Setting Free the Bears and More Food

In Grinnell, this past Saturday was 10/10, a massive, obnoxious, raucous annual party at which many people consume enough alcohol to render themselves either comatose or nauseous for the remainder of the weekend.
In Greece, they don't have 10/10, but that doesn't mean you can't overindulge in various pleasures. Quite the contrary, as a matter of fact. However, instead of drinking horrendous cheap wine in the pursuit of oblivion, Brad, our new friend Christos and I managed to become blissfully oblivious through the liberal consumption of cheap good wine and some of the most spectacular food I have eaten in my entire life.
For example: Crisp fresh cucumbers and juicy tomatoes with creamy salty feta cheese. Red peppers in olive oil still warm from being roasted. Crunchy cabbage in vinegar. Pork sausage with mustard (yes, I actually ate pork). A spicy feta cheese dip called tirosalata. Creamy tzatziki. Incredibly fresh cooked greens with lemon and salt. Chicken gastra, (a special local dish cooked at a low temperature for a number of hours) with plums, so tender you barely even have to chew it. Light sponge cake soaked in honey. Chocolate biscuit cake topped with whipped cream. Oh, and for breakfast, tiropita (like spanikopita without the spanaki, ie, spinach) bread, fresh honey and jam from fruit that tasted like it was wonderful and fresh.
Oh yeah- and good wine, of course. I don't actually know anything about wine, so I can't give you some impressive description like "an earthy fruity red with nuances of fig, peach blossom and tree nut" or "full bodied white with scents of pine nut and wheatgrass." I can't actually really distinguish between zinfandel or merlot or rose. But it was wine, and it came out of a barrel, which was pretty cool. And it tasted good.
All of this hedonism took place in Nympheo, a tiny village quite close to the border. What border, you ask? The border of a country known to some as Macedonia, to some as FYROM (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) and to some as Scopia. I'm not going to get into the political implications of which name is the official one, but basically, you shouldn't say "Macedonia" to a Greek unless you want to start an argument. See, the northern part of Greece is also considered Macedonia, and there are some disputes over who has the right to consider themselves a citizen of Macedonia.
Anyway, Nympheo is high in the mountains and quite beautiful. It was abandoned sometime in the early twentieth century, but in the 1980s some people came along and decided to restore it, and it's all cobblestone streets and picturesque houses. I didn't take good enough pictures, but here's a glance at it, anyway:





The other really cool thing about Nympheo is that they have a bear sanctuary, started by a rich wine-maker to save former dancing bears from the abuse they experienced in captivity. The sanctuary, called Arcturus, has seven former dancing bears, some former zoo bears, and some bears orphaned in the wild. They are mostly European Brown Bears, but there's on American Black Bear from the Belgrade Zoo. I took some pictures of the bears, and they didn't turn out so well, but I am going to post one anyway. I'm afraid that if I don't, you are all going to think I've just been reading too many John Irving novels and dreamed up the entire thing. See, here's a bear:



Anyway, the people at Arcturus seem to be doing really great work. Apparently there are now laws in Greece against forcing bears to perform, and two more bear sanctuaries are opening in Eastern Europe soon.

The other major event of the weekend was the Greece-Denmark football game. (And here I am obviously referring to European football, aka soccer.) It determined who goes to the World Cup, and it was not a good moment for Greece. So there are a lot of depressed Greek football fans right now. I guess I didn't escape sports-related misery when I left the US. But at least the Yankees lost yesterday.