Tourism on Bleeding4Metal - Pt.5: Greece

[shadowman]

Another country in our tour around the bleeding world...
The purpose of these topics about countries worldwide is to get an inside view of the way of life. Thanx to the contact person(s) Bleeding for Metal has over there we have front row tickets right ?  :mrgreen:

So this edition is all about one of the hottest European countries : Hellas !!

Let me go first, when I think of Greece I think of

Gargantouas ! One of my closest friends and simply one hell of a guy !!
Many islands of which I had the pleasure to visit Corfu
Archeological artefacts
Greek Gods
Olympics
Athens
Tessaloniki
Soccer teams as Panathinaikos and Olympiaokos
Really nice food
Sirtaki
The most beautiful women on the face of earh !!!!!!


So who is next ?

[gargantouas]

Soccer teams as Panathinaikos and Olympiaokos

Ok Panathinaikos I understand...WHY DID YOU HAVE TO MENTION THE UNMANED ONES?....?

[shadowman]

Maybe cause I am evil ?

[Virvatuli]

Hmmh... never been to there.
comes to mind:
Greek mythology, gods
Sokrates, Aristoteles, lovely Pythogars etc.
the golden ages of Antics.
Toogas... spelled probably wrong :P
And hot hot hot hot.

[Odin]

Yumm, Greek mythology, all the sagas about the ancient gods and semi-gods, philosophers, early scientists finding many of the most commonly used mathematic rules of today, Alexander the Great and the Macedonian reign over almost all the known world .... and much more.

It just comes to my mind that when thinking about Greece I mainly think about times long past! History, the good old times of Diogenes (oh, then I have to think of Greek men and their, errrm, well, it was kind of a habit back then to have affairs with young boys... and Diogenes going to the market and 'shaking the tree' there in public, hehehe ), Sokrates and all the fellows I got to know quite closely in my philosophy classes.

Furthermore all the sagas, the Ilias by Homer (not Simpson...) and so on.

When thinking of our time I think of Dimitris and our wish to visit Corfu - since two years or so now...  :roll:
And of course all the nice meals we know from Greek restaurants over here, hehe. And the last European soccer championship. Oh, almost forgot Uzo, Imiglykos and ... ergh, forgot it's name... golden relative to Imiglykos, but with a lot more alcohol, a great taste of honey and others. We talked about it on the old boards once, I think, I really loved that drink but haven't found it again since the one time I had the pleasure to taste it.

Mh, so far for now from me.

[The Metal RN]

I had the pleasure to take Latin for 6 years in high school, and while that mainly focused on the  Roman side of antiquity, I did get some education of old Greece as well!!

My favorites would be Mythology, I used to read all I could as a youngster on the myths and stories of old, I actually had to read the Illiad, the Odessey, and the Aeneid IN LATIN for school.

Through philosophy classes I have discovered, the birth place of reason/ modern thought// science/ philosophy/ mathematics.......... Democritus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle..............

For some reason when I think of Greece I think of Olives........................ :roll:

Beautiful old architecture, The Acropolis , The Parthenon,  Temple of Hephaestus, Sanctuary of Asklepios at Ancient Epidaurus, The Temple of Olympian Zeus (and the Fallen Column), .............

Gyros, Yummmmmmmmmm

These past olympics, world cup soccer, birth place of the Olympiad, marathon

"slow to start but sure to finish"

Athens/ Sparta

That's all for now. :P

[TexJoachim]

Ouzo!


Greetz,

Tex

[AngelOfMusic]

I'd love to visit Greece!  I heard the men there really appreciate women.

Mmm...lamb meat...*craves Gyros now, and will stab anyone who pronounces it "GYE-ROWS."  That's not the right pronounciation!!! Grr...*  Er, sorry, bit of a rant there...

[Souleraser]

Phew, Greece...

- Testudo hermanni hermanni (aka "Hermann's Tortoise")
- Lonesome George
- Chelonoidis elephantopus (I'm not sure of the correct english expression, thinking of those giant turtles from the island of Galapagos)
- Lessons in history & latin
- Maybe the most important european high culture of the antiquity
- giving faked financial stats to the European counsil a few years ago
- "Troja"
- An incredible number of common words having roots in the greek language
- First democratic political system ever
- Olives  and Olive Oil
- Souvlaki, Bifteki, Calamari, Zatziki
- Ouzo (anyone else who tends to prefer the red to the clear one?)
- the Akropolis


So much for now. I'm sure I'll feel like adding something quite soon.

[Odin]

.... something about Calamaris being Italian, not Greek ...

... and something about the idea to learn Greek, ancient Greek prefarably ...

... and something about Shadowman being a plain idiot, of course ...  :evil:

[TexJoachim]

- First democratic political system ever

<aside>
Not really. The first democratic political system was the USA: both sexes had the right to vote, slavery was abolished (altough later than in Europe).

Sorry to say that, but in ancient Greece only male citizens of any city-state had the right to vote. Women and slaves had no voice of their own.

As for the Romans, they were slightly better: Every Roman citizen had the right to vote. Sounds good, right? Well, of course only male citizens. Additionally one had to be in Rome to vote.

Oh, and there were 7 classes of voters in ancient Rome: aristocracy (~100 persons), very rich people (~1000 persons), rich people (~1000 persons), middle-class (~1000 persons) and three times the rest of the Romans (~10.000 persons each). These categories were filled according to the taxes one paid. Each catergory had one (1) vote. So, approximately 3100 persons held 4 votes while 30.000 poor persons had exactly 3 votes.

Whenever one was called to vote, there was no discussion of the bill, candidates or .... It was either agree or disagree. If all disagreed, a new assembly (on a different day!) was necessary.

Voting was started with the aristocracy and then went down through the classes. After the middle-class voted the voting was ususally over: If the middle-class was in favour of the opinion of the rich, Rome already had a majority.

Now, imagine that your parliament (in Rome: Senate), war chiefs ... is elected that way.
</aside>

Greetz,

Tex

[shadowman]

Ouzo!


Greetz,

Tex

We had an Ouzo meal this summer ! Oh my sweet Lord !!

[shadowman]

Good luck on your efforts to try and master the Greek language.  :roll:
Man, not to brag about myself when  I tell you that I think I have a way with foreign languages but Greek is just so damn difficult. Believe me, I have done more than just a simple effort. Assimil, Greek study books, cassettes, learning from specialized cd's...No luck.
I couldn't get it into my brain, mainly because of the weird characters I think.
Or option number two could be that I am just a plain idiot ?
 :wink:

AAARGGHHH SORRY ODIN !
I screwed up your posting. You said something about learning Greek and I wanted to respond to it. Apparantly I edited YOUR post not mine !
A thousand times sorry ! Is there a way to undo my terrible mistake ???
The above reply is mine not Odin's !!!

[Souleraser]

- First democratic political system ever

<aside>
Sorry to say that, but in ancient Greece only male citizens of any city-state had the right to vote. Women and slaves had no voice of their own.
</aside>

Yeah, not nice of course, but so what? Without that approach who can say what would have happened?
And there's by far more than only voting - just look at all the institutions and stuff they had working.

Call it what you will, but the fundamental first steps for *any* kind of democracy were made in those days. The first approaches of federalism were made as well as it was the first time someone else but the rich or the mighty or the clerus was able to have an influence on what is going on. And of course they created the idea of the self-defending democracy.

[Souleraser]

Is there a way to undo my terrible mistake ???

Actually not, no.