Greek challenges

This month I will travel to Greece for three weeks.
This is going to be one of my last trips before the Asian one.

I had been thinking, for a while by now, ways of improving my natural travelling abilities, so to easen eventual troubles during my next year of wandering... and so took I these thoughts into account when walking through Ireland in November.

Minimizing the baggage, walking more on foot, doing some hitch-hiking, staying longer, climbing local mountains and couchsurfing more were the goals that I fulfilled back then.


Now in Greece, I'm planning to do more hitch-hiking than usual (I wasn't a fan of this before, since it's absolutely uncommon where I live), to write more on my travelling log, to taste more local food, to follow a specific budget when spending money, to learn local language and useful phrases (I did this in Bulgaria too, with some success) and to practise it, to phonecall less home (it won't be frequent during the Asian trip) and to travel by boat/ferry (I did this too in Ireland, in fact, and it wasn't a pleasant experience... I'm not so used to the waves' movement).

Besides, I'd like to play more music on the street (I play a Basque folk instrument that I always carry with me) and maybe I will adventure onto the mount Olympus (I've read that it's not so difficult to climb).

It will also be my longest trip ever so far (21 days in a row).


I deem visiting Greece unavoidable in my quest for knowledge of the peoples of Europe, before I depart from this continent.
The European cultural baggage has got a deep source in this country, necessary in order to get the full picture of it, after having beaten the tracks of other countries.

Apart from Greece, I'm thinking of doing a "quick raid" into FYROM (Republic of Macedonia) and Albania, so to grab an idea of what these countries feel like, the only non EU ones (save for USA and the ones included in the Schengen agreements, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland) I will have ever been to, and quite underdeveloped yet, measured by European standards, but closely related to Greek culture in its wide sense (I suppose...).