Περιπέτεια

Travelling to a Christian country during springtime means experiencing lots of religious festivals.  One of these was "Carnival".  Carnival (with the emphasis on the last syllable), or Apokries , is a season that traditionally begins ten weeks before Greek Orthodox Easter and culminates on the weekend before "Clean Monday" or "Ash Monday".  This year, Carnival took place on Thursday, February 28. This celebration is very similar to Mardi Gras in New Orleans.  There's all kinds of masquerade parties and it's celebrated before the Lent season.  The Greek name Apokries means abstention from meat, because after that, the period of Easter Lent begins. The characteristic of Carnival is disguising and wearing costumes and masks that offer anonymity and freedom of expression. This festival dates back to Dionysos, the ancient Greek god of wine, fun and fertility. The biggest carnival that is organized in Greece is that of Patras. Other popular carnival...

On Friday, February 22, we took a day trip to East Attica.  Attica is a peninsula region of Greece that encompasses Athens and projects into the Aegean Sea.  Since Athens is in this region, it's easy to take day trips around the region to see different things.  That's precisely what we did! We left our apartments at 8:30 and traveled to Brauron (today it is known as Vravrona).  Brauron was an ancient city of Attica and it was the home to a fairly large cult to Artemis, the goddess of hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, the Moon, and chastity.  The reason for this actually originates in the second Trojan War (the one Homer wrote about).  The most popular version of the story is that King Agamemnon of Mycenae had to kill his daughter, Iphigenia, as a sacrifice to Artemis in order for the winds to be strong enough to carry his ships to Troy.  However, there is another version in which Artemis switches out Iphigenia for a deer at the last second and esca...