Posts Tagged ‘greece’

Ha.  Make that “seven or eight months behind”.  Most likely they’ll just remain memories in my head, to become nostaligicized as time passes.

I’m back in the US now, but the posts are running about a month behind.

In which your adventurous epistolarian wishes for a fedora and dodges a cop.

Alexandria has a complex heritage.  As a seaport, it has seen roaring armies clash in war and cultures softly creeping in through trade.  It is one of the many cities built by and named after Alexander the Great, though it has the distinction of being the most famous of these.  In the city you can easily find elements of the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman cultures that have ruled Alexandria at various times.  Sometimes they stand side by side, or sometimes they are eerily overlaid upon each other (have you ever seen a mummy with a Byzantine icon for a face?)

Although it has various monuments and historic buildings to see, we picked a few highlights for our single-day outing.  Starting with… catacombs!

Okay, first, a well-intentioned piece of advice to enterprising Egyptians outside this particular tourist attraction.  Instead of stealing the toilet paper from the bathroom and selling it to us, why don’t you sell us Indiana Jones-style fedoras and bullwhips? Seriously, have you been inside the catacombs? Have you seen Last Crusade?  It’s irresistable!

As I’m sure you’ve inferred, the catacombs are incredibly dramatic to visit.  From the surface, it doesn’t look like much – just a low hut set in a concrete plaza.  But if you descend a few stairs, suddenly you’re in a shadowy spiral staircase, built from large sandstone blocks.  Ten, twenty, thirty feet down, always spiralling around a center shaft, so you can see the light filtering down from the surface, but it gets dimmer as the air gets heavier.  After a few revolutions around the staircase, your eyes are adjusting, and you see an archway a few steps further down.  Ducking your head through the archway, you take a moment to find your bearings and realize you are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.

> Go north
Which way is north?  You’re very disoriented from the spiral stairs!

> ^C
…just kidding.  My condolences to those of you who got the joke.  But in fact, when you exit the spiral staircase, there’s a large complex of rooms to explore.  The first room seems to be nothing but a hallway to other rooms, until you notice the neat rows of squarish holes in the walls.  Crypts, of course, a dozen or so of them; they’re square because I’m looking at them from the head- or foot-end.  But wait a minute, those two are darker than the others, because they’re deeper; double-decker crypts?  I wonder if they flipped a coin for top bunk.

Off to the right side, there’s a shaft of light cutting through the gloom.  It falls from ground level, so many feet above, into a narrow room which seems to have a stone altar inside.  And of course, the walls of the room are honeycombed with dozens of small, squarish holes.  A church in the catacombs, perhaps?

Back in the hallway-type room, there’s a dark doorway straight ahead.  It leads down a narrow, uneven walkway between dusty sandstone walls, cut here and there with dark rectangular holes.  We come to a cross-tunnel, and for lack of a reason not to, go right.  The floor is uneven and here and there puddles of stagnant water have collected.  There are rectangular crypts cut in both sides of the hallway now, and some boards have been laid on stones as a dry walkway.  Because the tunnel is so low, I’d have to duck my head to walk on the boards, so I dodge puddles instead.  After thirty-ish feet the tunnel turns left; more crypts.  After another fifty feet or so, the tunnel turns left again.  Crypts.  Seventy feet later, the tunnel turns left.  Crypts.  Fifty feet later, left, crypts.  Thirty feet of crypts later, we’re back to the crossroads.

I must point out that, but for the irreverence of the idea, this place would make an excellent junior high sleepover party venue. Just unscrew a few of the lightbulbs for added scare effects, and leave a few bones lying around just to keep them on their toes.

So, we’ve just walked a long tunnel with hundreds of crypts, but in the middle there must be something… We turn left, down the one part of the crossroads we haven’t explored yet.  The hallway descends a bit, and splits in two in a grand-staircase effect; soon you see how grand it really is.  Some fifty feet beneath an empty lot in Alexandria, someone has masterfully carved the facade to an ancient family tomb.  On left and right of the doorway, representations of ancient Greek or Roman gods, touched up in Christian symbols, look outwards from between columns.  The sandstone carvings are distinctive and (as far as I can judge) well done, but they are especially impressive after the rough-hewn character of the rest of the complex.  They didn’t only decorate the outside, though; inside is a square room with three large stone sarcophogi instead of the standard hole-in-the-wall.  The walls are again decorated, with columns “holding up” the corners of the room instead of plain stone.  And here’s something I never considered before: the people who built this tomb not only dug out the tomb behind the wall and carved the fine scenes before me, but they also dug a long entrance chamber before the tomb proper just so you could appreciate the artwork that had gone into it.  Without the entrance chamber, you wouldn’t have been able to admire the carvings – interesting, no?  Quite an investment of time and resources when you think about it.

As we exit the elaborate tomb, we see what had caused the hallway to split in the “grand staircase” fashion: a ramp between the forks, which leads down.  But it’s flooded; no exploring that way.

Back near the spiral staircase, there’s another direction we haven’t explored yet.  A large, mostly open room lies opposite the “church” room.  It is about forty feet square, with four large columns in a square pattern about ten feet from the corners.  A U-shaped bench, about 18 inches high and five feet wide, runs between the columns on three sides of the room.  What in the world could this place be?  For once, there are no obvious crypts in the room.  But then we overhead somebody else’s guide; would you believe it was a dining room?  The bench is for Roman-style “reclining dining,” and after laying someone to rest, the deceased’s friends and relations would hold a funeral feast in the catacombs.  It’s not so odd a practice, but it was nonetheless a surprising thing to see in such a dusty, gloomy, ancient place.

Tucking our imaginary fedoras low over our eyes, we returned to the sunlight above…

Our next major stop was a fortress on the coast, referred to as “The Citadel” by our guide.  I confess, though, that I wasn’t too interested.  After a while, if you’ve seen a dozen fortresses, you’ve pretty much seen them all.  Drawbridge, parapets, murder holes, check.  *Yawn*, next?  So I wasn’t very excited about the place, but why not, it would be better than sitting around waiting for the others to get back, right?

So we walk up to the entrance to the Citadel.  As we pass through the tourist police checkpoint, I let everyone else walk ahead as I investigate a little room off to one side.  One of the police tells me “no, this way, please.”  I oblige him by going where he points, but I’m curious why I couldn’t go there.  A minute later, as we decide there’s not much to see on the first floor, the same guard miraculously appears to point us to the stairs up.  On the second floor, this guard is all over us.  He is always pointing out places to take pictures from and telling me the way to go.  Strangely he seems most interested in keeping us all together, so I start taking pictures on my way in the other direction.  He gets a little distraught as I work my way around a corner, and I walk briskly around a few turns just to see what happens.  As I stand there, innocently taking pictures out a window, he finds me and hustles me up to the third floor where two of the others are looking around, but somehow, we’ve lost one.  Apparently he didn’t notice that there were four of us, and only managed to corral three.

Having started
out uninterested in the fortress, I’d now been variously followed and led around for twenty minutes by an obnoxious cop.  It got worse; on the third floor, when we were looking around, he started keeping all the Egyptian tourists out of whatever room we were in.  They looked annoyed.  I knew I was.

When the three of us started going towards the exit, our shadow asked us if everything was alright, and we assured him, out of nothing deeper than politeness, that everything was okay.  He then asked for his baksheesh.

Me: “Baksheesh?  I don’t know that word. (to my companions) What’s baksheesh?” (still walking towards the door).
The quick one: “Dunno, never heard it before.”
The blond one: “Isn’t it money?”

Sigh.  Anyway, I made my escape the same way I’d dodged him before: there were more of us than him.  It turns out that Alexandria, despite the different history, is definitely Egyptian after all.

Easter is a big holiday in Greece.  Why?  98% of Greek citizens claim to be Greek Orthodox Christians, and Orthodoxy is the official religion.  The Orthodox Church is written into law in several places; for instance, bureaucrats must consult the Church before issuing a license for a place of worship.  (The scientologists were denied on the grounds that scientology is not a religion.)  And whether you know much about Christianity or not, if you’re from the U.S. you could be forgiven for thinking that Christmas is the most important Christian holiday.  But whereas Christmas just represents birth, Easter represents re-birth, and the Greek Orthodox Church, with it’s near-total domination of Greek spirituality, hasn’t let anyone forget which is more important.

The streets here in Athens are decorated with eggs, bunnies, and bells hanging from the lampposts.  In the main subway station, they opened a special room to sell Easter goodies.  The buses are all driving around with their displays reading “Kalo Pasco” (Good [Happy] Easter).  And of course, since it’s a religous holiday for at least 98% of the population, it’s a government/bank holiday too.  Long weekends, all around!

So I’ve decided to try and make something of this long weekend.  Originally a few of us thought about going to Bulgaria.  Why? Err… why not?  But apparently that wasn’t such an off-the-wall idea, because as it turns out the train to Sofia (the capital of Bulgaria) was totally sold out.  We weren’t the only ones thinking that way.

As a fallback option, we started thinking about what to do in Greece.  There are celebrations everywhere, but I want to make something nice out of this long weekend.  When we were looking at islands, one caught my eye – Patmos.  Near Turkey, in the Aegean sea, this island has its own brand of fame.  It probably doesn’t have the same clubs as Mykonos, but it did get a shoutout in the Book of Revelations; St. John the Apostle was exiled to Patmos, where he is supposed to have seen a vision of Jesus and written Revelations.

Talk about compelling tourist brochure material.

All that, plus it’s supposed to have wicked awesome Easter celebrations.  I’m not sure what would make an Easter celebration “wicked awesome” but I’m going to find out.  I’m somewhat relieved to be making this trip alone, too.  It’s a less developed island, with far fewer attractions of the neon sort – and so far, the thing I’ve liked best about Greece is having nothing to do on the islands.  Although I wish I had brought a better backpack and better gear for roughing it.  Not just because this seems like a fine place to try it, but also because I may have to – I’m not sure there’s any accommodation left on the island.  But I’m not likely to be in Greece for Easter a second time, so I’m going to see what I want to see while I can.

In which your stalwart gazetteer discovers the culture of compensation, but also the pyramids, so it mostly evens out.

What is baksheesh?  Probably misspelled, for one.  Translation and transliteration are a bit tricky sometimes.  You may have seen it as bakshish, or you may just never have seen it.  It’s more commonly known as “greasing the palm” where I come from.  I’ve never needed to grease, lubricate, smooth over, tip in advance, double-check my paperwork, or make a donation to charity to get anything done before.  If I tipped in advance, it was only to make sure my bags got placed on the cart instead of, say, lobbed. If I smoothed things over at a restaurant, it was only because Andrew explains things better than I ever could.  But if you didn’t grease the palm you’d still get your bags; just a bit more worn than when you’d left them.  And you could still eat, it just wouldn’t be the table you wanted, and you’d have a few minutes.

It must be the dry desert climate, but I found things that needed greasing everywhere in Egypt.  We had booked rooms in Cairo in advance, and we were met at the airport by our complimentary shuttle driver; as it turns out, he needed a bit of complimentary money.  Likewise at the end of the trip, we arranged a taxi to the airport; when we got in the car, the driver claimed that there was an extra charge for 4 people, so he needed more money.  These are just the opening and (nearly) closing salvoes; the “pay-me” culture was pervasive and offensive throughout the duration of the trip.

For the first full day we were in Cairo, we arranged a driver through our hostel.  A car and driver for the whole day seemed like a pretty good deal for three hundred pounds (about sixty bucks).  It’s more than a rental car, sure, but you don’t want to have to navigate in Arabic.  Plus, I’d seen Cairo traffic on the way from the airport, and I wasn’t ready for that.  Anyway, the driver seemed quite nice and took us to some of the top spots, starting with a step pyramid out in the desert at Sakkara.  He waited in the parking lot while we went to look around, but unfortunately since we were unaccompanied foreigners we were immediately set upon by all the freelance tourguides.  One guy started showing us around, helpfully repeating things I could overhear from nearby professional tour guides.  He frequently stopped to have us take pictures of him, and as I said, was really only repeating things I could hear myself.  We finally pried ourselves away from him, but not before he extracted his baksheesh.  In the end we paid two pounds to his friend the guard for sitting there, one pound to a random guy who was brushing water on rocks (why? and why did he deserve money for this?).  Our guide himself put up a much harder front and made out with ten pounds and a disposable pen.  I don’t know why, but when we were firm that we weren’t going to pay any more than ten pounds for his dubious services, he asked for a pen.  Go figure.

P.S. Note that I was the one doing the tip negotiations, because Jodi insisted that her husband didn’t trust her with money. This was a perfectly legitimate excuse, so of course he turned to me.  In all fairness, though, the pen was Courtney’s.

Later on in the day, I learned that take-picture-with-me behavior was not unique to this one guy.  Apparently some people make a living by just being around.  Many people in Egypt speak English.  At least, they say “welcome,” and “you want take picture with me?”  I’m baffled that everyone seemed to think that their presence in my picture will somehow improve it.  It ceased to surprise me, though, that they of course wanted money for the service.

After Sakkara (which was okay, but only okay), our driver took us to Giza.  You know the pyramids?  Great wonder of the world, marvel of ancient construction, all that?  Yeah, well, they’re in Giza.  Our driver insisted the only way to get there was by camel, so we went and rented camels.  120 pounds per camel, plus 15 pounds for the dorky Arafat-style hat.  Actually the hat was rather liberating; once you gave in to the reality that you were a tourist, you realized that the hat couldn’t possibly make you _more_ of a tourist, so why not?  We mounted up on our camels – being the man, I got the lead camel.  His name was Ali Baba; Courtney rode Michael Jackson, who kept trying to bite my leg; Jodi got Mickey Mouse, and away we went.

Let me just say now, for the record, that the camel ride was fun.  But you don’t have to ride camels to get to the pyramids.  There is in fact an asphalt road which runs from Cairo directly to the pyramids.  Between the pyramids, in fact.  Tour buses galore at the base of the pyramids.  So the camel ride, while fun, was completely unnecessary.  The driver got kickbacks from taking customers to the camel stables.

What about the pyramids?  Well, they’re… how shall I describe them… huge.  Enormous.  Gigantissimo.  Check out the pictures if you don’t believe me – gallery.kalimera.mattborn.net now has Egypt pictures.  What was really striking about them was the size.  Aside from the size, the dimensions and the magnitude were also impressive.  Let’s not forget the volume of space they occupy, and the height they reach, as well as the area of the bases.  And no description of the pyramids would be complete without mentioning their sheer largeness.  Get the picture?

Interestingly enough, they were also quite chunky.  I don’t mean they should cut back on the Ben & Jerry’s; I mean the blocks they were constructed with were rather coarse.  Kinda like Pharoah was using Duplos instead of Legos.  When I stood next to them, it appeared as if each course was over a meter high.  From a distance, they looked smooth enough, but up close, they were very rough.  Supposedly, there used to be a finishing layer of finer stone, cut at an angle, to make the outside of the pyramids smooth.  In fact, you can still see remnants of the fine, polished, smoother stone at the top of the Great Pyramid.  However, the rest of the finish stones were stolen, and presumably reused in other monuments or buildings.

Theft is not the only crime the pyramids face.  There’s also a horrendous volume of trash blowing around the pyramids. Can’t walk up to them without kicking a coke can or two.  Entrances below ground level are covered by a solid layer of refuse on all horizontal surfaces.  I didn’t note any graffiti, at least, but you’d think that the last Great Wonder of the World could be kept a little neater.  They were impressive in their own right, but the surrounding trashiness and offensive cash-grubbing nature of my hosts tempered the experience.  Oh, and lest I forget – this didn’t make any sense at the time, and still doesn’t: Many people in Giza would greet us by saying “Welcome to Alaska!  Wecome to Nicaragua!” Seriously.  More than two dozen people said that while I was there.  Truly, I am baffled.

That about wraps up the pyramids.  The pictures speak better than words, so make sure to look.  Back to Cairo… Allow me to note that on the road back, after we explicitly asked to be taken to a particular restaurant, our driver nodded and smiled and took us to a completely different one.  We noted that it was not, in fact, where we wanted to go, and he nodded and smiled and assured us it was okay.  We paid too much for mediocre food, and of course, he received kickbacks for taking us there.

Anyway, we had seen the Pyramids, and were pretty pissed off at our driver, so we just told him to drop us off at the Egyptian Museum and go home.  Kudos to the Egyptian Museum for letting me get through without dropping a single bill beyond the ticket price.  You made me check my camera, which had me worried, but I was able to get it back without having to pad the claim ticket at all.  As to the contents of the Egyptian Museum – they had quite a few impressive artifacts, including most of the Tut artifacts, but the Egyptian Museum had no exhibits.  The largest collection of priceless Egyptian artifacts in the world was pretty much just packed and stacked in the rooms as space allowed.  There did not seem to be any pride in the displays, nor any particular effort.  The museum suffers further from a near-total lack of signage, so that even if you found an interesting piece, you have no idea what you’re looking at, when it is from, where it was found, the historical context, or the implications.  If you are interested in Egyptian artifacts, I’d save my money and wait for them to come to your local museum, where they will be exhibited with much more pride and effort than they are in Egypt.  Or go to the British Museum, where I believe they still have an impressive collection, and a much more informative and useful display.

We rounded off the evening by going to the Grand Bazaar in Cairo.  Now, here I expected people to be after my money, because it was after all a shopping district.  No complaints there; my expectations were right on target.  I picked up a few souvenirs and learned a bit about haggling.  A few tips about shopping here: If you get off the main streets, you will have much better luck haggling them down.  On buying papyrus: if it’s real, you can dump your water bottle all over it, and the vendor shouldn’t even blink.  If they won’t let you try it, don’t buy it; or, if you’re okay with fake, use this method to get the price down further.  And oh by the way, plastic is not stone.  If they won’t let you scratch it with your pocketknife it’s plastic.  Same idea.

After a grand time wandering the Grand Bazaar, though, we had managed to split the boys from the girls, and also, the boys had no idea where they were.  So we wandered back towards large, lit streets, but in the meantime, we were in small, seedy neighborhoods.  Worst moment: as we threaded through a traffic jam, one of the drivers shouts out “The Americans are here!” and then shouts echo up and down the street around us.  Although I felt in danger of disappearing, the fact that nobody tried to sell me anything there was a welcome relief.

In the next installment, I’ll explore Alexandria, including my run-ins with Indiana Jones, and the Keystone Kop.

In which your intrepid correspondent gains some unexpected family ties.

My trip started quite well – in retrospect, this is probably because it started in Athens, which is a city I’ve grown accustomed to, if not mastered.  I had an early afternoon flight to Cairo, which was a significant improvement over my last oh-dark-hundred flight to Cyprus.  Plus, I’ve got the bus to the airport down cold now, which is one tenth the price of a taxi, and takes maybe 10 minutes longer at the outside.  There was no line to check in, and I got a caffeine fix at one of the coffee shops in the airport, while the girls rounded up some sunglasses – Courtney because she had lost hers, Jodi because hers apparently cost several hundred dollars (why, I ask you, why?) and weren’t “something you wanted to bring to Egypt”.  And then we were on our way.

And on the plane I had my first taste of Egypt, when the flight attendant was passing out customs forms.  It went a little something like this:
Him: “What country, please?”
Me: “United States”
Him: “Oh! You are with the two American girls?” (We were seated in different rows)
Me: “Yes, I am.”
Him: “Congratulations, you are very strong!  Two wives.  Two is all you have?”
Me: “No, I have more at home.”
Him: “Lucky man!”

See, I thought we were joking about the wives thing.  I was very amused by the whole exchange, all the more so because Courtney was sitting close enough to hear and gave me a dirty look.  And even if he wasn’t joking, I would think that I have enough respect for other cultures not to deride his misunderstanding.  But this was just the tip of the iceberg for gender-based intrigue.  Over the course of the trip, we experienced a number of episodes that made all of us quite uncomfortable with the state of gender relations in Egypt.

Gentlemen, as much fun as you think it might be to have people compliment you on the street for your prowess – it’s short lived. Platinum-blonde Jodi and curly-haired Courtney stood out ever so slightly everywhere we went, and many a stranger complimented me on my wives.  They shook my hand.  They slapped me on the back and told me how lucky I was.

Now, ideally, each time you talk to somebody you have an opportunity to find what makes you the same, or what makes you different – to stand on common ground, or to discover where you need to build bridges.  But while every man who offered me congratulations thought we were seeing eye-to-eye, I was beginning to understand that we weren’t even on the same map.  It took a while to sink in, but the comments they gave me implied their clear understanding that I was married to the woman I was walking with.  This assumption indicates a very fundamental disconnect between our cultures.  I’m almost certain that if you count them up I have more female friends than male, and I enjoy not having to marry them to walk/talk with them.  When seen through the lens of the speakers’ culture, the assumption may have been a reasonable one; that being said, I prefer the standards of my culture in this regard.  Furthermore, I’m morally uncomfortable with the underlying reason for the assumption.  It seems to be a consequence of the wide-ranging social separations between men and women, except for family settings, but this is (unfortunately) reminiscent of the “separate but equal” values espoused in the period of legal segregation in the United States.  And we all know how “equal” that was.

(And if you liked that analogy, stay tuned to see who I compare to Hitler!)

The next cultural difference is that of polygamy, because I received comments on my wives (note the plural).  Obviously neither monogamy nor polygamy are universal values, and the debate continues as to whether one or another is an absolute value.  (If you’re unclear on the distinction, you don’t get to argue the point, so use your dictionary first.)  Without rendering unfounded judgment on the morality of the practice, the prevailing tendency to (mis-)ascribe _polygamy_ as one of _my_ values caused me endless frustration.  And while I think that the polygamy issue is actually less of a gulf between our cultures than the marital assumption, the somewhat exotic nature of the idea multiplies its impact.

Of course, some things aren’t unique to Egypt.  Pickups/piropos are pretty universal, and almost always worth a laugh, but in Egypt the pickup lines had a distinct character.  Apparently one man was going to kill his four wives so he could marry Jodi; Courtney was worth three thousand camels.

I’ve tried hard to make this a balanced impression, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have an opinion.  My basic impression is that it would be awkward and perhaps degrading to be an American woman in Egypt, and it wasn’t that great for me either.  Next time, we’ll explore baksheesh and the police state.

P.S. Just teasing with the Hitler thing.

NICOSIA, March 9 (Reuters) – Greek Cypriots razed to the ground a symbol of Cyprus’ decades-old division running through the heart of the capital Nicosia and challenged Turkey to respond by withdrawing its troops from the area.
Demolition work on a concrete barrier in Nicosia’s Ledra Street ceased by dawn on Friday, exposing a corridor of crumbling buildings untouched for decades.
The barrier was quickly replaced by sheets of aluminium and remained under heavy police guard. Authorities said that for security reasons the area would remain off limits to civilians until Turkey removed its troops from its side.
Nicosia residents hailed the move as an important step and one compared it with the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
This is extremely symbolic – “The dynamism created by this move will lead to the opening of the crossing,” said Rasit Pertev, chief adviser to Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat.

It was not clear what prompted the Greek Cypriot action but both sides on the divided Mediterranean island have been under intense pressure from the international community for the past few years to strike a lasting peace deal.
“Tonight we have demolished the checkpoint on our side,” Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos told reporters at an EU summit in Brussels.
So now we will see whether the Turkish troops will be withdrawn so the passage would be opened or not. Because if the troops are not withdrawn  - there cannot be a passage.
The barrier was a cement wall stretching from one side of the road to the other. Beyond it is a buffer zone about 50 metres wide and manned by UN troops. Ledra Street is the main commercial district of Nicosia, a city of 250,000 people.
Cyprus has been split into an internationally recognised Greek Cypriot south and a Turkish Cypriot north, recognised only by Turkey, since 1974 when Turkish troops invaded to foil an Athens-backed Greek Cypriot coup seeking to unite the island with Greece.
Turkey has about 35,000 troops in the island’s north.
SYMBOLIC WEDGE
Diplomats say even if there is a deal with Turkey, it could take several weeks to prepare for any possible opening of the crossing. “It would take about four to five weeks at least,” said a western diplomat.
When the barrier was demolished, people grabbed chunks of mangled metal and concrete from trucks as they rumbled past.
“This is what happened when the Berlin Wall came down, only in our case the police wouldn’t let us take anything,” said a woman who, after an altercation with police officers, retrieved a rotting plank of wood.
In 1989 Greek and Turkish Cypriots agreed to a partial military disengagement of sentry posts in Nicosia which reduced tensions.
Turkish Cypriot authorities eased restrictions on visits across the Green Line in 2003 and five crossing points have been erected since then between the north and south.
Cyprus relations remain a stumbling block to Turkey’s EU membership aspirations and a source of tension with neighbouring Greece. Greek Cypriots voted against a U.N. re-unification plan shortly before joining the EU in 2004.

I have never been entirely sure why some places become popular, lively destinations, while others languish in obscurity and are denigrated as slow or backward.  I’m guilty of this myself at times; for instance, would I rather spend the weekend in Chicago or in, for instance, Beloit?  Well, Chicago.  Obviously, right?  It has people, and it has things to do, and yes, sometimes it is even beautiful.  Possibly in a man-made way, but that’s something.

But which came first?  The people, or the appeal?  At a certain point I think geographic locations achieve a self-sustaining momentum, which will cause people to visit just because that’s what people do.  Places like New York, Tokyo, London, and Paris all have that particular cult about them.  If you’re still following me, then hang on tight, as I explore whether this island might just rank up there with those neon capitals of culture.

I have recently had frequent occasion to try and figure out what, exactly, there was to do on the island of Mykonos.  I wondered, when prodded, where all the fun clubs and vaunted nightlife was.  And the people?  How come nobody else was there?  But I realized, when forced to think about it this way, that I didn’t care where they were.  And I didn’t care where the hottest club was, thank you very much.  I, for one, am pretty convinced that Mykonos is one of the places where the appeal was definitely there well in advance of the people.  This little gem in the Aegean was beautiful long before people set foot there, and for many many years and for many many people that was enough.  Only later did people go just because that’s what people do.  If that’s why you came, well then fair enough.  But if, while you are there, that’s all you’re bothered about… you are missing out.

Which is not to say that I didn’t have fun out and about on the town, because I certainly did – Caffe Perfecto did a great lunch, Appaloosa was nice for everything, especially the fun company, and Argo was mostly loud but also nonetheless enjoyable.  Passo Doble was small but did a mean espresso, and I marvel that they can turn what is an unassuming coffee shop by day into a themed party venue by night.  The entire waterfront is just row after row of awnings and tables, light and noise.  Even the nameless place in Little Venice (whose menu was strangely limited exclusively to Mythos that night) would probably have benefited from a daylight visit, if they could just find the rest of the kitchen/bar staff they seemed to have misplaced.  Those are the clubs/bars/restaurants/cafes I remember (usually the same places, but the function changes depending on the hour).  But I also passed some time walking on the beach, and that was much improved by being the only person there.  And I had fun sitting on the steps of a little church looking over the town, which frankly would have been no fun at all if there were, for instance, a line and a bouncer because Paris Hilton was also going to be sitting on those steps tonight.

The island was beautiful.  Unlike Cyprus, which was large (as far as islands go), complicated, and very thought provoking, Mykonos is quite small and simple.  Not to say it didn’t provoke thoughts, but they mostly went along the lines of “Oooh.  Ahhh.” as I watched the waves wash up and down.  Or the slower version, “Oooooh.   Ahhhhh.” as I watched the sun set into the sea over the whitewashed town.

And as I wax rhapsodic about my getaway, you may be thinking that I’ve been doing quite a bit of that here.  Let me assure you that it just comes with the territory.  Seeing new things, and seeing them with new eyes, often leads you to appreciate each place’s unique assortment of beauty with renewed sensibilities.  But just think, if I’m really this stunned, mightn’t you be, too?

So if you’re the kind of person who was quite taken by the Grand Canyon when you first saw it, or who could sit and listen to the ocean for hours, or who likes to watch thunderstorms roll across the flatness of lakes or plains, maybe you should visit Mykonos.  Everybody’s doing it.  But maybe, when you leave, you’ll know why they all come.

An overview of the Intern Quartet (less Mark) outing to Cyprus.  Step 1, get there.

Okay, so our flight to Cyprus was at 6:20am on Saturday the 17th.  The airport is down near Piraeus, so it takes usually around 45 minutes to get there, I’m told.  It didn’t seem that long when I got a taxi in after my flight, but then again, I wasn’t paying much attention (at least not quality attention) to anything right then.  So, 6:20 – 45 makes 5:35am, make it 5:05 to be safe.  Then we have to arrive early for international flight check-in, because even though Cyprus is in the EU, it hasn’t signed (or implemented, I’m not sure) the Schengen agreements, which means it still has independent border controls. On the plus side, this meant I got more stamps in my passport, which is amazingly unbelievably (and inexplicably) satisfying.  But we had to get there earlier (we thought), so now the clock is pushed back to 4:05am.  And of course most people don’t just roll out of bed and walk out the door – even boys – so make it 3:30am to give me time to put clothes on straight and brush my teeth.  Yuck.

Oh yeah, and the night before that, we went to an event at the Marine house, because they are generally cool people, and even if they weren’t, I sure wouldn’t tell them so.  We went over there and had drinks and conversation with the detachment and random people from work, plus people from town that they know. It was fun but didn’t end until midnight, when they moved the party to a bar, and we ditched to get a few hours of sleep.  P.S. if you ever join the Marines, you should know that the ones at diplomatic posts get live-in chefs.  And if my experience is anything to go by, they’re pretty good.  Nummy hors-douvres.

Anyway, getting a taxi at 3:30am is not a problem, it turns out.  Depending on where you’ve been this may or may not surprise you.  A flight later and we arrived in Cyprus.  Along the way, I discovered that the wait times at 5ish in the morning are pretty much nonexistent, so we had overbudgeted for time at the airport.  Also, intern Courtney falls asleep instantaneously on airplanes.

On the approach pattern, we flew over the whole island along the North-South axis – it is relatively small, at least in that dimension.  Even so there were large swathes of farmland and mountains that make you realize it’s more than just a tourist destination; people have lived there, semi-independently, for millenia.  Upon arrival, Jodi rents the car, Courtney tries to figure out how to keep her eyes open, and I change money.  P.S. I now have the only spendable money (in Cypriot pounds).  The feeling of power is amazing.  Also, they have interesting designs on their coins.

Step 1.5, a little background information.

The Turkish military invaded in 1974, on grounds that the Greek cypriots were violating the terms of a 1960 treaty, which may or may not be true.  The treaty contained many provisions to protect the Turkish Cypriot minority including guaranteed levels of representation in the legislature and increased local autonomy, and most importantly it required that Cyprus remain independent of any other power; historical evidence and prevailing sentiment at the time both indicated that the majority of the island was leaning towards unification with Greece, which would have been a violation.  Furthermore, there was significant domestic protest over the disproportionate power Turkish Cypriots seemed to enjoy.  Many people think that the Turks were only invading to force the Greek cypriots to compromise with the Turkish cypriots on favorable terms over the major issues – in any case, they now control 37% of the island, including a bit more than half (I think) of the capital, Nicosia.  So the invasion itself was a spectacular success, but the aftermath didn’t turn out as planned, because nobody bothered to compromise.

A note on names.  Pay attention here, because this is kinda tricky: when talking to a Greek cypriot, it is diplomatic to term the north side “Turkish occupied Cyprus” or a similar phrase, because they hate it when you give any semblance of legitimacy to the administration of the north side of the island.  However, when in the north, it is diplomatic to refer to it as “North Cyprus” (the informal name of the Turkish-backed state), because 1.) people don’t like it when you use euphemisms which deny the existence of the country they’re pretty sure they live in, and 2.) it is illegal to “insult Turkishness” in Turkey, and this may carry over to areas under Turkish control.

Step 2, play tourist.

So Saturday morning in Cyprus we drove the rental car from the airport at Larnaca down the coast road to Limassol, and then on the Pafos. How’s your Cyprus geography?  Along the way, it rained, but about the time we hit the Birthplace of Aphrodite, the sky cleared a little bit.  I have a picture on the gallery, looking southwest (I think) from the coast, with a bit of cliff on the left, ocean on the right, and a clearing sky above, that I think looks just gorgeous.  We also saw a fort (which was a bit of a snoozer, but what can you do?) and some archaeological digs (which were much cooler).  I got a picture of me laying down in a crypt.  A bit of fun, but mostly it made my jacket filthy.  And about this time I was feeling really tired, but I was not alone, so we decided to drive to Nicosia (the capital and major city) and check in with our hosts.

Jodi had arranged for us to stay with some family friends who work in Nicosia, so we checked in and said hi.  We had a snack, cleaned up a little, and suddenly even Courtney was awake, so we went into town.  Nicosia is really interesting, because the UN buffer zone separating the Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots runs right through the downtown area.  We wandered the Greek side for an hour, and then got a call on my handy dandy phone from one of the Marines from Nicosia, who showed us around.  It is nice to have these connections.

Sunday we drove over into the Turkish side of the island.  Regardless of differing opinions on the existence of a state in the northern section, they do allow people to cross between the sides.  I got another stamp in my passport (by special request), and we went touristing.  We went and saw the castle of St. Hiliarian (spelling?).  It’s high on a mountainous ridge, between the UN’s line and the Mediterranean to the north, but it was built long before the conflict.  I think it was built by the English originally, but used by the French, the Venetians, the Ottomans, etc. etc. etc. down the line. Today it is a tourist spot, but the area is still very important militarily, and we drove past tons of military bases.  I have a few opinions about the military situation in the area too, but I’m trying for a tourist perspective now.  So the castle was cool, and huge.  They claimed it inspired the Snow White castle but I think they’re lying.  We wandered it for hours – the grounds were very large, and steep, actually.  When it was fully intact it must have been impressive, and they basically built a contiguous complex of structures on the last 100 meters of the mountaintop.  We climbed to the very top and had an amazing view.  I think, if I had billions of dollars, and it wasn’t probably a World Heritage Site, and buying land in a country of questionable existence weren’t a bad idea, I would buy it. Breathtaking view of the mountaintops, green valleys between, and the slopes all the way down to the Mediterranean, right over the tops of towns.  On a clear day you could probably see to Turkey.

And from there, we wandered down to the coast by car and explored a little.  It was a pretty sleepy, generally unexciting place, save for the fact of the beaches, and the monument to the Turkish invasion. More political stuff, but I just can’t help it –  the artwork was very very very propagandized.  In the first panel, there were pictures of people suffering under oppression (probably supposed to be the Turkish Cypriots), and then the second panel had people suffering violently (probably representing ethnic cleansing), and the third had soldiers fighting each other (the invasion from Turkey), and in the fourth there were people smiling and holding hands under the shining sun.  The imagery is pretty straightforward, but I’m pretty sure the conflict is not so clear-cut.  Fascinating to see.  I don’t have pictures, because my camera battery ran out in the middle, but I made Courtney take some, so I’ll get those eventually.  It reminded me of nothing so much as a Turkish Guernica – both in artistic style and historical content, but I think the Guernica may be a more genuine reflection of the events it seeks to describe.

The great thing about this country being on the small side is, you can afford to take day trips to all kinds of places.  Last weekend, Meteora; this weekend, Delphi.  Delphi is home to several statues and monuments you’ve probably seen when the History Channel or somebody like them starts talking about Greece.  The Sanctuary of Apollo and the Sanctuary of Athena are two large complexes of ruins situated a few hundred meters from the modern town of Delphi.  I’m going to assume that the ancient town of Delphi is around the ruins I saw, because frankly the museum at the site was less than informative.

Anyway, we took a three-and-something hour bus ride from Athens out to the town on Sunday; along the way it began to rain, and by the time we got there it was quite gray and wet.  Not yet discouraged, we set out down the street with some other people we had met on the bus and made our way towards the ruins.  According to the signs, anyway.

Humorous interlude: Two men on the other side of the street serenaded the ladies as we walked past.

So after trekking a few hundred meters down the road, outside of town, around a few bends in the road – which, ironically, became more pedestrian-friendly once you left town – we climbed the hill to see the Temple of Athena.  (See pictures in gallery).  It’s got more than a few buildings, some recognizable pillars, and a very large theatre.  I don’t really know how to describe it; some of the buildings had signs indicating what they were (or at least their names), but it was pretty neat in person even if I’m utterly failing to convey this feeling to you.

And it was really wet.  More than a few of the pictures have rain drops on the lens.  On the other hand, it sure kept the tourists down.  We decided, since we were already so wet, that it wouldn’t hurt to walk down the hill, below the road, to the temple of Apollo, but it was less impressive than the Temple of Athena complex.  There were, in each site, an astonishing collection of pillar segments all around, and in many cases, very intricately carved stones of varying purposes – art or inscription, structural pieces like lintels, functional pieces like aquaducts, and decorative pieces like statues.  And after seeing all these through the haze of rain, we walked back to town, and caught another bus back to Athens.

Actually, I think this was my first taste of Greek ruins.  Still haven’t seen the Parthenon.