B r y B l o g - 2 0 0 6
Last updated: Sunday 26th February 2006
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Sunday February 26th, 2006
The rest of the weekend has been working - seven hours of lessons on Saturday and then again all Sunday morning. A quick coffee break and lunch at Christina's mother's. And there you have it. Lunch, that is.
Thursday February 16th, 2006
After lunch we went for a coffee at another little place, headed into a tiny supermarket and got three bottles of a Macedonian wine which we really enjoyed when we were in Ohrid, going by the name of Alexandria, and then took a taxi back to the border post - Christina couldn't face walking it. Soon we were back at the Greek side and in need of the toilet, and sure enough this reminded me of when I first came to Greece, back in July 1984. Back then I had spent getting on for two and a half days on a Magic Bus coach from London, and my very first experience of Greece was the toilet at the border at Evzoni. It was stinking hot, being July, and everyone on the bus was in dire need of a toilet, after a long stretch through southern Yugoslavia, as it was then, and as soon as we stopped upon entering Greece people flew towards the toilets, which turned out to be absolutely filthy, caked in faeces and swarming with flies. This was my first experience of Greece. To look at the picture below, from the Greek border at Doirani, one has to say that not much has changed in toilet hygiene at the Greek border...!
And so it was back home for a rest, after a fuller than expected Sunday!
Thursday February 9th, 2006
The other bit of news in Kilkis from today is that a number of police officers from the Drugs Squad have been placed under arrest after it was discovered that they had... quantities of hashish in drawers in their offices! It is alleged that they had offered drugs as a means to persuade some minor felon to hand over a bigger fish in the drugs scene, and it now looks like they will be the ones up before the beak... Rather ironic, really.
Tuesday February 7th, 2006
I was up bright and early on Saturday morning for my nine o'clock lesson, which was cancelled at three minutes past nine when the young lad's mother rang up to say he had a fever and couldn't come. Good start to the day. Lessons then ran through from ten till two-thirty, as I had managed to move my 2.30 till 4pm session to the previous evening. Christina and I made a surgical strike shopping trip to the Marinopoulos supermarket on the outskirts of town (I call it "surgical strike" as I try to avoid the browsing element of shopping, being in and out in the shortest possible time). I had expected it to be fairly busy there, but thankfully it wasn't, so we were soon back home. Christina had got some fish in to fry up, and I was going to do my barbecue, which is becoming something of a weekend tradition...!
We left at about half past twelve and made our way home on foot, the snow still falling. I am very lucky in that I don't feel the cold at all, but Christina definitely does and she was doing her usual Nanouk of the North impression...
The snow made the park in Kilkis look very nice (for once!). It hid the broken fountain equipment and sadly neglected ironwork and statues, and the appalling underground toilets and their totally incongruous roofing structure. As I mention on my Ohrid visit website, it is a constant source of amazement to me how a Greek town, fed with European Union funding, can be so badly neglected while a town like Ohrid in the neighbouring state of Macedonia, a much poorer country, can have a far better pedestrianised area and a fountain which is a pleasure to look at. I suppose that once again it comes down to local politicians here who are far more interested in self-promotion than in actually improving the town and quality of life for the citizens who voted them in.
Monday was back into lessons, but the state schools were closed because of the snow, which meant to Christina that her private language school was closed too, this being across-the-board policy with the Association of Language School Owners in Kilkis (of which, I am relieved to say, I am most definitely NOT a member). Effectively, this means, to my mind, that whenever the Council cannot get its act together and clear the snow, in other words every time it snows, teaching hours are lost right across the board and of course the private schools have to work extra to catch up the lessons. It goes without saying that even an inch or two of snow suffices to persuade Balaskas, the Head of the County Council, to close the schools. Supposedly, this is to make sure kids don't break arms and/or legs in their valiant attaempt to struggle through the inch or two of snow to their font of learning. Meanwhile, all the kids are now off school out in the snow doing what kids do in snow, run, skidding, having snowball fights, dodging cars skidding on icy roads left untended by the Council. Yes, all this is infinitely safer than having the roads cleared and schoolyards gritted. I mean, where are you more likely to break an arm or a leg, messing about in the snow or sitting behind a desk. Answers, Mr Balaskas?
Thursday February 2nd, 2006
My name is Georgia Apostolidou. I have benn teaching the english language since 1992 in frontistirio "A. APOSTOLIDOU" in Kilkis. I utterly relish this as it provides me with the opportunity to deal with young people, adiolescents and adults. I major in b2 c1 c2 levels maintaining an excellent report either trainess ans exerting a great deal of inflnence ocer their learning is my target tutorial aim dormer pipils can verify the aboce nation. My motto is: hard work is the key to success
Well, I count at least 13 mistakes in that short piece, spelling errors (or, to be lenient, typing errors), errors of expression ("utterly relish"??? What???) and parts that are simply incomprehensible e.g. "maintaining an excellent report" (rapport, perhaps, dear?), "pipils can verify the aboce nation" (do you mean the above notion? Even the right spelling would be very awkward English, and let's hope your "pipils" can spell better than you...). I am reliably informed that this character charges 25% more for Proficiency level (C2 level) lessons than I do (and I wonder if she gives a legal receipt...?), and I am a native speaker with 20 years of teaching experience.
January 2006 photoblog entries
Yet another busy week, hence the lack of blog entries over the last eight days. Last weekend (18th - 19th February) was Christina's family birthday - her brother, herself and her mother each have their birthday on consecutive days, the seventeenth to the nineteenth, and there was therefore much noshing and merriment to be had there. I didn't get much work done over that weekend!
The Council has been farting about all week regarding the dog pound problems - the chap who has been feeding the dogs there on a volunteer basis, doing the work the Council should be doing and is receiving money for, decided that he had had enough and now there is no-one to feed the dogs or look after them. The mayor really must pull his fat little finger out and get this problem sorted out. It is an utter disgrace for such shocking maltreatment of animals to be happening due to the incompetence of a municipal authority in a European country.
This week has been a week of changes insofar as the dates for the examinations in May have come out, and the klutzes who organise the Greek State foreign language examinations have only gone and set the dates for their French examinations on the same days as the Cambridge First Certificate, Advanced and Proficiency English examinations. This is a hugely crass (but typically Greek) move, as there are a lot of people up and down Greece who will now have to change their examination plans. I myself have two students who have had to do this, and of course preparation for one sort of English examination is quite different from the sort of preparation you need to follow for another. It is deeply annoying to find that just three months before the examinations students will have to be prepared for entirely different exams from those they have been preparing for since last September. In many ways it is comparable to teaching someone to drive a car, only to discover shortly before the driving test that they want or will need to drive a bus. To my mind, the chumps who chose to organise the exams for the same weekend as other major foreign language examinations are simply playing a puerile game with people's futures. The examination industry in Greece is a huge money-spinner, and by setting the Greek State French exams on the same weekend as the Cambridge English exams they are clearly sending out the message that Greek students should not take the Cambridge exams, but rather the Greek State English exams, which are on an earlier weekend in May. They have got anyone who wants to take the Greek State French exam and any Cambridge exam over a barrel, effectively. Madness, sheer madness.
The other major news is that today I applied for the mortgage for the flat I am purchasing, and should get the reply from the bank by the end of next week. Fingers crossed for that! Once again, though, the issue of organisation (or the lack of it) in this country reared its ugly head. You are making the biggest decision in your life in financial terms when you buy a place of your own, and so you need to be absolutely sure about what you are doing, about the details, all the ins and outs. You would expect to be taken to a quiet, private office, where the bank's mortgage advisor would sit down with you and run through all the options, obligations and so on. Perhaps a coffee and a nice chockie bickie would be offered.
But not in Greece.
In Greece when you need to arrange a mortgage you sit in the middle of a bank thronging with people, on the one side you have a clerk shouting across you to another clerk, the phone ringing every other minute, people appearing and asking things, all interrupting or rendering inaudible the crucial financial advice that you need to make the most important financial decision you are ever going to make. Such is life here.
Last night was the Greek celebration called Tsiknopempti, which is the last day before the period of fasting begins in the run-up to Easter. Being a totally unreligious person (and I'd say that I am anti-religion, in fact), this means sod-all to me, but Christina wanted to participate in the tradition of having grilled meat for dinner, so last night after finishing lessons at 10.30 p.m. I was out on the balcony yet again barbecuing sausages and steaks. I am certainly not one to pass up an opportunity to get the barbecue going, fasting or no fasting. Christina whipped up a tasty potato salad and other salads and our friend Varvara came round, as did Christina's brother Andonis.
The spread before the meat arrived
A week has passed since I last updated the blog, which means it has been a busy week! On Sunday 11th February, I got up and bounced the idea off Christina of a walk over to the village of Star Dojran (Old Dojran in Macedonian) in the neighbouring country of Macedonia. The border is only a twenty-minute drive from here, it was a sunny if somewhat chilly day, with a fresh northerly wind, yet she went for the idea, and we also got her brother Andonis to come along too. So up we drove to the Greek side of the border, to the village of Doirani, passing as we went a small group of people wearing black at the level crossing where only a week before a train smashed into a pickup truck carrying apples, killing the driver (as mentioned in a previous entry). They were holding a small memorial ceremony, but the strange thing was that some of them were actually wandering around the site picking up the apples which were everywhere, thrown from the pickup truck in the collision. Maybe it was a case of want not waste not, but it did seem a bit weird to see.
As I haven't got a green card for my car, we left the car on the Greek side of the border and headed for passport control. The passport official on duty turned out to be an acquaintance of Christina's, and they had a short conversation, only to be interrupted by some born-in-a-barn oaf who turned up behind us and who butted in with a "You can say all that on the telephone!" and pushed forward to the counter to give his passport over. He even used the "informal you" form to Christina, which is doubly rude. This is so characteristic of Greeks, and riles me incredibly. They can harp on about Greek culture till the cows come home, but I have got more culture growing between my toes than most Greeks have.
Anyway, having taken our leave of passport control and the muttonhead, we walked across the border towards Macedonia. Funnily enough, as we were walking along the no-man's land road linking the two countries, a van came racing up to us from the Greek side and pulled up beside us, the window wound down and a chap in a suit asked us if we were going to the casino. There is a casino just inside the Macedonian side of the border, which attracts a lot of Greeks (typically enough!). I piped up that we weren't, and the window wound back up and the van reversed back along to Greece...! Christina was not well pleased, as she was starting to realise that it was not a two-minute walk between the two border posts but something closer to a fifteen-minute one, and I had just turned down the offer of a free lift - the chap worked for the casino and shuttled punters back and forth in the van... Apparently the casino offers free drinks and free food, and you don't have to bet - could be good for a freebie nosh-up at some point!!
The thing about this border is that a lot of people living in Kilkis have never been over it (except for those willing to waste their money at the casino, fifty yards inside Macedonia), and I find the whole concept of living next to a border and yet never ever having crossed it staggering. Hailing from a country which is an island, I have long been fascinated by manmade borders between countries (as against natural borders, like that surrounding Britain), and even as a child I felt sure I would one day live near a border, as I do now, but I would never have imagined that in the twenty years I have lived here I have been over the border into Macedonia less than five times, and that I would be taking Christina's brother over for his first ever time, despite his having lived within fifteen miles of it for four decades.
Once we arrived at the Macedonian border post, we handed the passports over and Christina and Andonis filled in a slip of paper that Greeks have to, but which I didn't. This all stems from the element of distrust between the two countries and the decision to waive visa requirements for Greeks entering Macedonia. The piece of paper gets stamped and returned with the passport, but the actual passport doesn't get stamped, whereas mine did but I didn't have to hand over any pieces of paper!! We then made our way along the road (and past the casino!) to the village, which was quite a walk. The village was as quiet as a grave, being Sunday morning, and it looked like we would have difficulty finding somewhere to have a coffee, but eventually we got to the centre and found a restaurant. We had originally just planned on having coffee, but we ended up having a meal there. Lake Doirani, which is divided between Greece and Macedonia, is rich in carp, so we had that. Funnily enough, in Macedonian the word "carp" is actually "crap", so I can honestly say I had a plateful of crap for lunch on Sunday.
Anyone for a crap?
The main drag in Star Dojran on a Sunday
More crap...!
The rest of the week has been one of work, not much to report there...!
Well, the latest from here is that at long last the Council has got off its backside and is clearing the roads of the snow...! People have obviously been complaining about the Mayor and his cronies' total indifference to the plight of the townspeople and at last it has sunk in that if he is going to win the elections in autumn he had better be seen to actually be doing something...!!
The roads in Kilkis two days after it began snowing
It snowed heavily last Sunday. The Council gets to work on Thursday evening...
Speedy Gonzalez they ain't!!
Christina's brother travelled down to Thessaloniki yesterday morning by train and had the unpleasant experience of being onboard the train when it hit a car which was trying to get across a level crossing at the last moment, despite the fact the bars were down. The car, it seems, flew through the air and did two somersaults before coming to rest. Both car passengers were killed, but thankfully there were no other casualties. Two hours later, on the same line but further up towards the border with Macedonia, at a level crossing by the border village of Doirani, another train hit a car which again was crossing the level crossing at the last minute - again this level crossing has bars. The driver of that car was also killed outright.
It beggars belief how a driver can be so utterly dim as to try nipping across a level crossing to save a minute or two when there is a train bearing down on him. That said, the Greek railways organisation does seem to insist on installing bars of the type that cover just half the roadway, to block traffic on that particular lane from either direction, and so it is possible to try and drive a slalom between them. But what sort of retard would try this with a train coming, putting not only his life and that of his passengers at risk, but also that of potentially hundreds of people on the train, should it derail at speed during the resultant collision...???
On a more positive note, the Michigan ECCE (B2 level) examination results are out, and I am pleased to report more success. I had just the one entrant for that exam this time around, and he passed, which was very pleasing.
I have been hearing with ever-increasing indignation the latest update from one of my students about the gibberish being fed to the classes at his school by the religious instruction teacher, a woman whose name will go unmentioned here. In the past I have been informed of her diatribes against the Americans and British to the youngsters in her class. Her latest rant is, it seems, no different. Apparently, according to this dubious font of knowledge the Greek language has a vocabulary of some eight million words (yeah, right!!), and the spread of the English language worldwide is part of a pro-active campaign by the British and Americans to wipe out every other language in the world and to dominate all nations, which is why so many young people nowadays are learning English and why, she advises, they should all stop taking English lessons. She backed up this statement by explaining to the children that they would all soon be speaking just English and no Greek at all, because it is easier to say the monosyllabic "thanks" than the four syllables of "efharisto", the equivalent Greek word. Even more bizarrely, this woman has been telling her tender charges that in Brooklyn there is a Muslim base intent on eradicating the Greek language, religion and culture. Her exhortation to the children? Stop doing English lessons before it is too late!
Now, if it weren't for the fact that this deranged loon is in charge of children at an impressionable age and is supposed to be teaching a subject which for some is more than just a school subject but a matter of central importance to their lives, as religion is to many, all this would be highly laughable, the remarks of a misinformed and misguided old woman with a chip on her shoulder about the fact that hers is a minority language and that young people are following a global linguistic fashion by incorporating foreign words into their everyday speech. However, the sad fact is that she is in charge of youngsters and is responsible in part for forming their personality and knowledge of the world, and this makes all of it rather less laughable and rather more worrying. If I were a parent and my own child came home and told me what I heard from this student, I would be off to the school to demand what was going on faster than shit off a stick...
Greeks do, it has to be admitted, seem to have a quirky impression of their own language, which probably goes for most peoples around the world. One's national language is, of course, part of one's national culture and heritage, and it is good to be proud of it. However, many is the time that I have heard a Greek pipe up: "Of course, the Greek language is more expressive than any other language, it is more beautiful and you can say things in it in many more ways than in any other language". My standard response to this is to ask: "Oh, how many other languages do you speak fluently then?" The answer is almost invariably: "None". "So," I go on, "you are telling me that in your opinion the Greek language is more expressive and more beautiful than something you have absolutely no knowledge of?" Any of my kindly blog readers who have seen the episode of Blackadder where Sir Percy compares the intense blueness of the Spanish Infanta's eyes to the blueness of the Stone of Galveston, neither of which he has ever seen, will recognise where the logic in my response originates from.
You tend to get the same sort of drivel when Greeks talk about their country as the most beautiful country in the world. In this case it is just a matter of asking how their 147-country "see all the sights" world tour went...
It has been an interesting few days here at Hollamby Towers. Friday midday was the beginning of it when, out of the blue, I received an email from a friend from way back, twenty years ago in fact. In common with many people, I receive a constant stream of spam emails, mostly offering OEM software or well-known software at such low prices that there just has to be a catch to it. So when this email arrived with a name I didn't immediately recognise, I almost sent it directly to the trash folder of Eudora, but the subject line caught my eye and thankfully I didn't consign it to the virtual wastepaper basket. It was from Marie-Paule, who was doing the same course as I was at the University of Birmingham. To say that I was amazed is to put it mildly, I haven't heard from her in what must be twenty years. Then within a matter of minutes I received another email, this time from Hazel, who I knew from the French department at Birmingham way back then, and who I had by chance bumped into in the transit lounge at Zurich Airport back in the early summer of 1987 when I had been flying from Thessaloniki to Geneva via Zurich. Jaw drops again. Marie told me that Hazel had found my site by googling my name (from the University's alumni list, I think) and had passed it on to Marie. Hazel is busy organising a reunion of the alumni of the French department at the University of Birmingham and has a website dedicated to the developments on that. I emailed them both back briefly as soon as I could to say how great it was to hear from them after all this time and started lessons. Over the past few years I have occasionally googled old friends from university, but given that I am still in contact with male friends from that period it has mainly been female friends who I have been looking to find, and of course the problem of the change in the surname when a woman marries in the UK makes it nigh on impossible to find them.
Friday night after lessons saw us at the Varelofrones taverna again, stuffing our faces with our good friend Varvara. Varvara has a couple of flats in the seaside resort of Hanioti in Halkidiki and very kindly lets us use one of them for occasional weekends in summer. It is a two-hour drive and I love going down there because it is the nearest place to Kilkis where you can get draught Strongbow cider, which I love. It may be more expensive than back in the UK (in Hanioti it costs €4, £2.76 a pint) but there is nothing like it on a hot Greek afternoon. Below is a picture of yours truly from last summer listening to a podcast on my iRiver H340 while preparing to do justice to a pint of nice cold ice-cold Strongbow... Heaven!
Heaven!!
Sunday was a day free of lessons, but it started snowing heavily on Sunday morning and continued unabated till Monday night, giving Kilkis quite a thick covering of snow. Other places suffered more, so perhaps we were lucky. Typically, as I write this the Council still hasn't got the roads clear and cars and pedestrians are sliding all over the place.
In the evening we were invited out to a fortieth birthday party, that of my good friend Panayiotis. I used to teach Panayiotis, first in preparation for the Cambridge First Certificate (B2) exam and then for the Michigan Proficiency (C2) level exams, both of which he passed with flying colours. Panayiotis is not the usual type of Greek chap, he is interested in lots of different things, widely read and a keen photographer who has had his own photographic exhibitions. So, Christina and I managed to get a taxi, despite the snow, to take us across town through the heavy snow. Panayiotis was busy grilling sausages at the fireplace, and we were soon knocking back the wine and eating superb grilled sausages - and I think my blog has shown how much I like grilled sausages!
Panayiotis ponders the big four-oh...
Nanouk and me
Kilkis Park looks good for once
I myself had a few unwarranted cancellations, and I will only cancel teaching sessions if conditions are really so bad as to make it nigh on impossible to walk across town, which is exceedingly rare here. I always make a point of going out and checking conditions before deciding to cancel any lessons. Yet some children still found it impossible to wade through the three inches of snow...
This, however, did have the benefit of giving me time to sit down and type up a 20-year potted history of my life to send to Marie, Jennie and Hazel... Boy, was that a wander down Misery Lane...! Only kidding!
Last night I came across the website of a frontistirio (language school) here in Kilkis which has a list of its teachers, each having written a brief description of herself (all women) in Greek, except for the last one in the list who misguidedly tried to describe herself and her work in English, the language which she claims to teach to B2, C1 and C2 levels. Now let's explain this here. B2 level is the European Language Certification Accreditation's level for a fairly good ability at a language, approximately equivalent to or slightly higher than a British "O"-Level in the language. C1 is a better level, approximating a British "A"-Level in the language, while C2 level is the so-called Proficiency level, close to the level achieved by somebody studying the language to university degree level. The writer of the following purports to teach these levels. Hard to believe when you read her own English, but it is at the website (last entry on the page) if you want to check:
It is, to a large extent, thanks to supposed teachers like this that so many Greek children have such an appalling standard of English - and indeed in many frontistiria the English lesson is conducted almost exclusively in Greek, just imagine what good that does for the kids' spoken English! So many children come to me for lessons who have spent upwards of five years at a language school and yet who are incapable of articulating a basic sentence in English correctly, having been brought up on the ridiculous teaching methodology of all-grammar-and-vocabulary-and-no-speaking which seems to dominate here, as if the poor kids were being taught Latin.
At B2 level for the Cambridge exams, the success rate worldwide is some 75%, while in Greece it is about 48%, and at C2 level for the Cambridge exams the worldwide success rate is some 60%. In Greece it is a meagre 30%. Two out of three Greeks taking the Cambridge Proficiency examination go away with a piece of paper with the word "FAIL" on it. One can see why when even a teacher cannot express herself in comprehensible English...