This...is...Athens!

Although I was exhausted from my long journey, I did not sleep for very long. I got up Monday morning at 7:00 and unpacked before departing for the Gennadius library and the orientation session for the Byzantine Greek Summer School. My two roommates accompanied me to a nearby coffeeshop called Everest, part of a larger chain in Greece and maybe elsewhere too.
Everest serves pretty good filtered coffee (in Modern Greek it is called kaphes gallikos "French coffee" or kaphes philtrou "filtered coffee"), which is probably the thing I miss most about being the States. At home I drink at least two or three cups of coffee before I do anything in the morning, and I often drink another cup or two in the late afternoon or early evening. If you want to have filtered coffee in your home then you have to make do with instant coffee, which is better than nothing but still a poor substitute nonetheless. Since I've arrived in Greece I enjoy Greek coffee more than anything else. Greek coffee, as far as I can tell, is indistinguishable from Turkish or Arabic coffee; I've been told that the drink is Turkish in origin. Though I do understand why they call it Greek coffee here; as an American I take umbrage at filtered coffee being called "French coffee" (maybe I'll ask for kaphes eleutheros--"'Freedom' coffee"). It is made with very finely ground coffee mixed rather than filtered into the coffee, and is usually served in small teacups with sugar. It is a spectacular drink, and I've always wondered why it hasn't caught on in America; Starbucks has popularized almost every form of coffee, but I don't think I've ever seen Arabic/Greek/Turkish coffee in the States other than at restaurants which serve ethnic cuisine. By the way, there is a Starbucks about two blocks from where I live (and yes, sometimes I do get coffee there--but don't tell any other graduate students that).
So that's coffee in Greece. Now I went to have breakfast with my two floormates before orientation, although they ended up not wanting to eat anything so I ate alone in their company, so to speak. We are an interesting mix. Bob is a tall high school teacher from Kentucky who is my age (23). He is the only non-graduate student in the bunch, and he gets a lot of points in my book for attending a program like this even he has no professional obligation to do so. Tom, my other floormate, is more than ten years our senior, and is beginning work on his dissertation, an analysis of Didymus the Blind's commentary on Genesis. His background and interests are obviously in theology (Tom's, but Didymus' also).
Upon going up to the Gennadius Library, we meet the rest of the students There are a total of ten students (four women, six men) in the program: myself, my two aformentioned floormates, four art historians, a canon lawyer, an epigraphy (inscription) specialist, and a librarian with a background in theology. Over the next several days we have our first classes and get to meet our instructors, Dr. Papaioannou from Brown University, and Dr. Alexakis from Ioannina University (in Greece). We quickly discover that what we have signed on for is in fact not a vacation but rather an extremely intensive course designed to improve our Medieval Greek as much as possible in four and a half weeks. We have class for around four hours a day, along with individual one-hour tutorials twice a week. I spend at least 7 or 8 hours a day on homework. We also take trips to various sites of interest on Fridays and Saturdays, along with occasional visits to various places in Athens during the week. What this means, gentle reader, is that although I am in a city with wonderful cultural events, night life, and resturants, I don't experience very much of any of them, and I usually just walk back and forth several times a day between the library and my apartment (wait a second, this is just a sweatier version of my life in Princeton!).
And oh the heat. Now I am not one to complain about heat, as I like to think that I get along with it pretty well. I did grow up in Nevada, and like Paul Atreides I can say that I am a desert creature. But the heat here has been just awful. My first week in Athens everyday was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in a city with spotty--at best--air conditioning. Let's just say I don't love the library just because of its books. Global warming, my friends, may not yet be a reality in the United States, but it has been here for a long time in countries along the Mediterranean rim. In the three weeks that I have been here, there has not been a single day at or below the historic average high for June and July.
The heat has also given me a new appreciation of the siesta culture of countries slightly warmer than the United States. In Greece, as in Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc., during the summer months there is a traditional nap time between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. in the afternoon. Now dour Protestant that I am I was taught that this is because people in such countries are lazy and have no work ethic. While I always thought this ridiculous I can now say with certainity that nap time is obligatory not because these people lack the Weberian Geist des Kapitalismus but rather because without air conditioning you will collapse of heat stroke and possibly die if you do any strenuous work within this stretch of time during the summer months. Period. Well, I must run, but I will post more this weekend.