Greek Independence Day

Today is the 25th of March, the Greek Independence Day. Yesterday I had spent some time to find out at what time the parade will be. Curiously enough that information was almost impossible to find. For future reference: The parade starts at 11am. Why the parade? Well, I hadn't seen it in a while and CFG hadn't seen it ever, time to go and see some local customs. So we went there, on a sunny spring day.

Wow, there were a lot of people. Coming from the Metro station on Syntagma square it was really hard to find a place with a little view onto the street. Lots of shoving and pushing. When we had found something, we discovered that it was indeed sunny, it got hot really fast.

It took some more waiting time till things got to move. I really don't remember to have seen so many tanks, military trucks, etc. etc. at this parade in past years. Maybe it's my memory failing me, or maybe I faintly remember that in some years they had scaled down the showing of military muscles. We escaped the masses at Syntagma square and instead viewed a bit more of the parade near Panepistimio station.

At noon we got us another traditional custom for this day: Today people eat Μπακαλιάρο (Bakaliaro, in English: stockfish) with Σκορδαλιά (Skordalia, garlic puree). We got ours together with friends at Barbagiannis in Exarhia. Mjam, it was good! They had a lot of people there and almost everybody was eating Μπακαλιάρο.