Lost in Translation

My posts about our recent vacation will not necessarily go up in a linear fashion as far as date goes. Some things I'm just going to post as they come to me. Like this little goodie!

In most touristy places like Greece and Italy, restaurant menus are usually written in English, French, German as well as the native language. As a native Greek speaker I'm always interested to see how certain things get translated. I like to do this with subtitled tv shows too.

Anyway, my wife and my mother and I were dining at a quaint little seaside taverna in Mitilini (see picture above)- which is the main town on the isle of Lesvos, Greece. Yes, that Lesvos. Along the harbor there are several restaurants which serve fresh seafood, grilled stuff made to order (tis oras) as well as usually a rotating selection of more complex baked items (magirefta). That's the standard model for Greek restaurants. This menu was packed with items over like 8 pages, all with fairly small print and set up almost like an excel spreadsheet. Needless to say, I had to review the menu very closely. Now normally I would be looking only at the Greek menu but since my wife doesn't speak Greek, I tend to look at the English menu with her more often than not.

Well, as we were perusing the long list of delicacies my eye came across an unusual listing. I sat there looking at it, taking it all in and then asked my wife and mom if theirs said the same thing. Much to our shock, it was. Clearly written in all caps. It read "FAGGOTS IN RED SAUSE". (Here's a picture if you dont believe me!)



Never mind the shock of what it said, what could this possibly be a translation of?!? I'm feverishly flipping back and forth from the Greek to the English to make sure I had the right item, all the while my wife in tears laughing and my mother positively horrified and planning how to point out the inequity to the proprietor. I looked and looked and then there it was. A dish with Ottoman roots called Souzoukakia. Souzoukakia are sort of elongated meatballs cooked in the oven in a kind of cumin flavored red tomato sauce with potatoes. The "...IN RED SAUSE" part they got right spelling aside, but not quite sure how they came up with the other part.

By studying the menu it's quite obvious that there are several other errors and misspellings, but none quite so perplexing. When the server woman finally came back to take our order, my mom pointed it out whispering (in Greek) [excuse me, uh, there seems to be some sort of an error here. Somehow whoever translated your menus for you wrote "faggots in red sauce" for souzoukakia. Not only does that not make sense, but they said "faggots" not "homosexuals in red sauce", which is really rude. I think someone's played a prank on you!]

If anyone has any clue how this may have occurred, please let me and your local GBLT group know.

Powerful

I love cities. Big or small, London or Edinburgh, New York or Amsterdam, I love the people, the energy and the life. What I dont like ironically enough are crowds. Like at all! I was in Venice a couple of weeks ago and about went mad being surrounded and shoved by so many tourists. It was awful!

So, what do i do to combat that you ask? Ah, behold yet another hidden treasure of the ipod. Invisibility!

My favorite way to walk around any city, whether sight-seeing, shopping or just wandering aimlessly is to have my head phones in place and my music flowing through my ears. It makes me feel completely powerful. I slip out of the rat-race and into my own world fit with my own personal sountrack to accompany the mayhem going on around me. It's totally exhilarating. I'll walk and walk and the hours and kilometers just pass by as I weave effortlessly through a sea of people, cars and buildings. Focused, centered and free.

Day 1 - NYC

On the way to Greece we had a full day layover in New York City. Rather than sit around fabulous Newark airport all day, we ventured into the city to have lunch with some friends and give my wife the chance to get the all-important pedicure.

We took the train in during morning rush hour, arrived at Penn Station and walked down to Chelsea, which is one of our favorite areas and also the home of Bloomies nails, E's favorite mani-pedi shop. We ducked into The Garden of Eden, which is one of my favorite grocery shops ever! Grocery doesn't do it justice, it's really just a tiny Euro-style market. Anyway, we popped in to get something to eat on the run, and awaited Bloomies 10am opening.

This may sound shitty, but my favorite way to spend my time in New York is by myself, walking around all day listening to my ipod. Few things in my life beat that. There's a sort of magic to the feeling of being in this hugely dense metropolis, surrounded by millions of people, yet feeling like in a world of my own with my own personal soundtrack setting the mood. It's the best. Anyway, I knew the day would go fast, so I didn't get the chance to hit may favorite shops (Barney's, Bloomindale's and Prada) but I did get to get away for a bit and walk down to one of my favorite parks, Madison Square Park. It's beautifully situated at the intersection of 5 streets and anchored by the stately and timeless Flatiron Building. Here are some of my NYC pics.











The rest of the day entailed a bit more walking, a nice lunch with my wife and 2 close friends, then a mad rush back to the airport to make our 5:30pm flight to Athens.

Back from Greece

Well, we have been back from Greece since Wednesday and I am still in that hungover state where I'm constantly pondering what is it that I'm doing with my life. I've been back at work for a week already - which has felt awkward, like the first day of school and how it feels sort of uncomfortable seeing everyone.

I have also had to get our house back in order after 3 weeks of our 2 cats ruling the joint. It was a mess! Hair everywhere! Our poor house sitter made it a measley 2 days before she was defeated by her Kryptonite, which showed up in the form of cat dander.

Mostly though I've been just generally moping around wondering why I'm here. I know what you're thinking, nobody likes to come back from vacation and if the experience was great, you always think 'wow, why dont I live here, then I could be on vacation everyday!'. Well, I'm not delusional enough to think that. To me it's more of a lifestyle thing. The Greeks have a healthier work-life balance. I know what you're thinking now too 'work-life? The Greeks don't work?!?'. Well, I'm here to tell you that they do...just less than the rest of us.

While I was away, I had big plans to get back on the blog wagon and post daily with great stories accompanied by beautiful or funny pictures. Well, Greece may be great for lots of things, but internet access isn't one of them. I have much to tell, but now it must all be recounted from memory although this also allows for some creative embellsihments for anything that may have been mundane.

Anyway, I'm back, I'm unhappy and I'm ready to tell the world all about it!

Sea Bounty

Everytime I've been back to Greece over the last say 10 years, I have had a thought - really more of a regret - about a certain device that would make my Greece experience that much more "rewarding". The device that I am referring to is a metal detector.

I've spent a fair amount of time at American beaches over the years in Florida, South Carolina and Virginia. One thing that is a common sight in the morning hours at these beaches is a middle-aged to elderly male with a metal detector wearing a set of large headphones and slowly pacing up and down the coastline scanning the ground for the telltale beeps and whirrs of sea bounty. Really it's more like careless tourist bounty, with these guys seemingly always coming away with anything from pocket change to jewelry, safety pins to watches, you name it. This is finders-keepers-losers-weepers in action.

Back to Greece. In all of my 30+ years of going back to the homeland and in all the miles and miles of beaches that I've dug my feet into, I have never once seen anyone with a metal detector! The apparent lack of loot detecting equipment has naturally lead me to daydreaming my way to all the riches I could potentially fall upon if I were resourceful enough to someday bring one over with me. I envision piles and piles of gold crosses, gold kombolois (worry beads), gold watches, millions in Euros (and likely in worthless Drachmas). It's enough to make a man go mad!

Well, that time is here. For my birthday this past May, my lovely wife bought me a sweet-ass metal detector! After all the years of me painting magnificent visions of the fortune we could amass with the help of a booty buddy, she made my dreams come true! I have yet to use it as I have been waiting to let it fulfill its destiny and my dreams all at once. So, this past Monday, I packaged it all up, took it to the local post office and sent it on its merry way to my cousin's house in Greece to await my arrival in a few weeks.

The only thing worrying me now is putting all my hopes of financial indepence in the hands of the Greek postal service. I need my komboloi!

Nose Hair Trimmers

I've mentioned before that I am by education a designer of products. In my field, one of the things that we do quite frequently is what's called a "product landscape audit". This is sort of fancy industry jargon for going to stores and looking at stuff. I really enjoy product landscape audits.

I could actually write alot about this sort of activity, if only because it is one instance where I have found a common sweet spot that satisfies both my soul and my bank account. I will save that for another time and really just talk about one thing I find funny, nose hair trimmers.

First off I'm completely blown away at the number of makers and variations of these magical little grooming devices. Pretty impressive. Wow, this one does nose hair AND ear hair, awesome! They're truly technological wonders that our foerfathers would likely have fought wars over.

Why is it though that typically, when you look at the picture of the guy on the package, you dont see that glee conveyed? Is he not super stoked to finally not have a second mustache creeping out of his nostrils? Are these little mechanical friends not also the saviours of the tear inducing hair pluck? Take a look at these pictures and see for yourselves.



or




These guys seem more frightened than empowered. Maybe it's just extreme concentration. Who knows?

Here are a couple of my favorite versions though. The 1st one appears to have a glowing end that will light its way into your sinuses. The second one, well....look for yourself. Well summed up.

Connections

Our trip plans are now complete! This might not sound like much of an achievement, but what many may not realize is that when I say "yeah, we're going to Greece" getting there is only the beginning.

Greece may be on the Euro and Athens new airport may have been voted tops in all of Europe, but my homeland is not too many years removed from antiquity (more like antiquainted). That is most apparent on Greece's national airline, the majestic Olympic Airways. The clerks still smoke at their desks. The flight attendants still wear the same uniforms that they were issued in 1963. And most annoyingly, if you wish to fly to any island or city in Greece, you MUST fly through Athens! That means that although far more time efficient than taking the boat, you'd never be able to go from say Limnos to Chios (which are fairly close to eachother) without going via Athens. Crazy! What this also means is that you have to buy all these tickets pretty much a la carte which really adds up.

So, with family scattered all around Greece, getting to Athens is only the beginning. One of the funny things about that is that it can actually be cheaper in some cases to fly to another country altogether! And that's exactly what we're doing! Rather than go to Corfu to visit yet another cousin, my lovely bride and I are taking a 3 day side trip to Venice. We sort of figured that since Venice is slowly sinking into the Mediterranean, we only have a finite amount of time to actually see it. I hope the Italians there are friendlier than the lady who works at the pizza place at the Rome Airport that we always seem to run into. She's not so nice.

While I'm excited to see Venice, the canals, the architecture and the gondolas, I have to say, what I'm really excited about is getting to go to a Prada store and a Diesel store IN Italy! They MUST be better!