Renewable energy excursion with Oldenburg Uni

This post covers nearly two weeks of sightseeing in early June, so it’s quite long (and a long time in coming). Hopefully with this whopper out of the way, I can start posting a little more regularly again...

In early June, my Athens roomies and I traveled (by car and ferry boat) from Athens to Kassel, Germany. In Kassel, we met up with around 30 students – mostly renewable energy classmates from Oldenburg but also a few students from other disciplines or who studied RE elsewhere. We then set out on a 12-day journey through central and southeastern* Germany.

* Note: According to all Germans I’ve discussed this topic with, it’s utterly incorrect to use the word “east” (including NE or SE) in a description of German locations, unless they were in the former DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik a.k.a. East Germany) before reunification. When a place is geographically near the eastern border of a Germany (e.g. München/Munich), however, I don’t know any other way to appropriately describe its whereabouts than by using the word southeast.

Day 1 – June 2

• SMA (Kassel) – We visited SMA, which is one of the (if not “the”) world’s leading solar/wind inverter manufacturers. My former employers, Abundant Renewable Energy, used exclusively SMA inverters for grid-connected wind turbine applications. I was already familiar with SMA’s products, and our presentation didn’t delve into much technical info (and provided absolutely no information on wind energy applications)… so although I’m a fan of this company and their products, their presentation to us was a bit lackluster, in my opinion. We were not permitted to take photos at their facility, so this day is, unfortunately, a bit faceless.
  

Day 2

• Geoforschungszentrum – CO2 Sequestration (Pottsdam) – This was a completely new idea for me. Basically, there are large fissures in the rocks deep beneath the earth’s surface near Pottsdam, which have been used for many years to store natural gas. There are now experiments to determine the viability of permanently “sequestering” large quantities of carbon dioxide in these cavern-like formations, in order to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases which are released to the atmosphere. It’s definitely a controversial topic, and many in our group of students and administrators left this visit with the impression that this was a waste of money and resources… but I’m of the opinion that any possible remedies (or partial remedies) to our environmental problems should be investigated, if there are organizations and/or individuals willing to fund such research.
  www.gfz-potsdam.de

Checking out the C02 sequestration borehole

• Domestic Water Recycling Controversey (Briesensee) – In this small village, a woman named Doris Groger had an electric pump that provided her house with water from a nearby aquifer. She also commissioned a local engineer to design a domestic “water recycling” or wastewater treatment plant for her to dispose of her water. The engineered solution included several settling chambers for waste water, followed by a process in which the resulting water was utilized for watering plants automatically. Mrs. Groger was proud of her system for what it accomplished (technically)… but also because it kept her independent from the new sewage treatment plant that had recently been built in a neighboring village. She saw the sewage treatment plant as a means of squashing individual rights to live independently. Many of her Briesensee neighbors had similar systems, but they succumbed to pressure threats from authorities and linked up with the sewage treatment plant. Mrs. Groger refused. Then apparently in mid-September, the police arrested Mrs. Groger, so that the local water/sewage authorities could build the required connection point to her house.
  
  Was it a matter of individual liberty versus authoritarian power? Or were there other factors at play? We only received Mrs. Groger’s side of the story… so I don’t know how to fairly assess the situation.
  1. www.lr-online.de/regionen/Abwasser-Streit-in-Briesensee-Briesensee-Abwasser-Doris-Groger;art77931,2167021 (Article on Briesensee controversy, in German)
  2. www.paul-aus-petershagen.de/aktuelles/080907_briesensee.html (Article on Briesensee controversy, in German)

Tour of Mrs. Groger’s water treatment facility

Mrs. Groger’s interesting yard art collection says, “Stay away!“ at so many levels…

Day 3

• Deutsche Solar AG (Freiberg) – We spent around half of this day visiting a solar photovoltaic panel manufacturing and recycling facility. No photos were permitted in this manufacturing facility either.
  www.deutschesolar.de


• Solar PV Park (near Freiberg) – At the time, we figured out roughly how much PV capacity was amassed in this solar park… but gosh, it’s been too many months, so I’m not gonna hazard a guess right now (… but there were LOTS).

Large-scale solar PV installation near Freiberg

Day 4

• Vattenfall (Markersbach) – Vattenfall is one of Northern Europe’s largest power producers. They produce their energy using a combination of wind, biomass, coal, nuclear, and large hydro power. We visited their large hydro power production and storage facility located near Markersbach. We received a very thorough tour of the storage reservoir and pumping facilities by a very lively engineer/manager. Unfortunately, my German wasn’t good enough at the time to understand what he was so animatedly saying, but it was obvious that he felt passionately about his job and wanted to give us as much information as possible.
  www.vattenfall.com

BAAAAAAAHHH!!! We encountered this friendly guy on our trek through the meadow toward the Vattenfall hydro storage reservoir

Climbing the stairs to the reservoir viewing area

Vattenfall-Markersbach hydro power storage reservoir


Vista from the reservoir lookout deck

François has his way with a dandelion at reservoir’s edge…

Day 5

• Dehn & Söhne (Neumarkt) – Dehn is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of lightning protection devices. Their equipment has a reputation of being high in price but equally high in quality. In addition to showing us a sale-oriented presentation on their lightning surge protectors, we were permitted to view an artificially generated lightning strike in a laboratory. They showed us how their equipment holds up when it is properly installed, grounded, etc. Then, in three subsequent tests, they showed us how improper installation can render lightning protection equipment useless. It was interesting (and, I’ll admit, kinda fun to watch stuff get speed-cooked before your eyes!). Once again, no photos were allowed in the facilities.
  www.dehn.de

Days 6-8

• Freetime in München [Munich] – On Friday night when we arrived, we were led on a walking tour through the city center by two German student in our group. Then we had the weekend to spend as we pleased. The German football [soccer] team was competing in the European Cup games, so there was a match on two of the three nights that most of my classmates were eager to see. On Sunday afternoon, a small group of us went to a classical piano concert held at the Nymphenburg Palace in the outskirts of town. On Monday, the full group visited the famous Deutsches Museum, where we received a private tour by a curator who had put together an exhibit on renewable energy. The curator spoke to us about techniques for creating museum exhibit, using his RE exhibit and an older exhibit on the evolution of the windmill as examples.
  www.muenchen.de/home/60093/Homepage.html (City of Munich tourism website)
  www.deutsches-museum.de (Deutches Museum site)

View from Peterskirche [St. Peter’s Church] in city center

Checking out the Marienplatz market en masse

The whole excursion crew at a beer hall somewhere in Munich

Nymphenburg Palace before concert (Solène, Craig, & François in center foreground)

Daniel, Ritah, & I learning about the “carbon footprint” of various daily human activities at the Deutsches Museum (photo by U.Parinyacupt)

Windmills exhibit at Deutsches Museum (photo by U.Parinyacupt)

Days 9-11

• Weilheimer Hütte (Bavarian Alps) – This was the much-anticipated climax of our 12-day excursion. Weilheimer Hütte is a mountain hut at 1955m (6415 ft.), which is powered almost entirely by renewable energy resources – micro-hydro, wind, and solar energy (a diesel generator provides back-up). It’s a very cozy – albeit without frills (e.g. no hot water) – hut, and Christian (manager) and his wife cook fantastic meals for guests.
  
  We first took a ski lift up about 1000m and then hiked up the remaining distance to the hut. The members of our group possessed a broad range of hiking experience/skills – from “never been on a mountain before” to avid hikers. My mountaineering skills were somewhere in the middle of the pack, so I got a little winded occasionally… but some others suffered quite a bit from the climb. Thankfully everyone arrived at the top safely. There was a day hike and a tour of the hut’s renewable energy systems on Wednesday. On Thursday morning, we returned down the mountain using the same route we’d ascended two days earlier. Not surprisingly, the downward trek was quicker and easier than the upward climb… and everyone seemed energized at the bottom.
  www.alpenverein.at/huettenHome/EN/Home/index.php?huetteNr=0747 (Weilheimer Hütte)

Getting a lift part-way up the mountain

Garmisch-Partenkirchen from above

Big horns

Real purdy mountain view

Weilheimer Hütte from a nearby peak

Sunset from the hut

Mountain rainbow

Weilheimer Hütte’s mini (1kW) wind turbine (photo by U.Parinyacupt)

More nice mountain views

Starting the return hike down the mountain – foggy and a little misty

Cute li’l feller along the path

No passage! (What’s the secret password?)

I’m sure this guy was at least as scared of us as we were of him, but we pretty nervous about passing him

• Unterhaching Geothermal Plant (Unterhaching, Bavaria) – After coming down the mountain and gobbling up a big, down-home, country brunch at a local restaurant that our fearless leader, Hans, used to go with his parents in his youth, we drove to Germany’s largest geothermal power plant in Unterhaching, near Munich.
  
  Geothermal heating plants make use of water which has been heated by hot stuff (that’s the technical term) down deep in the earth. Sometimes geothermal plants use the actual hot water from below, but at Unterhaching, they use heat exchangers and a “closed-loop” system, consisting of a water/ammonia solution (known in the industry as the “Kalina system”) , in order to maximize heat-transfer benefits.
  
  After the ammonia solution is heated – at around 3350m (11,000 ft) below the earth’s surface – this heat is transferred via heat exchangers to stored fresh water, which is piped to houses in the surrounding area to supply municipal hot water requirements. The remaining heat energy is used to create steam, which powers turbines to produce electricity.
  www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/co ntent/jun2008/gb2008063_168366.htm (article from Business Week / Spiegel Online)

Pumps and ducts at the Unterhaching geothermal plant

Where has the time gone...

Wow, it’s been an embarrassingly long time since I posted an entry… I’m not exactly sure how I fell so completely out of the habit of blog-posting since I returned to Germany. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m working a 9-5 job (internship)… or the fact that I already had friends here in Oldenburg (e.g. singing group members and former classmates), so there’s always plenty of social activities I can join in and stay busy with… or maybe other stuff and a combination of many things. Anyway, I'm back.

And here’s a summary to get myself “caught up” again:

• Back in Deutschland – I’ve been back in Germany since early June (yeah, once again, I'm embarrassed about the time lapse). I spent two weeks traveling in southeastern and central Germany with a university-sponsored renewable energy field trip (more to come in a separate posting), and then I arrived back in Oldenburg. Life in Oldenburg is significantly different than the first time I experienced it. For one thing, I live on the second floor of a house (instead of a dorm room) in a completely different part of town than I did previously. Secondly, my lifestyle is no longer that of a student, since I spend roughly 45 hours per week working in an office and commuting (but at least I have no more tests to study for or lab reports to write).


• Master’s Thesis Internship – In July I began a practicum with a wind energy consulting firm called Deutsche WindGuard (www.windguard.de). The company’s office is located in a small, North-Sea coastal town called Varel, which is around 23 miles (37 km) north of Oldenburg. Each day I ride my bike to the Oldenburg train station (5 minutes), ride the train for 30 minutes to Varel, and ride my other bike to the office (10 minutes). Yes, I live a 2-bike lifestyle ;) …but both bikes are old, ugly, and borrowed. I’ll write a separate posting about my thesis topic.


• Singing Again – After a four-month break (during the semester in Athens), I’ve returned to the a cappella group I sang with during my first semester – Jaco de Musio. We just returned from fantastic group trip to Västerås, Sweden (around an hour’s train ride from Stockholm), where we attended an a cappella music festival/conference hosted by The Real Group (Swedish a cappella singing group extraordinaire). We had a fantastic, inspiring experience at the festival (more on this in a future posting).

So there you have it – all caught up with my current life in Oldenburg… (in a general overview kinda-sorta way)

My new Oldenburg apartment (2nd floor right-hand window)

Athens: Parting thoughts

During the first leg of our journey from Athens to Germany, I asked my Athens flatmates (François & Xavier) for their lasting impressions – both good & bad – of life in Athens. I’ve combined their comments with my thoughts into the list below…

• Noise, Clutter, Disorder
  Athens is a city that never sleeps, so at any time, day or night, there’s plenty of noise – cars honking, motorcycles revving engines, partygoers reveling.
  
  It also has the reputation for being a dirty, polluted place. According to several Athenians I spoke with, Athens’ smog has improved significantly, since the 2004 Olympic Games. This is apparently due to the complete public transportation overhaul that took place, including the installation of their very modern and convenient light rail system. There is definitely a lot of trash littering the city’s streets and sidewalks, but there are also lots of city workers whose job, every morning, is to clean up the previous day’s litter.
  
  One of my favorite sayings while in Athens was, “There are no rules in Greece.” People walk across busy streets wherever and whenever they can manage to do so (what a contrast with Oldenburg!). Cars and motorcycles usually don’t stop driving through a red traffic light until it’s “fully ripe” (i.e. has been red for 5-10 seconds). Double, triple, and quadruple parked cars are fairly normal sights on wider streets and at neighborhood road intersections. Cars and (especially) motorcycles largely disregard traffic lanes (and other vehicles) when driving. What’s more surprising than the fact that there’s so much disorder on the roads? …The fact that there aren’t more accidents (I only witnessed one minor, non-injury accident during my four months).

• ‘Might Makes Right’/ Pedestrian Blues
  The traffic ‘food chain’ in Athens is ranked by size, power, speed, and maneuverability; if your vehicle is big, then all smaller vehicles must defer to you – regardless of ‘right of way’ or other traffic laws. There’s also a sense that you can (and should) do whatever you can get away with… which is why cars and motorcycles constantly cut each other off and pay little attention to lanes; at every traffic light, motorcycles ride between adjacent cars to the front of the pack, in order to be among the first ‘out of the gate.’
  
  This sense of ‘doing as much as you can get away with’ also applies to etiquette between pedestrians and on public transportation: generally, Athenians just keep their heads down and walk wherever they plan to walk, without regard for or awareness of what others around them are doing. So my best guess is that the phrase, “Please – after you” doesn’t exist in Greek. Nowhere is this ‘me-first’ navigation more apparent than on the metro/subway. When the train stops and doors open, people are so anxious to enter the train that they force their way on while exiting passengers are attempting to disembark. And it’s not as if there’s any order to it (e.g. everyone enters & exits to the right)… It’s just pure chaos – a ‘push-n-shove’ battle of the fittest.
  
  And once you’ve gotten past the etiquette-related challenges, pedestrians just generally have a hard way to go in Athens. There are sidewalks usually only in commercial and touristic areas, and sidewalks are never sacred: motorcycles drive on them; cars and trucks park on them, forcing walkers out into the street to get around. And whoever designed the sidewalks throughout the city definitely didn’t plan for rain or snow, because sidewalks often slant up/down to follow the terrain (instead of using level stairs)… and the stone material used for many of the sidewalks is very smooth (and slippery when wet!)

• Strikes
  Perhaps this was an unusual year, since there is a particular controversy raging right now in Greek politics, related to the pensions of various types of city workers… But during our four months in Athens, there were two public transportation strikes, a month-long garbage pick-up strike, two weeks of rolling blackouts due to electrical worker strikes, two university employee strikes, and two “general” strikes (during which all public services shut down. The French have the reputation for their fondness for strikes… but I’m tempted to believe that Greeks (or at least Athenians) are in the same league.

• Impressive Sites, Varied Landscapes, Delectable Food
  Athens, of course, has wonderful ancient sites – from the Acropolis/Parthenon to the Agora to the Kerameikos cemetery and many others. Plus, it boasts 130+ museums, hilly urban landscapes, mountains all around, the sea to the south, and close proximity to lots of other interesting, beautiful, and historical places (e.g. Corinth, Nafplio, Delphi, and several islands).
  The “Plaka” and Monastiraki areas – although fairly touristy – are very enjoyable places to walk around and soak in the atmosphere of the shops, restaurants, markets, etc. If you stick to the more touristic sections in the heart of the city, in fact, there are plenty of nice, walkable areas to explore.
  
  And the food… Mediterranean cuisine is among my favorites. Succulent grilled meats, kalamata olives, feta cheese, lots of fresh or grilled vegetables, everything topped with olive oil and lemon juice – healthy and, oh, so tasty!

• Contradictions Abound
  Athens is a city of contradictions and extremes. Throughout this mostly “dirty, ugly” city, there are many places of tremendous beauty and majesty. I was told by a Greek classmate before arriving in Athens that it’s an “all-concrete” city… and although it is composed mostly of concrete and asphalt, most streets are lined with trees, and we lived just opposite a large, forested park. And when a group of us students hiked on Mt. Imitos in March, the contrasts between the natural, mostly undisturbed mountain setting with what looked like solid concrete below was stark.
  
  Athenians – while seemingly rude and inconsiderate in some senses – are generally very warm, friendly people, once you get to know them. Many Athenians speak English and are glad to chat with strangers. As a general rule, the younger people (as with anywhere in the world) are more likely to speak English… but there were plenty of times when I tried unsuccessfully to speak English with teenagers or 20-somethings and then was surprised to be addressed in perfect English by Greek senior citizens.
  
  Along with other Mediterranean peoples, Greeks have the reputation for a “relaxed sense of time” – in other words, tardiness is almost guaranteed. There’s also, generally, a very easygoing outlook toward life (e.g. relax… don’t take things too seriously… everything will work out). What I found at my university, however, were very serious, academic professors and a rigorous engineering curriculum. Our professors were very personable and had relaxed demeanors, but they were nearly always punctual (even as our Greek students usually weren’t).

And finally, some miscellaneous Athens pics (mostly taken by classmates) that never made it into previous posts:

Torch-passing ceremony at Athens' Olympic Stadium (photo by F&N.DiSalle)
I didn’t actually see this (it was supplied by my friends Filippo & Nora), but it looks interesting.

Japanese drumming ensemble in Syntagma Square (photo by F.Veynandt)

Shellfish display at Monastiraki Market (photo by F.Veynandt)

‘Running Man’ sculpture at night
I was always impressed by this statue in the shape of a “man on the move”, which is composed entirely of stacked glass sheets. Here’s a night photo of him, backlit by the Athens Hilton hotel

Filippo & I, “going low” at a favorite Panormou dance pub (photo by F.Veynandt)
“When I'm out walking, I strut my stuff, yeah an' I'm so strung out… I'm high as a kite, I just might, stop to check you out… [jump up] LEM-ME GO O-ON LIKE A BLISTER IN THE SUN!…” (“Blister in the Sun” – Violent Femmes, 1990)

Return to the North

After a long Friday night of carousing, we got up early-ish on Saturday (May 31) to finish packing, clean the apartment, and pack François’ car. And PACK it we did. There was only barely enough space for one thin-framed person to squeeze into in the back seat. We rotated seats fairly often, but having the shortest legs in the group meant that I volunteered to spend more time in the back seat than François (~6') and Xavier (~7’).
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We drove from Athens to Patra (NW city in the Peloponnese) and then crossed a nifty-looking bridge (called Rio-Antirio) heading northward into the Stereo Ellada region. Our ferry boat departure was from the northwestern port city of Igoumenitsa at 11:45pm. The road journey through Greece took around 8 hours, including breaks.
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Here’s a map of our route through Greece (Athens to Igoumenitsa):
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And here are some photos from the drive:
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Me in the backseat of François’ tightly packed car (photo by X.Gillard)
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The impressive Rio-Antirio bridge near Patra (photo by X.Gillard)
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From within the Rio-Antirio bridge (photo by X.Gillard)
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Athens flatmates, François & Xavier, at the Gulf of Patra
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Small coastal village of Amphilochia - on an inlet to the “Ambracian Gulf”
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"Superfast" ferry arrival at Igoumenitsa (shortly before our 11:45pm departure)
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Snuggling up for the night with hard plastic ferry benches (photo by F.Veynandt)
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Sunrise on the Ionian Sea (~5:45am)
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Arriving at Bari, Italy
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Until this trip, I had never been to Italy. And although we spent around eight hours there, it was eight hours of interstate highway [autobahn] driving. Unfortunately, there was no time for sightseeing, as we were on a very tight time schedule: We needed to be in Kassel, Germany, by 9am on Monday morning, in order to join a two-week university-sponsored renewable energy excursion with our former classmates from Oldenburg Uni (more about this in a future post). Thus, my first visit to Italy was completely uneventful (as if I was never there). We interacted only with highway "travel plaza" / gas station personnel… so of course, I gained no real sense of the country, the food, the people, the landscapes… at all. I’ll definitely have to go back for a “real” visit sometime.
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After our race through Italy, it took two hours to pass through Austria, and then we crossed back into Germany. We debated the virtues of stopping at a cheap hotel a few hours south of Kassel… but in the end, we decided that it would be better to drive late than to have to get up very early in the morning for more driving. So we arrived at the rendezvous location in Kassel, Germany, at around 4am and slept for around three hours before having breakfast and joining the bus tour.
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Here’s the second part of our road trip (from Bari, Italy, to Kassel, Germany):
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Back in Germany again

West Texas Wind

A few days ago, an old Peace Corps buddy named Alex sent me a link to this 6-minute CBS video called "Wind Turbines in Cowboy Country": www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=4205615n&channel=/sections/sunday/videoplayer3445.shtml. It's about the booming business of wind energy in western Texas.

Besides the fact that I'm generally interested in "all things wind", I found the piece interesting mainly because of how they covered the story. My personal rationale (as well as that of my master's program) for promoting and working to advance renewable energy is based primarily on environmental and energy concerns:

• lowering carbon dioxide & other greenhouse gases (in order to help Earth "keep cool" and avoid increasingly likely catastrophic damage, such as polar ice meltdowns, dramatically rising sea levels, mass extinction of certain animal & plant species, and generally an unhealthy planet);
• protecting human civilization from the inevitable future scarcity of carbon-based fuels (upon which mankind has primarily relied to supply its ever-increasing energy needs throughout the past 200-300 years); a more specific version of this idea is that of "energy independence" (i.e. generating energy locally, instead of relying on sources provided and controlled by foreign -- and sometime volatile -- entities);
• utilizing free, clean resources that never run out (until our sun burns out, which isn't predicted for the next billion years), in order to accomplish the first two objectives.

So what did I find interesting about the CBS piece on Texan wind energy? They never once mentioned the environment or greenhouse gases... or the need for long-lasting, sustainable energy resources... It's primarily a news article about money: the economic prosperity created by the booming Texan wind industry.

Since I'm not a "money guy" (e.g. my distaste for the single-minded focus on profit-making was mostly why I got out of the electrical "widgits" manufacturing industry), I sometimes forget that money is how -- and why -- things get done in the private sector. And since financial prosperity is generally so important to Americans, I suppose it makes sense to speak to this concern, rather than preaching about environmental advantages.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how the budding "green energy" industry will mesh into America's energy landscape in the coming years and decades... and how average Americans' lives will be affected by it.

OPA!!!

If you’ve ever been to a Greek restaurant in the U.S. (excluding gyro stands), then there’s a good chance that you’ve tried saganaki [fried cheese]. I’ve been a big fan of Greek food ever since I visited Papagus Taverna in Chicago around a decade ago. And since then, I’ve tried Greek cuisine in several other US cities. One universal – even emblematic – experience with (American) Greek restaurants is the festive tradition around saganaki. Here’s how it goes: 2-3 waiters arrive at your table – one holding a frying pan containing a rectangular block of cheese. One pours a high-alcohol-content liquor over the cheese; another lights the cheese on fire; and together they all yell, OPAAAA!!!! It’s fun, festive, and memorable – a crowd favorite – which is, undoubtedly why they do it.
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I’d always assumed – based on this “tradition” – that “opa” was an expression of joy or excitement, along the lines of “hurray!” or “yippee!” But… no. Sadly, I learned from Petros, one of my Greek Oldenburg classmates during my first semester that I was completely on the wrong track with this word’s translation. Firstly, this silly gag with cheese flambé apparently has nothing to do with any Greek traditions. Secondly, opa just means “oops”, as in “Opa, I accidentally stepped on your toe” or “Opa, I did it again” (à la Britney). There’s apparently a wedding tradition featured in “My Big, Fat Greek Wedding" (a movie I haven’t yet seen but would like to), in which glass plates are tossed onto the floor and broken while people shout “Opa!”… but this is, perhaps, done sort of “tongue-in-cheek”: Opa! [Oops, I just broke a plate] Opa! [oops, there goes another one!”] ...And so maybe, just maybe, one could extend this idea to saganaki – opa! [Oops, I’m a pyromaniac and like to set cheese on fire for American customers!] But not so, according to Petros.
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Disappointed as I was by this new knowledge (roughly on par with learning that there’s no tooth fairy), I refused to stop using my favorite foreign exclamation in any and all celebratory situations (especially if Petros, my Greek pal, was within earshot). Eventually, my use of the word opa caught on and began to insidiously brainwash my Greek classmates. Before long they were joining me in shouting opa! with glee at parties and during drinking toasts. Opa had become our ultimate party word in Oldenburg…
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But despite the successful transformation of opa’s meaning, what I really longed for was the chance to give Petros a true Greek-American “saganaki opa!” experience.
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(Okay, so fast-forward back to the present):
On our final evening in Athens (June 16), the entire group of EUREC (RE master’s program) classmates from the “wind energy” and “energy construction in buildings” groups gathered for our last supper at a nice restaurant in the “Plaka” (touristic part of Athens full of restaurants and souvenir shops). We had reserved a nice terrace balcony area with a view of the Acropolis at a restaurant called “H Πάλια Ταβέρνα του Ψάρρα" [I Palia Taverna tou Psarra -- The Old Taverna of the Fisherman]. Petros – in perfect Greek style – was a couple of hours late to our dinner gathering. But since he was one of the last ones to arrive, it meant that everyone was present when he received his surprise gift (that I had arranged earlier in the day with the restaurant management).
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Suddenly, across the balcony off to my right side, a flash of light caught my eye (a skillet being lit on fire)… Then three waiters dashed to the table where Petros sat and, all at once, they exclaimed (as if reciting a line from a familiar but not entirely memorized script): OPAAA! I would describe the look on Petros’ face that followed this mysterious gift as one of bewilderment -- with a hint of annoyance -- as he struggled to make sense of what had just taken place.
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Then… slowly… after a minute or two of reflection, a glimmer of recognition appeared… a smile spread across his face, and he shouted over to me at the adjacent table, “Scott! Did you do this?!” When I nodded, he and the other Greek classmates who’d studied with us in Oldenburg burst into a hardy laugh. It was a moment I’d imagined, waited for, planned, and carefully orchestrated…. And it gave me a real sense of accomplishment -- one of my favorite and most memorable moments in Greece (and not a minute too soon).
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The flaming cheese arrives (photo by C.Wong)

Petros is incredulous, and Giota says "What in the ..."

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Post-cheese laughter (photo by F.Veynandt)
Petros is in the center (green-white plaid shirt). At this point -- a few minutes later -- the waiter has begun giving Petros the play-by-play description of the saganaki shananigans I requested from the wait staff. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera to this shin-dig, and I'm still waiting on a few more photos (including one with Petros' look of disbelief) from a several friends. If I get other good shots, I'll post them here later.

Sunset on Filipapou

Filipapou is a hilltop monument to the SW of the Acropolis in downtown Athens. It’s one of the highest places in the downtown, so there’s a nice vantage of the city, the Acropolis, and the sea. Although I’d previously been to Filipapou two or three times, Xavier (one of my flat-mates) hadn’t yet been… so we set out on a Saturday evening (around a month ago) to catch the sunset there. Xavier & I were joined by Laurent and Marion, two of our renewable energy classmates. The sunset was colorful, and I got a few decent photos of Athens under nice lighting.
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Filipapou monument at sunset
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Soirée en Filipapou (L-R: Laurent, Xavier, et Marion)
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Athens facing NE (backed by Mt. Imitos)
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Sunset as spectator sport
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The Aegean Sea to the SW of Athens
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View of the Parthenon (Acropolis), with Mt. Likavitos behind
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Silhouette (photo by Dr. Varga Gábor)
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While I was standing on a concrete pillar (in order to get a clearer view of the Acropolis for the previous photo) a man approached me and said, “Hi. Look…” as he showed me the display screen of his digital camera. He managed to capture my silhouette, the Filipapou monument, and the colored sky, all in one shot. The photographer, named Gábor, is a banknotes (currency printing) professional for the country of Hungary. He happened to be in Athens, at the time, for an international conference on European banknote standards. At my request, he kindly emailed this photo to me.