More Xanthi

May 31, 2007

Xanthi, Greece

Today I am leaving Xanthi, headed by train back to Thessaloniki, and from there I will fly to Berlin and start the solo part of my travels. I am nervous again about heading off on my own, especially when for the past few days I have had a kitchen and a washing machine, and wonderful people around me. When I left, Elena told me that I was always welcome to come back, and I really wish that I will get the opportunity. I feel almost like I have gained a second wing of my family, and I really fell in love with Katherine, who every day helped me clean up my things and put on my make up. And Elena herself is wonderful, a warm, very intelligent woman who is making her way in the world—completely set in her own law office, as tastefully decorated as her home, and constantly surrounded both in Xanthi and around the world by people who love her.

I would love to come back, and I believe that the spirit of this scholarship has really come clear to me in the past few days. I had heard from the guys who founded the whole thing that the purpose was to maintain connections to Davidson, and to send someone off into the world to drink deeply of a foreign culture. I think I got a first hand dose of that in my stay with Elena—I got to see her family and friends operate, I got to see her children, and I got to see just how special the connections we make through Davidson are. If it weren’t for Davidson, I would never have been here.

The second morning of my stay in Xanthi was a school and work day. The holiday was over, and I woke up to a house in the midst of its mid morning bustle. Elena was up, immaculately dressed as usual with her blond hair in waves around her face, her feet perched atop high stiletto heels, and her lipstick glistening. She stood, coffee in her hand, as the TV blared and the kids moved in slow motion around her. She had help though—a matronly woman from South Africa named Ana was chattering away with Katherine as she fed her her morning milk.

Soon afterwards Elena and George left for school and work, and I grabbed some cereal and milk and perched on the couch as Dora the Explorer raced around solving riddles in the background. Katherine was next to Ana, her big blue eyes staring out at everything. Ana and I talked for a while—she also entered Greece as a foreigner with no knowledge of the language, and we spoke about the differences we had noticed between it and our own countries of origin. As she spoke she helped Katherine with whatever endeavor she wanted to embark on that day. For the past three mornings it has been much the same—coloring or drawing or videos. Katherine is one of the neatest and most meticulous children I have ever met. Every puzzle she put together she immediately took apart and placed back in its box, and when she colored she was very careful to stay inside the lines, eeping when her careful lines had escaped their boundary. And every morning she was happy to zip up all of my bags for me when I finished getting dressed, carefully placing my rumpled stacks of clothing in the bag, and zipping it shut. And she always helped me put on my makeup, grabbing each individual stick or pencil or powder and opening it carefully. At first she only handed it to me, but after the first day or so she swiped on my powder and bronzer herself, in careful soft strokes. The same with my lip gloss.

That first day I lounged around for a while, watching the show with Katherine and chatting with Ana as I moved about the house, happy to have more than one room to walk in and especially happy that I could rest and stay in one place for a little while. It has done more for my sanity than I think Elena has realized. After so many months on the road, having a home to rest in is the best thing in the whole world.

But I also wanted to see Xanthi, so I left with Katherine and Ana as they made their way into the park. I myself wanted to see more of the city, so I took a meandering tour, heading first toward the main square of the city where a large yellow clock tower occupied the corner and the cobblestones were crowded with brightly colored chairs and tables brimming with frappe. I continued on toward the Old Town, to the taverna where I had first met some of Elena’s family, and past it, winding up the narrow streets where the top floor projected out into the street over the lower levels, creating a narrow window of light to the sky. I moved up farther, passing groups of old women with their faces completely wrapped; Elena had told me that there was a significant Muslim population in Xanthi, and I walked right past the white minaret of a mosque on the way. I finally reached the road above the town and into the mountains, and resolving to walk to the nearby monasteries, I headed inward and upward. I never made it to the monasteries though—the road had no shoulder, and the semitrucks that came roaring around the bend did not inspire much confidence in me that I would not get run over or pushed off of the cliff.

So, instead, I wound my way back down the mountain, detouring through a rather large woodland park where the pine trees created a soft bed to walk on below. From different points I could see the changing skyline of Xanthi, as I moved down away from the river. I emerged from my walk in another part of the Old Town, and wound my way through the crowded streets and barely open tavernas until I spotted an intersection I recognized. Then, I made my way toward the river, passing a nice hotel and the university, where the coffee shops were buzzing with people. I went to the river, and walked around there, crossing over to the opposite side on a footbridge and ambling along in the greenspace. Then I turned again and made my way back up toward the square, walking along the narrow sidewalks until the space opened up. By then, it was the early part of the afternoon, so I stopped for a frappe in one of the cafes with the bright orange tables.

I felt very Greek sitting there, drinking my frappe and people watching. I even took out my notebook for a while and did some drawing—there was a particularly interesting group of old men who sat and watched people passing by. In time, one of the men fell asleep, head nodding gently on his chest, while the other absentmindedly stared of into space. And there was another group of people who seemed content to stay at the coffee place all afternoon, as I was. I sat for a long time, until the iced coffee got too warm, and then picked myself up off of the chair and went about in a quest for lunch. My wanderings led me to the street that Elena had pointed out to me earlier has being the major shopping street in Xanthi, with shoe stores and clothing shops lining the wider boulevards. I quickly found a gyro place, where I ordered what would be my last gyro, and ate it with gusto. It was delicious.

After that, I headed home, walking down past a beautiful red and yellow brick church and back to the apartment, where Elena met me for lunch. Her mother is the one in the family that does all of the cooking, she explained, as she pulled a Tupperware out that was filled with vegetables and a very soft meat. It was really good, and we sat and talked for a while more that afternoon. Elena also suggested a place to visit for the afternoon—a news stand that sold English language magazines. I was only too happy to go there, happily paging through UK versions of Cosmo and Elle. They had tons and tons of foreign language publications there, ranging from Russian to Italian and French. I myself finally decided on an Elle, and walked around for a bit more before returning to the house and plopping myself down on the sofa to have a nice read.

I even grabbed off of her bookshelf the book The Life of Pi, a novel written about a young boy whose boat sinks about halfway across the Atlantic ocean and lives most of the story as a castaway. The only difference between a story like this one and Robinson Crusoe is that he is stuck in the company of a three year old Bengal Tiger, and must grapple with how to stay alive in the company of a carnivore in addition to the fierce winds and rain and hunger. It was a fascinating book, and I was very quickly absorbed. It took me the better part of the next two days to finish it.

It was so comfortable there. I felt like I could probably spend my whole life comfortably curled up on the couch with the sunlight streaming in the porch windows, the children making quiet noise in the background as they played their games, Elena whisking in and out with her usual elegance. I was just so happy to be in a house with a family that I could probably deal with not knowing Greek.

That night, Elena and I paged through the fashion magazine, and I told her all of the things I had noticed while in Europe. She laughed when I told her how much I though the women here dressed up and told me that some of her other friends from the US had had the same reaction. Then we went out onto the porch where I got on the computer. I showed her how I managed to stay in touch with US entertainment during the course of my study abroad. I have an iTunes account and have bought a lot of TV episodes that way, and I showed her how to browse and download music. She listened to some of my songs, and we put them on a flash drive for her. It was a major cultural exchange—me with my American technosavviness and she with her highly European fashion sensibility, swapping tips and advice. By the end of the night she told me that she would show me some of the good shoes stores in Xanthi, and I would promise to get her iTunes on her computer so that she could download them at her leisure. I went to bed feeling happy.

The next day was another lazy morning. I woke up to find the house in much the same state that I had before—Katherine sleepily watching TV or playing with puzzles on the couch as Ana chatted around her, and George reluctantly getting ready for school. Elena as always was impeccably dressed. We hung out for a while, chatting and such, and I took my time getting dressed. Elena told me that she would call me in the midmorning so we could try to swap files on her network at her office, and I could take advantage of the high speed internet to check my email and download some more TV.

Elena’s office was just as well decorated as her apartment—in clean modern Japanese looking furniture, and wide windows that overlooked the park where Katherine would play in the afternoons. She let me use her intern’s desk as I played around on the internet and checked some emails, and soon afterwards one of her relatives or friends (I get mixed up on relations because there are so many) named Leonidas, the proclaimed computer expert. He tried to get my computer to connect to the network, but he could not get my mac to talk to Elena’s PC (it still happens sometimes, if rarely). So we resolved instead to share files the old fashioned way—by using hardware. I stayed there for a while and checked email and updated things while Leonidas did some work on Elena’s computer.

After a while though, it was time to go. Elena had promised to show me to some of the prime shopping areas of the town so in a few minutes we were out into the square, crossing it and making our way to a large department store looking place with a whole first floor occupied by women’s shoes. Elena went to run some errands but she found some storeclerks there who were very nice and who helped me try on pair after pair of the incredibly fashionable high heels that all of the European women seem to like to wear. I tried on pairs in all colors and styles, finally deciding upon a few that I liked, but not being entirely happy about the sticker price, I decided to wait. Elena took a look at the shoes as I modeled them also, cocking her head as she examined the ones I had picked. I had fallen in love with a pair of red heels crisscrossed with stitching and accented with brass grommets at the toes and the heels. But I wanted to look around to see what else I liked beforehand.

Elena had to go to the bank, so she simply told me where the next place was, another small boutique stacked with tons and tons of shoes in all shapes and sizes. I even recognized Nine West shoes, which seemed to look more fashionable here than they ever had in the states, with a wide variety of colors and styles. I found a pair of neon yellow ones that I liked, and the woman who worked there told me that they were a Greek brand—but the thought of spending so much money for a pair of highlighter colored kicks did not really appeal to me. I thanked her and left. I spent a lot more time that afternoon walking around, up and down the streets, before returning home.

Shortly after I arrived, Elena breezed in with the kids, and set George to work on his homework, especially his spelling. Every once in a while I would catch the name of a letter I recognized “epsilon” or “iota”, even though I had little to no idea of what they actually meant. But after a while I got restless, and gathered my things and ventured out into the town once again. I wanted to look at some more of the European shoes, which to me represented more works of art than anything else—they were way more concerned with fashion and style than any type of common sense—usually the heels were well over two inches high and they were without an exception stilettos. I turned away from the mountains this time, walking down a broad boulevard that led from the main square with the clocktower out into a smaller square, lined with shops and restaurants, and finally to a straight road, lined on each side with apartments and stores. They were all closed due to siesta, but the windows prominently displayed pair after pair of shoes, and I casually looked through the selection to see if there were any that I liked. Although there were some nice ones, my mind kept returning to the red pair I had seen in the first store.

So putting thoughts of shopping aside, I concentrated on seeing the city, passing coffee houses with old men just watching the people as they passed, sipping on their frappes and smoking. This was a newer side of town than the part that I had been in earlier, and the streets were wider and straighter than I had seen in most European cities. I walked for a while, and then turned around and headed back the other direction, making my way toward the mountains and back home. I only had a little while to wait before Elena’s father came to pick up the kids, and Elena and myself were headed out for a night on the town!

Our first stop was down by the university. There, a series of open air bars with slick modern looking furniture and seductively dim lights beckoned. We settled into one of them, perched up high on zebra striped looking barstools. Some of Elena’s friends (and or relatives, its hard to tell) were there, two friends of her younger brother, one whose name I cannot remember and one named Thassos. Later we were joined by another woman and man who Elena knew from work. It was a great night. Thassos was really nice, he spoke very good English and talked to me for a while about my travels, asking about where I intended to go and talking about the places he has been and where he wanted to go.

After having a few drinks there, we moved to the club, which was the nicest club I had ever been in. It was open to the sky in some places, but most of it was overshadowed by big billowy white fabric. Huge lights in bright geometric shapes dangled down from the ceiling, with small lights inside. The bars were a shiny white surface, and we arrived just as people were starting to filter in—around midnight. The music was a pulsing Greek type complete with a very characteristic shrill sounding guitar, and high pitched singing, an energetic but completely foreign sound. We stayed there for a few hours, myself enjoying the high-class ambiance of the place, and Elena chatting with friends and laughing. They even tried to translate some of the lyrics to the song for me so that I could understand.

Late into the night, we headed home, and immediately went to bed. It was fun, but trying to go out at night in Europe is utterly exhausting. Most places do not get going until about 2 am, which is the time most places in the US are closing. My body clock is completely underequipped to handle it, especially with the early mornings that I have been accustomed to on the classics trip. I guess I have not become that European. I still like my sleep.

The next morning, we both woke up wishing we had slept some more and had kind of a lazy day. I hung out with the kids for a long time in the morning. Then at 11, the woman who does Elena’s hair came over to do mine. Elena has this woman dry and style her hair once every few days. She says that its easier to have her do it than to do it herself, and I think she noticed that I felt decidedly ungroomed after my months and months on the road. So she offered to have the woman come over to do mine. She spoke no English, and I of course no Greek, but Elena had explained that I wanted my hair straightnened and other than that there was not much to communicate except for the occasional “put your head this way” which was easily said through gesture. And in less than 20 minutes, I had a perfectly groomed coiffure, which made me feel like I was the queen of the world. Its amazing how much a single hair do can shape one’s mental attitude.

So after getting all dolled up (with Katherine’s help of course) I ventured forth into the Xanthi morning. My first stop was by the shoe store, where I picked up the pair I had been eyeing all day. Then I went out into the old town, where I visited Xanthi’s one museum, a cultural museum with the old costumes and things from when the area was mostly pastoral, and later in the 1800s and 1900s. I thought it was fairly interesting but I could not read any of the signs because they were in Greek.

As a last hurrah, I finally got to meet Elena’s younger brother Alecos, and we went out to lunch with him and a friend. As usual, the meal was huge, and the main course was a huge fish which the waiter actually brought to the table for us to inspect before he cooked it. As always, it was delicious, and I ate until I was stuffed to the gills. They were wonderfully friendly, and before the lunch was over we all exchanged email addresses and phone numbers and when I left her brother told me that I was always welcome to return. I was floored, again. I could not believe the incredible generosity of these people who had barely met me and lived in a completely foreign place, offering to have me over again. I was so flattered and touched that they genuinely would want to see me again. And I definitely would love to visit.

Then it was some last minute photos and a long ride to Thessaloniki, where I promptly checked on the bus schedules for the morning, and fell asleep.

A Picture

Me, George and Katherine on our last day together in Xanthi.

Welcome to Xanthi

May 28, 2007

Xanthi, Greece

This is my second day in Xanthi, and so far it has been the most relaxing and enjoyable of all of my travels. I have not had to worry about the security of my belongings, or where I will find my next meal—Elena and her family have taken me in and it feels as though already I am almost one of their own. She speaks of me returning again as if I have already booked a second flight over from the states. The town itself is lovely too—nestled in among the mountains and a welcome break from the noisy stress of the bigger cities. I am very happy that I came here.

Yesterday I woke up very early, concerned about missing my 7:30 train from Thessaloniki. I woke up in the morning to the loud cooing of pigeons and was worried that they had somehow managed to come through an open window; luckily they were only greeting the early morning light outside. But, I quickly gathered my things, scarfed down a light breakfast and made a short walk to the train station, where I found the train just pulling into the platform. It was only a short wait before I was on the move, the train picking up speed as it wound its way through the flatlands and then up through massive green mountains, hugging into the side of the mountain face so that one side of the train car was completely blocked by the dark mass. I read and tried to sleep, but I was so nervous and excited about meeting this family that it was close to impossible.

But soon enough, the train pulled into the platform and I hauled my bags into the bright sunlight, pulling them past a bright yellow train station with a red terracotta roof and settling myself outside on a bench to wait for Elena to arrive. It was then that I thought that she might miss me—we had only exchanged one set of photos, and that was when my hair was a completely different color and I was not tanned from weeks out in the sun. I had only seen a few pictures of her myself, and they were months buried in my memory. But pretty soon a silver coupe pulled up in front of the station and a slight woman with straight blond hair and aviators waved. She looked so young, and so small, this woman, I wondered if it could possibly be the mother of two that I had seen so many months ago. But it was—she approached me and gave me the hug-and-kiss, and I caught a whiff of some very nice perfume as she whisked my things into the car.

I was worried that the initial drive to her house would be very awkward, but she made it so easy to connect, and almost immediately I found myself talking about the trip and my professors and Davidson. Her daugher, Katherine, a shy three year old girl with bright blue eyes and whisps of blond curls tucked neatly up into a ponytail, sat in the back seat. She stared out at me for virtually the whole ride. We stopped briefly where I said my shy hellos to Elena’s mother and continued on to see her son George. It was his first soccer practice, and we pulled into a bright green field where a bunch of kids complete with shin guards and cleats were running around, closely supervised by a few older men in baseball caps. I recognized one of the drills from my brief stint as a soccer player—kids in lines on opposite lines from each other, a goal on either side of them, would run out as a ball was kicked and jockey for control of it before finally putting it into the net (or at least that was the object of the drill). We stayed for a few minutes, watching all of the boys run around. I even met Elena’s father, who was in charge of George for the day. He did not speak English, and I spoke no Greek, so we nodded and smiled before Elena took me to her house where I could get settled for a bit.

We walked into a small but well furnished apartment, complete with tasteful modern couches and framed pictures of family and loved ones along the walls. It had two very nice porches to let in the breeze, which overlooked the street and the mountains which rose in rugged beauty at the edge of the city. I was quickly installed in George’s room— complete wth shelves full of games and toys and pictures of Spiderman along the walls. It looked in most respects like a very well kept child’s room, and the only difference was in the language of the books and the signs on the walls. Upon dropping my things, Elena and I moved to the porch with a frappe each in hand to talk about Davidson and the scholarship and all of my travels.

Before long she had taken several large photo albums off of the walls and we were paging through old pictures from her travel in Germany and later in Davidson with Stephen. I saw some faces I recognized from so many months ago—dressed in faded oversize jeans and the awful early 90s fashion—and some of them even wore objects that I recognized from my time at Davidson—the proud initials of Phi Delta Theta across the chest of a sweatshirt, and Davidson emblazoned everywhere. Elena has a huge network of friends and family everywhere, and she recalled their names and locations with ease—people now living in New York, Baltimore, Charlotte, London, Germany, and Greece. Her family was truly international in a way that I had never seen before, and for her it seemed it was second nature to fly to another country for a wedding, or for Christmas to meet friends in the States. And with the familiarity with which she talked about all of Stephen’s friends and fraternity brothers—it was as though she had seen them very recently. She told me that whenever they got together it was as though they had never left—a gift of friendship that I can only hope to achieve in my time at Davidson.

Pictures of happy times rolled past as she showed me even more parts of the world than I have seen in my long months of travel—nights in Davidson at Phidelt, visiting the in-laws in Baltimore, Atlanta, and the dorms in Berlin where she and Stephen first met. It was wonderful and eye opening to see them. But soon enough George and his grandfather rushed in, hot and sweaty from his soccer practice, and it was time to meet more family for lunch at a local taverna.

The taverna was located in a shady area, protected by a high fence from the street, where children ran around in the shade of the trees and people clustered around simple tables with bright white tablecloths. There, I met Elena’s brother and his wife, him a tall man with a strong jaw and even stronger looking biceps, and her another well dressed woman in khaki and green, wavy brown hair and warm eyes. There, we talked, they to me in English, and amongst each other in a fury of Greek, and we ordered more food than I could possibly eat in my life. Although some of it was similar to what I have had in the past in Greece—more of the delicious cucumbers and tomatoes, feta cheese, and French fries, but there were other dishes more Turkish in origin. Kebabs on a bed of tomato drenched pits, fried eggplant and zucchini, a salad with cheese and sun dried tomatoes, and a dish that looked like a casserole with mushrooms. It was all delicious, and Elena’s brother insisted that I try everything, gesturing with his strong hands and saying “Nicole, ella, (which means something similar to “come on”) eat!” To which, of course, I would take another scoopful or a piece of delicious food and enjoy it. They also offered me some retsina, which I had before, but Elena took it and put half of it in a glass and poured Coke in the other half—an innovation which softened the taste. I had mine that way, and enjoyed it considerably.

We had an excellent time there. The kids did not eat much, but seemed much more content to frolic with the other children underneath the trees, and we talked in English about my school and my studies, and they in Greek about nothing I could understand. That is my only regret about this trip—not knowing the language makes any kind of conversation strained a bit. Elena speaks excellent English but the others seemed less comfortable with it, and I was happy to sit and watch the happy exchange of news and information having little to no idea about what the particular information was.

And after a long lunch, it was back to the house, where I sat and talked for a while and Katherine watched me with her huge blue eyes. Eventually, however, tired from meeting so many folks in such a short amount of time, and from my bad night’s sleep the night before, I took a nap. I was surprised to wake up close to 8—I had evidently slept for quite a while, and the kids looked at me with an “aren’t you strange” expression on their faces. I showed Elena and Katherine some pictures of my own—images of Greece and the trip from our travels, and she recognized Dr Toumazou and asked about Denham and how things were coming along at Davidson. I showed her some of my family. I only wished I had brought more to show—I wanted to tell her everything about my roommates, my house in Florida where I grew up, and Davidson, but my school-provided computer only had new pictures on it, and I was left only with the power of my words to describe my life in the states to her. And she showed me more recent pictures on the computer, George and Katherine perched on her lap, and watched themselves grow up through different birthdays and Christmases.

Then, close to dinnertime (which came much later here than it has for me on the trip, around 9 or 10), the grandparents picked up the children and Elena and I took a short drive into the Old Town, where we met up with more friends for drinks and some food. We sat at another outdoor restaurant, the tables spilling out into the cobblestone streets, and Elena confidently walking along them in her stiletto heels as if she were walking along a seamless floor. We sat and I was introduced to George’s godparents, a large man whose name, Leonidas, I remembered only because of my knowledge of the battle of Thermopayle. There, we ordered drinks and ate the snacks the waiter provided, speaking long into the night, me in English and they in Greek. Once again, it was only bits and pieces or the bridge phrases that I understood—the phrases such as “ne” which means yes, and “daxi”: ok, which they loved to say several times in a row, the same way I would say “yeahyeahyeah.” They were a lively bunch.

We headed home around 1, and Elena and I spoke for a while as I flipped through channels on the TV, glad to have some down time, and after she went to sleep I spent a lot of time looking through my guidebook for Germany, planning where to go and what to see, before going to bed very late.

I slept peacefully, and the next morning woke up feeling for the first time in a long time, well rested and refreshed. The house was quiet, because the kids had spent it at their grandmother’s house, and I managed to find a wireless signal inside the house. I checked email and facebook, where my sister had already posted pictures from the trip online. Elena came in midmorning, surprised at how late she had slept, and before long the kids came bustling back in. We were going to the beach today, and it was time to get ready.

I got my things together and Katherine came in the room too, watching me as I gathered my things. She even helped me put my things away—pulling on the zippers and on my suitcase, placing my clothing level inside the bag so that it would zip. Cleaning things and putting them in order seemed to give her a great amount of pleasure. And then when it came time to get ready it was even better—she went straight for my makeup bag and started pulling out the little tubes and containers, unscrewing the caps and handing them to me. Although I had not planned on putting on any make up that day, she seemed so fascinated at the prospect that I couldn’t help but indulge her. When it came time for the blush, she took the brush from my hands and gently swiped the powder over my cheeks and nose, giving me a nice glow. She was evidently impressed with her handiwork, and gave me a look of approval as she neatly started to replace my things, each one back in its bag, and zipped up the case for me.

I grabbed my suit, and the four of us piled into the car, picking up Elena’s mother along the way, as we made our way to the beach house. I watched as the apartments fell away and the and opened up from the mountainous backdrop that held Xanthi to rolling yellow plains, speckled with terracotta roofs. Elena and I chatted along the ride, and the children in the back seat would occasionally interrupt with an insistent “MaMA!” We arrived at the beachhouse in about 20 minutes, where the rest of her family was waiting—three generations of women and friends, brothers, and children. Elena’s father was cooking on the grill and the smell was delicious.

Elena took me on a small tour of the house, a two story house with a terracotta roof, painted a lovely warm shade of yellow. There was a small garden in the yard, complete with flowers and tomatoes and potatoes. The whole set up was wonderful and heartwarming. Elena had so many people here, and all across the globe, who helped her and supported her in everything that she did. My family is all so far away, and so small in comparison, and I only saw my relatives once or twice a year. She has them almost every day if she wants.

We took the kids on a walk along the beach. They enjoyed squishing their toes in to the sand, and Katherine even took running leaps at the water, shouting the whole time “they are coming, they are coming” at the oncoming waves as they rushed forward. George preferred to wiggle his toes and bury his feet as far as they would go, looking up at us with an impish grin as he got immured in the muck. Then, suddenly, he would yank his feet out of the sand and start running around. The kids would follow each other in a series of tightening circles, laughing and shouting the whole time. Seeing them reminded me of my days on the beaches of Saint Augustine—I used to lay in the water and cover myself in sand until when I walked back out I could still feel the surf rolling in every stride I took. The beach front was not highly developed either, only scattered bits of houses and an occasional taverna that took the tables all of the way down to the water where they managed to gain some shade with the help of palm leaf umbrellas. I loved watching them, these bouncing children, and I could tell that Elena did too, and once again I marveled at how such a small woman could take on the energies of these two. But then we walked back to the beachhouse and I remembered—family.

Everyone was there, gathered around a big table in the backyard—both of Elena’s parents, her brother and his wife, and George’s godparents, and Elena’s grandmother. The smell of the meat on the grill was intoxicating, and me, not used to such a late lunch, was looking forward greatly to settling in for such a feast. They brought out plates and plates of wonderful Greek food—French fries (of course), salad, radishes, meatballs, souvlaki, bread, retsina—all of the works. It was a delicious meal, and all around me Elena’s family chattered back and forth. The kids soon tired of doing such grownup things as sitting at a table, so they were dismissed to run around, and disappeared around the corner of the house. Several members of her family asked me what I was doing in Xanthi and where I was going, and expressed approval at what I had seen and what I was planning to see. They also told me about all of the dishes at the table, injoining me “Nicole, ella, eat!” To which, of course, I was only too happy to oblige.

Later, the conversation turned more and more Greek as the subjects moved from me to the events in their lives. Occasionally Elena would turn to me and translate what was going on—stories about George in school, and video of an old friend’s new baby, and they would talk back and forth in rapid Greek so the only parts that I understood were: “ne ne daxi.” (Yes yes ok, which of course does not help at all.) So I decided to go to the beach. I offered to take the kids with me, but Katherine had been very upset the first time that we left, and Elena though that the two of them would be too much to handle. It was too bad—I would have loved to relive my own childhood through building sand castles or to watch them play in the surf, but I was also starting to fade, took the opportunity to simply lie on the beach.

It was slightly overcast, and the waves crashed against the shore as I took my blanket and spread it out, the lone sunbather on the empty beach. I stayed several hours, and the whole time I might have seen two people, fully dressed, go ambling off down the beach in one direction and then come back my way. But I did not mind being alone. Soon I gave up on watching the surf and simply listened to it as it crashed on the sand, imagining myself far across the Atlantic on the shores so close to home. I could almost believe I was there, except for the lack of humidity and the relative cool.

But I came out of my reverie soon enough, and came back to a house that was packing up to go home. I washed my feet from the sand, grabbed my things and waved goodbye to the good people I had met. I felt as if this were the American family that is always seen on shows like Wonder Years—multiple generations in a single beach house, enjoying a barbeque on the holiday. It was even memorial day weekend, appropriately enough. Except, of course, everyone is drinking retsina instead of beer and the grilled food is much better.

We headed home, the kids settling in to the back seat for the short ride, and Elena and I talking about the landscape and my home and all manner of things before we reached Xanthi and turned away from the part of the city I was familiar with, and made our way into the crowded overhung streets of the old town, and then past that up into where the mountains met the rooftops of the settlement. There, Elena pulled the car over to the side of the road and right next to a café with wide windows we could approach the edge of the road where the land dropped off and we could see all of Xanthi spread out below us, the scattering of terracotta roofs and off white buildings that stretched out and onto the plain, the river cutting through on one side as the roads straightened out from the old town and the houses turned into apartments.

George spotted a bright set of seats behind the café- it was an open air theater, and he wanted to climb all of the way to the top. We had no choice but to follow, coming up until our view of the town below was expanded now to include the roof of the café, the winding mountain road, and the scene from before. Both of them looked extremely pleased with themselves from being able to climb so high. But we could not stay for long, it was time to get home so we carefully picked our way back down the stairs and scampered into the car.

We arrived in the apartment safe and sound, and after checking that George had no homework for the next day at school, the kids turned on Happy Feet, one of those new computer animated movies with surprisingly good music and the voices of a number of notable actors, including my childhood favorite Robin Williams, who when I was a kid played the Genie in Aladdin. But it was singing penguins this time and he was just as funny.

After the kids went to bed Elena and I moved out onto the balcony of her apartment, where she could enjoy a cigarette or several as we ate snacks—the Greek version of dinner, and talked. I talked about Davidson, and she asked me all about Stephen’s old friends and how the frats were now and where I lived. I told her about the abroad experience I had traveling across multiple countries with baggage and a Cypriot Professor who sometimes regarded food as optional. She asked me what my favorite places where, and I told her that some of my favorites were in Greece—Delphi, and Ioannina, and then Cyprus and Istanbul and Florence and the wine country in France. We started talking about the history of these places, and I told her that I had read about 1453—a black day, she informed me in Greece’s history, when Constantinople fell to the Turks. I told her that I had not even known it had happened until this trip, that most European history that we get in American schools stops dealing with most things east of Germany after the division of the Roman empire, and never looked back. I really wanted to learn more—everything on this trip has made me want to learn more.

I also expressed to her how much going and seeing these places has impacted my education. The best part of reading that book was that when the writer talked about the gates in the city walls I could picture it because I had seen it—that Hagia Sophia inspired as much majesty in me as it did for this man and for the people in the book, and that all I wanted to do was read and travel. She, worldwise, nodded her head in agreement.

We talked about many things that night—jobs, schools, lifestyles, and friends, before we lapsed into comfortable silence and both decided at that instant that it was probably about time to go to bed. My head hit the pillow completely happy—I felt like I had made a new friend, someone who had no doubt seen much more of the world than I had, but was not so far away in age that we couldn’t still relate on a great deal of topics. She was even a cool mom—one of those that deals simply and matter-of-factly with her children, hardly raising her voice and never using the baby talk that most women lapse into when dealing with the young. And she loved her friends and family. I think I will be lucky if I can grow up to be like that.

Thessaloniki... solo!

May 26, 2007

Thessaloniki, Greece

Some things I have learned so far traveling without the Classics Trip:
-never expect the bus to come on time, it wont
-traveling always takes longer and is more expensive than you expect
-it usually pays to ask how to get from place to place, s0 you don’t get lost
-arrive early so you don’t get worried about missing anything
-plan for bad weather
-smile and be friendly, sometimes people will accommodate you in ways you don’t expect
-always check out hotel locations
-be ready to travel farther to see better things
-try something different, and don’t be afraid to adapt if things don’t go the way you expect

I am finally actually alone—not for long, because I am meeting Elena (of the Keller Scholarship) and her family, but that will be my one blip in a long 4 weeks of solo travel. Jesse left today, early this morning from the metro station, and I gladly said goodbye to my heavy bag and more sadly to her as she pulled away in the predawn dark. Now I am venturing into unfamiliar territory, both in terms of traveling companions (just me) and locations—Thessaloniki is somewhere I am only vaguely familiar with from before and after that it is all new. However, I have been happy with my Let’s Go guidebook, and have learned how to navigate and ask for directions when I need them, so I know that I will survive the journey. Still, it seems strange after all of this group travel to be sitting on this train utterly and completely alone.

I am looking forward to finally meeting Elena though—the woman who captured the heart of a Davidson student on his semester abroad, a romantic and tragic tale if I ever heard one. I know that this scholarship is important to a number of people, and I only hope that my experiences in the next few weeks make it worthwhile. We shall see! The opportunities seem truly limitless right now, with much less planned and an increasingly open world at my feet. And I know that spending time in Xanthi will give me the opportunity to immerse myself in the culture, away from the ruins and the buzz of the city, and I hope to achieve and maintain a real connection with this family, so far away from the world of Davidson, and yet attached to it in so many ways.

Delphi Part II

May 25, 2007

Delphi, Greece

Today we are on the bus back to Athens from Delphi, the last stop on the tour before Jesse leaves me and returns home, and I continue on alone to Thessaloniki, and then to Xanthi to meet a family that I have been in touch with through the scholarship. Then it is on to Germany, a completely new place for me. Greece almost seems like home now, and I am kind of sad to think that I will be leaving soon. I love the food and the experience traveling with my sister has given me a sense of just how friendly and welcoming the people are. Everyone we have met on our travels has been happy to assist us in where we want to go.

Two days ago we got up really early, and took the bus, which was late (again) to Aegina town, where luckily the ferry was late also, and got on just before it left the dock. We had to get all of the way from Aegina to Delphi, and my Let’s Go book had given me some idea, but I had never been to or heard of the bus station that we needed to find in Athens, and I knew it was going to be kind of a scramble.

We got off of the metro in Syntagma square, having reached the center of town with no troubles, and emerged into a sea of red, chanting fans. The Liverpool folks were out in full force, as well as the Milanites, and we could hear their cheers and fight songs echoing off of the tile walls in the metro all of the way until we reached the square itself. Where everything turned into mayhem. The Champions Festival was held there in addition to the Panathenaic Stadium, and the space was so choked with noise and color that I had a hard time orienting myself at first. Everywhere around me people were chattering in thick English accents, and we had to haul all of our bags up a flight of stairs to try to find the right bus stop, which the book had listed only as “close to Syntagma square”, not all that helpful when we had to wade through a screaming mass of individuals. After going to wrong way, and back, we finally found the stop that listed the #24 bus, which would drop us off at Terminal B, and from there we could catch a bus out to Delphi. I bought the tickets and when the bus came, we almost didn’t get all of our things on it before it took off, careening through the narrow windy streets.

We were on a quest to find Loission 260—the street address of the bus terminal, and Jesse and I both peered intently out the windows as the other passengers sat complacently, unburdened with piles and piles of baggage. We went through stop after stop, before the bus finally ground to a halt and the bus driver hopped out, leaving us wondering where we were, and if we were ever going to get to the right stop. When he got on the bus again, sandwich in hand, I went up to the front of the bus and asked him if this bus went to Bus Terminal B, and when he looked at me with an “I don’t know what you are talking about” face, I told him we were going to Delphi and pointed to Loission 260 in my guidebook. He nodded once and told me that yes, the bus was going there, and he would tell me when to get off. Relieved, I sat back down and more peacefully watched the streets whiz by. The bus went along its route, going BACK THROUGH Syntagma square, and it was then that I realized we probably just got on the bus on the opposite side of the route, and spent the whole first half of the trip heading the wrong direction.

But soon enough, we turned onto Liossion, and the numbers began counting up. The bus driver nodded, and pointed me toward the station, where I could see lines of teal colored busses waiting in the dust. We got off there, bought our tickets to Delphi with no problem, and boarded the bus at around 1 pm.

The bus ride took about three hours, and for the most part Jesse and I slept or read. About 45 minutes away though, we stopped all of it to look at the scenery outside, for we had entered the mountains, and the craggy peaks rose up before us in their rugged beauty. We climbed around the steep curves, and growing higher and higher, as the air grew misty and thick around the bus. We passed through a number of small mountain towns, clustered together on the side of the mountain, hanging on for dear life. The mountains began to get higher, and soon we were flying by Arahova, and then the ruins of Delphi appeared on both sides of the slope, white columns amidst the dark green and browns of the cliffs.

We were dropped off at the far end of town, but had no trouble finding our hotel. It was a small but tidy affair, with virtually no lobby but rooms decorated in white and bright oranges and teak wood. It was the best place we had stayed in so far, and I could tell that Jesse was thoroughly relieved to finally be done with hauling our things, which we had been doing since 7:30 that morning. We both dropped our bags off and went on a stroll around the town, the tavernas still sleepy in the afternoon, and tourists everywhere. We walked to the edge of town to take in the wonderful view—mountains as far as the eye could see, soaring way into the distance, and in one direction we could see the blue placidity of the Corinthian gulf, and a small town clustered around it. We were in search of a place to eat, and I knew that the guide book had recommended a local taverna, which we found by climbing up a winding set of stone stairs to another avenue parallel to the one we were staying on, with a view as breathtaking as the one below. We decided to return there later, but we had a good few hours before anything would be open for business, so we continued our walk.

Jesse loved the place, I could tell. She looked out over the mountains with a look of awe in her eyes, saying over and over again “I really think I am more of a mountain person.” I had made a good choice! And better still, the guidebook had mentioned some hiking trails nearby, and we found the trailhead at the far end of town.

We returned to the hotel excited about the prospects for the next few days, Let’s Go had spoken highly of Delphi and Arahova, the nearby town that was mostly used by skiers in the winter, but was located close to a beautiful 11th century monastery that I wanted to go and visit. We spent the time between our walk and dinner by watching another movie on the laptop—this time Jesse’s choice, A Walk to Remember. I knew that it was kind of a sappy chic flick movie with a sad ending, but was so surprised to find both Jesse and myself crying by the end! I could not believe it. By the time the movie ended, Jesse and I looked at each other with watery eyes and started laughing at our situation… it was only, after all, a movie! But by then we were both starving so we dried our eyes and ventured out into town.

We ate at a taverna called Vakchos, a lively looking restaurant with a porch that hung out over the hill, the better to see the shady blues of the mountain and the water below. We ordered a Greek salad and some souvlaki, and stuffed tomatoes. The whole meal was one of the best we had on the whole trip, and we stayed at the restaurant for a long time, watching people filter in and out as the light dimmed and the view faded into black. Then we headed back, and since it was the 23rd the day of the soccer game that everyone was gearing up for—we turned on the small TV in our room and watched the game, but we did not get through the whole thing before falling fast asleep. I found out later that Milan won—a huge disappointment to Liverpool I am sure, but the Brits probably simply drowned their sorrows and went on partying as they seemed to do the whole time they were in Greece.

The next day we woke up to an overcast sky, but we were determined to see Delphi, so we ate a quick breakfast and took a long walk down to the lower part of the site. I had seen it before, but that didn’t stop me from being stunned again at how ruggedly beautiful it all was. The ancient Greeks considered Delphi to be the navel of the world, and Jesse and I could not help but agree. We wandered around the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia, and the gymasium, with the stoa that I had written an essay on earlier. I told Jesse the highlights from what I remembered, amazed at how much I could recall. And then we made our way up to the Castalian spring, where I took a picture of Jesse drinking the fresh sweet water. Hopefully she will become eloquent, as the legend states.

And then, the tour de force, the sanctuary itself, a majestic walk up the sacred way to the ruins of the Temple of Apollo, and on to the theater and the stadium at the very top. I think this is without a doubt one of the most picturesque of all of the ancient sites we visited the whole year, and the clouds that hung bright white and low in the valley added to the atmospheric effect. Jesse told me that she thought that Delphi looked like it belonged in some fantastic movie or novel—something with dragons or the like, a real-life Mordor just sitting there below us. We passed groups of schoolchildren and tours on the way, spitting out their information just as I was giving Jesse her own private tour of sorts. We reached the top of the stadium and I surveyed the site for a second time, taking some notes and pictures for future reference on my paper, and we walked all of the way down to the far end, where some schoolkids in matching red hats decided to re-enact the Pythian games for themselves, panting as they sprinted across the finish line. Below the crumpled side of the stands, on the downward side of the mountain, we could see the whole site spread below us, bits of rock and column jutting upward, the white walls of the Treasury of the Athenians below.

We took a lot of pictures from up there, watching the clouds swiftly roll over the valley. Then we made our way back down all of the stairs, passing groups of people talking in all kinds of different languages on their ascent, until we reached the hotel and had lunch and relaxed for a while. The bus into Arahova did not arrive until 4 pm, when we would take a taxi from there to Osis Loukas.

The bus was late, as usual, and the clouds were looking rather menacing when we got dropped off in Arahova, a town covered from the rooftops downward with all kinds of ski advertisements, and any number of Colombia and Northface stores. Everything seemed to be shut down for the summer, though, and we could not really find much open, so we decided to embark immediately for Osios Loukas. We made our way to the taxi stand, where a man at the concession stand nearby called us a cab, and we embarked on our next great adventure. The cab took us down into the valley area, and turned off of the road we had used to get into Delphi, making its way past a number of small towns, until the signs turned toward Osios Loukas. We pulled up, and after some difficult negotiating with a third party over the phone, who translated my desire to have the cab driver wait for us to see the place, and drive us back to Arahova, we finally settled a time and a price and left the cab.

We walked down a spiraling ramp to the monastery, where we were greeted by a small but eloquent structure in brick and stone, its polygonal walls in a Greek cross plan with a dome at the top, surrounded by an old stone courtyard and a series of whitewashed monk’s cells. The church was before us, and on the side was a low entrance leading to a small crypt full of candles and carved stone coffins inscribed with a spidery hand. Outside, at the far end of the complex, we could see old stone walls and a group of low buildings with rough stone walls indicating the oldest part of the monk’s residence, no longer inhabited, but dating to the 10th century AD. We walked up the stairs to the top of the walls and saw the whole of the valley below us, spreading off into the distance. It was lovely—the gentler mountains coming down into rows of olive fields, and fading in groups of faded blue-green off into the distance. The clouds hung low, and the whole place was covered with a whispy white fog that clung to the trees and faded the colors on the buildings. It was delightful—a step into the medieval period where we could imagine black clad monks rounding the corners with chanting, and incense perfuming the air.

We walked back into the main courtyard, and the huge façade of the main church rose up in its series of windows and curves, the openings of the building accented with red bricks. Inside, the dimly lit place, sparkled with gold mosaics and oil containers, which awed us as we stepped into the echoing space. Jesse and I both stood turning around and around, taking it all in, me pointing out to her some of the things I had seen before in my travels in Greece, including the elaborately tiled marble floor and the images of Virgin and Child and of Christ which decorated the inside of the dome. The windows were full of circles of colored glass, and the front of the church gleamed in gold, filled with the stiff icons of the saints. We stood and stared for a while, before seeing another door to our left and walking through to another, smaller church, decorated with frescoes and with a simpler floor and ceiling.

It was all wonderful to see, and out in the light of day again we could take in the whole thing—the church in its rocky enclosure, the small monks cells, the valley falling away behind, and a massive arching green tree in the front. It was beautiful, and we really enjoyed seeing this other side of Greece. But it was time to go, and we spotted the taxi driver waiting. We took one last look at the scene, and took some pictures—the taxi driver even offered to take some for us of the two of us, which I really appreciated—and enjoyed the ride home.

The taxi driver offered to take us all of the way back to Delphi, but we wanted to see if Arahova had shaken itself out of its summer slumber a bit, so he simply dropped us off at the taxi station. Unfotunately, right at that moment it started to rain, and we watched the taxi driver pull away as the drizzle came down. Within minutes we were both wet and cold, and when we asked about the next bus, it turned out to be about 2 hours from coming. We tried to walk around a bit in the rain, to see and explore the town, but the rain made it altogether too uncomfortable, so we stopped in at a coffee shop and ordered some hot chocolate to wait it out. It ended up being a nice time, we had the opportunity to talk some more and watch the people in their daily business outside of the windows as the rain stopped and started. When it was time, we made our way to the bus stop, where we took the (late) bus back to Delphi, arriving a little wet and cold, but otherwise quite pleased with our day. (I have learned to never expect the bus to be on time. Its frustrating, but what else can we do but wait?) Jesse even picked up some local cheese in Arahova, which we ate with our homemade Greek salad for dinner.

We went to bed early, intending on doing a lot in Delphi the next morning before taking the bus back to Athens.

The next morning we got up, ate, and packed our things, checking out and leaving them in the lobby. We were going to hike the E4 trail, which would take us to the top of the mountains above the archaeological site. The day was overcast and a bit humid, and we could see the clouds moving at a rapid pace below us as we took a trail up the scrubby hill, finally reaching a rocky but well maintained switchback that wound its way up the mountain. We got to several points where we could look down over the site itself, the stadium nestled in the trees, and the scattering of rocks and columns of the Temple of Apollo, getting farther and farther below us as we climbed. It was a wonderful view, even better than from Delphi itself, and as we ascended bits of the mountain would become covered in a cloud blanket, and would be later whisked away, revealing itself in a peekaboo pattern so we were never able to see the whole landscape at once. But it was nevertheless breathtaking!

We ran into very few people on our hike—it was mostly us and the rocks and scrubby brush around us. We reached the top and could look out from Arahova down through Delphi and out into the Corinthian Gulf, a huge expanse of open space. Below us, but no longer visible, were the ruins of Delphi—we were standing practically on top of them. I loved that hike, and the opportunity to see the place from an entirely different angle. We knew from the trail map that the hiking path continued on for another few day’s worth, until it reached a small town far away, but we were not equipped nor did we have the time to make it that far. Instead, we reached the top and worked our way into the mountain, taking the trail as it wound its way into a small dip between the peaks, hearing as we neared it the faint clanging of sheep’s bells. Here was different too—not as rugged or as steep and open as the switchback, but a pine-laden trail through rolling meadows, some kilometers up from where we started. The air was thinner and cold, and Jesse and I put back on the jackets we had removed for the climb. We came within sight of the sheep, and then retreated the way we had come, making our way back down the mountain side to retrieve our things and get to the bus stop before our 1:30 ride back to Athens.

We needn’t have worried about being on time, the bus was late (as usual) and we sat at the bus station and leisurely made nutella and banana sandwiches, and talked to the others who were waiting. I met a middle aged British woman, who was not in Greece for the game, only to sightsee. She and her husband had been living in Brazil for the past 20 some odd years, and she was passing through Delphi on her way to Corfu, one of the Ionian islands which I later read were the only ones not to go under Ottoman rule and maintained a different sort of culture, one more heavily influenced by the French and the Venetian occupation than anything else. That is another place I would love to visit if I had the chance, but time is short and my only hope is to return again later to see all of the wonderful things that Greece has to offer.

We got on the bus no problem, and had a much easier time making our way back to the familiar Pella Inn hotel in Monastiraki, taking the bus and then the metro and walking the last little bit, greeted by the friendly receptionist who gave us our keys and welcomed us back. It was our last night together.

Jesse and I spent some time showering after our hike and haul-of-baggage though the various busses, trains, and streets, and we switched bags in preparation for my continued journey and her return home. We had decided to do this much earlier, Jesse would take most of my things so I would have an easier time on and off of the trains—usually bags have to be lifted into overhead compartments and there was no way my bag I had been using for the past 4 months would ever fit. I was thoroughly sick of carrying it.

We showered and I sorted my things out, and we repacked everything up, and then ventured forth into the darkening Athenian evening. We had decided to go first to Syntagma square, where I checked the tons of email that had accumulated over the past few days in which we were out of internet contact, and continued on toward the Panathenaic stadium. We had identified through Let’s Go Greece a small taverna reputed to serve ancient and Byzantine recpies was located. The place was called Kallimarmaron, and we arrived to find the restaurant deserted, but the woman who owned the place was very friendly and set a table for us. We ordered our food—chicken and vegetables in a vinegar and raisin sauce, and some kind of meatball in wine and tomato sauce, both of which were very very good, and considerably different from the traditional Greek fare. Perhaps we had arrived too early, because no one ate there the whole time we were there, but we enjoyed the food and each other’s company so much it did not matter.

It was growing cold, so we decided to head back to the hotel and grab jackets before heading to a slightly more peopled area for some dessert. We stayed close by, moving around the Roman Agora and the tower of the winds, past buzzing tavernas, some of which were still filled with red-jerseyed Brits. We settled in a quieter place, in the shadow of an old Greek church with some soft music and candlelight, where we each ordered some sweets—myself that wonderful Greek yogurt and honey, and Jesse a brownie with ice cream, and ate and talked until fairly late. At the end of the night, the server brought us some free after dinner drinks—Kamikazes, which we thanked him profusely for. The whole night was very nice, and fairly low-key, something Jesse really needed because we were both going to wake up the next day at 5 am to get her to the airport for her flight home.

And then, just after midnight, when Jesse and I had finally completed the last of our packing and preparations for travel, we slept.

Aegina

May 22, 2007

Aghia Marina, Aegina, Greece

We arrived at Aegina in the early afternoon, to an island that looked a little bit more run down than I remembered. The light colored buildings in various states of decay lined the waterfront, punctuated here and there by some truly nice buildings, and a beautiful looking orthodox church raising its terracotta dome to the sky across the water. We took a brief look around, before walking our bags to the bus stop, because our hotel was located in a small town across the island, one called Aghia Marina, only accessible by bus and taxi. We asked the man at the small booth when the next bus would come, and he told us “quarter to four.” By now it was only about 2:15, so we settled in for the long wait. Before long, however, it started to rain, and because the bus station had very little shelter, we were forced to spend a good amount of the time underneath the small awning in front of the ticket counter, inhaling the smoke of the man as he chain-smoked.

Luckily, when the bus did come, we had very little trouble finding our hotel—a backpacker’s hostel that was located just off of the main street in Aghia Marina, a town that looked largely geared toward the tourist industry and one that had obviously seen better days. The setting was beautiful, but all along the waterfront we could see the empty concrete shells of buildings that had never finished being constructed. Nevertheless, we were greeted by a pair of young girls with spiky dyed hair that gave us a form to fill out and gave us our keys, where we found a small but neat room with spare furnishings ready to greet us.

I knew that there was a great temple nearby, but due to the long wait and bus ride neither Jesse nor I were in the mood to venture very far from the hotel, so we walked down to the beach, taking in the sweep of the mountains on either side, and trying hard to ignore the peeling paint on the buildings behind us. As we moved farther down the waterfront, business seemed to pick up a bit, as a series of tavernas with friendly doorsman greeted us. We said hi, checked the menus, and continued on our jaunt around the town, coming upon some small shady avenues with white bungalows covered in all kinds of bright flowers, redeeming much of the rest of the town.

But, as the sun went down, we realized that we were getting hungry, and since we had eaten groceries for much of our time in Athens, we decided to go to one of the tavernas with the friendly waiter who had greeted us before. We found a table that looked over the harbor area, as the sky grew rose colored and the mountains slowly faded in to silhouettes. I introduced Jesse to Moussaka, a Lasagna type of dish with potatoes, eggplant, cheese and meat, which she really enjoyed. I reacquainted myself with Greek salad, which I had been missing, and ordered us some Retsina. The waiter, who recognized us from before, came over and talked to us for a little while, asking us where we were from and how long we were staying. We ended up staying in the taverna for quite a while, where the waiter would return often to keep us company, and who eventually convinced us once our plates were clear that we should “at least stay for a drink.” We enjoyed hearing about the island and talking to someone new, so we tried some ouzo—a drink that I had had a few times before but had forgotten just how strong it was. Luckily, the waiter offered to share it with us, and when we were quite ready to leave, indicated that the extra drink was on his tab. Immensely grateful, and incredibly flattered, we thanked him and left. But before we did, he asked us if we had any plans for the island. We said no, and he offered to show us some of the town the following night. We agreed.

We returned to the hotel excited about the prospect of seeing what Aegina had to offer besides the towns, which we had decided were only fit for tourists. Hopefully the rest of the island would have more to offer.

The next morning, we both woke up early and got ready to start the day, donning some sun dresses and making our way on foot out of the town, headed toward the temple of Aphaia, which according to Let’s Go was only a 2 km walk from the town. The walk quickly turned into a hike, as the previously paved road degenerated into a limerock hill that our sandals were pretty unequipped for. But a few hundred feet up the road, the pine trees that lined the road opened up and we were treated to an excellent view of Aghia Marina and the surrounding mountains, which rose up in a green and brown carpet and faded off into the distance. It was amazing, and we were only about half way to the top.

After a bit more scrambling, we finally reached paved road again, where we spotted a sign indicating the temple, and reached a clearing where we could just barely see the whites of the columns sticking out over the tops of the trees. Entering the fenced enclosure, I came face to face with the Temple of Aphaia again, its majestic columns brilliant against the blue sky. We walked up the short steps to the place, and came to the top where we could see on one side the circled inlet of Aghia Marina below us, and on the other, the coast of the island folded back into the sea. It was an absolutely breathtaking landscape, and I watched Jesse’s mouth drop open in awe as she took it all in, turning around and around to get the full impact of the panorama. We walked around the whole exterior of the temple, me telling her the whole story of the temple from what I remembered, and exploring much more of the site than we did that hurried day back in February, when we were rushed so much by the constricting bus and ferry schedules. We had all of the time in the world here, and wandered from one end of the complex to the other, over and around the fallen rocks that dotted the ground.

Finally we made our way back down, to discover that we had to wait almost a full hour for the next bus, and walked around the place for a bit before settling ourselves on a low stone wall to wait it out. The bus finally did arrive, and after a bumpy ride (with nonetheless great views) we got off at Agios Nektarios, a Greek orthodox monastery and church. It was huge, a graceful white building capped with a terracotta dome, and a porch that wrapped all of the way around the building. We walked all around the outside before venturing inside, into an austere white interior with pretty stained glass windows and crowds of bent old Greek women making their observances. We did not spend much time inside, but returned to the sun where we found a flower filled terrace leading up to the monastery itself, a small enclosure with simple white buildings and light wood doors, and a small sanctuary painted inside with images of saints. Another nearby building beckoned, where the ceiling was completely filled with oil vessels of all sizes, their metallic sheen breaking up the relative dimness of the interior. It was a place like out of a dream, simple rooms and buildings decorated with the brilliance of the flowers, and looking out upon the hills and valleys dotted with olive and pistachio trees. We both really liked walking around there, both of us clad in the monastery-given skirts which Jesse had to place over her jeans and the shrug I had over my bare shoulders, and saw the nuns as they walked around or chatted with the others who had come to visit. The whole complex was beautiful, but it was fairly small, and after a while we were ready to hit the road again, returning to the bus stop and waiting for the bus, which roared up in a cloud of dust some 30 minutes after it was supposed to arrive. I got the impression that punctuality was not one of the benefits of the bus system, in spite of its cheap prices.

We arrived in Aegina Town 15 minutes later, to the bustling storefronts in need of new coats of paint, and pistachios prepared in every manner possible in tons of shops, the nuts piled high, along with jars and candy bars of the stuff. We grabbed some sweets there and walked all along the waterfront, down to the large church I had seen on the way in. The more we saw of Aegina the more charm it had—brightly painted fishing boats piled up on the shore, tourists buzzing around on the scooters, and people stopping their cars to lean out the window and talk to one another—everyone seemed to know each other here. We had a great lazy afternoon along the waterfront, eventually stopping in at a local taverna to grab some water and people watch until the bus came to take us back to the other side of the island. We arrived safely home, and truged our way back to the hotel, where we had a modest meal in our hotel room—bits and pieces of food that we had grabbed from the grocery store, before, exhausted, we fell asleep. I woke up after a few hours and began perusing the Let’s Go Germany book to get my plans set for the remainder of the trip—I had a long list of places that I wanted to see and I was looking into the best way to see it all. Plus, I have a friend who is coming over to Europe to study in Spain. I am trying right now to convince him to visit me when I go to Germany. I also wanted to look into other things to do to occupy the next day on the island—from the looks of things there was a whole unexplored area close to the monastery we had visited, and a beautiful beach only a bus ride away.

Jesse woke up too, and we both read and relaxed for a while before heading out on the town to meet our new found friend. We walked over to a bar he had named the night before, one we had remembered from our earlier walk around town, and were pleased to find him astride his motorbike, chatting with the owner of the bar. And one of the servers we recognized too—she also worked at the hotel. After sitting down and ordering, we discovered that the island was so small that many of the people in the tourism industry knew each other. Our friend the waiter, in fact, DJs at the bar we were currently sitting in on some nights, and as we continued talking, other people walked by that he would stand up and say hello to. Elsewhere in the bar, we saw groups of people in bright red soccer jerseys—Liverpool fans that had come in to watch the game but had decided to stay a little bit farther away from Athens. We asked him about his life and about the island itself, discovering that in fact Aegina was a lot more happening until Greece joined the European Union, and the rising prices of everything made business slow down drastically. He told us that all of the shopowners on Aegina were waiting for the good times to return—explaining the unfinished look on some of the buildings in the harbor. He also told us how hard it was for people his age—which did not look much older than us—to get a job in Greece. Many people went outside of the country to get advanced schooling degrees, and then came back to Greece to wait tables because that’s where the money was. Although it did not sound like an ideal situation to me, it looked like he enjoyed his life and the company around him.

We stayed in that little place for a few hours, comparing life between the US and Greece. We asked him about football, school, and where he had traveled to, and he in retun asked us about where we were from, surprised that both of us could be in school in the same country and yet live 7 hours apart from each other. That was the distance from one end of Greece to the other, it seemed like. We were equally interested to know about life on the island, disovering that the motorbike was the best way to get around, and that the nightlife on the island did not get started until we were both ready to hit the pillow—apparently this is true in most of Europe, that the bars and clubs stay open until the early hours of the morning, and do not usually get started until many of the bars in the US had closed. Determined to get our sleep—after all, this was our vacation—we said goodnight, and walked home. We were both happy to have talked to someone, but our idea of relaxing did not include partying until the morning. I was too busy trying to catch up on all of the sleep I had missed on the Classics Trip, and Jesse was recovering from both school and exams. But we were happy that we came out and saw what we did, going to sleep with the noise of the Liverpool fans chanting in the streets below us.

The next morning we slept in pretty late, and were happy to see that we had awoken to a clear sky. We packed up our things, and took the first available bus, together with a huge crowd of British folk, toward Aegina Town. We got off at the monastery, as before, but this time we bypassed the building entirely, walking up a side road that one of the people in Aegina had advised us to see once I told them that I had been studying archaeology this semester. The region was called Paleohora, and it was known as the “town of 300 churches.” Originally occupied as early as the 10th and 11th centuries, from what we read on the small, whitewashed sign on the side of the road, it was later abandoned, leaving the small stone and mudbrick churches to waste away in the sun. We could see them on the mountain top ahead of us—scattered brown squares standing out from the slightly greener background. So we began our trek—up the small and poorly maintained mountain trails. We cleared the trees fairly quickly and then emerged out in the middle of the mountainside itself, overgrown with tall grasses and scrubby flowers, and below us we could see the brown of the mountain fade into green valleys and pastures below where Agios Nektarios dominated the landscape.

But ahead of us we could see the small churches—from the looks of things, one room buildings surmounted by a single dome and made out of the local stone. The original plaster that may have covered the buildings had long since been worn away, leaving them to slowly acquire the color of the land around them. We took one of the best looking trails, and came upon each one in turn, poking our heads inside if the door was open, walking around the outside if it was not, and gradually making our way up the mountain face. The day was quite warm, and dry, and we stopped here and there to admire the landscape that was unfolding in front of us. By the time we reached the top of the mountain we had come around it so far that the monastery was hidden by the mountain’s bulk behind us, and we could see the island fall away below us and stretch its way toward the sea, glimmering on the horizon. It was like stepping into something out of a fantasy novel—a forgotten holy place, left only for the insects, that we had happened up on in our wanderings. And, it was quite a bit newer than anything I had seen so far on the trip—relics and not ruins, where inside we could still see the burnt out wax from the candle offerings and the smell of oil stil clung to the air. Jesse, I could tell, was impressed both by the strange beauty of the abandoned churches and by the view that they afforded.

We both ate lunch in the shade of one of the larger churches, a white one still retaining traces of blue paint on its dome and containing elaborate carvings on a few stones beside the door—crosses outlined in curling lines and spirals. Below us, the monastery had begun to come back into view, its bright white walls and huge terracotta dome standing out against the faded green behind. Then we slowly made our way back down the mountain, reemerging eventually by the bus stop where we had arrived. But, as usual, the bus schedule was not cooperating with our plans, and instead of waiting, we decided to walk the remaining kilometers down to Aegina.

In retrospect, it probably would have been a lot easier to wait for the bus. Aegina town was a lot farther away than we had thought, and we walked for at least an hour without spotting what looked anything like a substantial settlement at all. Instead, we were walking through a valley between two olive green mountains, which rose into the bright sky above. The sun was shining, and we were sweating with the wal Eventually we got to a location where we could finally see the town itself—dots of red roofed houses that extended much farther back from the waterfront than either Jesse or I had thought. And we were still so far away, viewing the buildings from a bird’s eye perspective as we walked along the snaking mountain road, our valley being much higher than the land that fell down to greet the water. In the far off distance, we could see shadows of islands and the sharp white shape of a ferryboat, slowly making its way out of the harbor.

We walked for a long time, and the houses grew slowly closer, but still not close enough. I kept looking behind me and I could see Jesse’s expression growing increasingly exasperated—at the bus and at how far away the town was. We continued walking, but kept our eyes open for a taxi, finally hailed one, and ended up paying about 4 euro for a 15 minute ride into town, for which we were grateful. Our next destination was a beautiful beach, another bus ride away, and since the weather was still nice we decided to take the bus again. We had a while to wait though, so we bought some ice cream—well deserved after our unexpected hike over half of the island. I bought some local flavors with pistachio in them, and Jesse got chocolate, and we hung out until it was time to go, loading ourselves onto another bus.

It was worth the ride, though. We got dropped off at Marathonas Beach, on the side of the island which faced the Peloponnese, and we could see the blue hints of the shoreline off in the distance. The land contained only a small strip of houses and tavernas, and at the far end where the cove curved out in a point far to the left of us, we could see a small town in the distance. Right where we were, though, there was only scattered fishing boats and small tavernas, which brought their tables right down to the softly lapping water. We settled ourselves right down on a pair of lawnchairs in the sand and took in the beauty of it all. This was the island that I had expected to see—small, well maintained buildings dominated by a peaceful arcing shoreline, almost deserted of people except for around the restaurants. It was utterly peaceful, and we settled in for some sun and some reading. I even made my way into the cool water, stepping over rocks and pebbles as I waded out where the water stayed shallow, and could look back at the rocky mountains as they sloped down to form the cluster of buildings along the beach, and finally to the stands of umbrellas where my sister sat, blissfully still for the time being. We read and napped until the late afternoon, when all of the sudden cloud cover took our sun away, and we began to feel the hints of rain.

It was time to go. Unfortunately, again, the bus schedule did not coincide with when we wanted to leave, so we had to wait for the bus, and used the time to walk up and down the small parts of the village, where huge bright flowers covered white villas, and smells of the sea wafted over the evening air. Then the rain really looked like it might come in earnest, so we reatreated back to the bus station, which was covered, and waited for the bus to finally come. Which it did, and promptly dropped us off in Aegina, where we had to board another bus to Aghia Marina. But that bus wasn’t coming for another two hours, and absolutely sick of waiting, we mustered up the money for a taxi.

That night we had a yogurt and cereal dinner on the small porch of our hotel, watching the sun go down over the rooftops. I went down to the lobby to check my email while Jesse napped, making further arrangements for the rest of the trip. While I was there, a loud young man came down stairs and approached me directly, babbling away in a language I did not understand. I asked if he spoke English, and he responded “oh, you’re an American;” and proceeded to ask me in the heaviest cockney I had ever heard if I had an adapter that converted US plugs to Greek ones. He was in town for the Liverpool v Milan game, and had bought a digital camera in California but had not gotten an adapter for European plugs. I went up to the room and offered him mine, having several, and he thanked my sister and I greatly, calling us “good old gals” and offering to buy us a drink if he saw us again. Then, with a hoot, he was gone, bringing the singing Liverpool fans with him.

That night, we went out on the town and met our friend again, and the Liverpool fans were out in full force, singing songs and drinking what must have been gallons of beer. We sat and watched them with detached smiles, feeling completely divorced from the fervor that gripped them, but appreciating through our own American football mania what it must feel like to have your team on the verge of such a championship. Later, the waiter from the restaurant offered to give us a tour on his motor bike of the island. Whizzing around the curving roads, the wind in our hair, we were excited to finally be away from the drudgery of the busses, and we got to see the waterfront from an entirely different angle, the lights glimmering out on the water. He dropped us off near our hotel, the picture of Greek hospitality, and said goodnight. We were happy to have had such a nice guide for the island, one that told us all about the place and seemed happy to show us around, for nothing but our company. My guidebook had always said something about Greek hospitality, and this must have been it. I was initially suspicious that someone had taken such an interest in us, but he ended up doing nothing more than showing us the place, and giving us an extra taste of the island, and for that we were both grateful. And the ride on the motorbike was definitely worth it.

Back to Athens

May 20, 2007

Athens, Greece

Right now I am on the ferry to Piraeus, my sister Jesse by my side. It has been a wonderful few days back in the city that I have come to think of as a sort of “home away from home.” Its also strange, not being with a group, and having to plan everything by myself. The first few nights I was here all of my dreams were filled with hotel names, and train stations, and flights… but I think I have finally got the hang of it, and am really excited for what’s to come.

The first night I got back, I got out of the cab and checked into the hotel around midnight, hauling my stuff up the stairs and knocking at a random door in the hotel that my Dad had booked—the Attalos Hotel, where we had stayed during spring break, just down Athinas street from Monastiraki. She opened the door, and we both gave each other huge hugs, happy to see each other after such a long absence. I threw my stuff down in the room and showed her the things I had brought from the other countries I had visited, a scarf from Tunisia, and a ring from Thessaloniki. We talked for a while, but I was worried about where we would stay next, so we spent a good part of the night in the common room of the hotel, on the internet, making reservations and talking about what we wanted to do and see. We decided to move to a less expensive hotel—Dad had only booked The Attalos for a few nights, and we were both on severe budget restrictions. We decided to make a side trip to Aegina, an island with a beautiful Greek temple and supposedly a town known for its pistachio production, and end our stay at Delphi, which I had apparently raved about to my parents so much that Jesse decided she had to go.

We were in the room, myself buried in online booking sites and train schedules, and Jesse with her head stuck in Let’s Go Greece, when a young man who was fairly tall walked into the room, sat down next to us, and struck up a conversation. Turned out his name was Nick, and he was in the army or marines, stationed in Iraq. He had a week long holiday in which he had decided to go to Greece and meet his parents, and he had just come back from a bar and was looking for someone to talk to. His internal clock was messed up because of jet lag, and we talked to him for a long time about experiencing other countries, traveling and seeing the world. He had experienced a lot of the same things that I had in other countries—a sudden realization at how sanitized everything is in the United States, a new found appreciation for constant internet access, and a realization that the world is not quite so safe as it seemed. His story opened up my eyes even further—he was talking about bomb scares and interacting with the local people on a scale I had never had on the Classics Trip, and we sat fascinated as he poured out his yarns to us. But it was quickly getting to the early hours of the morning, and we said goodnight, ready to explore the city the following morning.

And explore we did—I was surprised at how much of the city I remembered as we made our way toward Monastiraki and then past the winding shops and streets toward the agrora, where we paid our dues and entered the dust filed place of ruin. I walked Jesse around, and we caught up on the lives that we had missed for the better part of the semester, stopping here and there to point out a monument that I had remembered from my studies there previously, and again, was surprised at how much I did manage to tell her. I remembered the place, the layout, and the history behind it all, as if it were etched in the very stones themselves, and in a way, it was. We walked past the Odeion, the Stoa of Attalos, and up to the Hephaesteion, a building remarkable for its state of completion, and I watched my sister’s eyes widen at what she was seeing. Looking at her wonder made me relive my own first encounters with the wonders of the Greek world, and towering above us the whole time was the Acropolis, the pillars left open to the brilliant blue sky. We made our way up there, slowly, stopping occasionally to gawk at another rock or ruin of a building that we found interesting; one of the monuments I had missed the first time around was a small Byzantine church sitting right in the middle of the Agora, completely bypassed by the classics trip. It was a small building with bright red tile roofs and the inside was completely whitewashed with the exception of a few small fragments of frescoes still remaining on the walls. And then we took the slowly winding ramp up to Areopagus hill, scrambling amid the dry rocks to look down on the forum, and finally to the acropolis itself.

It was much better weather than when I went before, and I was finally able to fully appreciate the beauty of the place away from the academicized world of lectures and books and proportions. It was truly stunning, to see the huge buildings still struggling to establish themselves amid all of the ruin surrounding. The propylaia still stood massive and largely intact, its huge columns guiding us up to the top of the citadel, and to the right the little temple of Athena Nike stood much farther reconstructed than I had remembered from the last time. And we passed under the giant lintels and Jesse got to see the Parthenon for the first time, stopping dead in the middle to reach up and take a picture, of course, and we walked all around it as I told her what I remembered of the building.

From the top, we could see much of Athens laid out below us, white roofed houses and winding streets stretching in the bowl of the city, crawling up the hills to lap the edges of the mountains that rose in the distance. And we continued walking, back around the Parthenon and over to the Erechtheum, to the porch of maidens and the delicately floraled and coffered porch where a ceiling tile was taken out in rememberance of Zeus’ lightning bolt which settled the argument between Athena and Poseidon over control of the city.

Then we came slowly down, walking out the other side of the Acropolis, past the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, under a good deal of construction thanks to the upcoming event—Carmen, that unfortunately we would both miss because it began on June 1, the day that I will be in Berlin and the day that Jesse will probably be well immersed in her work at home. Then, hungry and looking for a substantial lunch, we walked around the crowded neighborhoods at the foothills of the Acropolis, stopping at a local taverna for a healthy dose of pita gyro, something I had been missing. Jesse was quite impressed with the taste of the Greek fare, and we both really enjoyed it, together with the ubiquitous French fries and lots of tzatziki, which I really missed, before, hunger stated, we realized how tired we both were. So, we took a meandering route past the Arch of Hadrian and the Temple of Olympian Zeus, back to the hotel and to the welcome of our pillows.

After recovering from our nap, we skyped our Dad and Mom, told them that we were alive, and then ventured out into the city again. We went back to where we were, and walked through the gates of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, notable not only for its huge size (it was a wonder of the world) but also for its length of construction. Hadrian finished the building, but that was only after about 600 years, during which it remained in different stages of incompletion as rulers came and went, money got acquired or lost, etc. At one point I remembered Dr Toumazou telling us that a colony of monks once lived on top of the columns, a testament to their size. We walked around the whole complex, as the sun was growing low in the sky, and watched as it turned the normally whitish colored marble a pink hue. Then we took a brief extra trip to the Panathenaic stadium, a later reconstruction of a 4th century BC original. I had been there before, but wanted to go back to do some more survey for my thesis, and ran into huge construction works.

Big screens, a series of small booths, and a miniature soccer field had been set up in the floor of the stadium, with huge trucks moving bits of equipment around. I had known from a fellow classics tripper that one of the biggest games in the soccer world would be taking place during my visit—the final of one of the futbol leagues in Europe, pitting AC Milan against Liverpool. Blue signs indicating the event were already set up on every single lightpost in Athens, and they were plastered all over the booths being set up here. I asked one of the employees what was going on, and he told me that the booths were in preparation for a festival that would take place before the game, starting on the Saturday we were there, and ending on the Wednesday of the game itself. Determined to return, I thanked him and went along on my scouting, walking back behind the stadium and emerging in its upper reaches to look at the arrangement of the seating and the entrances and exits, taking more detailed notes.

But I was most interested in this festival—it explicitly connected the main event taking place in Calatrava’s stadium to this one—a link that had been forged when the Olympics had been reinstated in Athens during the inaugural 1896 Games. I wondered if perhaps there was a continuing connection between the new Olympics in this recent stadium and that of the old, and if the two were used in conjunction often. It was an easy connection to make—the Panathenaic stadium was prominently located in the center of the city, making it a great venue for the festival event, along with Syntagma square, which was also used, and the form of the building immediately reminded viewers of the other, much newer stadium farther away, the one that would actually be hosting the games.

Jesse and I stayed for a while on the top of the stadium, watching the sun go down, turning the rocks a pinker and pinker shade, and from our high perch we could see the Acropolis grow slowly more backlit in the distance. It was truly magical. We made our way slowly back to the hotel, stopping at a local grocery store to make a great tomato-cucumber salad, which we ate, picnic style, in our hotel room. Then, exhausted from the day’s events, we quickly fell asleep.

We woke up the next day super excited about what we were going to see. First things first, we moved from the hotel that Dad had booked to a smaller and cheaper one farther down Ermou from the metro stop at Monastiraki, a small but clean room with shared bathrooms. We had looked through the guide book a little bit the night before, and decided that we really wanted to go climb Mt Lycavittos, the tallest hill in Athens, which contains a little tiny chapel on the top and affords wonderful views of the entire city, even better than from the top of the Acropolis. We got dressed in our sneakers and shorts, outrageously practical for any European woman, who I think probably would not be caught dead in such attire. We meandered along Ermou, watching as the shops opened their doors and the day slowly began, and made our way up the street towards Syntagma square, and then we turned back toward the city, through Kolonaki square, where we passed store fronts full of Louis Vuitton and the other high end stores that permeate that region of the city, winding our way slowly up and up until we reached a lightly forested area that indicated the beginning of the hill.

And we stepped onto the concrete paths, winding our way thorugh spare pine trees and working our way slowly upward, chatting to each other the whole time, until we reached a break in the trees and surveyed our progress up the hill. We finally reached the top, after the day had gotten warm and we were quite thirsty, and emerged from the brush to confront the whole of Athens spread out in a grand panorama below us. We could see the Acropolis, and the glimmer in the distance of the sea where Piraeus beckoned, the Panathenaic stadium nestled in the green forest that surrounded it, and then turned around and around to survey the white roofs as they sprawled out over the land. The top of the hill contained a small chapel, and Jesse and I briefly peeked our heads inside, greeted by the austere expressions of the saints. We returned to the sun, and sat on the bright terrace for a while, sipping on water and taking in the size of the city. I had never really gotten the opportunity to just sit and enjoy Athens, so I really relished the opportunity to slow down for a bit.

But, it couldn’t last forever, and we got restless, so we decided to head back down the hill, and emerged in a part of Athens I was unfamiliar with. We consulted the map to find the right direction and started off, and ran right into an open air market, more similar in many respects to many of the stands I had seen in Tunisia or Turkey, with heaps of fruit and veggies piled high, the vendors calling out their goods to us as we walked by. We enjoyed the sights and sounds, and stopped briefly to check out the goods, but we really wanted to see the Archaeological Museum that day, so we walked the rest of the way through the market and emerged on a main thoroughfare, and walked in the direction of the museum.

I had forgotten how far away the museum was from our hotel, and by the time we reached the big bookstore about halfway there, I suggested we take a break and peruse the shelves, and emerged with only one book, a brief survey of Calatrava’s works, before stepping out to get coffee and food, before pressing on. It was only the early afternoon, but we were both quickly growing tired, and were happy to see the archaeological museum loom up in the distance, with its butter yellow and cream façade. The front was filled with statues; new ones in bronze and gold with flying and twisting nude figures; a modern artist named Anna Chromy had designed them with ancient Greek myths in mind. Luckily, it was some kind of national museum holiday, so we got in without an entrance fee and wandered the halls. I pointed out to Jesse some of the more important pieces from what I remembered--- the Artemision Zeus, a portrait of Antinoos, grave stelae, and the huge geometric vases from the Keramaikos cemetery. She seemed interested, but by the end of the museum we were both fading fast, so we only spent a short time there before taking the metro home.

We both fell asleep right away, and woke up a few hours later ready to go out and see the town again. However, it was late in the day, when most of the archaeological and museum related sites would be closed, so Jesse and I decided to see some of contemporary Athens in the shopping district. We spent the better part of the night wandering around Ermou, and then venturing into the smaller markets of Monastiraki and even into the flea market, seeing the sights, sampling the goods, and enjoying ourselves. Partway through the night we even managed to run into the Tower of the Winds, which Jesse had really wanted to see, and saw the tavernas just starting their evening’s business, patrons beginning to fill up the tables outside, laughter filling the air as the sun went down. We decided to return later for dinner, but for now we continued on, passing by a funky little jewelry shop and tons of sandal places, before we decided that we had sufficiently emptied our pockets, and returned to a local gyro place that I had eaten at several times before, got our hot sandwiches, and ate them on the walk home.

Once again, we reached the hotel completely exhausted, and watched a movie on my laptop for a little while before we were completely overwhelmed, and slept. Athens is an exhausting city.

The next day we decided that we would go in the afternoon to Cape Sunion. I had been once before, but in the driving rain, and there was a well preserved temple there on the peninsula, and supposedly a number of inviting beaches along the way, and Jesse and I were excited at the prospect of relaxing a little ways outside the city and getting some sun. However, we had been told by the worker at the Panathenaic stadium that the festival there began today, and I was interested to see how the preparations turned out.

We walked up Ermou toward Syntagma square, and saw noise and movement there too. There were booths set out for children to play soccer inside of inflated enclosures, and banners all over the place advertising both the teams, and their sponsors—Vodafone, Heineken, Sony, Mastercard, Playstation, and Ford, among some others. Every banner in the square contained the distinctive blue signs stating “Athens Final 2007” and underneath that a colorful logo of one of the sponsors. Booths sold t-shirts and scarves—scarves were a feature of the other soccer game that I went to earlier in the year, and I wonder if they are a distinctive European thing, or a soccer thing? In any event, the merchandise was present everywhere—part of the take-home kitsch to recapture the moment. And for this game, it did not just start on the game day itself. Like some bigger sporting events in the United States, preparations for this game began several days in advance, building up in intensity to just before the game, lending the whole thing a kind of a carnival atmosphere, and a case to further indundate the spectators with the images of the sponsorship. I went up to the information desk and grabbed a free newspaper publication that went along with the game, and the woman who handed it to me told me explicitly to “come check out our sponsors.” If that dosen’t say it, I don’t know what does.

We walked through Syntagma, me perusing the paper, and my sister helping us to navigate our way back to the stadium, where the celebration was just beginning. A small soccer field had been set up in the floor of the stadium, and a group of schoolkids in new uniforms were having a game, their proud parents sat in the stands, and behind them on a huge television were images Milan and Liverpool in action, together with pulsing music. The kids also wore jerseys provided by the event; their backs were plastered with logos as well. Farther back from the entrance to the stadium, we saw a booth set up with all of the jerseys of the teams in the league—I recognized Olympiacos and Roma—surrounding the championship trophy, which resembled in many ways the shape, if not the material, of a Panathenaic amphora. It was a bright metal, with the names of the victors inscribed in one side. I finally understood the connection to the vase silhouette on the signs all over the city, they represented not only a generic victory trophy, or a connection to Athens itself, they were an abstract silhouette of the actual victors trophy itself, right down to the high arching handles that graced the sides of the vessel.

Then we continued on, back to Syntagma to take the metro to Omonia, to return to a great Souvlaki place that I knew of from the last time I visited. There, the spits of pork were sizzling, all you can eat bread was everywhere, and the tzatziki was spicy. I ordered a plate of souvlaki, some French fries, and the tzatziki and it was ready in no time. We chowed down, and loved it. But it was getting late, and as soon as we had dipped our last slice of bread in the garlic dip, it was time to get to the bus station, so we got ourselves on the metro to Victoria station, emerging completely disoriented, but luckily we managed to find the correct bus station and arrive 10 minutes before the bus was due to leave. Perfect timing.

We spent the long bus ride to Sunion talking or sleeping, and watching the hilly countryside whiz by. Clearly, it was mostly tourists on the bus, and I listened occasionally to the babble of languages around me as I watched out the window. We pulled up to the temple in the late afternoon, just as dark clouds were gathering on the horizon. We both looked worriedly at the sky, but the rain seemed to hold off for a bit, and we bought our tickets and trudged up to the rocky peninsula. Below us, the cliffs dropped off into a dark and brooding sea, the broken bits of the temple projecting themselves upwards into the cloudy sky. It was a beautiful but ominous setting; the clouds looked as if they would break in any minute, and we knew that every minute that we took to admire the landscape was one in which we could potentially get very wet.

So we retreated to the small restaurant that had served me before when the rain came down sideways, and I advised Jesse to order some baklava, while I helped myself to some delicious Greek yogurt and honey, and we sat and watched the sky grow steadily darker. Jesse found to her delight that she loved the baklava, and we both tried to warm ourselves against the incoming chill as we waited for the bus to return. We had planned on spending a good deal more of the day there, weather permitting, perhaps strolling down to the beaches that we could see visible from our cliff-top perch. But as it was, the rain looked like it would break any minute, so we headed home.

We arrived in Athens much earlier than we expected, so after returning to the hotel we wandered around again for a while, up and down the narrow streets that wound their way around the foot of the acropolis, returning when it finally grew dark to our room, where we ate a very small meal. We were both still really full from our desserts that afternoon, so we settled in for some TV on the laptop.

Around 11, we ventured out to see what the Athens nightlife had to offer. I knew from talking to people that Psiri was a good place to visit, but I had been there once before with my parents, and I though that perhaps we would benefit from a more relaxing atmosphere. So we walked around the agora, emerging near the far end, an area I had been to once before to see the Herakleidon museum, and a place I knew had a lot of open air restaurants and bars. Jesse and I found ourselves a table, buried in an orange lounge with comfy seats that spilled out into the street. We each ordered a drink and settled ourselves down to watch the people that strolled in the streets, and the tables that changed customers. We caught up on each others lives, laughing at stories each other had to tell, before we both started yawning and made the short walk back to the hotel and to sleep. The next morning we were headed to Aegina.

But first, I had to return to Santaigo Calatrava’s Olympic Stadium. I knew more about the building, having read some of the Calatrava book the night before, and wanted to see what changes had been made to the complex in preparation for the Final that was being hosted at the site.

So we took an early morning metro ride, emerging to the cloudy day and the bright white of the stadium complex. Jesse and I walked around quite a bit, me thinking about the aspects of Calatrava’s distinctive aesthetic—one that almost uniquely merges engineering, art and architecture into a unified whole. His book seemed to indicate that many of his forms were organically based—a twisting torso turns into a moving frame of steel, the blink of an eyeball into the massive curvilinear forms that look like they are about to take flight. The complex here is no different, and is based on the contrast between the graceful curves of Calatrava’s stadium and the associated velodrome, and the straight boxy shapes that I believe belong to his predecessor on the site. Calatrava has tried to unify the disparate tendencies by the addition of long walkways and a screen between the boxy indoor athletic complex and his stadium, shielding the viewer from the full visual impact of the former, and giving it a sense of movement with the slanted screens that run just in front of its façade, giving it the same sense of depth and movement that permeates his other buildings.
White was the perfect color choice. I do not know enough about his work to know if that is his typical color, although some brief perusing of the book I have gotten leads me to believe that it is at least one that is prevalent in his work. But it fits perfectly with a Grecian landscape, so dominated by the bleached white relics of an ancient civilization, the white faced buildings that cover much of the countryside and which absolutely cover the land in the Cycladic islands. The arched bands that act to support the stadium roof contain the same contrast with the blue sky—alternating bands of white and blue that can be found on the flag, and at a temple on a bright day. I am not sure how much of this was intended by Calatrava, but the stadium complex is magnificent nonetheless.

As far as changes due to the impending game, the same series of banners in brigh blue complete with the meander and amphora motifs ringed the outside of the stadium, and the two pillars that formed the entrance to the stadium and helped to support the roof contained the logos of both of the teams—Liverpool and Milan. To the right of the entrance to the stadium itself was a series of tents, probably intended for the sale of merchandise and food, and the entire complex contained a new row of bright yellow signs in English directing the foreigners in the right direction, and barricades to make sure that they only followed the prescribed path to the arena itself.

It was a beautiful day, and we spent a few hours at the stadium before heading back into Athens, where we wandered around Monastiraki a bit more. Apparently on Sundays there is a big junk market on the area of Ermou and around the Kerameikos, where we wandered, taking in the bright sunlight, and watching people as they haggled over little bits of junk, old shoes, books, and discarded items that lay baking in the morning sun. I wanted to find the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art, but realizing that it probably wasn’t open until late on Sundays anyway, we returned to the hotel to pick up our bags and have an early snack before heading down to the port itself.

After a long metro ride and a relatively painless walk to the port, we were there. We managed to catch an even earlier ferry than I had thought, but we still had some down time, so we settled ourselves and our huge pile of bags by a café and drank some water and checked our email until it was time to leave. We hauled our bags up the steep flight of stairs, and now here we are. I am excited about the island, and looking forward to the rest of the trip.