Mt. Parnitha

Last weekend we visited Mt. Parnitha, thanks to our kind French neighbour, who showed us the way. Btw., my language remark: here in the streets you can often hear French, sometimes German, rarely English. But most of the younger people will speak some English, and also most of the sales-people. In the offices, it seems to be the rule that newly taken people should know English, if they are to work in the public service. In some areas - at the University e.g. - I hear Serbian quite often. In the city, near the Omonia square and around the Mihail Voda street, Polish language prevails.

It was a cold (around 4 cels) but sunny morning down on Agia Paraskevi, but when we drove our 18yrs old "dust road beast" above 1000 mnm, we entered clouds. When we started to walk, we had some 'survival' moments in snow-storm, with freezingly cold wind. Kids were brave and did not complain too much. And we managed to come up to the shelter "Bafi" at some 1300 mnm (hm, funny, in internet I find it is at 1160mnm, and on the house itself it was 1300-and-smthing mnm).

It is written at one of the pages (http://www.thegreektravel.com/athens/athens-parnitha.html):
"Mount Parnitha...highest of Attica mountains (1,400m). In its huge pine wood forest, extending over 300kms2, you will have the chance to see over 818 different kinds of herbs and plants (1/6th) of the flora of the country), thousands of trails to follow and hundreds of small caves to explore.

The ancient Greeks believed that the goat-footed god Pan used to come to Parnitha quite ofthen to play his music and dance in the forest. Nature has been very generous with this mountain. Parnitha was first settled in the Mycenaean period and it was always a key-post for the defence of Attica. It was the most fortified mountain of Ancient Greece. "

Yes, I agree, mountain is really like if Pan could jump out behind every tree. We saw some traces of a big animal, maybe it was him?

When driving downhill, the weather cleared, and we had beautiful view to the City, with the line of the coast at the horizon, it was as if we'd land by airplane! Athens really offer magnificent view from above, as some obvergrown Beduin city.

We followed the custom of Athenians to make a small snow-man and put it on the car when driving back to the city from the mountain.

It survived all the serpentines and came to our home...well, almost complete, it lost head somewhere in the freeway.

In the playground accross our house Ania made this pic, which mixes usual (for us) autumn with South:

One comment on language: Greek is strange language. After month and a half I started to distinguish words in the sentence, but still...
Also, as it is ancient language, there is many words which resemble some words used in different meaning in other languages. This picture shows it well, who parks on this parking?

Also, I signed 'Idiotiko' something when signing a contract for a work or renting of a house or phone/internet account :-) .

It is 2nd part of November, raining outside, midnight. Temperature outside: 14 cels! In Warsaw it is -3 cels, on the Adriatic coast it is +2 cels, in the interior of Croatia -2 cels or so, on Taiwan it is around 20 cels, in Melbourne 17 cels. Athens IS an ideal city, what considers weather. Well, last 3 days it was raining and streets are rivers, but, the, I prefer this than dirty snow in the city.

I was doing some bureaucracy last days (permit of stay). Macabre. Bureaucracy here is on the Turkish level, from the time of Pashas!

I needed to do the health check. 15 minutes of real work, but it took... some 7 hours, in 2 days, sure! And writing the same data ten times (by the hospital staff), really old, old way... Hypokrates General Hospital...seems not the best idea to be ill here in Greece! Obviously their public health system is left to go in ruins.