2014-03-12-Soft Skills 2€¦ · Web viewSeminars@Hadley. Geography and Travel: My Big Fat Greek Seminar. Presented by. Cathy Pasinski. Leila Papadacci. Bob Gardner. Moderated by

2015-02-25 Geography and Travel

Seminars@Hadley

Geography and Travel: My Big Fat Greek Seminar

Presented by Cathy PasinskiLeila PapadacciBob Gardner

Moderated by Dawn Turko

02-25-2015

Dawn TurkoGood 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 Hadley School.

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.

©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 1 of 36


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 PasinskiThanks, 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 PapdacciThank 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 Corinthian Gulf, 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 Mediterranean Ocean; 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 PasinskiThanks, 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 werewritten 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.



Some of the special holidays we celebrate in Greece are our Names Days, that’s something different. For example my name is Catherine but my Greek name is Aikaterinē and I am named after Saint Catherine. Her Names Day is celebrated November 25th. That is the day that I celebrate my Names Day. That’s the day she died. Everybody celebrates their Names Day more than they celebrate their birthday. That’s when we have our big parties.

Of course, Christmas and Easter, which is the biggest holidays. It’s the biggest religious holiday of the year. Then we have the feast of Dormition, which is August 15th, another big holiday in Greece.

Then we celebrate the Greek Independence Day From the Ottoman Empire on March 25th. Then we celebrate Ohi Day, which means No Day on October 28th, which celebrates saying “no” to Italy and Germany. Then of course, we have very big weddings and baptisms, big parties for those. If anybody has seen the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, it’s right on. Lelia says we get gifts twice, once for Names Day and once for birthdays. Yep, we’re so special that way. The way we celebrate all these holidays and Names Days, we have usually home parties, and we cook lots of food and we put the music on. After we eat,



we get up and dance. The way we dance is we hold hands in a circle and we listen to the music and we just do our dancing around and around and around. If somebody’s feeling really sassy they can do a Zeibekiko dance. One person will go in the middle of the circle and dance on their own and everybody else can clap around them. If you go out to party or even if you’re at home you might start throwing plates, and breaking them just because you’re getting excited and maybe throw flowers and some people may throw money on the dancers. I don’t know. We just go all out I guess. If you ever go to Greece, make sure to go to a party. You won’t forget it.

Here’s some dos and don’ts. If you meet someone, just like here, you would shake their hands at first, but I guarantee you after you spent time with them in the end when you say good-bye, you’ll be hugging and kissing both cheeks, which is a traditional greeting. You’ll be friends by then. Greek people are usually so friendly.

If you go to visit someone in their house and they offer you something, accept it because they might get offended if you say no. The other thing, which is kind of funny, in U.S. you can put your hand out and show number five with your open hand, but in Greece that would mean that you’re mad at someone and you’re doing like a swear gesture at them and they wouldn’t



appreciate it. The same thing with two. Try to not do that. Just say “five”, don’t show five.

Some famous people from Greece, I have some ancient ones – Plato and Aristotle, like I mentioned. Aesop from Aesop’s fables; El Greco, the artist; Hippocrates from the Hippocrates’s oath that doctor’s take; Alexander the Great and Socrates; Homer and Pythagoras.

Modern famous people are Telly Savalas, who played Kojak on TV in the 70’s I believe; Maria Callas, an opera singer; Aristotle Onassis, who was the ship tycoon that married Jackie O.; Jimmy the Greek, who was a Las Vegas and TV personality; Nia Vardalos, she’s an actress, she’s the star of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”; John Stamos from “Full House”; Prince Phillip, who’s married to Queen Elizabeth of England; George Papanicolaou, who created the pap test for women to detect cervical cancer; Rita Wilson, who’s married to Tom Hanks; Kelly Clarkson, the first “American Idol” winner, Maria Menounos, she’s a TV personality; Jennifer Anniston from “Friends” and from movies; Tommy Lee, from which band I forgot. I know it’s a hard rock band. Yanni, who plays the beautiful music; and Chris Angel, who does the magic tricks.



I think I’ve talked enough for now. I’m going to pass the microphone to Bob so he can tell us about his experiences from traveling to Greece.

Bob GardnerHello everybody. Listening to all this really brings back so many memories. About 20 years ago, my wife and I got interested in things Greek. Neither one of us are Greek or have any Greek ancestory. But we got interested in the food and then we got interested in the music and the wine and culture. Over the last 20 years we’ve gone to Greece four times. We’re probably your average American tourists. We don’t know Greek. We usually don’t rent a car in Greece. I’m totally blind, my wife is sighted, but she looked at some of the roads and the traffic in Greece and decided she didn’t want to drive there. We do public transportation.

Over the years, we’ve seen obviously the standard tourist’s sites – the Acropolis. How can you go to Greece without going up onto the Acropolis and seeing the Parthenon? We’ve been to Delphi and to Olympia, the original Olympic Stadium. Quite an amazing experience to look down and actually be in the original Olympic Stadium. We’ve covered a good part of Greece. I’ve by no means have seen it all. We’ve gone to Northern Greece and the [inaudible 0:35:02] and I and [inaudible 0:35:04] and the Island



of Corfu in the north and we’ve been on the Peloponnese obviously through Olympia. We’ve been to Rhodes, which is an island, which is very, very far south. We’ve covered a fair amount of the mainland and probably been to about maybe nine or ten of the islands.

I’ve always felt very comfortable in Greece as a tourist, an American tourist. It seems just very easy to travel there. English is spoken widely, particularly if you’re in the hotels and the restaurants where tourists would be. English is usually no problem in the shops and the stores. You can get in some areas it may not be spoken all that much, but usually you have no trouble with the language. The hotels and all that are very, very nice. Obviously, we as just your plain American tourists, have stayed I guess I might want to call them like resort like hotels. Hotels obviously are very equivalent to like say a Holiday Inn, something like that. The bathrooms look very much the same as in the U.S. My first trip to Greece, I was amazed the bathrooms just about everywhere, even in a restaurant, look pretty much the same as here. Nothing really strange. You got showers, you got TV, you got cable in your hotels. Obviously there English is definitely spoken by the staff. In my experience, there’s people from all over the world that come to Greece. Tourism is very big. You could be in a hotel with people from all over Europe and all over the



world. English tends to be the standard language that the staff uses. Obviously, they can’t learn Polish or Norwegian or whatever, so English is sort of the common denominator that everybody uses to communicate with each other.

Money is not much of a problem any more. It’s just amazing how things become in Europe, and Greece is no exception. My wife and I when we go there we never take large amounts of cash because just like in the U.S. you can go to an ATM and put in your debit card and Whamo, out spits euros. It’s just unbelievable.

I’ve been asked to talk a little bit about transportation. Like I said, my wife and I have always used public transportation. We’ve traveled just about every which way you can in Greece. There’s obviously an internal airline, which I can’t remember. It might be Olympia Airlines, Olympic Airlines, I can’t remember, where you can fly from Athens to some of the bigger islands and cities. There’s cruise ships we’ve done, where you take like an ocean going cruise ship around the Greek Islands. We’ve traveled by bus, which would be the equivalent of a Greyhound bus. We have actually done that. We’ve also have ridden the ferry system. Since Greece has so many islands, there’s very extensive ferry system that allows you to go from island to island. We’ve done that also.



I think that would pretty much wrap up my little presentation on being an American tourist in Greece. It’s a very fascinating country. I love the culture. It’s a very nice culture. It’s very friendly. They still have a lot of family values that seem like we’ve somewhat lost in this country. In one of our trips, my wife and I were able to stay with a Greek family for about a week, lived in their house, which was quite an experience. Was really able to get a behind the scenes look at Greek family life. With that, I think I will stop for the present. Thank you.

Cathy PasinskiHey Bob, thank you so much. I have a question. How many times have you been in Greece? If you could tell me what you thought of the environment and the weather in Greece.

Bob GardnerI’ve been to Greece four times. The first time we went, not paying too much attention to the weather, we went in probably the end of July or August. We just about died in Athens. It was very, very hot. I remember another time we went and we decided we would go in the fall and we went in looking for cooler weather. We went in September and it was still very hot. I think that it was kind of an unusually hot spell. I’ve been in Northern Greece in the summertime



where going over the mountains in Ionian, where it was pretty cold. The last time we were in Greece was two years in 2013. Again, thinking a little bit about the weather and all that, we actually went in the beginning of May. That was very nice for the mainland and all that. In the some of the islands, one of the islands we went to is a very famous island, Santa Rene, and it was actually very windy and a little on the cool side there at the beginning of May. Did that answer your questions Cathy?

Cathy PasinskiYes, I also have one more. How did you set up your trip to go to Greece, and once you were there, how did you find a way to get to the islands or to the other parts of Greece? Did you have an agency? If you could tell us about that.

Bob GardnerThat’s a very good question. I thought about putting that in at the beginning but I thought I’d wait and see if it came up. When we first decided we wanted to go to Greece, which was almost 20 years ago, it was really before people really did too much on the Internet. I didn’t have a computer at home. I believe I had a computer at work, but I didn’t have one at home. What we did is we went through a travel agency, it’s actually in Chicago, and they specialize in Greek travel. The people that own it, that you talk to, are



Greek and they have been to Greece. They’re very, very familiar with Greece, and the facilities and the hotels. Even though today you an obviously get on the Internet, and I could get on the Internet and set up a whole trip by myself on the Internet, I still have gone through that travel agency. We did that for our trip in 2013.

One of the things that they do for example is let’s say that you’re in Athens and you’re scheduled to go to the island of Mykonos the next day. This travel agency would have this all set up. They would have a cab at your hotel in the morning to pick you up and take you down to the ferry. They’ve made arrangements; they’ve bought your tickets for the ferry. Then when you get to Mykonos on the other end, they would have a cab waiting for you that would take you to your hotel. It’s very nice that way. Trying to set up all that on your own on the Internet, it wouldn’t be impossible, but it would certainly be a chore. Buying your plane tickets and your hotel reservations would be obviously very simple on the Internet but having all those interconnecting travel arrangements would be more trouble that it’s worth as far as I’m concerned. I’m willing to let a travel agency do that for me. Does that answer your question?

Cathy Pasinski



Thanks Bob, that’s great. For Patricia, I just posted, it’s called Olympia Express Travel Agency in Skokie, Illinois. I don’t have the phone number yet, but I will find it and post it in a few minutes.

Next, we’ll go to Leila. She’s going to talk to us about some speaking Greek.

Leila PapadacciI was just finishing up typing something there. Teaching Greek. I have taught Greek for kids and adults. It’s something I miss doing because I don’t do it here in Colorado since I moved out here. But because there’s quite a bit of Greek population in Chicago, when I was living there it was something I really, really enjoyed doing.

Some of the things that I’ve put down for you is, the word Efharisto, which means thank you. Parakalo, which means please or you’re welcome. I just want to interject here, Greek is phonetic. What you see is what you read except for a couple of diphthongs. It’s very easy to learn how to say things in Greek. Another word would be Signomi or Mehsinhoriteh, which means excuse me. Another thing that I wanted to let you guys know in case you need to go there, a useful phrase would be pou i’ne, where is, and then you add there what you want to add, the word. The



way to say, can I have some water, for example would be- boro na echo̱ ligo neró. How much is it? póso kostízei? Again, water, neró.

Stási̱ is a useful word for those who are using public transportation. It can be used for both train stops of bus stops. Where can I buy or where can I get jewelry for example, [foreign 0:46:26]. My name is [foreign 0:46:31], my name is Leila. Kaliméra, good morning. So Kali means good, méra is day.

Kalinychta, good night. Ti kaneis, how are you or how are you doing. The standard phrase kalá, good, I’m good.

If you need any more information I’m sure online you can use Google translator for simple phrases. I wouldn’t use it for anything more elaborate because it doesn’t do exact translations. There’s also some really nice websites where you can check out how to say the letters and some simple words.

Cathy PasinskiThank you Leila. Also, I’ve seen apps on the Apple store and I’m sure the Android store has them. I haven’t added those to the resource list, but that’s a good idea. I’ll try to add a couple of those. Bob, you next. You’re supposed to touch on transportation and accessibility. If you were able to use an elevator, if you saw any braille anywhere, what kind of



transportation you’ve taken and the ups and downs of Greece with accessibility.

Bob GardnerOkay. Also I was going to tell you I didn’t know if I should say it, I can also give you the name of the travel agency that I used in Chicago if you want or I can send that to you by e-mail.

As far as transportation, as I said earlier I think we’ve taken just about every kind of form there is. As a blind person, I don’t remember really any particular problems with any of these. I don’t remember really as a blind person, really having any particular problems in Greece at all. I don’t remember being singled out for special treatment or being looked at or treated oddly because of my blindness. I don’t remember even a single incident of that. I can certainly think of many times in this country where that’s happened.

I don’t remember much in a way of braille to be quite honest. For example at hotel rooms, I don’t believe they’re braille, which I’m pretty sure is a law here in this country. I think you might have some trouble with braille in Greece since the braille code in Greece would probably be different than the braille code here. There’s only 24 letters in the Greek alphabet and for the most part totally different letters than we use.



Unless they’re Brailling in English and using the English code, it wouldn’t do me much good.

As I said, getting around was no particular problem. Of course, I really feel like I have fairly decent travel skills. I do travel; do plane trips and all that on my own. However, when I was in Greece I was with my wife, who is sighted. Even though I try to be as independent as I can as a blind person, certainly traveling in a foreign country with someone who’s sighted is definitely easier than trying to do it by myself. There’s no doubt about that in my mind.

As far as the ups and downs, I sort of wrote that down what I was going to talk about. I think about this as kind of like half joking, but it’s really true. Greece, as Leila said, is a mountainous country but it seems like Greece is not a very level country. It seems like you’re constantly going up and down steps all the time. It would be, I think if someone I think was for example in a wheelchair, had accessibility problems that way, those kinds of physical disabilities I think it would be a very difficult country to get around. It seems like there’s steps everywhere. I was thinking about this morning. The last hotel that I stayed in in Athens in 2013, two years ago, I do remember there was like three or four steps going up to it, but now that I think about it they actually did have a ramp going up to be able to get in the front door. I think that is the



only time I ever saw anything like that when I was in Greece. It can get very tiring at times getting around.

My last trip in 2013, when we went to the island of Santa Rene, without getting into what Santa Rene, the Island is like, it seemed like you couldn’t go hardly more than about 25 or 30 feet without either going up and down a step or two or three or four. Steps were everywhere. It’s fun. It’s beautiful. I love the music. I would encourage anyone to go. It’s quite an experience to go to Greece that’s why my wife and I keep going back.

Dawn TurkoHi, this is Dawn. I’m jumping in now that you’re off the microphone Bob. Leila’s doing a great job answering some questions related to Greek braille. She’s saying that there are no contractions and that for the most part, the braille is the same except for letters that are not represented in the English language. Before we move on Cathy, I just want to be sure that we give a moment for people who may want to pick up the microphone with a question. Let’s do that real quick as the hour is getting away from us.

We have open microphone if you have a question.

Sharon Howerton



I was there with my choir in 2009 and we did a lot of, like Bob was saying, there were a lot of places to climb. It was a physically demanding trip. They certainly didn’t have many handrails that I could find. Of course, since we sang in different churches and cathedrals, and monasteries and all, we had to do a lot of climbing into the choir loft and that type of thing. We sure didn’t find any handrails. Yeah, if you had some mobility issues, it could be sort of difficult. I almost fell into the sea trying to get from the tender to our cruise ship when we were leaving Santa Rene, so I will always remember Santa Rene.

Dawn TurkoOkay, Cathy. You’ve got the microphone.

Cathy PasinskiThanks Dawn. I just wanted to say Bob, was it Olympia Express that you used as your travel agency, the one in Skokie? Because I put that information on the text public chat.

Bob GardnerNo, it was called Apollo Tours. I believe they’re actually in Chicago. I’m not so sure about that now. I don’t have the phone number in front of me, but I could send that to you by e-mail. The people there were very good. Extremely knowledgeable. If you want to go to an island and they could tell you oh, you



want to be on this part of the island. The hotels here are this way and that way and you’d better off because of this and that. They know the hotels, they know the transportation and they really have done a good job for me.

Cathy PasinskiI’m glad to hear it. I just use Olympia Express when I travel, or the Internet. I’m going to talk about living as a blind person in Greece. In the old days, there wasn’t a lot of support. Now there is a lot since 2008 and all disabled students can get a free public education. They can either go into a mainstream classroom or a special education school, whatever fits their needs. For the students that are in the last year of high school, when they’re taking their college entrance exams, they do have accommodations for blind students so they can do their best.

There is a school for the blind in Northern Greece called The Sun. It teaches primary school and high school. There is Panhellenic Association of the Blind that was established in 1932. It teaches orientation mobility, daily living skills; it has a talking Vocs library, it teaches skills of employment and career and it also has social work services.

Another organization is called The Center of Education and Rehabilitation for the Blind in Athens.



It offers the same things as before that I mentioned but it also has a school with physical education classes and psychological services. There’s also The Lighthouse for the Blind in Athens, which in Greek is called Pharos and that has a school. It also has a Tacto museum in it with exhibitions from all periods of cultural civilizations. They also offer workshops with metals, textiles and ceramics. They help blind and visually impaired people get trained in employment and to find jobs.

I have a connection with Pharos with The Lighthouse for the Blind. My Aunt Maria actually worked there as a cook when I was a little kid because I remember her talking about it. There’s a connection there.

Traveling to Greece with a cane is not the easiest. The villages don’t really have blocks, they don’t have sidewalks. It’s kind of just a lot of hills. The houses are built right up to the roads so it’s not always the safest thing to travel with a cane. City travel might be a little bit easier but it can get very chaotic because cars are very loud, lots of beeping, the motorcycles are very loud there. So traveling, it’s just chaotic. Lots of people, everywhere. The grid pattern is not consistent and not in all places. It would take a lot of training for someone to do it. I can’t say it’s impossible. I’m just saying it’s very difficult.



I have never seen a guide dog in Greece. I know they have a guide dog school in Greece that blind individuals can go, and train and obtain one. I looked up the travel requirements for bringing a guide dog from another country. They said for all pets they just require that the dog is microchipped and that its had it’s rabies shot in the last 12 months but no later than 30 days before travel. That’s what I found out. It looks like you can bring your guide dog, but you would have to be careful because there’s a lot of stray dogs and cats in Greece. Some people put like poison out so when the dog eats what it thinks is a snack and they get poisoned. So you would have to hold onto your dog very, very carefully.

Blind people are treated with respect, although I do know that some people might feel really, really sad for them.

For employment opportunities, I found that the American Friends for the Blind in Greece are the ones that established The Lighthouse for the Blind and they do jobs skills training. Like Leila was saying about the braille code, we have our own braille code. In the resource list I have pictures of the braille letters as they correspond with the code.

Yes, Dawn, you have a question?



Dawn TurkoNo, I was just queuing up. I saw that you were getting close to the end of your notes and we are getting to the end of our seminar. Finish up your thought and then I’ll work on saying some good-byes and so there you go.

Cathy PasinskiI think I’m pretty much done. But I did want to have Bob tell us about his experience with visiting the Parthenon, which is what the story in the YouTube video is about. Of course, that’s also on the resource list, along with other information about movies, and books and websites you can access for travel and learning about Greece. Bob got a very special treatment. He was allowed to touch the Parthenon, which nobody else is allowed to. I’ve never touched it. If you could just tell us about that.

Bob GardnerI’ll try to make this as brief as I can. I know we’re out of time here. My first trip to Greece, of course we went up on the Acropolis, and we went to go look at the Parthenon and my wife says, ‘Okay, there it is.’ There was a fence there that no tourist can go beyond. Basically, you look at the Parthenon. That’s reasonable because I don’t know how many millions of tourists that go to Greece in a year. You wouldn’t want to have five million people going through the



Parthenon. Besides that, it’s being restored. It’s in ruins in certain parts of it.

Anyway, I was disappointed. I thought about it and I decided the next time we went back to Greece I wanted to do something different. I wanted to see if I could at least be allowed to stand on the steps of the Parthenon, to maybe touch one of the columns. There’s been whole articles written just about the columns of the Parthenon. Like Cathy, as a blind person I wanted to at least touch it to say that I’d really been there. Being totally blind, looking at it beyond a fence didn’t do anything for me whatsoever. It turned out to be kind of a project. Through the miracle of e-mail, I was able to get a contact. There was a Greek lady who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Athens. I finally found her and she was the one who was able to set to this up for me. Her name was Yoanna, and I understand she’s since retired but she did a fantastic thing for me.

The next trip we went to Greece, went up to the Acropolis and they had a special guide waiting for me. Not only was I allowed to stand on the steps of the Parthenon, they actually let me go into the Parthenon and took me through the Parthenon. I got to talk to the foreman there who was in charge of the men who were working on the restoration. I was allowed to touch whatever I wanted. Then my guide Desmena,



took me to the museum that was there. She said there’s all these statues and all that nobody’s allowed to touch, and she said, you can touch. Even with some of the people there in the museum started, ‘No, no, no. Don’t touch this.’ She said he can touch, he can touch. I was able to get a much better understanding of what some of the statues were and all that. That was an unforgettable experience. The lady who made the video, Stella Kura…kapo. Like I have a hard time with her name, too many syllables. Kureakopoulus is the one who made the video.

Cathy PasinskiThanks Bob. It’s Stella Kyriakopoulos. That’s a mouthful. You can watch his YouTube video, “Bob Goes to the Parthenon”. Everything is in the resource list. Thank you so much. Dawn.

Dawn TurkoI’m just so captivated by all these stories. This was a chocked full of Greece seminar today. I think the lack of questions is because you were so thorough in your presentations. Bob, Leila, Cathy, thank you so very much. The recording of this seminar will be in the Hadley’s Past Seminars Archive probably in a day or two, along with the resource list that we’ve been mentioning. So you can go there and re-listen or suggest it to others. My goodness, if you have kids or anybody who’s studying Greece, you get it all here.



This was fabulous. I am going to turn the microphone over to Cathy, and Bob and Leila for their farewells, while I go ahead and put the short survey hopefully up on the screen if I do it correctly. I’m enjoying music in my office, but I know it’ll go away when I let go of the mic. Just hum along. It’s been a great afternoon. Cathy, Leila, Bob, the microphones are back with you all.

Leila PapadacciI want to thank everybody at Hadley School that I was allowed to be part of this. I hope we gave you the information that was useful. I would strongly suggest you visit Greece because you can experience the smell of the water in combination with the pine trees and the smell of thyme and oregano in the mountains. Nothing compares to that. I really hope you visit that. Again, thank you for listening and good-bye.

Cathy PasinskiThanks Leila. Thank you for listening and participating in the seminar to Greece. I hope you make it some day. You’ll love it. Adios. Dawn TurkoThank you everybody for participating today. It’s on my list of places to go, and has just moved up to the top of the list. Thank you so much folks. Let me say good-bye and thank you. Bye-bye.


Documents

2014-03-12-Soft Skills 2€¦ · Web viewSeminars@Hadley. Geography and Travel: My Big Fat Greek Seminar. Presented by. Cathy Pasinski. Leila Papadacci. Bob Gardner. Moderated by