Greece

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.

Meteora, Greece has several surreal monasteries. They look more like Dali painting than real. You stare at them wondering, "How do monks get up there? Do they ever come down?"

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?"

Greece symbolizing the west in the east

Why does it sound so strange to say that Greece is in Eastern Europe, even though it's obvious from a map that it's located there?

It's because Greece has great marketing. Greece has been associated with the West for a long time. It started when the West tried desperately to associate itself with Greece. That's because over 2,000 years ago Greeks were light years ahead of the barbarians in Western Europe. The Roman Empire started the tradition of acknowledging the immense Greek contribution to civilization. Back then, Europeans were more likely to view Europe on a north-south continuum rather than an east-west one; the south had the civilized, technological advanced societies, whereas the north had the losers.

That way of looking at Europe shifted when the Roman Empire split in two. Greece suddenly was no longer associated with the West or the South—it became part of the Eastern Roman Empire, often called the Byzantine Empire. Later, when the Turkish Empire ruled Greece for over 400 years, Greece became even more Eastern.

Fast forward to the 1800s, Greece finally rid itself of the Turks. By then, however, they had spent the last 1,500 years being associated with Eastern Europe. If you had asked a European 100 years ago if Greece was in Western Europe, he'd have laughed and said, "Dude, have you looked at a map? Those guys are practically in Turkey!"

After WWII, the West wanted Greece to rejoin the Western European club. As the Iron Curtain fell across Europe, Greece nearly fell in the Eastern Bloc. They had plenty of Greek communists begging Stalin to help make Greece communist. However, the Western Allies lobbied hard to keep Greece in their domain because Greece is strategically located on the Adriatic and has utopian beaches.

Stalin relented and told the communist Greeks to back down on their revolutionary dreams. Greece joined the EU, NATO, and the eurozone. Because these organizations are linked with Western Europe, Greece re-associated itself with Western Europe after a 1,500-year break.

Today, connotation distorts geography. Quick: what's more eastern, Bosnia or Greece?

Most would instinctively say Bosnia, but that's wrong because all of Greece is east of Bosnia. (Zoom out of the map below to see for yourself.)

In conclusion, Greece is like Finland: a country that geographically is in Eastern Europe, but culturally is not.

This is an excerpt of The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us. The chapter on Greece only focuses on the part of Greece that is directly linked with the rest of Eastern Europe—Greece's Macedonia.