After an amazing day/night in Thessaloniki, Kostas and I drove to Xanthi, my home city (just a couple of hours from Thessaloniki). My family house is actually 5km out of Xanthi, in the beautiful village of Petinos (photos of the place where I grew up will come with my final blog entry).

It was sooooo nice seeing my parents, my brother (whom I hadn't seen for over the year), and my grandparents (all in their mid-80s now 🙂 I spent all afternoon with them and then joined them in one of my cousin's engagement dinner (yes... food again 🙂

 

I left the engagement party early to join some of my friends at bars in Xanthi.

In the photos: Despina, Mary, Vangelis, Filippos (my brother), Kostas, Mpampis.

The last stop was Mpampis' bar (the last photo above) which I love. The three of us talked about our views for social justice, what's fair in the world's economy, how to solve the world's problems, etc. etc. 🙂 Wayyyyy into the night... 4am.

I walked Despina, whom I've known since high-school, to her family's place (she's visiting too from Thessaloniki) and then did the crazy/stupid thing I tweeted about yesterday 🙂 I walked to find a taxi and got back home. Once I arrived in Petinos, I realized that I hadn't made arrangements to get a key for the door. Still, I seemed to have car keys in my pocket. Car keys? Eh? I had totally forgotten that I drove my mom's car when I went out :-))) It was already past 4.30am so I just decided to sleep for few hours and go pick up the car in the morning 🙂

I woke up early and walked to Xanthi. Found the car and went to get "mpougatsa" for Despina and myself (photo below). It was general election day for Greece. Despina (very very clever girl... PhD in theoretical physics, research work, etc. 🙂 was working on the exit-polls. I decided to keep her company for most part of the day. It was HILLARIOUS!!! We were laughing all day. It was an amazing place for people-watching. Even though we weren't there in any election-related official capacity, everyone was asking us for directions, help, etc. Both of us, very polite, were more than happy to help. It was lots of fun! Soooo many lines to remember, stories to tell 🙂

 

After a break to have lunch with my family and to exercise my voting rights, I rejoined Despina for a while before going off to meet more friends. Afterwards, I ended up eating, yes again, at Vangelis' and Mary's new amazing house (at this stage, I am even getting full by just typing about food 🙂

Finally... a "quiet" night... only till 1.30am... in one of my favorite bars called "Ano Kato" ("Up Down") with Despina.

Tomorrow is my last day around here before making my way to Seattle via London... meeting with even more friends! :-))