Greece Again October 30 - November 16, 2005
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Island Fever
Politics still dictate transportation in the Aegean and leaving Turkey
required touching Greek soil to access the fleet of larger ferries plying
the seas westward. We made the obligatory short hop from Bodrum, Turkey to the
Greek island of Kos before heading to the Greek mainland. The main port town on
Kos is a wildly popular summer destination and there was still some life
in its center at the end of the tourist season in November. Being the hub for the
eastern most cluster of Greek islands, it retained some vitality in the off
season.
Our stay on Kos was extended to 5 nights because of the
infrequent ferry service, which was enough time to learn how quickly the island
became small. Two or 3 days would be enough to bike on almost every bit of paved
road on the island and you could surely do it all in a day in a readily
available rental car. A local, thirty-something man who had lived in England
referred to his native soil on Kos as a
"shitty little island" and was anxious to talk about any and everything
during our brief encounter at the grocery store. "Island
Fever" was my thought--a restlessness I had heard that some Hawaiian
islanders experience.
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As our luxurious and reassuringly stable ferry with a
capacity for over 2,000 people made several
island stops on its way to Piraeus, the port serving Athens, we gasped at the
thought of life on these islands--in ancient or in modern times. These small Greek
islands looked charming from our ship with their familiar clusters of boxy, white
stucco buildings; domed white churches with bright blue trim; and the occasional hillside
stone windmill in ruins. But the tourists were essentially gone for the
better part of the next 6 months and the port villages looked almost like ghost towns. Most
of the windows were shuttered closed and only a few people were out and about
in the low winter sun. Usually the only trees were a few clusters in the small urban area
around the port
and scrub, or maquis, was the highest thing growing on the rest of the island. Rocks and
dried weeds filled in between the scrub. Bill wondered if even a herd of sheep
would survive on some of these islands.
I thought about the young man in the Kos grocery store as we briefly stopped at these smaller,
less populated islands and imagined how I too would go stir crazy. Peace and
solitude are nourishing but when one wanted some stimulation it would likely be
through passive channels, like reading, TV viewing or the internet. If one
lived on these islands it would be so hard to follow up on a new curiosity in an
active way. Even
something like cooking with new ingredients or dabbling in a new hobby could take
weeks of serious preplanning and likely involve a half or full day of transport time to
a larger island's city--transport that would only be available a few days a
week. One would have to go ready to make a 'buy' decision as too much time would
be invested to window shop before making a selection. And as we knew from prior,
ferry-halting spring storms in the Mediterranean, islanders can become
completely isolated for days at a time.
I can imagine that depression and alcoholism are huge
problems on these islands. Residents must revert to "react" mode when the
tourists swarm during the summer months, with many locals being involved in
the industry and perhaps working long hours. In September and October tourism
tapers down, and by November they are all but gone. With few resources to
access, I can imagine that many residents just shut their brains down as the
demands upon them disappear and the forced structure to their days evaporates.
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Athens
Museum School
Athens was the only certain port of call on the
westward portion of our meander from Asia Minor towards this year's final
departure point of Frankfurt. And our Athens stopover was for the sole purpose
of revisiting the renovated-for-the-Olympics National Archeological Museum. This
museum was one of our first history teachers abroad as it had extensive exhibits
that were bilingual with English. I still remember standing in front of
the large, aging, white panels taking notes for seemingly hours as I was introduced to the Cycladic cultures, the
Minoans and the Mycenaeans. We anticipated seeing their wonderful finds in
smart new displays and being able to absorb more details since actually having visited a
number of the archeological sites.
We spent the better part of 3 days in the museum and still
had to whiz through the last third of it to see it all. But as expected, we were able to savor
the
details of many more exhibits this time instead of just sorting out the big picture. I enjoyed
watching for the first pieces of glass in the chronologically ordered displays
as we read about the development of glass while in Turkey.
It was
surprisingly difficult to distinguish ancient glass (1500 bce) from ivory,
ceramic and even lead pieces from the same era.
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We scrutinized an ivory
deity found in a Mycenae tomb that looked reminiscent of Hindu influenced art as
there was no mention as to where it was crafted. That piece had me pouring over the pages
of our electronic encyclopedia that evening to determine if there was evidence
of trade between the Aegean Sea and the Indian subcontinent in the 2nd millennium bce
(there is). Still unanswered however was the question: Was this deity carved by Mycenaeans or was
it imported from farther east?
We spent 2 hours alone in the room with the very oldest
scraps of pottery, some made a 7,500 years ago. I get positively buzzy with
excitement around beautiful pieces of Bronze Age and Pre-Bronze Age pottery.
Part of the thrill for me comes from seeing finely crafted things from the
beginning of the ceramic era. And seeing ancient pieces that are
so aesthetically pleasing gives me a sense of connection with these faceless,
nameless peoples. Rather than looking at leftover bits from an anonymous
culture, I feel like I connect with the artisans in a small way because we share
a fondness for the same things. And here, as in a couple of other museums, we
felt like we aroused the suspicion of the guards because we lingered so long over
these ancient artifacts that most visitors breeze by as they head for their
favorite eras.
We have logged so many hours in museums that we not only
study the finds in the exhibits but now we also evaluate the museum itself.
Greeks have a reputation for doing just enough at the last minute to get the job
done--a reputation that generated a lot of anxiety for them as Olympic
hosts--and we saw evidence of their last-minute style in the museum. The museum
was closed for a couple of years to spiff it for visitors to the 2004 summer Olympics and it
still wasn't completed when we visited in the fall of 2005. The 3 rooms of
Egyptian displays were still closed with no available opening date. The last
displays in the last room on the upper floor had no labels at all. And exhibits
here and there were missing half of their English labels. The variable quality
of the written material reflected work being done in a hurry. One big info panel
had the dates for the major historic periods muddled and other explanatory
pieces were posted without sufficient proof reading. But we loved our lengthy
visit in their renovated museum and hope that the passing of the Olympics won't
deter them from completing the final details in the exhibits.
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As museum buffs we also enjoy watching for biases in point of
view, like in an Istanbul museum where the late 20th century military invasion
of Cyprus was described as a "peace initiative". By the end of our visit, we
felt that the Athens Archeological Museum had taken a
Greek-ocentric perspective: there was ample mention of what disseminated out
from the Greeks, with little credit for what came in. As often is the case in
museums, there was no
mention of the Celtic finds though some of the bronze pieces smacked of the Celtic
culture. And cities in Greece that were actually colonies of Asia Minor cities,
especially Ionian,
weren't identified as such. It was a good reminder of the hazards of
self-teaching history through museums as you must already know part of the story
to spot the biases.
Out & About in Athens
We didn't spend all of our time in Athens with our noses pressed
against the new antireflective glass displays--we spent 2 days outdoors on foot. We enjoyed
the long walk from our hotel to the Acropolis so much that we arrived with too
little time to justify the $12 per person entrance fee. A bit disappointed, we savored the fun we'd
had exploring the open air markets along the way and shopping for the odds and
ends that we hadn't found while in Turkey. And having been disappointed in the past
at the quality of affordable hotels our guide book directed us to, we also spent time checking out a half dozen hotels
and recorded our findings in the "Country Details-Greece" file
(also available from our home page).
The day had been a satisfying one though we failed to reach our original
objective. Luckily we were able to extend our stay and we made it to the
Acropolis on our second effort with time to spare.
Being a pedestrian in Athens was just as harrowing as we
remembered it. The drivers were merciless in training newcomers to the streets as to their lack
of rights. As a
pedestrian, you don't begin crossing the street on the green 'walk' sign but
wait until the cars and motorcycles complete their turns. Pedestrians were left
to hope that there was still time to cross on a green or had to try again on the next
round. Also, it was dangerous to stand on the curb cut-outs that I think of as being
for wheel chairs and strollers because in Athens they instead were more often
used by motorcycles driving on and off the sidewalks. And unlike most cities,
even the pedestrians didn't seem to have a
codified behavior--they didn't predictably bear left or right when things got
tight. The helter-skelter courses of many of the walkers bogged everyone down in
their efforts to dodge motorcycles and other obstacles on the sidewalks.
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The dogs of Athens however take the zaniness of it all in stride, like these 2 snoozing on a narrow patch of sidewalk in front of the museum. We still keep alive the phrase "like an Athens dog" when we cross streets in busy cities as it was during our first visit to Athens that we watched how the dogs shielded themselves with local pedestrians when they wanted to cross multiple lanes of heavy traffic. We now do the same in many cities and bolt with the pack of pedestrians while on the "downstream" side away from the oncoming cars.
Corfu
We dashed to the western island of Corfu from
Athens by bus (and then ferry) rather than biking in hopes of a long afternoon's
reunion with a US cycling couple we met a year ago in Spain. Unfortunately our
rendezvous was clipped short and we were left with a chance meeting at the ferry dock as they were
waiting to board the ferry we had just debarked. We were quite disappointed with the
anticipated but missed opportunity as we rarely get to talk shop with fellow cyclotourists. But Corfu was a beautiful place to shed our deflated mood.
Corfu was one of those places I wanted to see--not because I
knew anything about it but because it was a familiar name. And as usual, there is a reason the name is spoken often enough for me to know of it, as
the main town on Corfu and the island itself were delightful. When I returned to
Bill and the bikes after looking for hotels, I blurted out that
it looked like Venice without the canals. Later I was amused to learn that it
had been a Venetian outpost. There was something about the maze of narrow stone
alleys and the lack of vehicular access in some areas that reminded me of
Venice.
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We cut short our visit to Corfu to take an unexpected detour to southern Albania. The steep roads and closure of most of the tourist facilities outside of the main port town made it less inviting to explore Corfu than we anticipated. We settled for 1 museum day, 1 riding day, and 1 day planning our trip to Albania. As on Kos, the reduced winter ferry schedule was in part driving our schedule.
History Repeating Itself
Learning about history has been a fun
sleuthing game but as many have long said, understanding the past also helps
understand the present and anticipate the future. Not having news for a couple
of weeks and then hearing about the 6th night of riots (with many more to come)
in the immigrant estates in Paris brought history lessons to mind. Being exposed
to more frequent daily European news over the last few years had heightened our
awareness of the terrible problems of immigration: the desperate need of people
to leave horrific social and political situations and the potentially
destabilizing effect on the more affluent countries they stream into.
The Paris riots brought to
mind a poorly understood time of upheaval in the Mediterranean civilizations in
roughly the 1200-900 bce period. The destruction of several civilizations
including the Hittites, Minoans, and almost the Egyptian social order is
attributed to the mysterious Sea Peoples. Historians debate as to whether they were
the cause or the effect: were the societies disintegrating and the migration of
hoards filled a vacuum or did some triggering event unleash migrations that
overwhelmed established societies. It has always been a bit difficult for me to
comprehend the disruptive potential of the unorganized Sea Peoples but seeing the Paris riots put an
analogous scenario before me in vivid color.
And we also watched the uncertain outcome of the fall German
elections with interest. The German government, like several in Europe, is
formed from a coalition of several parties if no party wins a clear majority in
the elections.
And the people vote for parties, not individuals, so even the final chancellor
is in question until party approve after a successful coalition is formed. We believe it was almost 2 months after the elections until a
coalition government was formed, with ministers quitting before the new government
was even off and
running. We thought about how this hiatus in the German government structure could have in prior eras created a vulnerability that a belligerent
neighbor would have capitalized upon by attacking. Bill also commented that this
was the same kind of chaos and political uncertainty that allowed Hitler to rise to power as a
compromise candidate in the 1930's.
Fortunately neither the Paris riots or the labored process of
forming a new German government lead to national or international disaster, but
both situations amplified how more catastrophic outcomes could have occurred in
the past.
Where We Are Now 12/4/05
We just arrived in Frankfurt, Germany from Munich
by train and are poised for flying
back to Portland on Tuesday.
Love,
Barb
