ISLANDS: Rhodes, Crete, Santorini and Naxos; PELOPONNESIAN PENINSULA: Nafplio, Mycenae, Monemvasia, Sparta, Mani, Areopoli, Kalamata, Koroni, Methoni, Olympia, Patras; MAINLAND: Nafpaktos, Ioannina, Lia, Meteora, Delphi, Athens, Thessaloniki
SEPTEMBER
11
In the autumn of 2001 we traveled
through Greece for seven weeks. Despite its many pleasures - friendly people, beautiful
islands and beaches, charming old Venetian port towns, ancient ruins, good food
and music - we didn't fully "connect" with
"SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAS JUST HAPPENED TO
For the first days following
the attacks, we were glued in disbelief to the few channels of information in
English - CNN, the Internet and the International
Herald Tribune - searching for in-depth analyses of the situation. The rest of
the time, we wandered in a daze amidst throngs of carefree European
beach-goers. When the
Still shaken, Joan stayed at the
pension poring over newspapers. By the fourth day, she roused herself and
joined him on a visit to Iraklio's archaeological museum - one of the best
museums in
Despite a sense of dislocation
after the terrorist attacks, Joan was willing to continue traveling but wanted
to leave Crete. By this time
we were in Hania (below) - a charming ancient Venetian port located less than
four miles from
SANTORINI
Santorini is
one of
The ferry from
From the port, we caught the
ferry-bus into
O'ia was a bit
too touristy, so we headed two kilometers inland to the
traditional
Marika the donkey and her owner Georgio met us at the edge of the village and packed our gear through its crooked, cobbled lanes. (Joan's backpack is green; Lou's backpack is black; Marika's back is packing them.) Marika led us through a maze of narrow lanes, past charming pastel houses.
Finally we reached the edge of the village and climbed up to Pension Georgio - a cluster of blue-and-white buildings formed of lumpy, rounded stucco. We spent three days in the top studio apartment with its own patio and several cats lazing among pots of red geraniums. In the evenings we climbed the hill to a local taverna - Santorini Mou - to eat grilled lamb and eggplant and listen to the jolly owner playing Greek folk music on his bouzouki, which looks as if a tiny mandolin had mated with a tiny banjo!
From Santorini we carved a wide arc through the Aegean Sea - island-hopping by ferry from Santorini to Naxos and then to the Greek mainland at Pireaus, the main port of Athens.
A modern subway zipped us from Pireaus to the center of Athens.
We decided to rent a car because of
the lack of good public transportation in rural Greece and we were heading for a
three week tour of the Peloponnesian peninsula and the mainland. The tiny car,
a Hyundai, ended
abruptly in back - as though it had been spanked on its behind as it came off
the assembly line.
Joan drove through traffic-clogged
streets for an exhausting two hours to escape Athens, because Lou didn't have a
current driver's license on this trip. Fortunately, Greek roads aren't
congested outside of the bigger cities and Greek drivers are far more
predictable than the daredevil Turks. More challenging were the
road signs. We sometimes had to screech to a halt, back up and try to decipher
them using our rusty memories of Greek letters. Let's see: sigma, beta, phi,
phooey! Fortunately, most signs in Greek were followed a few yards later
by those using the Roman alphabet.
PELOPONNESIAN PENINSULA
After driving across the Isthmus
of Corinth to the Peloponnesian Peninsula - which is both spectacularly
beautiful and tremendously varied - we spent several days in Nafplio, a pretty
town with elegant Venetian houses and narrow streets tucked between the sea and
a hilltop fortified castle. We
climbed around the castle, swam at a nearby beach and took day trips to the
ancient ruins of Mycenae and Epidaurus. In the old Venetian town of Monemvasia,
we dined like Shirley Valentine in the eponymous film - sitting at a beachside table, listening to the
gentle rolling of wave-pushed pebbles and watching the full moon rise behind a
gargantuan rock island. The superb ruins at Mystras (below)
were set among fine walking trails, as were the fortified Mani tower-houses at the tip of the third finger on the
four-fingered Peloponnesian "hand."
A 21-year-old Servas member met us
for a seaside lunch in Kalamata (famed for its olives) and expressed her negative views
of American lifestyle. We chided her gently
as she'd never been to the U.S. and was basing most of her opinions of American
values on Hollywood films. Her disdain for American consumerism, though, was
harder to counter. It is true that Americans place a huge emphasis on working
long hours to buy more and more things. Many Europeans put less emphasis on
things and more on free time - on relaxed family meals, lengthy café discussions
with friends and five or six weeks of annual travel.
We lingered for several days in Harakopio to swim and read at a nearly deserted beach. The autumn weather in Greece was wonderful, but by the end of September we sometimes felt like the last Roses of summer as pension owners nailed up their shutters and boat owners winched in their dinghies for the winter. From here we headed north to Ancient Olympia.
ANCIENT
OLYMPIA
Like most major tourist sites, Ancient Olympia is best visited early in the morning before the swarms of tour buses arrive. (Lou's late stepmother Pansy once gave us this tongue-in-cheek advice about department store sales: "Always get there early - before the greedy folks!")
What an idyllic setting. The ruins
of temples, priests' quarters, training facilities and stadium are scattered
under a canopy of pines and oaks. We walked in
silence - alone in the dappled morning light. The first quadrennial Olympic
Games began here in the 8th century BC and continued for 1200 years until the
4th century AD. Modern games were reestablished in 1896. During the early
games, the continually warring city-states were expected to stop knocking the
hell out of each other and compete in wrestling and boxing, discus and javelin
throwing, chariot and horse racing, and running and jumping. Only free Greek
males (no slaves allowed) could compete, and the paintings and sculptures we
saw in the Olympia Museum indicate they participated naked. Women were not
allowed to watch; if one sneaked in, she was hurled to her death from a nearby rock. So much
for good sportsmanship.
The Olympia Museum has everything
from jumping weights (jumpers released them in mid-air, believing
their distance would be lengthened by carrying them partway) to sculptures
donated by athletes caught cheating. This precedent apparently did not apply to
Emperor Nero. In 67 AD he entered the chariot race with ten horses, while
restricting his competitors to four. In spite of this advantage, he fell and
lost. The prudent judges awarded him the victory anyway. In the photo
below, Lou is crouching (fully clothed) at the starting line on the ancient track - ready for
a "pretend" Olympics.
We drove across the top of
the Pelopponese to Diakofto where we rode a rack-and-pinion train up into the
mountains, then hiked back through a gorgeous (pardon the pun) canyon along
seven miles of railway tracks. We had an exciting moment when - just as we were
about to enter a long, totally dark and very narrow tunnel - the returning train
burst through it. (After the train went by, Joan clung in mock terror to the
rocky wall of the tunnel; if Lou can pretend to be an Olympic athlete, she can
pretend to be a damsel in distress! If you squint, you can see her in the photo
below.)
A
PILGRIMAGE FOR ELENI
Eleni is Nicholas Gage's deeply moving account of his heroic mother's struggle to save him and his four sisters from the Communist guerrillas during the Greek civil war of 1945-49. For planning the daring escape of her children from the village of Lia, Eleni was imprisoned and tortured. Eventually she was given a quick trial, forced to dig her own grave and shot. Gage was only eight when he saw his mother for the last time. The children were successfully evacuated to America, where Nicholas eventually became an investigative reporter for the New York Times. Bothered by reports that the Greek communists were attempting to revise the history books by claiming there had been no tortures or summary executions, Gage quit his job and used his investigative skills to oppose the revision and try to track down his mother's murderer. (The book has a surprising ending.)
Because of Eleni's impact on
us, we went out of our way to make a pilgrimage to Lia, hidden
in Greece's northwestern mountains five miles from the Albanian border.
The hour's drive from Ioannina to Lia led through autumn-stippled clusters of
oak, pine and plane trees into rugged mountains where
the air was cool and crisp. We slowed for black
squirrels, red foxes, and herds of bell-clanging goats tended by bent,
black-clad crones. At the general store on the Lia village square, a half-dozen
grizzled men (perhaps husbands of the hard-working goat herders) were intent
on a game of cards. Outside stood the old plane tree that had witnessed so many
of the brutal events uncovered by Gage - the coming and going of the Italian
army, the ravaging of the area by retreating Nazis and the abductions, tortures
and murders carried out by the Greek communists. We found the Holy Trinity
Church where
all the mothers of Lia were assembled in 1948 to hear about pedomasoma -
the communist program for taking all children ages 3-14 away from their parents
to training camps in countries behind the Iron Curtain. (By the end of that
year, they had taken 28,000 children out of Greece. Many never returned or saw
their parents again.) We found the old school house where
villagers suspected of collaboration with the Greek fascists were tortured.
Gage described the brutalized prisoners tumbling down the steps before a crowd of stunned villagers.
It took us another half-hour to find Eleni's home. Finally, a cheerful man who identified himself as Eleni's cousin
pointed down the hill to the overgrown stone ruins of
Nicholas' childhood home - still shaded by the old mulberry tree (photo below).
Much has changed in Lia in the last half-century: footpaths have been
replaced by paved roads and new buildings constructed. But it was exhilarating
to explore the village where that
courageous woman gave her life for her children.
MAINLAND GREECE
In Monodendri we lodged in a
traditional Zagorian pension, and Lou hiked for five hours - he was all alone on the
trail - through the spectacular Vikos Gorge. Joan is shown at the beginning of this hike in the photo below.
She couldn't hike with him, because she had to drive three hours round-trip on
deserted mountain roads to pick him up at the end of the hike.
Meteora has phantasmagoric
rock formations - more massive than those in Capadoccia (Turkey) and gray
instead of pink. Many are riddled with holes like Swiss cheese and several are topped with monasteries.
This forest of rocks has been a refuge for monks since the 11th century. To
ensure their isolation, the monks were raised and
lowered in baskets!
Driving south, we visited Delphi
where the ancient oracle groggily dispensed her prophecies under the influence
of fumes emerging from a fissure in the earth. The museum here is filled with
fascinating sculptures, including these of a chimera (note her webbed feet)
and a bull-headed man.
ATHENS
Back in Athens, we were the first visitors to the
Acropolis one morning and were greeted by a special ceremony. Ranks of
white-skirted Greek soldiers wearing red pompoms on their shoes performed
maneuvers, while a military band played and the United Nations flag was raised
in celebration of the 50th birthday of the U.N. A few moments later we watched the sun's rays bathe
the Parthenon in pale golden splendor and escaped just as the hordes of
"packaged" tourists arrived.
While in Athens, we stayed three days with a wonderful Servas family of four.
We sat around the dinner table and discussed the reasons the terrorist attacks occurred, with
highly educated people who are basically sympathetic to the U.S. but who have a more complex and
historically-grounded view of U.S. foreign policy than most
Americans. (We noticed after returning home that Americans have become much
more interested in trying to understand world affairs since
September 11.)
PAPANDREOU
THE POLITICIAN
The Greeks have had a tumultuous political history for millennia. Greece's Prime Minister, Andreas Papandreou, was at the center of political controversy for some twenty years beginning in the late 1960s. On the bus between Thessaloniki and Istanbul, Lou talked with a Greek economic journalist about Papandreou, who was one of Lou's economics professors at the University of California at Berkeley in the early 1960s. Three times in succession Papandreou failed to keep an office appointment with Lou, and the professor's apologies were so smooth and convincing that Lou felt embarrassed for even mentioning the broken appointments. With such verbal dexterity, it's not surprising that soon after that he became a successful politician in his home country. The journalist told Lou about Papandreou's primary political slogan: "Greece has an appointment with history and I will take you there!" After the politician's terms in office were finished, political humorists joked that Papandreou's appointment was not kept. Lou could have predicted that.
NECESSITIES OF LIFE
Greek food was
good, but not (at our budget level) great. Lou enjoyed the large doses of olive
oil in Greek dishes, though he missed the peppery heat found in some Turkish
foods. Joan wanted a greater variety of vegetables and less emphasis
on meat (read: g-r-i-l-l-e-d l-a-m-b) in both countries. The fresh fish was
delicious, but too expensive for us to eat very often. We never tired of Greek salads, which are simply the
addition of salad dressing to the Turkish breakfast of cucumbers, tomatoes,
olives and feta cheese. The
sweet tap water is safe to drink almost everywhere in Greece,
whereas in the surrounding countries we needed to filter it or buy bottled water. Greek
coffee, like Turkish, is muddy - the last half-inch is sludge - but at
least in Greece you can get good espresso; in Turkey you're stuck with powdered Nescafe or tea. Greek wine is excellent and cheap; Joan
even liked the pine-flavored retsina.
Toilets in Greece are mostly of the European sit-down variety, rather than the hole-in-the-floor type found throughout much of the Middle East. Ferry schedules are notorious for middle-of-the-night departures and arrivals, and are often disrupted by bad weather during the autumn and winter. Our return ferry to Turkey was cancelled because of a storm at sea so we had a 20-hour bus ride back to Istanbul. Many Greeks speak at least a little English; it's a fairly easy country for language-challenged Americans to visit.
WHY WE DIDN'T FULLY "CONNECT" WITH GREECE
The whole point of travel for many people is to take a relaxing break from routine. They want to see beautiful scenery, visit interesting sites, rotate their bodies on a warm beach, take a sunset cruise and enjoy good food. Because Greece offers all this in abundance, most tourists rate it very highly. Greece is a comfortable, reasonable, non-threatening country with a tremendous variety of things to see and do. But one of the primary reasons we like to travel is to experience cultures very different from our own. Greece seemed a bit too familiar. We were more fascinated by Syria and Turkey than good old Greece.
Also, in developing countries we usually meet many fellow backpackers interested in exploring the local culture. But such travelers are less common in Greece, where most tourists seemed to be on guided tours to ruins, on plane-hotel packages to beach resorts or just cruising the party scene. And it was more difficult for us to meet the local people in Greece than it was in either the Middle East or Southeast and Central Asia. For one thing, we used a car much of the time instead of the inefficient Greek bus system and this isolated us from everyday life. Also, unlike developing countries, Greece has had many years of swarming tourists. (We heard so much German being spoken we sometimes thought we were in Germany!) As a result, the Greek people seemed less outgoing towards visitors than, for example, the Syrians, Cambodians or Turks. At least, that was our experience. Despite these caveats, we had a good time in this great country.
DETAILS, DETAILS, DETAILS
GUIDEBOOK: Greece (Lonely Planet)
FILMS: Never on Sunday;
Zorba the Greek;
Shirley Valentine
(2001 Prices - in low season)
HANIA (Crete): Monastiri Pension.
Former monastery; double with bath and ocean view $21/night.
FINIKIA (Santorini): Our favorite
lodging this year! Georgi's Apartments. $28/night; charming apartment with
patio, cooking area.
NAXOS TOWN (Naxos): Hotel Anna - great location. Double with bath and cooking area $23/night.
ATHENS: Hotel Kouros in the Plaka district - convenient to sights and restaurants. Our high-ceilinged room was at the front; had a balcony overlooking trees and an old church. Bathroom down the hall. Under $40/night 322-7431.
VIKOS GORGE: Monodendri Pension
& Restaurant, a charming traditional-style hotel. Double $19/night, shared
bath
METEORA: Hotel France in Kastraki
village, near Meteora. French-speaking owners. Double $27/night with bath, balcony with view.
SERVAS: This international
non-profit, non-religious organization is dedicated to bringing together the peoples of the
world. By enabling travelers to meet people of other countries in their homes,
it helps break through the sterile travel pattern of going from hotel to museum
to restaurant to shop. It promotes an open exchange of ideas. U.S. Servas web
site: www.usservas.org
Joan and Lou Rose joanandlou@ramblingroses.net