2015-02-25 Geography and Travel
Seminars@Hadley
Geography and Travel:
My Big Fat Greek Seminar
Presented by
Cathy Pasinski
Leila Papadacci
Bob Gardner
Moderated by
Dawn Turko
02-25-2015
Dawn Turko
Good afternoon and welcome to today’s Seminar’s at Hadley. I’m Dawn Turko and I will be moderating today’s seminar, which we’ve titled “My Big, Fat, Greek Seminar.” And I have to tell you I did chuckle when the title was sent through by today’s seminar organizer. That would be Cathy Pasinski, an instructor here at the HadleySchool.
This is one in our continuing series related to geography and travel. We’ve traveled globally a few times already, and today it’s going to be all about Greece. We’ll hear about culture and the country and of course the food.
Cathy has lined up some wonderful panelists. And I am handing the microphone over to Cathy to introduce her panelists and get us started on today’s very full seminar. As I do that, you will see popping into the messaging area of the screen something new we’re doing, which I’ll just sneak in right here.
For those of you who are on Twitter, we have a #SeminarsAtHadley in case you would like to continue the conversation about Greece or any of our other seminars through Twitter. So I’m poking that one in, and I am handing the microphone off to Cathy.
Cathy, welcome and introduce your panelists for us. I’m very excited about this.
Cathy Pasinski
Thanks, Dawn. I’m Cathy Pasinski and with me, I have my friend, Leila Papdacci. She grew up in Greece, just like myself and she works as a rehabilitation teacher for the blind in Denver, CO. Also, I have with me Bob Gardner.
I heard about Bob from a famous YouTube video among the Greek community, “Bob Goes to the Parthenon”. And I reached out to him, and he was very gracious in accepting my invitation to present about his travels in Greece. I can’t wait to hear more about that.
But first, we’re going to have Leila Papadacci start our journey to Greece. Take it away Leila.
Leila Papdacci
Thank you. Kalis peras olous- good afternoon to everyone. I want to thank Dawn and Cathy again for inviting me to be part of this. I really appreciate it.
So initially, I want to start with the physical geography of Greece. It’s located at the southwest corner of Europe. It’s east of Italy and west of Turkey. Greece is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea and it has upward of 6,000 islands in its area. It is South of Albania, Bulgaria and Armenia and north of Africa.
It has quite a few earthquakes because there’s a big rift in the Mediterranean Sea where Africa is climbing over Europe. But it’s part of the European Union, even though talks are under way whether or not they will remain in the European Union.
The topography of Greece - mainly mountainous and of course, with lots and lots of islands, as I said, around 6,000. It has beautiful beaches that have different kinds of formations; from the very fine sand to very, very rocky.
So, beaches are wonderful. You can find all sorts of different ones, from the very fine sand to black pebbled beaches or red-pebbled beaches, which are beautiful. The soil tends to be dry in the summer.
The climate usually gets very hot in the summer and in most cases it’s dry heat with temperatures up to 110 degrees Fahrenheit in July. The winter for the most part is mildly cold, even though in the last few years they have seen more snow than usual. It used to snow only in the mountains, but this winter for example it even snowed in the islands, which was quite surprising. And it can also be very, very windy. For those of you who will travel, especially in the summer time, once the plane starts reaching the airport there’s going to be quite a bit of turmoil where you hear a lot of shaking going on.
Vegetation – Greece is very rich. Its ground is very rich in minerals so it produces very tasty fruits. Even though it’s mountainous, mostly in the main part of Greece provides the most of the produce productions. We have lots and lots of pine trees in the mountains, many fruit trees like lemons, orange trees, mandarin trees, cherry, apricot, Muslim mullah, which are sort of like… I don’t know what you would call it in English. Grape vines are very, very popular in every house. They provide shade, fruit and Muslo, which is the juice of the grape from which we make wine and cookies, actually. And lots of olive trees that do provide the best extra virgin olive oil because of its very low acidity and great tasting olives.
Landforms - Greece is a very small country with around ten or eleven million people. It is actually 1/3 of the size of the state of Illinois. It’s not very big. The mainland is divided in two parts by the CorinthianGulf, which actually is not a natural formation. It’s a manmade formation because it has the Isthmus of Corinth’s.
The northern part is larger. The southern part is shaped like an upside down open hand with the thumb missing actually.
The capital of Greece is Athens, and it’s closest to the middle part of Greece I would say. The largest island is Crete, which is at the most southern part of Greece in the MediterraneanOcean; beautiful, beautiful island. If you ever get a chance to visit you should. It’s great.
Greece is divided into counties called Nomi. The local animals include lambs, donkeys, chickens, goats, cats, dogs and lots of fish and seafood. Not very many cows because it’s dry, so there’s not a lot of ground for cows to munch on.
If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer and provide you with more information. Thank you. Cathy will now talk to you about the human geography.
Cathy Pasinski
Thanks, Leila. We will have time for questions and answers later. I’m going to talk about human geography and I’m going to start with the history of Greece, which dates back to 8,000 years BC. I was looking at making a timeline of historical events and I picked some of the most important ones.
The first one would be the Trojan War that took place in 1250 BC. Of course, you can read about that in Homer’s poetic books, the Iliad and then the Odyssey, which is the sequel about one of the warriors, Ulysses, trying to get home after the war.
The first Olympic Games happened in Greece in 776 BC at Olympia, which is located in Peloponnese, the part that Lelia said looks like an upside down open hand. The birth of the Olympics happened in Greece.
The invention of the Greek Alphabet and Homer’s Iliad and Odysseus was written in 750 BC. The introduction of democracy in Athens took place at 510 BC. So we consider Greece the birth of Democracy. The Parthenon was constructed in 449 BC. It was a temple to their goddess Athena who protected the city of Athens.
The trial and execution of Socrates, like we say in Greece, happened in 399 BC. He was the first person to openly speak about philosophy and maybe the gods that they believed in might not be the actual gods. He brought questioning; he would question everything. The citizen did not like that he was stirring up new ideas especially with the youth so they decided to put him through a trial. He was found guilty and executed by drinking poison. His student, Plato started the Plato Academy of Athens in 380 BC.
In 336 BC, Alexander the Great became king of Macedonia. He died in 323 BC. Plato’s student, Aristotle, who was also the teacher of Alexander the Great, went to school at Plato’s Academy and after being a great philosopher and scientist, and they called him the father of science because he is the one that started writing everything about different levels of science and philosophy. His works are still admired today. He died in 322 BC. In 145 BC, the Roman Empire invaded Greece and spread into other areas of the known world as well.
Then we’re going to make a big jump during, they call that the dark Ages of Greece. There’s not a lot of documentation but we jump to 1453 AD and that’s when the Ottoman Empire, which is today’s Turkey, conquered the Byzantine Empire for 400 years. Before that occupation, Constantinople, that is now called Istanbul, used to be the capital of
Greece and the main area where everything was happening. But now that part is still occupied by Turkey, so it’s called Istanbul at this time.
After 400 years, in 1821 there was a Greek Independence war that started and lasted until 1832 where the people of Greece decided they could not be slaves anymore and they decided to fight back. They did gain their freedom.
The first modern Olympics in Athens came back in 1896. In 1940, we have the occupation by Italy and Nazi Germany. We have a famous story where the Prime Minister was asked by the Italians, let us come into your land. He said, No,ókhi, which is the Greek word for no. So every year on October 28th all the people in Greece celebrate that because we stopped Italy and subsequently Germany from coming in willingly. We did fight them and the fight lasted a couple of months where we could hold them back. People say that because of that period of fighting the Greeks they could not advance more eastern towards Russia in time. That’s what caused them to lose the war.
The final thing on my history timeline is the summer Olympics in 2004 that happened in Athens. I was lucky enough to go and see some of the events. It was very, very enlightening. I was so proud to be there and see the Olympics come back to Greece.
The next thing I’m going to talk about is language. The language is the Greek language. We have our own alphabet. It started in ancient Greece and it looked a little different. It has evolved now to what we say is Modern Greek.
The religion is Orthodox Christian. The whole country usually follows that religion. There’s no separation of religion and state. Since the last couple of decades, a lot of people have migrated to Greece from other countries. They do believe in their own religion. They’re allowed to do that.
The economy in Greece, I’m sure a lot of people have heard from the news it’s not as good. The currency is now the Euro, for now. It replaced the drachma in 2002. It’s been a really rough time for the past five years for Greece. They are going through an economic depression. They had to borrow 61 billion euros from the European Union and Germany to avoid bankruptcy. Now with all the interest and fees, we own more than 300 billion. It’s very difficult to repay that, so they’re still trying to figure it out. A lot of the salaries’ had to be reduced. Pensions had to be cut. They had to implement higher taxes and improve their economy. The unemployment rate is really high; it’s around 28% with the youth. A lot of the young people are trying to go to other countries to find employment.
Like I was saying before, about 20 years now a lot of people from other countries started migrating to Greece. Although we have predominately Greek citizens there’s also about 3 to 3 ½ million immigrants that come from countries like Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, China, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and countries from Africa. A lot of people are migrating to Greece hoping to find a better life.
The government of Greece is a democratic government. Like I said before, that’s where democracy stared. They have different political parties like they do in this country. Some of them have ideologies like what they call themselves new Democracy or socialism, or communism, or Independent, and now there’s even a lot more.
Just a month ago, they had elections again. The people of Greece were not happy with the austerity measures that had been put on them by Germany. Now they wanted a new government and that’s what happened. They voted a new government in and hopefully the new government can do something to improve the economy.
The government of Greece includes a president who is the head of the state, a Prime Minister, who runs the government along with a Parliament.
Greece has a flag that is blue and white, has a white cross in the upper left corner that’s set in a blue square. There are nine blue and white strips that alternate to the right of the cross and below it. Kind of just like the American flag has stripes alternating to the right of the box with the stars. The nine stripes; there are nine blue stripes and nine white stripes that alternate. They have a special meaning. They represent the nine syllables of the words, Freedom or Death, spoken in Greek, which is Eleftheria i thanatos.
Those are the words that were spoken by the revolutionaries of 1821 when they wanted to free themselves from the Ottoman Empire. So they spoke those words, Freedom or Death, and there’s nine syllables in the Greek words. That’s why they have nine white and nine blue stripes. The flag was implemented in 1822.
Now about the education of Greece. Greece has a good educational system. I actually went all my school years there. It’s free to the citizens. The children start with kindergarten through sixth grade. They call that their Elementary School. Then they have Junior High for three years, and then High School for another three years.
The students when they are in their last year of high school they take college entrance exams. Only the top students get accepted into college. Everybody tries really hard. Everybody loves to learn. The good thing is that higher education in Greece is free to the students. But since not everybody can enter, they do have private colleges as another option for people who are willing to pay.
Now I’m going to talk about culture and customs in Greece. I’ll start with the arts. Greece is very famous for its theater. There are the Greek tragedies like “Prometheus” who was written by Aeschylus, “Electra” who was written by Euripides, and Antigone which is written by Sophocles.
There were also comedies like “The Frogs and the Birds”, written by Aristophanes, which are still performed to this day. They still have the ancient theaters that existed many, many, many centuries ago. They perform these plays that were
written by these ancient writers.
We have cool music. Kind of peppy as you heard from the beginning, and the basic most popular instrument is called Bouzouki and it kind of looks like a guitar but not really. It has a round back like a bowling ball in the back. It’s flat in the front. You play it just like a guitar but faster and it has a unique sound.
There’s also different versions of it like Baglamas which is a smaller size. Lyre, which is an ancient instrument, Clarinet, Mandolin, Flute, Tambourine, which in Greek we call daffy. I’m sure there’s more that people use all the time.
Now to my favorite part which is the Greek food. My favorite is the gyro in Greece. It’s so much different than the gyro sandwich we get here. Instead of having the process meat, most of the time you have chunks of meat. It's chunks of lamb or pork. You put it in the pita. It’s smaller; it’s not as big as the gyros they make here. They are more like taco size. So delicious, love it.
Feta, my favorite cheese. Pastitsio, which is like a Greek Lasagna. I had made it once for the school. Musica, which is another version of lasagna but except instead of using pasta you use eggplants, potatoes, and zucchini.
Lamb of course. That’s a big one, especially at parties. People like to put it on a spit and roast it all day. Then just dive in. It’s so good. Tiropita, it’s like a pie with feta and eggs in it. Love Tiropita and dawn does too. Spanakopita, which you put spinach and feta, and eggs. Sadiki, which is the white sauce with cucumbers, and garlic that goes in the hero sandwiches or you can just use it as a dip. Tomato and cucumber salad, which is a staple at everyone’s table in the summer. Egg lemon soup or cream of chicken rice soup; really good for the winter. Navy bean soup, or as we call it Fasolatha, which is the national dish of Greece. Dolmades, which are stuffed grape leaves.
Then onto the deserts. Baklava, which is a very rich desert with crushed nuts in between phyllo with lots and lots of butter and syrup. Galaktoboureko, which is my favorite, is like a custard between fello and with syrup. Kourabiedes, they are kind of like almond cookies but they have lots of powdered sugar on top and all around them. Very good. Melomakarona,these cookies are made with honey, and orange juice - delicious, lots of syrup in the end. Theeples, which is fried dough; again you put them in syrup.
You can’t just eat, you have to drink your Uzzo, your wine, which is usually homemade, and beer. And of course, you would go out and see everyone having their Greek coffee or their Nescafe frape. Everybody loves their coffee and they drink lot of it.