Το φιτρί αγόρι (colourful life)

Perhaps continuing with BIG things (no, I’m not going to remove my trousers). Today I’d like to introduce my best job in the kitchen that didn’t burn: The Spanish omelet with 6 eggs, milk and the two biggest potatoes we could find made in a frying pan with 28cm diameter. Of course as and always, it was made with teamwork: Stella and me. Yep, I’m not able to flip that big omelet by myself.

As always the frying part is a bit complicated because you have to put much oil for that amount of potatoes. Therefore, not always you fry the potatoes right, some of them are hard and some of the ok. But this one got the right amount of oil, the potatoes got the taste of the olive oil, and got fried perfectly. We used the technique of “flip the frying pan”, to be able to flip the omelet. It lies in flip the frying pan to match the dish with the omelet and flip both together (something like in a movie).

The reason to make this omelet was Stella’s birthday. Now she is <censored> years old. So we prepared the house and some food for the people: omelet, pasta with cheese, cake, salty stuff, sangria and other things I’ve forgotten. Now its time to wash the dishes. Uf!, the stack is not big, but it scares me.

After waiting more than 30 minutes for the menu, we received this “blanket” in the restaurant. It was a small restaurant in a village near Patra. The place is just in the limit with the sea, and it has beautiful views. And everything they have there is BIG. Starting from the BIG menu, big salads, big dishes, big everything.

The prices are not bad, a big salad is 6 euros, but the salad is for you and 5 friends more. You can have a meal with that salad!. But the even if in a restaurant the most important is the food, here you can enjoy with the views thanks to the location near the sea. You can feel the waves hitting 1m near you. And of course, smell the salty air typical from the beach. I forgot the name of the restaurant, so I can only give you a picture

For a student who lives in a flat with no so many tools to cook, not so many time to spend cooking, and the most important: with no so many “energy” to cook (yep, I’m lazy). For a person who fulfil those characteristics the student restaurant is the best place to eat healthy and cheap.

The first is cheap, beacuse you can eat for 2 euros or 1 euro with a 15 days luncheon voucher. That’s in Irakleio, in Patra you pay 1,9€ and you can have lunch and dinner, free salad an fresh water (from the tap). In Irakleio you have to pay for a bottle of water, there is no tap, and you can only pick one salad and a piece of fruit.

Healthy. Not so many people can say that the food from the student’s restaurant is healthy. It’s not always good, and some days it s***s. But you can find fish, vegetables and other things that your mother told you to eat and you always forget to buy in the supermarket

Well, to finish, the picture was taken in one of those “Apple Lover” moments one have every day. As you can see my skills with the knife are not very good, so I will not open a shop selling that stuff. But it’s something funny

If you don’t know what HDR is, check this link to wikipedia. The first time I heard about HDR, someone showed me an image over saturated and I had to ask what was in the image, because I couldn’t recognize what was that. After that I forgot about HDR, until I saw this pictures on Flickr and I started to realize that perhaps I could make nice pictures using that technique.

I don’t have a tripod here therefore I used the old trick of “don’t move the f****** camera”, and I went near Patra’s harbour to get the sunset near the sea. In Patra the sky turns pink, its very nice, but can a digital camera take that moment? Only “a bit”. Here I leave my 2 first picture using HDR and “potochop”.

Today (May 16th), I arrived to Patra to visit my friend Stella. Travel around Greece it’s not very difficult, there are always buses, and some times trains. But the most difficult part is to escape from the island (Crete, of course). The weather in Crete is nice, and in Irakleio you can find whatever you want, but, an island is small, and in the mainland there are always things to do and friends to visit.

So on May 15th, at 7:00pm, I started my trip to Patra to visit my friend Stella (the one in the picture). First I have to arrive to the harbour (λιμάνι). It seems easy, just pick the line 1 from my home, but its not very easy to go by bus with a big backpack, and two bags in your sides, and even less when the bus is full of people and you cannot pass form the entrance. In 3 stops I got a chair, and at least I was sat during the horrible traffic jam of every Tuesday. Because in Greece not every day the shops open in the afternoon. Tuesday is one of that days, so the afternoon is a Nightmare. I don’t know how can you put so many cars in an island. Another guy and me tried to scape from the bus in the middle of the traffic jam, but the “nice” bus driver said “oχi”, and if a driver says no… its no. So it took me 1 hour to reach the bus station.

Bus station? Yes, I took a trip Irakleio-Patra So you go to the bus station and you buy the tickets for the ship and for the bus. You go out, put your luggage in the bus, and go to the ship. The bus will travel with you in the ship and it will be waiting for you when your journey through the mediterranean sea ends. The trip Irakleio-Pireas (Athens) was strange, not so many people in the cafeteria (usually is full), but lots of people sleeping in the seats (usually you can find a place). I didn’t sleep to much. First I tried in the cafeteria, but the lights and a f****** phone ringing. Then I tried in the seats, but there was I guy snoring as loud as hell.

When the trip finished I went to the “balcony” of the ship to see how it manoeuvres. I don’t know how they can control such amount of floating steel with so many precision. I took the bus just 20 meters from the ship and tried to sleep but, I was hungry. The last time I took that bus to go to Ioannina it stopped in the same place when I went and when I returned. But today it didn’t stop. So I started to think “I’m not hungry, I’m not hungry…”. It didn’t work, but I least I spent my time with that and listening to the eurovision songs.

I arrived to Patra at 9:15am. And the adventure began. First find a taxi. I got off the bus and went to pick my luggage. I found a little girl trying to pick two huge suitcases. She was asking help in greek, but nobody helped her. So I offered myself (yes, Spanish gentleman). The people there was so rude that a guy pushed me away when I tried to pick my backpack. Like “hey, go away”. I got it and I asked the little girl about where to pick a taxi. She told me that she also wanted to pick a taxi, and that perhaps we could share the cost. We were going to the same street! Strange day. It was impossible to find a taxi in the small bus station, and we picked the luggage and run to a supposed taxi stop with one taxi without a driver (he went for a frapé). At 9:40 we picked a taxi with another guy, and we headed to the TEI and surroundings.

The girl was running to give an exam. First she had to leave her luggage and then go to the exam at 10:00. It was impossible so we agreed that she will stop in the TEI (like the university), and I and the taxi driver will met her friend and give her the luggage. We arrived to the street, but we didn’t find anyone. I fact we looked in the wrong place, but with my limited Greek knowledge I couldn’t do more than wait in the middle of the street with the luggage. I decided to wake up my good friend Stella and put all the stuff in her house.

Nice adventure today. The girl arrived after her exam and me and Stella went to the supermarket and to visit some of her friends with her scooter (σκουτερακι). Now we’re watching a program about the weight loosing industry mafia in Greece. Some reporters with hidden cameras had made a good work that deserves to be seen.

Καληνυχτα!

If you use a MAC, for sure you have given a name to that special key with an apple. Its like the control key in Windows, but with its own style: apple+c to copy, apple+v to paste, and so on and so forth. In Spanish I use to say “manzanita” that means little apple. I thought it was typical from the Spanish language, that in other languages will be something or standard like “apple key” or strange and you cannot imagine. Until you arrive to Greece and you listen to μηλαράκι (milaráki).

Apple in Greek is μήλo (mílo), and Greece is the country of “I’d want a little bottle of little water, little please”. Everything is cute and little. So for the magic apple key, they had to say… little apple. Now I know how to say apple I cannot forget that, because if a Greek friend asks me about how to copy&paste in my computer, I say “press μηλαράκι…”

Time to leave to visit a teacher and download the last ep. of Heroes. I’m addicted.

In Greece you can find lots of animal kinds. But in the TEI there is a special fauna, well I guess all around Crete, but the TEI has a special road that goes up and it have nice turns to do μαλακίες (malakies). There you can find the typical cretan driver, called also μαλάκα (malaka). They drive cars, motorbikes and buses. And in this picture you can appreciate the wildness of two of those animals when they met.

The bus is in the middle of the road, almost entirely in the opposite way, invading the lane. In the other side, you can see a car trying to get out its parking space. Why the bus was going through the other lane, and why the car driver didn’t take a look ahead, nobody knows. We know from our Greek history lessons that when you want to cross a road, you have to look left, right and up. ¿Up? Yes, for the flying motorbike.

It wasn’t a big crash, only the wheel of the car was damaged, and the bus was like new. But that stopped the traffic to and from the TEI for 15 minutes for the rest of the buses, not for cars because the bus was so much in the other lane that almost all the cars were able to pass. And of course, like in Spain, lots of people watching (even me). I don’t know if I was risking my life taking this picture but… here is it

Did I drive here? Yes, I did. In Athens, going down a road like in Tokio Drift but without drifting and shit-scared because the road had no protections in the limits and we were in a mountain. Also the car was very wide for me (Audi A4), and the road was not very wide. Driving with the fog and long distance lights. One of the normal lights was broken (very common here). The way down the road was ok, and the highway was ok, the problem was in the city. You don’t have to stop at the STOP sign, other drivers can “eat you”. And of course, you have to go as fast as possible, if not, suddenly a car will overtake you without any warning: no lights, no horn. And that happend: a car tried to go out from a street to my street, it put half of the car in my lane, I avoided it, and at the same time a car overtook me and we almost “kissed” our side mirrors. But, I survived!!!!! Im alive!

Moral of the story: If you drink, don’t drive. And if you live in Crete.. watch out!!!!

I don’t know how many years passed since the last album from Linkin. Well, I know if look for in in wikipedia: about 4 years. I downloaded the single weeks ago, “What I’ve done”, and at first I didn’t like it. But I gave it another chance and I ended listening to it again and again. The same happened with the album; the first time was something like “WTF is this”. And now its playing again and again in my iPod.

Is it good? Yep, but for me its because its different. Of course you can find Chester shouting and tearing apart his voice, but, not as the Nu-Metal I knew. It has slow songs, and very very beautiful lyrics. In fact the first thing I did is to download the lyrics to be able to enjoy the first play with them, and reading them I though: “its gonna be something good”.

To finish, lets put one song I like: “In Between”

Let me apologize to begin with
Let me apologize for what I’m about to say
But trying to be genuine was harder than it seemed
But somehow I got caught up in between

Let me apologize to begin with
Let me apologize for what I’m about to say
But trying to be someone else was harder than it seemed
But somehow I got caught up in between

Between my pride and my promise
Between my lies and how the truth gets in the way
The things I want to say to you get lost before they come
The only thing that’s worse than one is none

Let me apologize to begin with
Let me apologize for what I’m about to say
But trying to regain your trust was harder than it seemed
But somehow I got caught up in between

Between my pride and my promise
Between my lies and how the truth gets in the way
The things I want to say to you get lost before they come
The only thing that’s worse than one is none
The only thing that’s worse than one is none

And I cannot explain to you
In anything I say or do or plan
Fear is not afraid of you
Guilt’s a language you can understand
I cannot explain to you in anything I say or do
I hope the actions speak the words they can

For my pride and my promise
For my lies and how the truth gets in the way
The things I want to say to you get lost before they come
The only thing that’s worse than one is none

For my pride and my promise
Between my lies and how the truth gets in the way
The things I want to say to you get lost before they come
The only thing that’s worse than one is none
The only thing that’s worse than one is none
The only thing that’s worse than one is none