14 september

This morning I arrived in Greece. Here are my first impressions...
The landscape is amazing. It's unbelievable. Massive, rough, wild, and huge!! High mountains, extremely blue water and beautiful weather.

The traffic here is totally mad. I arrived in Thessaloniki and had to take the bus from the airport to some busstation in the center of the city. What I saw on the road was incredible! There are no rules at all, people just do it: they make phone calls behind the weel, nobody 's wearing a seatbelt, they just honk and drive and park their cars not double, but three double or four double!! Wow, I wish I could have done my driving lessons here! I surely would have made it at once!!

After a bustrip of three hours I arrived in Florina. The 'biggest' city in the neighbourhood. There Juliette (a former French volunteer, who 's living in Prespa for two years right now), who drove us another hour to Agios Germanos, my home for the coming 9 months. Half way we stopped the car and stared at the beautiful lake of Prespa at sunset. It's amazing. There some places in the world you only see on pictures, that however seem to be unreachable. I could hardly believe that this is the place where I will spend 4 seasons. We drove further and after a while we arrived at a very nice old house. An interesting place, but very cool and nice anyway!! A lot of wood, a big garden, with peppers, tomates, walnuts, grapes and... an apple tree!

As soon as we were installed we were picked up by Christos, a Greek guy, who would take us somewhere for dinner. We (Sirio, Nina and me) jumped in an massive pick up, but because of the police (??? Greek???) we all had to sit in the front. And there was only one seat left. So there we where kind of sitting/lying on the frontseat with the three of us. Christos switched on some cassette tape with loud popsongs from the 80ties and started the car.

We drove through the mountains, 50, 80, 100, 120.... 140 km per hour!!! Not over asfalt, but ways with stones everywhere through the dark, without a seatbelt.... This was crazy dangerous.... Somehow we arrived at a place 3 meters from the lake, to have dinner outside. We had some typical Greek dishes with feta, fried peppers, salat, etc... really my favorite!!

Then, in the middle of the night we drove to an island Agios Achillios, to see the famous old church (which is actually a ruine). Imagine... just standing there in one of the windows, watching the over the lake and staring at the milkyway to discover that even the moon is different here.

I'm in love with this place!

12 september
I'm  running out of time here. It 's been starting this morning.
I got up a quarter past six to put on my running shoes and go for jogging. It was a cold nice september morning. The fields were covered with a foggy blanket and the sun was giving away a perfect lightshow: a smokey sunrise. It was quiet. Hardly any people on the streets and no dogs to run after me. Just me and my running shoes touching the asfalt. I kept concentrating on my breath while my thoughts moved somewhere between Holland and Greece, the grass and dogshit, my suitcase and pasport, a mouse on the street and an airplane. Just a perfect Dutch morning, but pretty relaxed. Afterwards a cold shower, and my morning ritual with fresh pomelo juice, my vitamine B drugs and my mothers bread. I was wondering what would become of all those weird but nice habits. Anyway they have apples in Greece, at least, that's what they told me.

The last few days I said goodbye to my friends, to my house in Utrecht. So right now I had to do another thing that is very important in life!! THE BEACH. So my mum and me just jumped in the car and drove to the sea. It was perfectly relax. Back home however I was snapped back to the hard reality check of the world around me. I had to fix my suitcase: only 20 kilograms!!! 5 kilograms handluggage? Are they crazy at the airport? How can I make this work since I have to survive not only summer time, but also a winter in which it can be more than 20 degrees below zero???  Yes, I was stressed. In those circumstances I'm always freaking out. Running through the house, loosing my mobile phone, forgetting what I had to take down, where is my favorite shirt?? How does this new camera work? Somebody help me out here??? Somehow I managed. It' s good to have some relativating family members moving around...

I'll go to bed and try to sleep. Next to my pillow are a pencil and a paper to write down everything I should think of...