Traveling to Greece

Greece has been on my list of Ideal Vacations for as long as I can remember. As a kid I was obsessed with Greek mythology and would read books and books on the subject. My favourite story was (and still is) that of Persephone. Going to Athens and seeing the statues and visiting the Acropolis Museum and seeing the place these stories came from would be a dream.



And then as I got older, the movie The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants came out and one of the main characters visits her family in Greece. Those parts of the movie are filmed in Santorini, one of the many Greek islands and is breathtaking. From there I became enamored with the idea of something they call "Island Hopping" in Greece where you spend a couple of days here and there on some of the islands (not all, that would take forever!). There are boat tours and cruises to take you to the different islands. Right now the islands I would love to see are Santorini, Mykonos, Corfu, and Naxos.
Finally, a much more frivolous reason for wanting to go to Greece is the food and hospitality. I had a good friend who was Greek and we'd go to her grandmother's house every weekend and they treated me like part of their extremely large family (it was hard to move around in the house there were so many people!) and she made Greek food by hand, enough to feed a hundred people. I'd like to go to their country and experience that again.

Greek Economy

There are three areas of the economic structure in Greece: service, industry, and agriculture. The largest being service sector because of tourism.
The service sector brought in 75.8% of the GDP in 2009 and employed 65% citizens.
The industry sector that includes mining, petroleum, textiles, and transportation, brings in about 20% of the GDP and emploiys 22% or workers. Lastly, the agriculture sector is 3.4% of the GDP because most of Greece is no longer cultivable. Olive oil is the largest product from agriculture.

The current recession in Greece is causing unemployment in all sectors but most importantly the service sector because tourism is down due to public debt.

Greek Customs

In Greece, there is a celebration called Carnival, or Apokries. Two full weeks of feast and drinking that ends the day before Lent in order to get all the food and partying out of the way. Parties in the middle of the streets and decked out in costumes, this celebration comes from worshiping the god, Dionysus, the god of wine and feast. It's a particularly big event in the city of Patra where drinking and dancing all night is the norm.

Another particularly interesting custom the Greeks have is their dinner etiquette: when invited to dinner, it is customary and respectful to arrive thirty minutes late. And always have a second helping or the hostess might be offended.

Religion in Greece

The prominent religion in Greece is Greek Orthodox, a branch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the second largest denomination of Christianity. This affects their culture in that they practice Greek Orthodox ceremonies and all students are required to take religious studies. The Greek Orthodox Church boasts about 98% of the population and is the only church under the Eastern Orthodox Church that is recognized as a state and therefore is pretty much exempt from taxes and the clergies' salaries are paid for by the state.

Climate in Greece

In terms of weather, Greece is known for its Mediterranean climate, which is one of the many reasons tourists flock to this country in the hot, dry summer months. That and the wonders of island-hopping. The average low for Athens in January is 6 degrees Celsius (as a Canadian, this seems more like spring to me).

Sounds nice to the tourists but for the locals: not so peachy. Droughts and wildfires due to this climate are inevitable but the real problem is the air and water pollution. Over the past few decades, Greece has gone through many changes in the economy with tourism, transportation, and urbanization, all contributing to the decline in natural resources and the current environmental issues. The pollution in the air is evident in pictures and to people living or visiting and is health hazardous.