When we arrived in Thessaloniki, we took a cab to the apartment we rented. The cab driver was giggling almost the whole drive and we guessed that although jolly, he was also amused at Sam’s attempts at speaking Greek. Aside from chitchat, she had told him the name of one of the streets near our apartment and that seemed to trigger extra amusement. The street name did seem peculiar. We had tried to guess what it meant in English, and it seemed like it might be something like Chicken God Street! We’d read it as Theokotopoulo, and Theo should be god and Kotopoulo is Greek for chicken. Several weeks later, our Greek friend Haris cracks up when we tell her the street name. It’s Theotokopoulou and the street is named after the artist El Greco! It’s his last name, but have you ever heard his actual name instead of hearing El Greco? He’s a famous artist and it’s cool to name streets after artists, but I still like Chicken God Street better. Greek is such a tough language to learn and we’ve been struggling to learn it for months now. More on that topic later, but for now here’s the chicken god near the White Tower, the most most famous symbol of this great city.
