Hellenic Abroag - Part 2: I don’t practice Santorini
Andddd we’re back. My apologies for the delay in the second installment of the Abroag. Sometimes life gets in the way. (These take a while to write and I never worked up the motivation).
But I’ve officially sat back down, thrown a pot of coffee on, and forced myself to bang out Part 2. Our story picks up on the plane to Santorini, one of the most beautiful islands in my ancestral homeland of Greece. My mom and dad were just wrapping up their mile-high morning booze fest with another couple whom they envied due to their slightly younger age and lack of children.
Finally, we landed in the homeland and set about our Grecian adventure. The trip consisted of 3 parts. A few days in Santorini, then a few days in Mykonos, then the final few days back in Santorini on the other side of the island. Love my Dad and am greatly appreciative of him for taking us on this wonderful trip, but that itinerary is why Mom should be in charge of planning.
First note about Greece: Because of the Greek alphabet, all the businesses have names that make them sound like a shitty legacy software company. Literally, the first building I saw was called Alpha Epsilon. You know that place is crawling with BC finance majors who couldn’t land a job at JP Morgan.
(Gonna call a mid-blog audible here and present a lot of this in quick hit, image/note format for the sake of both of our time).
Our hotel was crazy nice (shoutout Steve for making the medium bucks)
This place was huge on spa treatments, which I immediately jumped on because every part of my body is a stiff breeze away from falling off. There was an extensive list of treatments, though this one in particular jumped out at me:
Didn’t end up doing that one, but fully believe I’d have an 8-pack right now if I did. Big junk science/herbal remedies guy. I instead opted for a massage called the total man, which surprisingly did not end with a Robert Kraft. So more like “Most of the Man.” I did have to wear the threadbare frilly thong pictured below, which served essentially the same purpose as Adam and Eve’s leaves. Was like jamming my business into a butterfly net.
Oh wild side note: the intake form for the massage had you check a box describing your current skin condition and one of the options was “gross.” I think if you select that option then massage therapy turns into just therapy.
Personally, I very much enjoyed the massage, though I’m not sure I can say the same for the masseuse who bizarrely opted to spend some time massaging the ol’ glutes. Literally was just a back and neck massage, so not sure why she would even include that bit. Regardless, I tipped her 40% for her troubles.
The massage had me looking like I was 35 again (I’m 26) so I opted to hit the town and see what’s what. Immediately, I noticed that Santorini’s transportation was the same as that of a guerilla army that only has the budget for hand-me-downs from the Cold War. Got a car that looks like something you’d blow up in the Favela map in Call of Duty, and a bike that’s made of wood like they need the scrap metal to support the nonexistent war effort. I’m telling you man, Europe goes out of its way to be sus.
Not really anything to do with Santorini, but I saw some attractive ladies walking by and tried to jump up and touch a high tree branch to impress them. I missed.
Speaking of ladies, the mannequins in Santorini were needlessly busty. Hit on her for longer than I’d care to admit before realizing she was plastic.
When dinner rolled around, we had our pick of options since Greece’s three main industries are tourism, restaurants, and being retired at 45. There were some interesting restaurants, like this one that advertised “Souvlaki - Greek style” in case you were concerned you were going to get Irish Souvlaki:
Or the “So-so” bar and grill which I respected immensely for its truth in advertising
Ultimately we settled on a great spot our concierge recommended. I know nobody gives a shit about my vacation or my dinners, hence why I tend to stick to just mocking beautiful places, but I do have to do the obligatory food pics.
Not pictured is the shrimp my dad tried to order by saying “Can we get some shrimp as well?” Yeah no shit you can pops, I could spit into the Mediterranean Sea from here — you need to say which shrimp dish you want. Between Greece and Florida, this was the 4th time he’s tried to order shrimp as a standalone item without any further specificity.
The whole grilled fish Greece does is dope, but it’s even cooler that all the restaurants bring you into the kitchen and show you the fish they caught that day. It’s like a pick your own lobster thing except they’re all super dead already.
Also, I’ll get more into this in a later blog, but for a country as traditional as Greece they’ve gotten super into fancy, deconstructed food. I think the third pic above was like a play on a lamb shank or something? Just give me a fucking lamb shank.
Jumping back to our hotel, there was a cool bar with needlessly expensive drinks. This one in particular stood out.
Just relax with the names guys. That sounds like a porn that’s set in space.
Speaking of the bar, there was a bartender kid who kept talking about how he wants to move to America because it’s impossible to make money in Greece, presumably because they don’t have any. I told him he should consider Boston and he said, “no cost of living is too much there.” This dude thought Boston was in New York, but somehow knew that my rent is too high. Clean it up Boston.
Moving right along, my family decided to do one educational historic thing in between creating a backlog of feta and white wine in our respective esophagi. We all went on a tour of an ancient Greek village that was buried for thousands of years underground following a volcanic explosion, but was perfectly preserved because of ash or whatever. In true Greek fashion, they didn’t find the city until the 70’s and that was purely by accident.
Sorry, I should say that most* of my family went to the archaeological site. My sister Katelyn, never one to add any unnecessary additional knowledge to that brain of hers, opted to sit this one out despite fears of FOMO and being “taken” in our absence.
The tour was actually very interesting. The lady was super knowledgeable and made a few stops before the archaeological site to explain Santorinian history. Apparently the whole island is just a giant active volcano, which seems less than ideal. I guess every 10,000 years or so the underwater volcano erupts and just buries the island. Kind of makes you wonder what the point in carrying on there is. Also what the hell is an underwater volcano? Doesn’t the water just put it out?
She also randomly dove into Greek etymology for no particular reason.
For instance, “utopia” actually means “nowhere.” So the guy who came up with that was a fucking bummer. And Gyro, (pronounced Year-Oh for you uncultured swine), means “Spin” or “Spinning.” To use it in a sentence: “I drank too much Ouzo, got the gyros, and pulled trigger.”
Anyways we eventually got to the dig site, so here’s an ancient city:
A few thoughts here then I’ll wrap up:
Crazy that people just knew how to build this shit back then. If we lost access to the internet, the world would go into the Dark Ages instantly.
I do not understand how things like those vases get preserved for thousands of years. Also fun fact: virtually every artifact they found at the site was either a cooking tool or something used to hold food (the vases). So Greek.
I would be worshipped as a god in this society. They showed the beds/coffins they used and everyone was like 4 feet tall.
The tour guide kept trying to put things from the site into modern terms so we’d understand it better. She described some frescos on the side of one of the houses as “the first Instagram stories.” Thanks, I never knew what paintings were until you explained it like that.
There are no bodies in the site because everyone apparently bounced once they knew the volcano was about to splode. It’s also possible that the bodies are lower down in the site, but they haven’t dug that far yet. Yep, there’s more to this site that’s yet to be uncovered but the Greeks are taking their time getting down there. Only been 50 years.
The tour guide also kept making it a point to tell me, my brother, and my pops that the society was female-led so there was no war and they were always at peace. Jeez I wonder why no one wanted to fight for this ticking time bomb of an island. Also great, you got peace, but you also got volcano’d so really how good was your leadership? If a man’s in charge, yeah there’d be more wars and probably some under the table betting on gladiator fights, but that volcano doesn’t go off. We push a boulder into that thing like Sisyphus.
Apparently they offered goat sacrifices to please the gods, but clearly that wasn’t enough. Gotta go lamb. Can’t cheap out like that.
Last thing: there was some tablet the lady showed us that had a bunch of markings on it. Archaeologists surmise that it was an accounting ledger. So even in ANCIENT FUCKING GREECE, someone is still working some dead end job for one of the Big 4. PWC? More like PWB.C. am I right? Whatever, they can’t all be funny.
In the true spirit of the original Abroag, I want to close with the original superlatives I used to do at the end of every blog post:
Santorini Destination of the Week: This isolated church
Yeah so that’s apparently a church built into the face of a very steep mountain. Imagine being 12, your dad forces you to wake up at like 7AM for CCD, and you have to free solo your way there. Only person praying in there is Alex Honnold.
Santorini Drink of the Week: Blue Monkey Lager
Surprisingly really good beer. Honestly preferred it to Stella. Also good on Greece for having breweries. Way to move with the times.
Greek Grievance of the Week: They’re getting too cute with the food
Look, I love Greek food. It’s literally in my blood (got some moussaka clogging up one of my arteries). But chill with the new school avant-garde shit guys. No more deconstruction. No more style over substance. That picture above is of a Mediterranean flatbread I got. Gorgeous right? It tasted like good octopus they put on top of a cafeteria french bread pizza. Focus on the flavor before anything else. The classics are so good in Greece — no need to get away from that. Serve me a piece of Pastitsio in a shoe box for all I care, as long as it’s good. Once you start garnishing things with three single pieces of arugula, you have to know you’ve gone too far.
That’s Part II! Keep an eye out for the third installment whenever I next work up the energy to write for 2 straight hours. Next up: Mykonos 👀
