Hellenic Republic//Greece

Environmental Hazards Travelling to any new destination posses risks. Risks go both ways, we as travelers deliver some to our destination while our destination posses some to us. The issues I will discuss in this post are both environmental, one caused by visitors and the other impacting visitors.  Santorini on a gloomy day. Image Source: The BBC Greece has been a popular tourist destination for a while and like most admired destinations is facing over tourism. As a result, the country is facing the standard impacts of over tourism; littering and degradation to local biodiversity. A good example of this is the island of Crete. Few decades ago Crete's primary income source was agriculture. However, today this has turned over to the tourist industry. The result is soil erosion on high footfall nature trails, increased groundwater extraction to meet demand and damage to aquatic ecosystems due to plastic littering. Not only Crete but even other Greek hotspots like Santorini are experie...

The Greek World's Behavioral Culture Like most countries around the world, Greece too has specific aspects to lifestyle that can be considered uncommon and unique to the region. Visiting the country for the first time and encountering some of these unspoken rules of the culture can come as a surprise, especially if you, the visitor, have not heard of or come across such interactions before. In this post I will highlight some unique bits of the Greek people's day-to-day lifestyle to help reduce the cultural shock that you may experience on your visit to the Hellenic Republic!  To begin with, the Greek people allot a certain level of importance and symbolism to hand gestures. One of these gestures is the waving of your hand at another person. The part of the world where I and most readers of this blog come from call this gesture waving hello to someone standing at a distance. However, in Greece this sign has a completely different meaning. The motion goes by the name "moutza...