Day Twenty Six - Live From the Centre of the Universe!
On this exciting installation of your favourite blahg, we've gathered so much to say that for your convenience it's been neatly catagorized. So much to say, we're not sure where to begin. Where to begin? Naturally, with a disclaimer:
User Agreement:
The following blahg entry has been neatly catagorized for your own safety, and should not be consumed at large in a single dose, beyond the obligatory 'skimming for one's name' method of ingestion. Side effects may include acne, yeast infections, temporary pockets of non-ordinary reality™, global warming, mad cow disease, and, of course, anal leakage.
End User Agreement.
Camping as a Lifestyle
Throughout Greece, there exist those little slices of well-kept wilderness to fulfill the instinct of sleeping beneath a bare sky. Often, as a bonus to those going through societal withdrawal, they have showers, cafes, gravel pitches, waterslides, and so forth. However, after two nights without a tent, we discovered that all the creature comforts in the world can't replace a private, bug-free enclosure. We were still outside Sparta at the time, and decided after much quarrelling to suck it up and go for a tent. Off to Sparta, then, where we found and bought what seemed to be the only tent in the city. If, by chance, you're cold and wet in Sparta because you couldn't find a tent to camp with, we're really very sorry.
We found it in what they call a "hobby store", but what they should call a "cheap supplier of shotguns to a mostly drunk public." Two walls were devoted to guns, one to harpoons, and the rest to hunting accessories. When we asked the pretty girls at the counter for a tent, it took them ten minutes in the basement, presumably to blow all the dust off a worn shelf labelled in gothic writing, "legitimate camping supplies." The tent is bulky, doesn't fit on our bags, and has about twice as much space as we need. Also, it's orange enough to land airplanes. But despite all the setbacks, the fact remains that we walked into that hobby store homeless vagrants.
We walked out Mrs. and Mr. Alandra Miller: homeowners.
Most nights these days, we spend camping. If you're going budget travelling we highly recommend it, as it's usually half the price of a cheap hostel (which in turn is half the price of a cheap hotel). Plus, it's a relaxing way to live; the roosters caw us awake every morning, the distant shotguns sing us to sleep every night.
Smalltalk About Weather and Food
One question we're asked a lot by our dedicated fanbase (that's you!) is wheather or not we've eaten anything exotic. Now, for me anyway, the term 'exotic food' is a distinctive one. It conjures up images of, say, slurping fresh papaya fruit off the bosoms of native girls under a waterfall. Now it's true that we've had our fair share of fine Greek cuisine, but it's also true that mostly we're just poor and hungry. Consider, then, my journal entry from Olympia last week.
"It's rained for nearly a week. All of our clothes are damp because we hand-washed them yesterday with a bar of hotel soap in a sink at the campground. We'd never done this before, but Alandra had seen it done in a Tom Cruise movie so we were fine. Nothing could dry before it started raining again. We ran out of our daily supply of bread, cheese, and sandwich meat. Went to a grocer, Alandra did most of the shopping. An hour later, we were sitting on a sheltered bench sorting through the bag. We had one loaf of something like rye bread that isn't, to go with one block of weird feta. (interesting fact about feta: by 2007 only feta made in Greece will be able to keep that name, everything else will be called "feta"). The worst are the pre-cooked hotdogs in a can. They were preserved in brine. She says they taste like expired feet, and she's probably right. Before today, I guess we've been unknowingly eating raw sausages; dangerous but tastier. The only good thing was the can of halva, which was rich if dry. Comes in a catfood can. Tastes like heaven. I had a brinedog to celebrate."
It goes on like that for some time, but I'll spare you.
The Ruins: Mystra, Olympia, Acropolis
While we were still outside Sparta, we took the recommendation of nasal (though very intelligent) Dutchman and visited the ruins of Mystras. It was a city built around 1200 A.D. on the slope of a moutainside, with defensive walls around the inner village and a fortress crowning the pinnacle. I'm not totally sure on its history, and don't want to make a fool of myself by stating innaccurate facts, but we do know that it was the last capital of the dying Bizantine Empire. Also, that it was beseiged and burned to the ground about four different times, by different people and for different reasons. While it's only an archeological preserve now (the populace moved out in the mid-1800's after the rebuiling of Sparta) it had, in its heyday, a total population of over forty-two thousand people. The only people living there now are nuns dressed in black robes, who haul things about the remaining city on donkeys. A little surreal to see.
Heading up the ruins, we first walked through the remains of the town. Mostly, there were sections of old buildings like doll houses or half-built Lego, with sides and roofs missing, staircases going nowhere, ladders leading up to non-existant attics. There is a very well-preserved church; intereting enough if you don't consider how bored the old artists must have been from painting the Glowing Virgin everywhere.
After visiting the church, we only had an hour left to see the fortress and come back down before the doors locked. There are three thousand stairs leading up to the fortress, most of which were slippery with rain. We were completely exhausted when we finally approached the fortress, ran past the archer turrets, and through the gateway. We ran to the castle walls, and looked out over the countryside. It was an amazing view; we could see distant olive farms looking like brushy punk hair-dos, all of Sparta like a splash of grey paint on the hills, everything. It would be easy think of yourself as a king when you live on a moutain like that, and it's no surprise that mythical dieties often reside on peaks.
Next week, backtracking from Sparta to the western coast of the Peleponesse, we stayed a few nights in Olympia and saw the ancient Olympic Games site. In ancient days, the warring tribes of modern-day Greece would stop their fighting for a few weeks every four years to, you guessed it, compete in war-games. During this time, the politicians could create treaties, warriors could prove their mettle, and piles and piles of men would get naked, bathe together, and then go "worship the goddess of fertility," so to speak. Women and slaves weren't allowed in the site on penalty of death.
The modern ruins are the best we've seen, considering their age, preservation, and the comparatively lax site rules (ie, you're allowed inside the buildings). There were bath-houses with many of the columns and flooring still intact (no roofs, of course), exercise and competition fields with stone bleachers and dieties, and several temples. The most fantastic of these was the Temple of Zeus, whose gigantic pillars fell outwardly in an earthquake several hundred years ago.
Added bonus: it just happened to be National Monument Day, so everything was free. Better than Christmas!
We also saw the Acropolis for Alandra's birthday today. It was touristy and blocked-off.
Whatever.
To Wrap Things Up
Currently we're spending the last of our nights in Athens (a great city, but it wears you down). Tomorrow we're heading off to the island of Milos, where the sun is warm, beaches plentiful, and brinedogs rare. We're coming up on our first month away, we've covered a lot of ground, and we're looking forward to some downtime. Our Greek is coming along pretty well (we bought comic books). Our clothes are dry. We play chess with shells and rocks. We make a lot of daisy-chain jokes. Life goes on.
Despite the downpour
We find rays of Greek sunshine -
Cheers to you, Ouzo.
-a haiku (written in wet clothes and rain).
On the up-and-up before it goes doubledown.
Alandra & Dylan.
User Agreement:
The following blahg entry has been neatly catagorized for your own safety, and should not be consumed at large in a single dose, beyond the obligatory 'skimming for one's name' method of ingestion. Side effects may include acne, yeast infections, temporary pockets of non-ordinary reality™, global warming, mad cow disease, and, of course, anal leakage.
End User Agreement.
Camping as a Lifestyle
Throughout Greece, there exist those little slices of well-kept wilderness to fulfill the instinct of sleeping beneath a bare sky. Often, as a bonus to those going through societal withdrawal, they have showers, cafes, gravel pitches, waterslides, and so forth. However, after two nights without a tent, we discovered that all the creature comforts in the world can't replace a private, bug-free enclosure. We were still outside Sparta at the time, and decided after much quarrelling to suck it up and go for a tent. Off to Sparta, then, where we found and bought what seemed to be the only tent in the city. If, by chance, you're cold and wet in Sparta because you couldn't find a tent to camp with, we're really very sorry.
We found it in what they call a "hobby store", but what they should call a "cheap supplier of shotguns to a mostly drunk public." Two walls were devoted to guns, one to harpoons, and the rest to hunting accessories. When we asked the pretty girls at the counter for a tent, it took them ten minutes in the basement, presumably to blow all the dust off a worn shelf labelled in gothic writing, "legitimate camping supplies." The tent is bulky, doesn't fit on our bags, and has about twice as much space as we need. Also, it's orange enough to land airplanes. But despite all the setbacks, the fact remains that we walked into that hobby store homeless vagrants.
We walked out Mrs. and Mr. Alandra Miller: homeowners.
Most nights these days, we spend camping. If you're going budget travelling we highly recommend it, as it's usually half the price of a cheap hostel (which in turn is half the price of a cheap hotel). Plus, it's a relaxing way to live; the roosters caw us awake every morning, the distant shotguns sing us to sleep every night.
Smalltalk About Weather and Food
One question we're asked a lot by our dedicated fanbase (that's you!) is wheather or not we've eaten anything exotic. Now, for me anyway, the term 'exotic food' is a distinctive one. It conjures up images of, say, slurping fresh papaya fruit off the bosoms of native girls under a waterfall. Now it's true that we've had our fair share of fine Greek cuisine, but it's also true that mostly we're just poor and hungry. Consider, then, my journal entry from Olympia last week.
"It's rained for nearly a week. All of our clothes are damp because we hand-washed them yesterday with a bar of hotel soap in a sink at the campground. We'd never done this before, but Alandra had seen it done in a Tom Cruise movie so we were fine. Nothing could dry before it started raining again. We ran out of our daily supply of bread, cheese, and sandwich meat. Went to a grocer, Alandra did most of the shopping. An hour later, we were sitting on a sheltered bench sorting through the bag. We had one loaf of something like rye bread that isn't, to go with one block of weird feta. (interesting fact about feta: by 2007 only feta made in Greece will be able to keep that name, everything else will be called "feta"). The worst are the pre-cooked hotdogs in a can. They were preserved in brine. She says they taste like expired feet, and she's probably right. Before today, I guess we've been unknowingly eating raw sausages; dangerous but tastier. The only good thing was the can of halva, which was rich if dry. Comes in a catfood can. Tastes like heaven. I had a brinedog to celebrate."
It goes on like that for some time, but I'll spare you.
The Ruins: Mystra, Olympia, Acropolis
While we were still outside Sparta, we took the recommendation of nasal (though very intelligent) Dutchman and visited the ruins of Mystras. It was a city built around 1200 A.D. on the slope of a moutainside, with defensive walls around the inner village and a fortress crowning the pinnacle. I'm not totally sure on its history, and don't want to make a fool of myself by stating innaccurate facts, but we do know that it was the last capital of the dying Bizantine Empire. Also, that it was beseiged and burned to the ground about four different times, by different people and for different reasons. While it's only an archeological preserve now (the populace moved out in the mid-1800's after the rebuiling of Sparta) it had, in its heyday, a total population of over forty-two thousand people. The only people living there now are nuns dressed in black robes, who haul things about the remaining city on donkeys. A little surreal to see.
Heading up the ruins, we first walked through the remains of the town. Mostly, there were sections of old buildings like doll houses or half-built Lego, with sides and roofs missing, staircases going nowhere, ladders leading up to non-existant attics. There is a very well-preserved church; intereting enough if you don't consider how bored the old artists must have been from painting the Glowing Virgin everywhere.
After visiting the church, we only had an hour left to see the fortress and come back down before the doors locked. There are three thousand stairs leading up to the fortress, most of which were slippery with rain. We were completely exhausted when we finally approached the fortress, ran past the archer turrets, and through the gateway. We ran to the castle walls, and looked out over the countryside. It was an amazing view; we could see distant olive farms looking like brushy punk hair-dos, all of Sparta like a splash of grey paint on the hills, everything. It would be easy think of yourself as a king when you live on a moutain like that, and it's no surprise that mythical dieties often reside on peaks.
Next week, backtracking from Sparta to the western coast of the Peleponesse, we stayed a few nights in Olympia and saw the ancient Olympic Games site. In ancient days, the warring tribes of modern-day Greece would stop their fighting for a few weeks every four years to, you guessed it, compete in war-games. During this time, the politicians could create treaties, warriors could prove their mettle, and piles and piles of men would get naked, bathe together, and then go "worship the goddess of fertility," so to speak. Women and slaves weren't allowed in the site on penalty of death.
The modern ruins are the best we've seen, considering their age, preservation, and the comparatively lax site rules (ie, you're allowed inside the buildings). There were bath-houses with many of the columns and flooring still intact (no roofs, of course), exercise and competition fields with stone bleachers and dieties, and several temples. The most fantastic of these was the Temple of Zeus, whose gigantic pillars fell outwardly in an earthquake several hundred years ago.
Added bonus: it just happened to be National Monument Day, so everything was free. Better than Christmas!
We also saw the Acropolis for Alandra's birthday today. It was touristy and blocked-off.
Whatever.
To Wrap Things Up
Currently we're spending the last of our nights in Athens (a great city, but it wears you down). Tomorrow we're heading off to the island of Milos, where the sun is warm, beaches plentiful, and brinedogs rare. We're coming up on our first month away, we've covered a lot of ground, and we're looking forward to some downtime. Our Greek is coming along pretty well (we bought comic books). Our clothes are dry. We play chess with shells and rocks. We make a lot of daisy-chain jokes. Life goes on.
Despite the downpour
We find rays of Greek sunshine -
Cheers to you, Ouzo.
-a haiku (written in wet clothes and rain).
On the up-and-up before it goes doubledown.
Alandra & Dylan.