Written By Alex & Aidan
This week we continued working at Vasili’s wonderful farm, where we spent the next three days picking grapes and olives (used to make olive oil and wine), getting to know Vasili’s family in order to learn from their experience on the farm, and enjoying beautiful meals by Nikki, the wife of Vasili and co-manager of the farm. Clemmie even had her fortune told by Nikki through the remnants of her Greek coffee, and found that she was destined for wealth! On Wednesday, our time there culminated in a traditional festive ceremony where we stomped and danced upon the grapes we picked to create the grape juice as we jammed along to traditional Cretan songs.
After a lovely traditional feast of goat meat and snails for dinner, we watched the beginning of the process to turn our stomped grape juice into wine. Of course, the entire process takes many months. This just means we have to come back to Vasili’s farm someday to try out our foot wine!
On Thursday, we visited an old winery and monastery called Toplou, where we toured a vineyard and more modern winery run by the monks. We were able to compare the ancient, traditional wine production methods shown to us by Vasili to this more technology oriented, modern winery. After the winery tour, we saw the actual Toplou monastery where we saw some old religious artifacts and art from their museum.
Later that day, we visited our favorite Yannis the beekeeper once more! He treated us to another session of inspiring ideas surrounding climate change and what we can do to impact the world positively, with additional focus on how bees live and work and how their lives are impacted by our changing world.
On Friday, we returned to the animal sanctuary run by Mizo to assist with the care of the animals and learn more about their situations and behaviors. After this, we visited again our good friend Alex the potter, who taught us about the glazing process of our pottery while we finished our pieces and showed us some of his amazing music taste and dance moves.
We spent the weekend in Athens, where, amazingly, roughly half the population of Greece lives. After we arrived, we got an amazing architectural and environmental tour of the city from Joseph, an awesome environmentally active professor who designed the mud houses we stayed in for the first two weeks. We explored the city and its many shops and restaurants, and visited the Acropolis, the enormous and enduring center of Ancient Greece, which was an amazing experience. Additionally, we visited the Museum of the Acropolis in Athens, which had a lot of extremely well preserved artifacts from the Acropolis, and as such was a very enriching experience.
After our time in beautiful Athens, we took an hour train ride to where we are right now, the fantastic Regreen. Regreen is a community of people using sustainable farming techniques and permaculture to support themselves, and now since we have arrived, us. From scenic views to wonderful food to in depth drum lessons and helping out on the farm, we have been having a great time here. This is where we will be staying for the next few days, until Sunday, when we leave for Athens and then Bologna. And, if these few days are any indication, we are going to have a great week.