Maria and Vicente were unavailable in one way or another, so it was Rasa, Zanda and me who set out to visit the lakes. The decision and “plans” were made only the day before. We met up near our house in Opalchenska, but then had some problems figuring out how we could: 1) make the first step out of Sofia 2) get to the lakes in the first place. Googling around for help wasn’t so useful, either… Sometimes it is like this in Bulgaria: the way to get to any given place is not so obvious, and often even Google isn’t enough for a clear answer, or, even if it is, things can always turn out to be very different in reality, as you’ll soon realise from this “little” story.
The beginning of our trip was just a taste of what was to come: we lost some time in changing buses and getting lost in the outskirts of Sofia that were closest to where we thought the bus or train station of Ovcha Kupel would be, but found no station. Somehow, mostly thanks to our luck and unexpectedly understanding hurried directions in Bulgarian, we got to Gorna Banya train station, where we got our train to Dupnitsa for 4,5lv each.
Gorna Banya railroad lady.
Picture by Zanda.
1.5 hours later, we were sitting outside Dupnitsa’s train station eating shopska salata and kartofi sas sirene (4,5lv for both), mulling over what we should do next. Our original plan for visiting the lakes, after all was said and done, was to be home not too long after sunset, because Boyan (another EVSer we met in the on-arrival who lives in Sofia) would be having his birthday party that night and we really didn’t want to miss it. It was already 2 o’ clock, however, and we had no idea how much longer it would take us to actually get to those lakes. Finally we discovered a bus to Sapareva Banya, the town closest to the lakes, and hopped on for another 1,40lv, which, contrary to all our previous experience, we paid before getting off the bus, and with no physical ticket left to us to prove it.
Obyadvam v Dupnitsa.
Composition by Zanda.
So there we were. Sapareva Banya. Home to the Balkans’/Europe’s hottest/something-est geyser (as we briefly had the chance to discover through the bus’ windows) and other hot-water-related activities – it really is a thing in Bulgaria. We were there, but the lakes were still a long way away. If you looked at our relative position using Google Maps, you’d think we were rather close, but we had to also move vertically and somehow climb that imposing mountain right in front of us… We knew there were ski lifts involved, but that was about it. We looked for help and directions in a nearby government building, where after looking around for a bitwe eventually found the guard (I had to struggle to keep a straight face while writing that). We asked him “how go seven uuuuh, lakes”, or the equivalent in Bulgarian, and he replied that there was no minibus (as we had let Lonely Planet make us think!) and that the only way up was by taxi. “Where taxi?” He pointed towards the entrance of a shop.
The “taxi” was actually the telephone number of the taxi driver, stuck on the window of the shop. We decided we would ask the man to help us call. We went back and this time there was also a woman there. When we asked her if she knew English, she replied “Deutsch!” I happily started talking to her in German (I wasn’t expecting I’d have to do that when I got out of bed that morning) and explained the situation. She called the taxi for us, offered us coffee, and warned us that the ski lifts might have stopped working soon. We agreed on the price with the driver (18lv to the ski lifts) and rode off for the 15km or so of winding road to the ski lifts.
The taxi driver was a peculiar but funny guy: in his late-thirties, wearing a Metallica t-shirt and having a Beatles song I’d never heard before playing on his taxi’s sound system. I think he misunderstood my saying at some point “mnogo barzo” (very fast): I meant that our visit to the lakes would be very quick, as a reply to something relevant that he had asked me, but he probably interpreted that as permission to start racing up the mountain. He didn’t miss a single opportunity to tell us, in a mixture of lively Bulgarian and very bad English and even German when we didn’t seem to recognise the words in Bulgarian, all about Sapareva Banya -in which he apparently had the monopoly of taxi driving- and the mountain up which we were riding the taxi. He kept repeating the words skala and kamak. At some point he stopped to show us a rock in the shape of a turtle, which when seen from a different angle also looked like a human face. Apart from that, the view was breathtakingly beautiful, on a mountain side dense with forest.
Turtle Rock
After we almost crashed on the way, we finally reached the ski lifts. It was 4 o’ clock. 2 hours before, Zanda had said that “she had forgottten there had been a winter this year”, because the weather was so warm that day, all the trees had already blossomed etc. 2 hours later, we were surrounded by snow and people were actually taking the ski lifts for their intended use. We were greeted with the announcement that the ski lifts would be working for just another half hour. That meant that we had to make the decision there and then: give up and go home, cursing our luck, or take the ski lifts and stay on the mountain for the night in a ski lodge we were assured would not cost more than 15lv per person.
We went up.
“No time to explain – hop on!”
View from the ride.
So we reached the “base camp” for exploring the lakes. But guess what? None of us had expected that our little excursion would involve getting anywhere near snow. Yeah, 2200 or so metres above sea level in March? Never would have guessed… It was still relatively warm (or should I say, not too cold) because the late afternoon sun was still shining and making everything look beautiful, but we were nowhere near prepared enough for this. Thankfully, we all had at least a jacket of some sort wtih us, but no ski boots or anything for hiking in snow. Because the other thing we didn’t really know was that in order to reach the lakes from the hotel/lodge/chalet you had to walk for at least an hour or so. We tried walking up the mountain outside the lodge in our normal shoes before it would have got got dark and found out for ourselves that it definitely wasn’t such a good idea. Still, we had great views and it felt really good climbing this winter wonderland.
What didn’t feel so good was how we had just decided to not go to Boyan’s party. People started calling to see where we were, because we had told mostly no-one that we’d be visiting the lakes, and absolutely no-one that we’d be staying there for the night, and thus miss the party. It felt bad, especially because we just knew that people would believe that we didn’t care about the party… But we had to make a choice. There will hopefully be many more parties in our lives still. Chances of visiting this extremely beautiful place, on the other hand? Hmmm… Still, even when you make choices like these consciously, you can’t help but feel a little bit of regret.
Anyway, the lodge/chalet had all of its cheaper dormitories booked, mostly by annoying little children *Gargamel face*, so we had to take the 100lv per room per night three-bed one, which we managed to haggle to 90lv. But that room… that room! Its biggest problem was the heating – or the lack thereof. Zanda even resorted to using her Russian, which I hadn’t heard her speak before and I gather she doesn’t want to as a matter of principle, to complain to the manager about it. He came to the room and “turned on” the heating, which meant making the radiator from freezing cold to pleasantly warm to the touch. Yes, our room flirted with temperatures not much higher than zero for the duration of the entire night. But at least we had a television to forget our shivers with. Switching the batteries from one remote control to the other, we managed to tune to Animal Planet – the only channel not in Bulgarian or dubbed in Bulgarian – and had baby pandas, the Summer of the Sharks and Aina the elephant lull us to sleep. Meanwhile, the other animals in the room were about to transform into butterflies in their barely warm enough blanket cocoons.
Fortunately, the next day was much better. We woke up early, had breakfast, rented some ski boots from the basement of the hotel and headed out, ready to find those bloody lakes! The skies were clear and deep blue, the snow was blinding white and deep, the view was magical… It was perfect. And then it happened: we discovered the first lake.
Pointing at it, in case you missed it.
It hadn’t seriously crossed our minds that the lakes could have been frozen. When it did, we comforted ourselves by thinking that if they were, somebody of all the people we met on the way would have told us, or would have tried to stop us from going there. But then it made sense: why would anyone want to stop us when we were showing such determination and conviction? The locals must have thought that we must have known that the lakes were frozen, and that we simply didn’t care.
An hour and a half or so after we started hiking from the lodge, we reached the second lake (we even walked over it) and another lodge next to it. There we had some tea and cherished our moments in the frozen wilderness. Yes, the lakes were frozen, but we had made it, and that was the only thing that counted.
To cut this long story short, by the time we had reached the ski lifts to begin what we thought would be the long way home, we were already happy and satisfied with the way things had turned out.
But the cherry on the cake had yet to come.
Even though we had the taxi guy’s telephone number safely in our phones, we really didn’t want to strain our wallets any further, and so preferred to try our luck with hitch-hiking all the way back, which was the original plan actually. So we signalled to the first car which was looking like it was about to leave the area of the ski lift, ran to it and asked the couple -that could have been our parents- if it would be okay for them to take us to Sapareva Banya. Not only did they take us there, they got us lunch at Hotel Panorama in Panichishte -some of the best food we’ve had while we’ve been in Bulgaria – and told us that they could also take us all the way back to Sofia, since that was their final destination as well. If they were chainsaw murderers, they kept their hobby to themselves.
Another thing that made me personally proud of our contact with this couple was that 90% of our communication with them, like in most of the trip actually, was in Bulgarian. When all you want to do is express you gratitude, you don’t care about how correct your language is; you just blurt out whatever you know, even if it’s just words, phrases, or saying mnogo mnogo vkusno, mnogo mnogo blagodarim vi!
2500g of guyvetch-y goodness for five people…
Only later did we realise that this picture
Zanda took was of the couple that would
buy us lunch and drive us back home to Sofia…
We decided that we should send it to them
to show them our appreciation.
This was our Sedemte Rilski Ezera adventure. It was a very inspiring trip to us, as you can probably tell by the length of this story and the compositions by Zanda (here’s a link to ther facebook album of our trip). For me it captured nicely the spirit of EVS and travelling in Bulgaria: international friends, looking for spontaneous adventure and a more deeper understanding of their host country, at the same time discovering all of its treasures and short-comings and that in the end it’s the people that matter the most. We might not have exactly found what we were looking for, but what we got in return proved to be just as valuable, if not more. And in the end we also got to see Boyan and tell him happy birthday, for his real birthday was two days after the party. Τέλος καλό, όλα καλά.
Oh, and another thing before I sign off that I keep having to learn again and again:
This post has been was a work-in-progress ever since I got back from France in August. A major contributing factor for this delay has been a certain game I’ve put close to 4 full days into in the past month. Another has been my enduring inability to prioritise my activities, declutter my life and put my thoughts and feelings in order. I have found that creation is what I need, a positive step in the right direction. Writing more and returning to Cubilone’s Dimension will prove to be, I hope, a step towards solving these problems. Actually, solving them sounds a bit alien; I can’t really imagine myself living without these aspects of my personality. Is this my personal story sabotaging my development? Have I made a self-fulfilling prophecy out of trying to form or carve my identity? Hmmm…
As the months pass by and my post-study period grows longer, the dilemmas grow larger and scarier and often I feel as if I’m stuck in the middle of two worlds.
The first one was that, after many years of thinking it over, I finally did my CELTAcourse, which means that I’m now an internationally certified English teacher, or at the very least I’m elligible to teach pretty much anywhere in the world. For four weeks, eight hours each day, I learned how to teach the English grammar, vocabulary, phonology, various methods, what one should and shouldn’t do… At least the basics, for it’s of course a lifelong process, as is everything. The toughest part was that my 9 colleagues and I each had to teach eight lessons, totalling six hours, which we had to plan thoroughly beforehand as well as execute the best we could in the classroom, teaching real students (who by the way did not have to pay money to learn English because it was trainees teaching them) and later receiving feedback on those lessons from our colleagues and tutor.
The Received Pronounciation phonetic alphabet.
Oh, the things I heard about my teaching! I had never taught before, at least not in this “official” sense, and it showed. I was extremely nervous, kept staring at the whiteboard while writing my nonsensical teaching aids, had great trouble explaining in simple words things like the form and function of the present perfect or the lead-in for exercises… If those students hadn’t been as accustomed to other confusing teachers before me, they would have surely performed completely different tasks half the time, which they sometimes did. The tutors were brutal with their criticism at times, but it was all beneficial in the end: it helped me realise that one of my main and enduring weaknesses has been explaining things in simple and unconvoluted words even though, ever since (I remember having the same problem as well many times before), every time I realise I’m explaining something awkwardly or maybe unintelligibly, the self-consciousness still makes it almost impossible to explain in an empathic and efficient way. This will come with experience I suppose but it was one of the most important lessons. On top of that, we had to complete one assignment each weekend, which left us next to no free time at all.
My tutors, Alexander Makarios, George Vassilakis and Marissa Constantinides were all exceptional in their own ways and did an excellent job in making me kick off my teaching career. Thank you guys! My colleagues -Vaggelis, Daniel, Ioni, Chrysanthi, Pedro, Panayota, Margie, Theo and Kelly- I grew sick of and am glad I didn’t have to spend any more time together with them. Just look how much we hate eachother’s guts in the pictures and video:
Left to right: Margie, Pedro, Ioni, Vaggelis, Dimitris (that’s me by the way), Marissa, Kelly, Daniel, Chrysanthi, Panayota, Alexander, Theo
Four weeks of hard work; at least as many glasses of wine to make up for it.
After I was done with the CELTA I was pumped to leave Greece and go teach English somewhere in the world with the coming of the new school year, preferably at a place in which I would be able to communicate with the locals in their native language. That was something that would exclude Japan -it’s a whole different chapter and dream- but would include Spain, Latin America and Germany/Austria, my B2 certificates for both languages fresh from early last summer and making me eager to get some real life experience with them as soon as possible!
But then the second thing happened.
Even before I had hugged my colleagues and tutors goodbye, desperate for some rest and some time to either think or not have to think at all, at the very least until the time I’d have to leave Greece to do my English-teaching duty, right then came the call for the Trip to Heterotopia. “For 21 days in Southern France we’re going to be a caravan visiting eco-communities, festivals, solidarity projects and groups. We will be wildcamping, so bring your tents, sleeping bags and headlamps!” At first I was very sceptical. I was tired and longed for doing nothing, as I mentioned above. It was only little more than a month since I’d been abroad last and, frankly, I felt as if I’d had enough flying around with backpacks, having to wait in airoports and making new temporary friendships, for the year at least. I reluctantly applied anyway; the idea seemed just too good to skip altogether.
To my surprise, I was actually selected, albeit at the last moment. When I talked with Chrysostomos, the head of European Village (the sending organisation) about the specifics, I warned him that my financial situation was at its usual low. He told me that all the costs together would amount to 120€. A hundred and twenty. I was shocked.
-“What’s the catch?” I thought I was being clever. “What’s the cost of participation?” -“None. We’ve decided not to have one. Our current budget allows us to handle all the costs; it will be better and more convenient than passing them down to the travellers.”
That was it. 120€ would be cheaper even than staying in Athens for the same amount of time. Dafni wasn’t too happy with the suddenness of it all (we had made various plans for August already) but she was a sweet little understanding raccoon in the end and anyway had her own plans.
So there was us: 10 Greeks, and another 15 French people in it for the three weeks of the exchange. Together we visited five different locations and stayed some days in each, did wildcamping in every place, took part and volunteered for local festivals, picked organic vegetables from the community gardens and patches, learned how to build and use dry toilets (it’s not as bad as it sounds actually), participated in workshops on eco-building and local seed trading, there even was a Greek night dedicated to the Crisis. Our flag”ship” motor vehicle was the Vagabond Sage, a retrofit ’70s coach complete with dry toilet, wind generator and solar panels. We did not use all of its features but it was the symbol of our Trip in the French Heterotopias, the utopias that really exist.
The Vagabond SageInside the Vagabond SageSelf-organisingLautrecNettle salad. Guess who helped pick it… It was delicious and the numb fingers somehow made it better.Lots of camping was had.
All pictures by Marina, Myrto and Caro (I apologise for the terrible formatting of the pictures above. The gallery couldn’t come out right. I think it’s time for a new theme anyway...)
The experience from those three weeks is hard for me to put into words, not unlike much of the rest of my life. The trip was very practical: we had to pack stuff, unpack stuff, cook most meals from scratch (and cater for close to 30 people at times), deal with stuff changing places and having to ask about their whereabouts (looking at you, coffee and coffeejugs!), set up tents, build dry toilets and showers, empty said toilets, and many more things I’m generally not good at, the cerebral rather than practical, abstract rather than present, clumsy and unwieldy person that I generally am. I was much happier sitting somewhere writing my morning pages (more on those in the near future) or enjoying the sun than really helping to prepare dinner, for example, but not being really useful filled me with guilt. I felt that this separated me from the rest of the group and made it harder for me to contribute to our common goals and tasks. Sure, learning about eco-friendly and transitional practices was heaps of fun and super-interesting; connecting with the French and the Greeks was exciting and fun and there was all this adventure and thrill of moving from place to place and exploring rural Southern France, but I always had this nagging feeling that alone I could not do this, that somehow I wasn’t the right person for it. Once again, as I have too many times before to count, I felt like the black sheep. Or rather a sophisticated, colourful goat among a herd of sheep that has none of the definite deviant prestige that black sheep usually have but instead has a certain, perhaps misplaced, idea of superiority. When that idea is threatened and attacked by no-one in particular but, at the same time, everyone at once, I can be very reclusive and pensive. I was the city kid in a group of people who lived and breathed nature, it seemed. Thankfully, there were other people in the Greek group with whom I could share the feeling.
(Video I made with Phoenix for Daphne. Phoenix is the little fox she got for me while we were in Finland. The video is in Standard Definition, unfortunately.)
At the same time, I know that what we did in that trip is important and is the future. Anything that could make me and others more self-sufficient, make us able to take our own situations into our hands, free to lead our lives as we please, is important in this age of destroyed opportunities, slave wages and fear-mongering. We had some discussions on self-reliance around our almost daily nightly fire, watched a couple of movies that inspired me to take action one way or another (more specifically Να Μην Ζήσουμε Σαν Δούλοι), but most of all it was the people who took part, with their lifestyle and their choices, that made me think and feel.
Departure day
To cut a long story short, by the time we had got back to Greece I didn’t really want to leave immediately to find a job abroad. I had this feeling that staying here in Athens might not be so futile if I can find a way to use my time actively and creatively. Additionally, I felt and still feel that there’s lots of shit I have to figure out, reconcile, get over or leave behind before I can start something new. Putting some order to my digital belongings, selling or giving away stuff, giving time and energy to learn from everything that has happened in my life recently is really what I need but keep postponing due to distractions. Part of me tells me it’s all still being lazy and that purposefully skipping the opportunity to work abroad when I had it is regrettable, not to say of suspicious motivation on my part.
What appeared instead, however, is an excellent testament to the power of serendipity and letting the flow guide your path. Even if I missed the teaching abroad deadlines, there’s a very good possibility I will still be leaving the country after all to do my EVS (European Voluntary Service). Since there’s nothing urgent to do, might as well take advantage of my extended gap years while at the same time being independent for a change.
The real big questions in my head right now have to do with what path I should follow: one focused on living in the moment, taking advantage of opportunities as they come (the EVS and YIA side), discovering the Heterotopias that exist right under our noses and applying myself to that, or the other, in which I’ll make myself more qualified for actual work (which could be in the form of a MA in Prolonged Indecisiveness) or, yes, getting money and building the foundation for future survival? Certificates or Heterotopias? Playing it by ear as I’ve done a lot lately, or gearing up for the mystical tomorrow-never-comes “adult life”, which some would argue can’t include working as an English teacher abroad? /s
I have the EU and the YIA program to thank for giving me time and time again the opportunity to flourish!
From where I’m standing at the moment, the hopefully upcoming EVS looks like it might be able to combine the best of both worlds for me: independence, creativity, new experiences as well as involving myself with things that might benefit my future options of getting by. Still, it’s too fresh to announce anything concrete. If I’m finally doing it (my application’s in the notorious EVS red tape maze right now), which I should know by December, I’ll be leaving for Bulgaria in January 2014 and will be living there for close to a year working for Sofia City Library. That will involve updating their volunteer-run blog, creating promotional media for the library and, from what I can tell, having relatively lots of freedom to pursue my own projects.
What will happen next and whether or not I’ll manage to take advantage of the months ahead will depend entirely on my own ability to balance, prioritise and purge, while at the same time not leaving the flow. OK, maybe not entirely: the current monumental instability of the world will provide us all with some interesting distractions, surprises, dangers and wild card paradigm shifts. One thing’s for sure: we already have absolutely no excuses to feel bored.
Dramatic representation of 2012 Greece (I’m tempted to say Athens). Good direction and photography, kind of corny at times, even when the subject is very dramatic indeed… still good though.
Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree
I always loved how, in the book, pop prolefeed songs are manufactured by computers; no human creativity is needed. I involuntarily recall this tidbit whenever I listen to the newest radio hit these days.
I originally read Nineteen Eighty-Four (the original title, though understandably usually shortened to 1984) in Greek a few years back. 10 days or so ago I felt a need to return to it in English and did so in audio book format, read by Simon Prebble.
They say that Brave New World describes our world much better than 1984 does, that the blissful ignorance is much more prominent in our society than 1984’s “boot stamping the human face”. I’ve always held at heart that our own dystopia in the making is the neat blend of the two: the blissfully ignorant sex, drugs and genetically determined human strata, go hand in hand with a government that is in love with power and has merely chosen this more subdued but no less effective way to prolong its ever-lasting dominion.
In this world, wars never end; the enemy is unbeatable and ever-present. Bombs go off randomly every now and again just to allow your mind to come in terms with this fact. Telescreens follow the population everywhere. Nowadays people even take little telescreens with them and have feelings of withdrawal if they are ever separated from them. Those who control the present control the past, and those who do so, do it very, very well. So well, in fact, that public opinion can be swayed one way or another in a matter of weeks or even days — so little do people actually remember, so easily do they forget. Relativism is used as the end-all be-all argument to support that might is right following sickening twists of logic: that there is no nature “out there”, thus truth is dictated by the government and the government only. A similar argument hides behind the saying “who wants to ban fascist groups is against freedom of speech and a fascist themselves!” The encouragement of doublethink, of which the above is but an example, ultimately has people holding two contradicting beliefs at the same time: “I’m not a racist, but everybody knows that our race is more advanced” or “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength”. In a similar vain, the government body that is responsible for hitting people and quenching peaceful protests is named “Ministry of CitizenProtection” and the one which makes sure that everyone starves is called “Ministry of Development”, releasing false figures to mask the facts and manipulate the masses. They are allowed to do so; there are no real laws, since the judiciary body is also controlled by the government. What about the proles where the hope for revolution lies? They’re either too busy surviving to actually think for themselves or they’re blindly consuming the “prolefeed” the party is providing them with, including of course their own propaganda.
…oh, sorry about that. I got carried away there and started describing our own living, breathing 2012.
This is definitely one of the masterpieces of the 20th century and is one of absolute favourites. It stands as a beaming symbol of the totalitarian societies of the past and of political oppression, violence, propaganda, hunger for power etc. Orwell’s vision was so ironically vivid, realistic and reverberated with so many that his name has even come through this book to stand for a whole arrangement of things that smack of real-world totalitarianism. Even if he did write it for a different world than what exists more than half a century later, it’s evident that when it comes to human societies, old loves die hard; whether it is totalitarian socialism/communism or hardcore neo-liberal capitalism, it makes little difference. The essence, displays Orwell masterfully, remains the same. Reading 1984, especially for a second time, I got the same feeling Winston, the protagonist, gets from reading a certain book in the book itself: that he had always known about these things and that he was grateful that he had found someone who could articulate them for him.
Parts of 1984 are extreme, I’ll admit. Part Three is a punch in the gut every time. I just wanted to lie in a fetal position in the corner of my room after first reading it. It is that hopeless, that horrible. I can’t believe that states like Oceania et al. could be set up and maintain themselves on force, pain and hatred alone; call it conscience, call it a belief that people are basically good, I just can’t see such a place existing. It’s too evil to exist! That said, I can’t think of a way that such a regime, if already having been set up properly, could fall, either. Not to mention that in many ways, our own world and reality is full of unnecessary evil. Who’s to say if it’s within the bounds of possibility for the next logical step in this progression of evil and imbalance to be taken?
This nightmarish inevitability hidden within, the terror of the idea that if someone really wanted to create IngSoc and Oceania, they could, is what plays with my mind and I believe with every reader’s mind. We might, like Winston, think that such a world is just a work of dystopian fantasy; if we look around us carefully, we just might realise that the absoluteness of the pain, the torture and the future being described as “a boot stamping on a human face forever” might not be such absurd ideas after all.
The owner of the boot is creating his shoelaces made of hatred and fear as we speak. What if we could create our own artificial shortage of shoelaces?
The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live by Daniel Dorling
