Day 8

5/21/19: Byzantine Museum, Aristotelian University, and free afternoon-

This lovely day, maybe one of the warmest of the trip thus far was our last academic and scheduled
on the journey. After nightfall, the rest of our two days in Greece would be traveling and free time
capped off by a nice, fancy, final dinner. Anyways, today, our main activities was a museum and university visits.
More specifically, we visited the Museum of Byzantine Culture and the Aristotelian University.
First out of the pair was the museum and we got there by above ground bus through public transportation,
our first time here in Thessaloniki. It was also nice to start the morning a little bit later,
catching some much needed sleep and starting our day around 10am. It was our final day being guided by Eleni,
our very knowledgeable and passionate tour guide these past few days. (Thank you from all of us Eleni!)

Eleni told us so much about Byzantine culture during the hour or so we had in the very important museum
(one of the more famous around and is very precious to native citizens of Thessaloniki).
The building housed a lot of artifacts from this period concerning religious change, familial customs,
burial practices, and the empires in which it was all nestled under. We saw a majority of the rooms,
however did not reach every one of them. It was a very busy place, but that is good both from a revenue
during a financial crisis standpoint as well as respect and understanding for the culture from 395-1453.
Generally, we heard about topics of the early Christian Church, the Early Christian City and Private Dwelling,
the Dynasties, the Twilight of Byzantium, and the Fall of Constantinople.

Some info that we learned about these themes were products and materials for constructing everything,
changes within the church physically and structurally, shifts in types of painting and sculpture,
and a lot of other things that made a move to something new. This was the main theme and vibe from
the experience, the progression to the modern day new religion of Greek Orthodox. We also saw clothing,
tomb possessions, church arrangements, mosaics, writings, and so much more that were kept in more or less good shape.
After completing our loop, we said one last goodbye to Eleni and headed for the next part of the day.

After crossing off the initial part of our morning, we took about a 15 minute walk that had the old city walls
in the backdrop, so amazing. Upon arrival of the campus at one of Thessaloniki's many universities
(we learned that this city has quite a large youth population in school, which is free post-secondary education),
we walked around many of the buildings. It was a pretty campus and students still seemed to be in session as some
of them were on the grounds. We met one professor who worked in the faculty of philosophy and education in the oldest building.
Following this conversation, we made our way to the new building with it’s entrance masked all around with political propaganda.
We found our way to a classroom that was empty, quite a large lecture hall.

After this, by accident and funny enough we ran into one of Christos’ old colleagued and had a discussion with him.
His name is Nikos Maghioros and is an associate professor of Canon and Ecclesiastical Law.
In layman's terms, he teaches theology and told us about his classes and program. His faculty also has established a neat new
class about the intersection of religion, finance, tourism, and other subject areas with the focus on ecotourism,
the same as our class. It was also neat that he had one of his students with him, who shared her project in the university.
She is making a sustainable agriculture opportunity which will create a sort of community garden space creating food and
jobs for refugees and immigrants. I thought both of these Greeks’ insights were quite interesting and helpful for understanding
a part of their mission.

In wrapping up the day, we had a lot of free time on our own to do as we pleased. By now it was lunch
time and we found a nice restaurant called EunVuko where I myself had mackerel and a Thessalonian Salad
with of course a starter of great bread and a closer of a treat. After this, we were officially independent, so
some of us went back to the hotel while others walked along the waterfront and tried to do some shopping.
After getting off our feet for some time to rest, we headed out for dinner which was Gyros and other sandwiches.
Following this we walked some and had some traditional treats to close out or final night in Thesselonki.