Done and done

It really doesn't feel like I'll be leaving Athens in two days. Nor does it feel like this is the end of the academic year. I've had such an amazing time here that I don't think I can adequately express everything with words on this page, so you'll just have to track me down and talk to me about it. In anycase, I just turned in my last paper, which might be the last paper of the undergraduate career. Tomorrow I'll spend packing and then I catch a flight to London on Sunday, stay there for a few days and head back to Chicago. I'll be there until the 15th when I move into my new apartment and then head back to Michigan for a few days. Then it's off to California, for a summer of making video games interning at Left Field Productions. Awesome.

See you all soon!

Class, Broken Toes and Slurpees

The last week or so has been pretty standard. Class has been pretty interesting. It feels much more like a core class now, raising questions in discussion like "What is a nation?" and "What is a Greek?" and such. The reading has been pretty easy, and I've watched Pier Pasolini's Medea a couple of times as research for my final paper about the film. The movie is crazy. Speaking of movies, I saw the new Star Wars movie. I'm proud of Lucas, it doesn't suck. Maybe it's because I had really low expectations, but it was a thoroughly fun movie.

Perhaps the most exciting thing that's happened though, is that I broke my toe on a walk around the city Sunday. I had just wandered away from my apartment for a good hour and a half when I smashed my foot into this concrete tree base thing. I tore a big chunk of my big toe's nail back and bled all over. The toe next to it, though, took the brunt of the force: I hit it right on top of the first joint. Today it's black and blue and a little stiff, but it doesn't hurt as much as it did yesterday, which is good, so it's not too bad. I think I'll live.

Being back in Chicago is going to be weird. As much as the Western world is trying to infiltrate this country, particularly through the EU, Greece really is not a Western country. That veneer of familiar culture eased all of us into the Greek lifestyle, but I think going back is going to be quite a culture shock. There are a few things that I miss about the States, though. Like slurpees. When it's really hot here (and it gets hot at about 10:00 am), that's all I can think about sometimes. I can't think of anything that I seriously miss though, I've been having too much fun exploring what this part of the world has to offer. I'm definitely going to miss things from here though, like souvlaki and tzatziki and the wonderful (and cheap) vegetables. I'm going to miss the laid back culture, particularly at the cafes, just sitting with some coffee talking with people for hours on end. And the old man culture here is great, though a little sketchy. I'll definitely have to come back.

I posted a few new pictures from around the city too.

Island Hopping

So, after hour couple of hour layover back in Athens, we shipped off to our first island destination, Kithnos. We arrived late in the afternoon, so the sun was setting and the whitewashed buildings of the port town looked beautiful. There are only about 600 inhabitants on Kithnos, so the town was very small and the people were very friendly. We sat down at a café and had some coffee as we watched the sun sink towards the water. After resting for a bit, we headed off away from town to find a place to camp. This turned out to be slightly more difficult than we had anticipated as the ground was covered in spiky shrubbery of doom. Everywhere you stepped, there was a spiny little shrub just waiting to claw at your ankles. It was awful. Eventually we found a little rocky spot where nothing was growing and set up camp, huddling in the center away from the sharp, pointy death surrounding us.

In the morning, we got up and walked to the other side of town where there was a nice little beach. We went for a swim and, of course, the water was freezing. It was also incredibly windy and sand was blowing all over the place, but it was nice to lie in the sun and warm up. After having had enough of the sand-blowing madness, we walked back to town for lunch. We found a little restaurant hidden behind a few buildings and sat down. This place has the best Greek salad I have ever had. Everything was so fresh. It was really unbelievable. We also had some grilled calamari drenched in olive oil that was pretty spectacular too.

After lunch we walked back the direction we had came from and found an even better beach. It’s located at the end of this long, rectangular bay and was relatively calm. We sat around and swam for the better part of the afternoon before heading back to town to catch our boat to our next destination: Serifos.

On the short boat trip to Serifos, I took a bit of a nap, but didn’t really wake up from it and was delirious for the rest of the evening, which was pretty crazy even without the added insanity. We arrived at the port around 10:30 and it was cloudy, so it was pitch black outside. All we could see were the lights of the town, the harbor, a really weird looking hotel on the other side of the harbor and these lights that went up a huge hill and just sort of stopped. Later we’d find out that the hill lights were another town built on just two of the four sides of a pretty big hill. In any case, we wandered around town along the beachfront, towards the creepy looking hotel and looked for a place where we might be able to rent a room for the night on the cheap. They were all closed, however, so we trekked off into the black wilderness. It was all pretty disorienting since we were in a place we’d never been before and it was absolutely dark outside. We started walking up a hill on a road and we found what would have been a good camping site, had it not been a construction site. About this time, it started to drizzle a little bit. There was a lightning storm off in the distance, probably over Athens (which we could still see the orange glow from) and when the rain hit the old power lines overhead, they sparked and crackled. It was pretty crazy. We kept walking along the road, going up and down, with me getting increasingly more delirious, until we finally decided just to wander off the road a bit on what turned out to be a goat path. Again, we slept surrounded by spiky plants of doom. And on rocks. Very uncomfortable rocks. Needless to say, we didn’t sleep very well that night and Bob and I were awoken several times in the night by the sounds of goat bells clanging, each time from a different direction. So we were surrounded by spiky death and by goats…

In the morning, we realized that we had been sleeping a few hundred meters from a very primitive looking stone farmhouse, complete with crazy little white dog running around on the roof, a yard full of chickens and the farmer yelling at his goats: Ella Ella Ella! Pretty crazy. We packed up gear back up and headed back towards town. The island made a lot more sense now that we could actually see what things were. We saw the town on the side of the hill, Xora, the beachfront we had walked along and the construction site we had walked past. Back in Serifos Town, we had breakfast at a little café and figured out our travel plans for the next leg of our trip. After grabbing a pastry at the bakery, we took a bus up to the top of the hill to Xora. It was a scenic little town of white buildings and churches and a few of the traditional Greek windmills, one of which I took a nap in the shadow of while Bob and Pat wandered around town. From the top, they saw a beach that we’d end up walking to. After waking me up, we started our long hike down the mountain on steep stairs and donkey trails. There were little lizards about every five feet, too, but I failed in catching any of them. Came pretty close a few times, but they’re wily…

After walking for about 45 minutes down the hill and past a dammed up reservoir, we arrived at the beach, and it was amazing. The color of the water was turquoise, like what you see on postcards of the Caribbean, and the sand was incredibly fine. We were the only people there for a good while before a few others showed up, but for the most part, we had it to ourselves. It was a pretty fantastic place. I can only imagine that in the high season the place would have been crawling with people and the nearby taverna, which was closed while we were there, would draw even more people.

After lounging for a few hours, we walked back to town and grabbed some souvlaki before heading to the dock to wait for our ship. The plan was to go to Paros, stay there for a five-hour layover and then hop on a ship to Santorini. While we were waiting, we met a pair of English girls who were also going to Paros. So we hung out with them on Paros while we waited until 3:20 in the morning for our ship.

We got a few hours of sleep on the boat and arrived on Santorini bright and early…and a little crazed. When we first got off the boat, we saw white on top of the cliffs of another part of the island in the distance and thought they were snow. Nope, just buildings. Anyway, we gave the hostel we were going to be staying at a ring and they sent a little van to come over and pick us up, which was really cool, since the port was at the bottom of a huge cliff that would have taken probably an hour and a half to walk up. The hostel guy drove us across the island to Perissas, one of the several little towns on the island.

The hostel was pretty neat, just rooms full of bunk beds and young people from all over. Well, really just Australia and Canada, but that’s almost all over, right? We ran into Adi and his friend, Andrew, by chance since they were staying at the hostel too. They had rented a car so we all piled in and drove around the island. First, we went up to Oia on the north of the island. This is the town where all of the postcard pictures are shot. What they don’t tell you though, is that all of those traditional looking houses are actually hotels. After walking around town a bit, we headed down the side of the cliff to this little cove that had a bunch of restaurants and basalt. Lots of basalt. We ate a picnic lunch and then wandered around a bit. We found a big rock about 10 meters off shore that had a platform cut into it for jumping off of and Bob, Adi and Andrew swam out and jumped, but only after the “encouragement” of a passing boat yelling at them to jump. It was probably about an 8-meter drop. I would have done it but I had just eaten so much for lunch that I figured that I’d puke my guts out if I started swimming, and Pat managed to get his hand impaled by a sea urchin on the way out to the rock.

After heading back to the car we drove over to the red sand beach on the other side of the island. The sand was more black than red, but the pebbles were a mixture of red and black igneous rock. The beach was set at the base of this huge red cliff and there was pumice strewn all over the place. We hung out on the beach for a good while and eventually piled back into the car, visited a lighthouse and drove back to drop the car off at the rental agency.

Now the guy who rented the car to Adi and Andrew is perhaps the sketchiest person I have ever met. He had been in Greece for eight years after living in Seattle and New York. He’d gone to Georgetown and had an MBA and a CPA. Now, this doesn’t seem too odd, a really smart 40-year-old guy living on a Greek Island. The sketchy part is why he’s in Greece. He ran a bunch of his own businesses back in the States and did his own books and eventually figured out how to cheat on his taxes through various loopholes and the like through the businesses he owned. Eventually the IRS nailed him, so he paid off what he owed and fled the country. Apparently, the FBI can’t get him here. But he exuded sleaze, and when Andrew went into the office to sign the contract, he said that it was a really small room, with those blinds that close really quickly at the snap of the little twisty thing, and that he half expected some goon to come out of a back room and beat the hell out of him. This guy occasionally even sends letters back with Americans to be sent to the FBI to taunt them. Madness.

The next day we just bummed around the hostel and went to the black sand beach that was about five minutes away. Other than the pizza I had for dinner, nothing was too exciting.

At this point, we were pretty burned out on traveling since we’ve been on the road for almost two weeks of running around like crazy, so we decided just to head back to Piraeus. However, as luck would have it, the ferries were on strike that day. So we had an extra day to kill. We hopped on a bus to Akrotiri and checked out the excavation site there, which was very Pompeii-esque with walls and pots and loads of solidified volcanic ash. After the site, we walked up to the modern town, had some coffee and then went to find a bus to get us back to Perissas. We walked for about twenty minutes to a bus stop and started waiting. And waiting. And waiting. There was definitely no bus coming. At this point, Bob started going a little crazy, throwing berries at a very small rock, which we eventually got fed up with and I jumped up and down on and threw across the road. We also saw a guy drive by on a moped with a huge blue macaw on his shoulder. It was pretty weird, and we’d see the guy again on our boat back to Piraeus the next day. In any case, we spent the next two hours walking back to Perissas and going completely mad along the way. There was a lot of singing of Rolling Stones songs and desperate lizard-catching attempts. When we got back, we met our first American of the trip, a Wisconsin girl who has a brother who goes to the U of C and goes to school in Indiana with a girl Bob went to high school with. Sometimes I don't believe there are 6 billion people on this planet.

The next day we got up early and headed off to Fira, the largest town on the island, for breakfast. We ate at “Momma’s House”, which was complete with Momma herself. She was this crazy little Greek woman who pinched our cheeks, tousled our hair and knocked a few euros off our bill since we’re poor students. It was the first American breakfast we’d had in a long time though, and it tasted good.

After eating, we walked around town a bit and hopped on the bus that took us to the port, where we got on our boat and made our way back to Athens. Quite a crazy trip.

I’ve uploaded new pictures and a panorama of the second beach on Kithnos and another from the road we walked up on Serifos.

Adventures in Crete

Monday evening the group packed into a bus to head off to Crete. I’m not entirely sure why they had a charter bus take us to Piraeus, since it’s connected to Athens and easily accessible via public transportation, but meh. I was really quite sure what kind of boat we were taking to the island, only that it was about an eight-hour ride and that we had cabins. We arrived at the port and unloaded in front of an enormous ship. Basically a small cruise liner. We boarded and found a floating hotel. Pretty swanky. After dropping our stuff off in our tiny four (bunk) bed rooms, we moved up onto the deck and stuck our feet in the empty hot tub. Guess it’s not quite in season yet. The boat took off in about an hour, and the breeze on deck was very pleasant. We all sat out for a while, talking, reading and eating before trying to get some sleep.

Our wake up call was at 5:45, far too early. Especially considering that we were going to a museum that morning. In any case, we got off the boat and onto a bus that drove us from the port to our hotel in Iraklion where we crashed in the lobby since our rooms were not ready yet. After a continental (kind of) breakfast, we walked across the street to a nice Venetian fountain. Our professor for the remainder of the class time here came with us to Crete, and so we sat around the fountain a bit, listening to her talk about the history of the island. Iraklion is a pretty touristy city, lots of shops and the like. But scatter around are buildings showing off Venetian and Ottoman architecture. Afterwards we talked to the museum, which held ancient Minoan art. Some of it was pretty neat, a lot of it wasn’t. One of my favorite objects was a libation vase in the shape of the head of a lioness. It provides evidence that the Minoans had contact with other cultures, as lions are not native to the island. Neat stuff.

After the museum, and lunch, we headed to the ancient palace at Knossos. Arthur Evans heavily reconstructed the site early in the twentieth century, so it was far different from anything that we’d seen before. Walls had been rebuilt, columns erected and painted and all sorts of things. Most of the class showed utter disdain for it, but I thought it was pretty cool. There are plenty of piles of rocks around this country; it’s interesting to see a different approach to preservation. The site itself was labyrinthine, with winding passages through the foundations of what used to be walls. After Knossos, everyone was completely exhausted from museuming and walking all over the place. We went back to the hotel and napped before going out to another communal dinner on the U of C’s dime.

The next day we bussed to Rethymno, where Crete used export huge amounts of olive oil soap. We wandered around a huge Venetian sea fortress after another lecture about the history of the area and eventually wandered down into town for lunch and a wade in the sea. The architecture of the town was very pretty, and had elements of both Venetian and Turkish styles. Earlier, there had been a controversy between the citizens and the Ministry of Culture over the preservation of the historic civil buildings in the city. People wanted to renovate their homes but the government wanted to keep things “traditional”. Many of the buildings were in bad repair because of this conflict, but you could see one of the biggest contention points of the argument all over the place. The facades of some of the buildings had been replaced with cement, instead of the more usual stucco, since it holds up better to the moist sea air. Scratched into the wet cement were linear patterns that the residents claimed to be traditional since their grandfathers practiced the art. There is some conjecture that it’s similar to the marks one makes in grout when placing tiles, but it’s certainly not Venetian or Ottoman.

Later that afternoon we headed off to Chania, and stopped at Souda along the way. Souda was and still is a huge naval base, strategically situation at the bottom of a long bay. We stopped at a little rest stop at the top of a bluff overlooking the bay. The water was gorgeous and you could see the NATO ships on the other side. Continuing on to Chania, we arrived at our hotel, unloaded our stuff and had yet another communal dinner. You can’t beat free food, especially when it’s from a highly recommended restaurant.

The next morning after breakfast, a few of us went across the street to a market where I bought some food for lunch and wandered around the shops. Fresh bread and Cretan Gruyere are a hard combination to beat. After looking over the fish at the market, we walked back to our hotel and hopped back on the bus. We bussed out to a few of the monasteries in the countryside. They were all basically the same set up: outer walls surrounding a courtyard and a church. They were very pretty and surrounded by gorgeous scenery. The last monastery we visited was abandoned. The monks who inhabited it had to move around to the other side of the mountain it rested on as pirates could see it from the sea and had a tendency of raiding it. It was down in a valley about a half hours walk on a goat path. The monastery itself was pretty derelict, but the amazing part was a cave next to it that four of us went into. It went about 400 meters back and was covered in stalagmites and stalactites. The cave was still very much alive and it was very humid, but you could see soda straws still forming and the columns were awesome. The best part though, was at the end of the cave was a small shrine. There were old icons, an incense burner and some other religious paraphernalia set on the stones. Completely unexpected, but I suppose we were right next to a monastery.

After the monasteries, we went back to Chania for gelato and a really nice swim on the nearby beach. That evening we got back onto another gigantic ship headed back to Piraeus. This afternoon at 4:00, Bob, Pat and I are headed off to Kithnos to start our cycle of the Cyclades. Ten days of island hopping here I come.

I’ve posted more pictures and be sure to read the post under this one, since it’s new too, just uploaded at the same time.

Pilgrimage to Meteora

So, Meteora was amazing. Adi and I set out Friday morning for Trikala, a town near our destination. The bus ride was uneventful and we soon arrived at the bus station. We had a bit of time to kill so we grabbed some souvlaki and wandered around the town a bit. It really reminded me of New Jersey. There was a little river running through town, lots of storefronts and a much different feeling than that of Athens. I’m coming to the conclusion that Athens kind of sucks. Every time I leave it, the rest of Greece just blows me away, but the city itself isn’t that exciting. We were soon on our way to Kalabaka. Since we had forgotten to look at a map, and of course didn’t bring one with us, we didn’t really know where Meteora was in comparison with Kalabaka. We knew that there was a bus from Kalabaka to the monasteries in the morning, so we figured we’d take that. We arrived late in the afternoon and walked around the town for a while. It’s set at the bottom of these huge, eroded rocks that come shooting up out of the ground inexplicably. We had some time to kill, so we decided to hike up through a gorge in between two of said rocks. We stashed our stuff behind a rock near the base and started our way up. It was a bit of a climb, and I managed to cut my arms up a bit on the rocks and sharp pokey shrubbery. When we came to the top, we could see a little cross standing on top of a rock facing the direction we came from. Figuring that the cross was all there was to see at the top we climbed up to and were met with an amazing sight. There was a small meadow on top next to a church set into the side of the rock. The rocks surrounding us were filled with little grottos, and this church had been built inside of one of the larger ones. Pretty spectacular. We climbed down the much gentler slope on the other side and got to a road that overlooked another small town. We wandered over and found the church in the center of town. We had no idea where we were, other than in a tiny little town in the middle of Greece surrounded by huge rocks. And we still had no idea where Meteora was. People were starting to filter into the church as we arrived, so we decided to go in and check out the Friday service. Since it was Orthodox Easter, the church was pretty crowded, but we managed to get some seats. We were definitely the only foreigners there. I only got a few weird looks. The service consisted of the singing of hymns or psalms, or something, I’m not really sure. Pretty cool though. When the singing was over, the little…flowery thing that I can’t remember the name of…was carried outside on a candlelit procession around town. It was pretty cool walking around with everyone and we eventually ended up back at the church, were we reentered underneath the flowery thing. Afterwards, we went back outside to attempt to find our way back to our stuff. We got back up to the rock we were on before, debated about which way to go and eventually headed off in the (thankfully) right direction. As we left the small town, we figured out what it was called: Kastraki. It was a sort walk back around the giant rocks separating the two towns back to Kalabaka. We reclaimed our gear and walked back into town. By chance, we walked by a touristy little shop that had a book on Meteora on its display case. And on the first page was a map. Sweet. As it turns out, we were pretty much right in the middle of Meteora. Had we gone the other direction on that road earlier, we would have ended up walked uphill to the big monasteries set up on top of the huge rocks all around us. There were also a few campsites marked on the map, so we decided to walk to one just outside of town. So we walked out to campsite, which turned out to be one of those park your RV/pitch your tent here kind of places. The person who ran it was a crazy old guy who wanted to charge us 10 euros to sleep there. Amusingly, when we told him we were from the States he leaned back, put his hands on his hips and fired imaginary pistols: “Ah, Bush!” Guess everyone thinks he’s a cowboy. After explaining to him that we didn’t like Bush either, we left and slept next to a little creek on the other side of the road for free. On the way, we saw our first wildlife that wasn’t a reptile or a stray cat or dog: this weird hedgehog looking thing that was the size of a possum.

The next morning, we walked back to Kalabaka and took the bus up to Meteora. The place is magnificent. All around you are these huge Monasteries sitting on the cliffs of these enormous rocks jutting up out of the ground. The bus weaved between the rocks up to the highest point, the Great Monastery of Meteoron. We arrived about a half hour before it opened, so we sat out on the rocks nearby. The early morning light on the rocks was beautiful. There were birds flying all around us: swifts, swallows and these strange black birds with gray on their throats. Later we saw a huge crane fly by.

To get into the monastery we had to walk down and then back up this huge set of stairs. Before they were built, the only way into any of these monasteries was by rope ladder or winch. Now most of them have steps and little cable cars for transporting goods and people. Inside the monastery was a little touristy. There was a museum and little signs around most places. Many of the places were roped off, marked as private, like the monks’ living quarters. You really couldn’t tell that you were on top of a giant rock; it kind of felt like a small, self-contained city. There was a nice little courtyard with a balcony on the cliff edge that we sat on for a long time, just staring at the view. One of the weirdest things there was the charnel house. It was just a little room set into the side of another building that had rows and rows of human skulls and bones lined up inside. Guess there’s no place to bury people on top of a huge rock.

After we left the monastery, we walked back down the road the bus had taken us up, past the other monasteries and back to Kastraki. We wandered around town a bit more and ended up back in Kalabaka where we stopped at a café and had some really good iced cappuccino. People were starting to get ready for the big meal at midnight and the town was filled by the smell of lamb roasting on a spit. It smelled really good, especially considering that we’d been eating nothing but bread for the past two days for the authentic Easter experience. After relaxing for a good while, we walked back to Kastraki and stashed our stuff on the way on the side of one of the huge rocks that had a nice flat grassy place. We walked back to Kastraki and had a few hours to kill, since services didn’t start until 11. When we got back from wandering around town, we went back into the church, which had all of its lights dimmed. The service was much shorter this time: about 45 minutes of singing and then the big rebirth bit. All of the lights in the church were put out and the priest emerged from behind the altar carrying a candelabra. He waved it over his head as people under him tried to light their own candles from the flame. It reminded me of fireflies dancing about, chasing after the flame of the priest’s candle. Eventually he stopped moving the candelabra and everyone lit their candles and passed the flame around to the remainder of the people in the church. At this point, everyone went outside where a little mini altar had been set up at the foot of the steps leading into the church. The priest sang a bit more and at the climax, the church bells started going crazy and there were fireworks. It was a very impressive spectacle, especially considering we were in a really tiny town. I think the entire population (maybe a few hundred) was probably there. At this point, we made a break for the first taverna we saw that had a lamb roasting out in front of it. We found one and ordered a kilo of lamb, some sausages and traditional salads. The lamb was amazing. We also were given the traditional red-dyed hard-boiled Easter eggs. There’s a game that the Greeks play with them where you hit each other’s eggs with your own, trying to crack their shell while not cracking your own. I totally smashed Adi’s egg. It was awesome. After eating, we walked back to our stuff, completely exhausted. We set up camp and passed out in about five minutes.

We woke up early the next morning to the sound of a trio of stray dogs barking their heads off at us. At least it was at about the same time we were planning on getting up. We walked back to Kalabaka and saw scores of people burning bonfires in their yards or in the street. It must be part of the tradition that we didn’t know about, but everyone smelled of wood smoke, and it smelled good. When we got to town we learned that busses didn’t run out of Kalabaka…sure wish someone had told us that. Luckily, we found a taxi that was willing to take us back to Trikala where we would catch the bus back to Athens. However, once we got there, we learned that the bus station was closed. I really wish someone had told us about that one, say, like the person who sold us our bus tickets for that day or maybe the Athens Centre, since we told them what our plan was to make sure it would work. So we tried to figure out what we were going to do. We had to be back in Athens by Monday, since we were leaving for Crete that evening. Adi found a hotel that was open and talked with the owner, who told us that we could take the train back to Athens and drew us a map of how to get to the station. After a short walk and a confusing conversation with the people at the train station (who didn’t speak much English), we were on our way back to Athens. Whew.

I’ve uploaded some new pictures and panoramas of Meteora and the landscape around Kastraki. And in case you haven’t noticed, there are now links to my picture pages on the right-hand sidebar of this page.

I'm Alive!

So I didn't get arrested, I just haven't seen a computer in a long, long time.

Camping near Glyfada was amazing. We set off on our crazy journey and headed for Syndagma in search of cheap sleeping bags, armed only with five pounds of pasta and a couple of sausages. We made it to Plaka and sited some small sleeping bags for 15 euros and proceeded to haggle (really, just ask) then down to 10 euros a piece. Afterwards we hopped on the tram towards the coast. And of course, the sun was going down about the time we arrived at the southern part of Glyfada. We wandered aimlessly for a while trying to find the water and eventually realized that we were a little south of the peninsula that we'd been aiming for. So we backtracked, looking for a place to get onto the beach, and eventually cut through an outdoor indoor soccer complex and made it to the beach. We hopped a few fences along the way and made it to a rocky outcropping that was the southern face of the peninsula. There was a path that we followed, in the dark, up and around to the point. It was a beautiful night, warm, plenty of stars. A little windy though. We climbed up to the point, saw a few fishermen still at it and luck shined down upon us: there was a little cove down below us, surrounded by the rocky walls of the peninsula. We climbed down and marveled for a while before collected a big pile of driftwood and started a fire on the rocky beach. You really can't beat campfire-roasted sausages and beer. We ended up sleeping on a big rock above the high tide line, which was a little uncomfortable, but all in all, a fantastic find. The next morning we woke up with the sun and sat around a bit. There was an island off in the distance a few miles away and Teage and Adi had the crazy idea that they were going to swim to it, and they definitely didn't believe me when I told them how far away it was. In any case, we all jumped into the incredibly cold and salty Aegean for a swim. I think Bob was complaining about the cold before his body was even completely submerged as he jumped in. That water is cold. Bob and I lasted a few minutes in the frigid water, and Teage and Adi swam for the island. They made it a couple of hundred meters out and then swam back...and shivered for about twenty minutes straight after getting out of the water. After warming up in the sun we packed up our gear and walked north across the peninsula back to the tram. As it turns out, we had been next to an abandoned campground, complete with dilapidated bungalows and a big box turtle walking down the road. I think we all slept the whole way back on the tram, we were exhausted but it had been really fun.

The following week was the start of our four-day excursion around various parts of Greece. We packed into a charter bus Tuesday morning (way too early) and headed off to our first destination, the Hosias Loukas monastery. Hosias Loukas is an incredibly well preserved Byzantine monastery situated in the middle of a bunch of scenic mountains, covered in olive and almond groves. The surrounding area was really gorgeous and the monastery itself was very impressive. The interior was lined in mosaics depicting various biblical events and included a very cool crypt with vaulted ceilings where the tomb of Saint Loukas is kept. After thoroughly exploring the monastery, we climbed back into the bus and headed for Delphi. Delphi is pretty fantastic. That afternoon we visited Marmaria, a little sanctuary at the foot of Mount Parnassus, and then walked back to our hotel, which was located on a little hill in town, overlooking a spectacular valley. We went past the sacred spring where ancient pilgrims would purify themselves along the way and I walked up a hill and found a couple of horses just hanging out. That night we all went out for dinner of the U of C's bill and ate for about two and a half hours. It was kind of ridiculous, and fantastically good.

The next morning we headed to the main site at Delphi, the sanctuary of Apollo. We hit up the museum first, which had way too many people in it and then started walking the sacred way up Mount Parnassus past ancient treasuries and to the temple of Apollo where the Pythian priestess would give suppliants oracles; a pretty impressive site. There were about fifty million too many people there though, and I was kind of wigging out by the end of the trip. After viewing the rest of the ruins, we got back on the bus and headed for Olympia.

We arrived late in the afternoon and walked around town for a bit. A few of us grabbed some dinner at a local taverna and explored the rest of town, of which, there wasn't much. In the morning, we headed to the ancient site. It was phenomenal. These flowering purple trees covered the entire site, and looked beautiful next to the columns of the ancient buildings. The lichen-covered marble of the ruins is absolutely stunning in the morning light. Just look at the pictures, I can't describe it. The temple of Zeus was very impressive; I can't imagine what it would have been like to walk into that temple while it still stood, and came face to face with Phideas' 13 meter chryselephantine (gold and ivory) statue of Zeus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. We were a little rushed to get through the site, which was a pity, since I could have lingered there, taking photos and absorbing the sights, for hours.

After Olympia, we bussed up a mountain to Bassae, where a temple to Epicurean Apollo stood, until a tent to protect it. It was windy and cold on top, which was strange, since I had been very hot down at Olympia. Bassae is in the middle of Arcadia, which is very mountainous and suitable only for raising sheep and goats. The vistas were magnificent. And we were all cold and cranky.

That afternoon we arrived in Nafplion, where we had another dinner on the U of C and celebrated a few birthdays of group members. The next morning, we trekked out to Tiryns, one of the two Mycenaean cities nearby. All that's left of Tiryns is the huge cyclopean wall (so called because it’s made of huge stones believed to have been put in place by said one-eyed giants) and the foundations of the magnificent palace that once stood there. Afterwards, we bussed around the bay to Mycenae, a fantastic site. Mycenae is located on top of a small hill nestled in the craggy mountains, surrounded by huge cyclopean walls. At the foot of the hill is the so-called Tomb of Clytemnestra, a subterranean dome made of stone, which was very cool, and grave circle B. We walked up the path to the city, through the famous lion gate and up to grave circle A, where Schliemann found the "Mask of Agamemnon". We continued up the hill through the remains of the palace to the backside of the hill, where an underwater cistern secretly provided the city with water. We went down the unlit stone passageway with flashlights and candles. The walls were damp from condensation and it was pleasantly cool. It really made me want to go caving again. Down at the bottom of the stairs there was a small rectangular shaft that in ancient times would have been filled with spring water from a spring 20 kilometers away, fed via clay conduits. Mycenae was really impressive, particularly strategically; you'd have to be completely nuts to try and storm that hill. On the way out we swung by the Tomb of Atreus, which was similar to the Tomb of Clytemnestra, but significantly larger, and had a small chamber connect to it, presumably where the actual tomb would have been.

After Mycenae, we traveled to Epidauros, the site of the sanctuary of Asclepious. The site wasn't very impressive, though it did have a few uniquely shaped buildings. Next to the sanctuary, however, is the most well preserved theater in all of Greece. The acoustics were amazing. Standing in the center, you could hear someone in their normal speaking voice at the very top, in addition to being able to hear a coin drop and the awesome chirp echoes from the seats while clapping at the hyperbola's focal point. There were some German tourists there who sang and you could hear them easily anywhere in the theater. A few of us recited some Homeric hymns and the kids who are studying ancient Greek recited a passage from the Iliad in Homeric Greek.

This is where the story gets interesting though. At this point, Teage, Adi, Nora, Hajnalka and I stayed behind as we watched our bus head off back towards Athens. We were headed south to Portoheli and then to Spetses, the island south of there. After consulting the guy at the concession stand about bus schedules, we decided to camp at Epidauros that night and head to Portoheli in the morning. So we walked about a kilometer towards the town next to the site and stopped in the outskirts at a little pizza place and had a nice dinner. We could tell we were in the middle of nowhere: all of the houses we passed seemed empty, all of the tavernas were closed and while we were eating about three tractors and a herd of sheep passed by. After dinner, we walked back to the site with the crazy idea that we were going to sleep inside of the site at the Abaton, an ancient sleep healing center. However, one of the people who works at the Athens Centre told us that there were guards there at night since the site is still being excavated, so we decided to try and find them, so as not to piss them off. It's a good thing we didn't decide just to hop the fence too, since as we walked up to the main entrance, two really big guys with big dogs emerged from the shadows wanting to know what we wanted. They soundly rejected us, but told us that as long as we were 100 meters away, we could sleep wherever we wanted. So we found a nice grassy patch and camped out, only slightly freezing our asses off at night with the stray dog that had been following us around, which we named Moonshine.

The next morning we hopped on a bus to Portoheli through Kranidi. Kranidi was nothing special, just a little town; we didn't stay there for more than an hour, waiting on the bus. Portoheli is a beautiful little town in the center of a very circular cove. Little white houses and citrus trees all around the blue water...amazing. The reason we came here though, was the ancient acropolis of Hellias, which is underwater. We didn't know how deep the ruins were going to, but as it turns out, they were only about two feet under. We ate lunch next to the site, watched a horse wander past, skipped stones for a while and walked passed the land portion of the ruins to the submerged area. We hopped in the water, which was just as cold as last time, and had a nice swim. The Aegean is much more salty than the Pacific or Atlantic, and I could tell. My skin wasn't too happy being covered in salt afterwards, but it was really nice. And ancient ruins are sharp...I managed to give myself a nice pair of cuts on my leg swimming over the top of a foundation that I thought was a little deeper than it really was.

After our swim, we sat in the sun, warmed up, and walked back to town, grabbing some food along the way. It turned out that the ferry we were going to take to Spetses had left about an hour before we got there, but after much confusion and disappointment learned that we could take a water taxi to the island from the town in the cove next door, Costa. It was about 5 kilometers away, and Teage and Adi decided to run there, mostly because they didn't want to pay for a cab. The cabbie we were talking with has a brother who works in Greektown...small world. Anyway, we paid our five euros and waited at the sea taxi stand/harbor thing for a bit. Once everyone was back together, we got on a boat and crossed the short (maybe 4 km) distance to Spetses. I can't describe how gorgeous this island is. The best I can do is obscenely beautiful, but I run out of superlatives quickly. We arrived just as the sun was going down and the sky was fantastic. We were in the new port area of the only town on the island (about 5 km across) and it was pretty touristy. We swung by a little grocery store, bought some sausage, pita and tzatziki for dinner and headed off away from town in search of a place to camp. We wandered past the new port to the old port, which had a bunch of little restaurants and bars and more beautiful water. We sat there for a while, trying to get our bearings and figuring out where to go and eventually cut inland past a peninsula with a big lighthouse. We walked through rows of white houses and past gigantic mansion/summer homes and luck smiled upon us again. I was walking up ahead of the group a big and turned a corner; I was met with an awesome site. Down the road, I could see all the way to the black water, with a huge full moon rising up out of it. Cutting into the reflection were the jagged rocks of little peninsula. I stood there agape for a while until everyone caught up. We were drawn to the moon likes moths to a flame. Down the road, past more mansions was a little, rocky cove. There were even crude steps cut into the rock leading down to it. Above the stars twinkled, and once we were at the water, you couldn't see any houses, only the magnificent sea. We split up in search of something to burn, since this beach was devoid of driftwood. Teage and I went north and the other three went south. We didn't find any wood, but we did find a big rock out in the water that we lay on for a good while, taking in the sites and wonderful smell of the sea. Eventually we walked back the other direction and met up with the others, who had found a field on top of the peninsula that had a bunch of dried bramble, almost yucca, type plants. We brought them back to our campsite and lit the fire. They burned quickly, but we had a lot, so our fire lasted for a good while. After eating we went to bed, this time making one giant sleeping bag out of two and sharing body heat, which worked quite well as we were all very warm all night. I think it was a little warmer there too, not to mention less windy since the rocks were sheltering us.

In the morning, I woke up a little after sunrise and climbed up to the top of the peninsula where the remnants of some kind of fortifications, probably from the Greek war of independence, stood. I climbed to the top of one of the squat towers and saw the sun coming up over misty islands in the distance. Behind me the island was bathed in the warm colors of the rising sun, the white stucco turned red. Below me, on the rocks, stood a little bluish purple church, which I climbed down to. The water was amazing. I climbed back north along the rocks towards our campsite, sometimes having to jump from rock to rock (I only got my foot wet once!), and marveled the whole way. In the sea, there were hundreds of sea urchins covering the rocks and I found a little cave that went back a couple of meters. When I made it back to camp, the sun was a little higher and the water in the cover was becoming this wonderful shade of blue. It was so clear; you could see the rocky bottom all along the shallows. I sat on the pebbles near the water for a long time, just looking at the scenery. It was unbelievable.

When finally we left the cove, we walked back to new port to figure out the ferry situation and Adi found us a fast boat back to Piraeus (Athens' port) later in the afternoon. En route, we walked past Ayia Marina, a nice beach next to the cove we camped at and through rows and rows of little white houses. We grabbed some souvlaki for a snack and wandered for a bit. Eventually we went back to old port and found a nice looking restaurant to eat lunch at. In the front of the restaurant was a big, chilled box...full of fresh fish. When we ordered, they didn't have what I wanted originally, so the waiter took me up to this box and basically said: which one do you want? I pointed to a tasty looking fish and sat in the sun while they cooked it. That fish...was amazing. They cooked it whole and served it likewise on a plate, with a little butter and seasonings. Fantastic.

The ferry ride back was uneventful though we did meet a New Yorker who had been living in Athens for the past four and a half years who's a graphic designer and owns a custom car shop. We chatted with him on the ride and he gave us his number with a promise to show us around the city some time. We'll definitely have to take him up on that since we still haven't quite figured out where in this city people our age are. We arrived in Piraeus late in the evening, took a bus back to Syndagma and walked back to our apartment building. The rest of the evening consisted of showering, eating and passing out. A completely awesome weekend.

This week is the week leading up to Greek orthodox Easter, so there are people getting ready for the festivities all over the place. Originally I had been planning on going to Istanbul this weekend, but since it's Easter weekend, it's going to be prohibitively expensive, so instead I think I'm going to go to Meteora with Adi and attend the services at the monastery there (which I believe is up on these crazy rocks that just shoot up out of the ground). It should be pretty amazing.

Next week we go to Crete for a few days and afterwards we have about ten days off, which I think I'm going to spending island hopping my way back to Athens. That should be completely incredible.

I’ve uploaded a bunch of new pictures, and be sure to check out the panoramas at the other site; I've added shots of Delphi, Bassae, the Epidauros Theater, Portoheli, Ayia Marina and a shot off of my balcony during this crazy dust storm that blew in from the Sahara!

Panoramic Shots...

...are now at:

http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~robison/images/greece/

Tragedy and Debate

Over the past few days, we took a trip to the theater of Dionysus, which we had walked past a few different times, and read through about half of The Eumenides. The theater itself was pretty neat, though nothing really too spectacular. Jenny directed the reading in true UT tradition (kinda scary). I like the play, but the ending is a little monotonous just reading it; it really needs the singing and dancing and music that would have accompanied the production in ancient times.

This morning we ventured to the Pnyx, where important public speeches were given and debates held, including the Mitylenian debate, chronicled by Thucydides, where Cleon and Diodotus argued for and against, respectively, the execution of the residents of Mitylene as punishment for their rebellion. Diodotus won the debate and the ship which had been sent with orders to kill the men and sell the women and children into slavery was chased down and stopped, saving the population just in time. We did a reenactment of the debate here, similar to the play, reading from Thucydides and cheering for the points the orators made, just like a good angry mob.

Tonight a bunch of us are going to go southwest to the beaches near Glyfada and camp out. Hopefully we won't freeze to death or get arrested or get eaten by sharks.

A few new pictures are up.