Our Big Fat Greek Wedding

I recently went to Greece to attend a wedding. "A wedding!" you say. "This must have been a dear friend, a beloved relative, a close and important sibling for you to go such a way for their wedding!" And you were be right, if one's friend's cousin's cousin's cousin's wedding can be considered as such.

You see, six or seven years ago, N and her cousin stayed with N's cousin's cousin's cousins in Verdikousia, a little mountain village in central Greece (in the proximity of the city of Larisa, for those of you playing at home). N's cousin's cousin's cousin and his family put them up for two nights, drove them to Mount Olympus and generally showed them some sights and some great hospitality. In return, N showed her cousin's cousin's cousin around Sydney when he and his fiance visited a year and a half ago. And as a result, she and I (her +1 in this scenario) were invited to his wedding.

The plan was that we would arrive in Athens late on the Thursday, do some sight-seeing on Friday morning, catch the train to Larisa in the afternoon, book into our hotel, go to the wedding and reception on the Saturday evening, then back to Athens on Sunday and back to England on Monday. A flying trip, but how often do you get to go to a real Greek wedding in your life?

And at the last minute we found out - not only had we been so generously invited to this wedding, but the groom himself would be picking us up from the station and driving us to Verdikousia to spend the night with his family, before all going to the wedding together in Larisa the next day.

We were picked up right on time from the train by a very tired looking groom. Apparently the first Greek wedding tradition to be got through is a full WEEK of partying with family, friends, relatives, randoms (for instance, us) every single night. Every night, the groom's family makes food, sets up tables and people just show up for hours of eating, drinking and dancing until 4 or 5 in the morning - and then there is also all the wedding preparation to be done during the day. No wonder the groom just looked ready to get married and be done with it!

After a beautiful drive up into the mountains, we were greeted warmly and shown to our room. I don't have room here to do everyone justice, but the blanket statement that everyone was equally hospitable, and everyone treated us like simultaneously one of the family and also as an honoured guest should just about cover it. Most of the older generation didn't speak any English, so we had to get by with a lot of smiling and gesturing, but most of the people our age spoke English amazingly well (although every single one of them apologised for their poor English) and worked hard to make us feel at home. We learned about 10 words between us (N learned nine, I learned one) and one of my favourite moments of the whole weekend was being taught to count by a five or six-year-old who very earnestly wanted us to learn. Poor thing, he must have thought we werepretty slow. Anyway, now is not the time for dwelling on such things - instead, let's discuss what happens on the day of a traditional Greek wedding in Verdikousia.

- The groom sleeps until 1pm, having been up the previous evening (and all the other ones before that) until about 5am
- The children start having their hair done first, and getting into their beautiful suits and white dresses. This means that they have to be fed by the adults for the rest of the day, or risk spoiling their beautiful outfits.
- The adults then have their hair and makeup done, in time for the photographer and videographer to arrive around 4pm.
- The groom is then dressed by his family, who help him put on his coat, shoes, etc.
- Family photos ensue (including one of us with the groom...so maybe more like 'family' photos?)
- Then, the groom and his family, friends etc. have to go and invite the best man to come to the wedding. You need a clarinetist and accordion player for this, in case any dancing should be required. We had to stop once on the way to dance, so thank goodness they were there! We were welcomed at the best man's house with drinks and snacks and more dancing. Thankfully, the best man was free (phew!!) and came back up the hill with us to the groom's house.
- At this point, we had to deliver the bride's shoes. The groom's mother had these, inside a balloon (it sounds weird but it looked very cool) and a convoy of friends, family and cousins's cousin's cousins was required to deliver these to the bride. So we jumped in the car and headed down the hill (a cow, dog and some sheep wandered onto the road at various points and also a tractor, but we made it)
- We arrived at the bride's house and were shown upstairs, where her bridesmaids proceeded to put the shoes on for her, which is more difficult than it sounds - one of them needed to have some money and a rose petal inside, and on the sole of the other she wrote the names of all her single friends in ball point pen, the tradition being that after a night of dancing, whoever's name is still legible is the next to get married)
- The groom's family and friends are expected to steal things from the bride's house so we connived a the stealing of a sandal and photo frame
- There was more dancing
- As the bride left the house, she drank a glass of wine and threw it over her head and smashed it
- And then we went to the church for the wedding! All this took us up to 8pm, so it was a beautiful golden sunset as the bride arrived at the church, for the part this had all been leading up to - and I think it was worth the wait! (also, the children look adorable)

Amsterdam

It has come to my attention that I'm going on a LOT of holidays this year - and maybe this is something worth sharing!

So I'm going to backtrack and start with Amsterdam, because that was first, and move on from there.

It has been said, and said again, that travel is not about the destination but the journey. I'm please to say that this isn't always the case. I'm sure we've all experienced a journey that was only made worthwhile by the destination; and my journey to Amsterdam was certainly one of these.

It was a 4-day weekend away with my two closest Cambridge friends, N and E, a brief window in our lives to spend time together, catching up, laughing, praying and eating (but not in an Eat Pray Love way because that book is seriously the absolute worst).

Our journey began straight after work on the Friday evening. We had to cut things pretty fine to get from work to Stansted for our flight, so there wasn't much margin for error in the plan - there was only one train that would get us through security with enough time to get to the plane. E wisely booked herself a cab to take her from work to the station, to make sure that she got there; a cab which arrived early and left without her. Thankfully it didn't go far, so she just made it in time, although the driver seemed surprised that she had expected a taxi booked for 4.45 to actually wait until 4.45 before leaving.

The next hurdle came at Stansted, with the liquids bags. Like everyone else in the world, we had booked carry-on only, and it was only at the security gate the N found out that her bag - bought from Stansted - was too large to go through the Stansted security gate. (Most memorable line from this experience was "That bag was 20x20! I'm a teacher! I use 30cm rulers a lot!") Unfortunately the security personnel were unbudging, so we emerged on the other side lighter by a deodorant, moisturiser, lip gloss and sundry other items. Luckily, our flight was delayed 30 minutes so N had time to duck into Boots and buy a new deodorant.

It wasn't until we were chatting in the boarding line that E casually asked, 'So does our airport transfer just pick us up from the gate?' I had forgotten to book the airport transfer, it seemed. By this time, we were all out of internet coverage and couldn't work out even if the transfer had been booked, whether it was included in our stay, etc....so realised we would have to take the train when we landed at 10.30pm.

Luckily, the train in Amsterdam is pretty straightforward and we arrived at the central station some time between 11.30 and 12, at which point we were too tired to work out the tram system and caught a taxi to our hotel, from someone who didn't seem able to tell us much about Amsterdam (what was a good local food, what we should do as tourists apart from visiting the red light district, etc...)

Our hotel room was at the top of a flight of stairs for which the word 'precipitous' might have been invented - I'm not sure we should have climbed up them without mountaineering equipment, let alone with three wheeled suitcases, but we made it. Discoveries upon getting ready for bed included: N had not brought either pajamas or toothbrush (these kind of things appear really important when you're really tired, we might have blown it out of proportion a bit) and finally, that instead of buying spray deodorant at the airport, she'd accidentally bought femfresh.

These things aside, we got into our pajamas and got ready for bed. It was at this point - at 1am - that N discovered that flushing the loo caused sewage to pour out of the drain in the shower.

The next morning was a brand new day, and while there was a lot of back and forth about the sewage room, we got there in the end. And I can say that, as tired, grumpy and frustrated as we were with the journey, the destination was absolutely worth it. Amsterdam is such a lovely city - canals, bikes, bridges (with lights! in the arches!), beautiful trees, tall skinny buildings, waffles, friendly people - it was such a fun and lovely holiday. We rode Dutch bikes, went on a river cruise, walked the streets and ate delicious food and it was an absolute joy. We might just need to work on our grasps of logistics before we go to Croatia...