Eastern Europe

Where to go in Northern Greece

Places I saw and recommend in Northern Greece: Metéora. I’m sure it’s fun to climb Mt. Olympus, but I was too busy having fun in Thessaloniki. 

Is Greece in Eastern or Western Europe?

Whenever you think of the founder of western civilization, you probably think of Greece:

• The Greeks gave us Homer's epic poems, the Corinthian columns that are everywhere, and an early version of democracy. 
• Just the names of Greek places conjure up wondrous images: Athens, Thebes, Sparta, Crete, Rhodes, Mount Olympus, and the Aegean Sea. 
• Western companies use the names of Greek gods and heroes: Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, Hermes, Apollo, Perseus, Hercules, and of course, Nike. 
• Western literature and ideas were born out of text written in Greek such as The Iliad, The Odyssey, Oedipus, Medea, and the Bible's New Testament. 
• Western heroes include Greeks like Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Thucydides, Herodotus, Euripides, Archimedes, and countless others. 
• Greeks built much of our foundation in mathematics, medicine, science, and philosophy. 

The astronomer Carl Sagan observed that if the repressive Middle Ages had not come and Europe had stayed on the technological path that the Greeks had started us on, then we would have colonized the Solar System by now.

Given that everyone associates Greece with western culture and civilization, it's ironic that Greece is in Eastern Europe. [I'm assuming a binary east-west split, where the idea of "southern Europe" doesn't exist. For more about this read about how I define Eastern Europe.]

Americans don't like looking at maps, so it's easy to forget that Greece's northern borders touch the Eastern European countries of Albania, Macedonia, and Bulgaria. In fact, Greece is so far east in Europe that you only have to drive two hours east from the Greek border and you'll have left the European continent and entered Asia! Istanbul, the gateway to Asia, is short drive away (see map below).

Hence, geographically, it's obvious that Greece is in Eastern Europe. Just don't tell the Greeks that, it will piss them off.

If you were looking for evidence that Hades, the Greek god of the underworld, was trying to claw his way to our plane of existence, it's in Metéora. It seems as if his stony fingers are piercing through the earth's flesh and reaching toward Zeus in defiance. In Greek, Metéora means suspended rocks. About 60 million years ago (five million years after the dinosaurs went bye-bye), Metéora's sandstone pinnacles formed. Weather carved them into their shape today. They may remind you of Monument Valley in Utah. What makes Metéora truly special is that hundreds of years ago Greeks built celestial monasteries on top of these rocks. When you see them, you'll ask yourself, "How the hell did they build that there?"

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