Greece, The Three Island Tour

Athens

The shortest way from Darmstadt to Athens goes through Basel, Switzerland. Well, ok, maybe not the shortest but at least the cheapest. Ok, not exactly the cheapest. Let's just say you can get from Darmstadt to Athens by first going to Basel. The cheapest way would involve spending about 15 hours on an Italian train, followed by 24 hours on a Greek boat. Neither prospect thrilled me, so I opted for the marginally more expensive solution of using the Eurail pass to get to Basel, and then flying to Athens from there.

Bob met me at the airport (he flew in from Israel earlier in the day), and we made it to the hotel by 4am or so. Yes, there was a traffic jam in Athens at around 3am. I don't know if this was due to the Greeks' driving style, urban planning or nocturnal habits.

On Sunday, we decided to go to the museum in the morning, and then catch the ferry out to the islands. It was a good plan as far as it went, and we nearly stuck to it. That is, we went to the museum. On Sundays admission is free, and it was worth no more than that. The problem is that all the good Greek stuff is either in London or Berlin or perhaps New York. The mediocre Greek stuff is scattered throughout lesser museums of the Western world. This pretty much leaves the crap in Athens. There were no more than four interesting pieces.

After the museum, we navigated to the train station and caught a train to the harbor. Right at the end of the train station, there are three or four booths where you can buy tickets for ferries to different islands. One of the booths is run by a jolly (read obese) middle-aged man who must buy his nose hair whole-sale. He seemed good natured, claimed that he was the very Leonidos mentioned in Let's Go Greece (making us produce the book to satisfy his boast), and convinced us to buy unlimited ferry travel tickets for a mere 8,000 Drachmas.

The tickets were valid only on boats of this particular company, one of which left in the morning and one in the evening. There were no boats on Wednesday, but that didn't bother us at the time. Our boat left for Santorini at 10pm, and was scheduled to arrive there at 6 or 7am, which left us with half a day to kill. We caught the train back to Athens and wandered up to the Acropolis which I had not seen yet. It was closed. So much for Ancient Greek culture. It was clear that I would have to satisfy myself with its modern descendant. This too proved to be disillusioning over the course of the week.

The ferry

The ferry appeared to have unlimited capacity despite the fact that all passengers were restricted to three decks at the rear of the ship. This was a night ferry, so we assumed it would be possible to get some sleep. Ha! We assumed that the seats would at least recline. Ha! We assumed that you could raise the arm rests that separated adjacent seats so that you could stretch out a bit. Ha! In the end, we were reduced to two alternatives: Sleep on the upper deck on a plastic bench bum-style, or sleep inside on the seldom-cleaned floor. The first alternative was cancelled because we were under-dressed to spend the night in the cold damp air, and that reduced us to alternative two. Bob spent the rest of the night squeezed between the fixed legs of a table and equally fixed legs of the row of chairs that bracket the table. I stretched out on the other side of a small glass wall, on what amounted to the walk-way among rows of tables and chairs. The four Austrians at the next table were not as wimpy: they spent the entire trip sitting upright in their seats, chain-smoking.

The highlight of the trip occurred in the early-morning hours shortly before our arrival when (much to the delight and amazement of the on- lookers) two guys decorated the face of a third (presumably their friend) who was sleeping in one of the chairs. The decorations consisted of a set of expertly placed pen marks (had they done this before?) endowing the victim with a moustache and a goatee. He stirred once or twice, but despite the giggling all around did not awake.

Santorini

Rising majestically out of a clear blue sea, its volcanic rocks reminiscent of the Grand Canyon, Santorini is as picturesque a slice of boredom as you can imagine. Allegedly owing to its volcanic origins, the island is completely barren of vegetation above ankle level. My feeling is that the Greeks had some say in the matter and opted for the laissez-faire approach. In other words, they just don't seem to give a damn. The village was a small maze of winding streets smeared across the edge of the cliff, leaking down the other side like some white butter scraped off a knife onto a rim of a pan.

The island begged to be compared with Capri, although it did not compare favorably with the Emerald Isle. There were no sea-side forests, no bright, potted flowers to contrast the white walls, no grottoes, blue or otherwise, none of the charm of an ancient community. There was no sense of the past. There was virtually no life away from the tourist trade; with the exception of a few small vineyards, the entire island seemed to be geared toward extracting Dollars, Deutschmarks or Drachmas from the confused mobs of foreigners seeking R&R.

An argument can be made that the Tourist deserves the treatment that he receives. But certainly a bit of self respect and self restraint on the part of the natives would go a long way to increase the attractiveness of that land to those seeking something other than cheap Heineken and greasy gyros.

We took two bus trips to other parts of the island. There is an archeological site on the other end of the island where they are excavating a pre-Greek city. The site had yielded a beautiful set of frescos, which we saw in the museum in Athens, and images of which the present-day inhabitants of the island have already adopted as their own. Apparently archeologists do not know much about this culture, other than that it was somehow related to the Phoenicians, and got wiped out by a volcanic eruption much like Pompeii. The difference between this place and Pompeii was that here the inhabitants were not caught by surprise: by the time the eruption occurred, they had left, taking everything they could carry with them. It's not clear to me which is more eerie: excavating a city that died in the middle of a busy afternoon or one that was in some sense already dead before the eruption. So thorough were the inhabitants that the archeologists don't even know how big they were: they found one small bed, but cannot tell if it was a child's bed or an adult's. Obviously they haven't found the cemetery. It's rather far-fetched to believe that the residents packed up their ancestors when they fled the volcano.

We didn't learn any of this on the first trip. When we arrived at the site, there was a small group of people at the gate, a sign saying "Closed Mondays," and a woman saying "no, no, no." She insisted that she had seen a group of people enter the site, and extrapolated this to mean that they would let groups in despite the sign. ("After all, this is Greece," she insisted.) All we had to do was wait. And wait. And wait. As new people arrived, the fairy tale of possible admittance was related to the newcomers. At last, after an hour or so, a couple of kids came into view, and were summoned toward the fence by the myth monger. She wanted to know if and when we could be admitted to see the dig, and the kids (in English) assured her that someone would be down in ten minutes. Being silly tourists not versed in the intricacies of Greek time-telling, we believed them.

A few words about Greek time: When a Greek says something takes one minute, he really means about five minutes; something claimed to be four minutes take anywhere up to 15 minutes, and when a Greek says something will happen in ten minutes, it generally means he has no idea. Thus the hotel is "four minutes from the center, one minute if you take a shortcut," and ferries usually arrive "in 10 minutes." We did not know this on our first day. Apparently, neither did the rest of the rabble assembled at the gate. When the promised fifteen minutes expired, and expired again, some grew restless. Some grew more stubble, sitting comatose under of the six trees of Santorini.

Finally, when the myth monger could no longer believe her own tales, she sped off on her scooter to check out (a hitherto unannounced) "other entrance." She came back a few minutes later, visibly downcast. There would be no dig tour today. The kids (gasp!) lied! The outrage! Why those little twerps should be throttled and their carcasses hung from the eucalyptus for the crows to feast on. We caught the next bus back to the village.

Having collected our wits during the first five minutes of the bumpy, jarring bus ride, we hopped off at an major intersection (two houses within 200 yards), and caught the next bus toward the opposite shore of the island. Rumor (and tour book) had it that there was an interesting village, a beach, and general nirvana to be had there. There was indeed a village, and a beach, and even a few boats, floating aimlessly in the lagoon. But nirvana was nowhere to be found, so after much deliberation and vacillation, we settled down to a lunch of Heineken and gyros. Not to be total losers, we split an order of saganaki.

The following day we visited the dig, and then started planning the rest of our trip. Of course the next day was Wednesday, and we could not use our tickets. When we looked more carefully at the schedule, it turned out that in addition to having no service on Wednesday, there was no morning boat from the farther islands on Thursday, either. Leonidos because a four letter word in our vernacular as we shelled out another 1,100 Dr. for the hour and half (real time) cruise to Ios.

Ios

I am positive that somewhere, in some small American university, there is a fraternity house with the letters Iota, Omega, Sigma proudly plastered over some peeling wall overlooking a dusty parking lot, with an almost-empty pool in the back. There has to be. That is the only way to account for the existence of this island. Just think: Ios has a port, a single paved road that goes about a mile up to the village, and then continues for another mile and half, back down to the beach. The village consists of a mess of small houses whose owners rent out rooms at 3,000 or so Drachmas double-occupancy, one grocery store, three or four bakeries, a few (well hidden) restaurants, a bunch of gyros stands, a post office, and about 100 Irish pubs. Oh yeah, and the beach is (mostly) topless.

If you do not want to roast on the beach surrounded by hulking Swedes, and if you do not want to spend your evenings watching drunk Danes try to pick up Austrian women (in English, of course), do not go to Ios. If you do come, bring your donkey. Because there are hundreds of miles of roads on Ios, but only 2.5 of them are paved.

Compared with Ios, Santorini seemed to be a vibrant, cosmopolitan city where travellers would flock to experience the exotic lifestyle of the locals. The Tibet of the Cyclades, if you will. We spent a day on Ios. We went to the beach. I burned my feet. We came back to our room, and took a siesta. We took a stroll through the village but at 10pm most of the bars were still closed. There was a crowd near the grocery store because unlike bars it was open and sold cheap beer. Armed with a couple of Tuborgs, we wandered around some more. There was nothing to do. We went back to our room, and Bob attempted another nap. In an hour, we headed down again, stopping in one bar that advertised itself as being the only place in the islands that stocked Guinness. Wandering further, we talked to a couple of American girls who told us about the 4th of July celebration (Swedes running around dressed up as Indians) and about a bar where everyone (not just the waitresses) dances on tables. Having missed the former (and not having a great desire to spend the next 363 days waiting for it), we decided to check out the table-dancing place.

The Omega-Sigs would have been proud. The place was wall-to-wall people, two bars spitting out overpriced drinks faster than Tom Cruise in "Cocktail," blaring sound system producing something that could be called music (if you were drunk enough), and sure enough, where the floor ended and a table began the dancing crowd was simply elevated three feet. Every once in a while someone would come crashing down, flailing arms and legs, only to be caught in mid air by some short- haired giant and pushed back into an upright position. The Omega-Sigs would have been impressed.

The next morning, muttering something incomprehensible about Leonidos's children, we sucked down a couple of Heinekens and left for Naxos.

Naxos

That is, we tried to leave for Naxos. Along with a bunch of other people, we lined up at the port and waited for the boat. And waited. And waited. And waited. I had my camera out to photograph the ferry as it swung around the point. I put the camera away, figuring that the boat would show up that instant. It didn't. I took the camera out. No boat. I put it away. Nope. A hydrofoil roared in, picked up the rich and the impatient and sped off again. As it was leaving, someone asked one of the port guys when the regular ferry would arrive. "In ten minutes."

It finally arrived, an hour late, and deposited us on Naxos an hour and a half later, right into the clutches of a Greek phalanx. The spirit of Alexander the Great is preserved in Naxos by the room-renting rabble. Unlike on Ios, where room rentals were organized by a little office in the village, on Naxos it was every woman for herself. The one restriction that the port officials did enforce was that everyone waiting for the boat with intent to harass had to line up at the end of the pier, next to some parked cars, and off the drive leading off the pier. The result was a tight square formation that confronted the bewildered backpackers, brandishing folders with glossy pictures of their rooms and gesticulating wildly. Fortunately for us their discipline broke down as our ranks closed and not even the harsh orders of the officers could prevent the Greeks from climbing over each other, shouting "Rooms! Meester! Rooms! Meester! Cheeep! 3,000 Drachmas! Cheeeep! Rooms! Meester! 3,500 Drachmas!"

We slogged our way, hacking and slashing, through the frenzied mob and proceeded double-time toward the town, with a couple of Greek women, picture folders drawn, in hot pursuit. We paused at the map of the town to survey the possibilities, and parried their thrusts with well chosen replies like "No thank you" and "No, no!" This did not prevent one of them from tapping the map with her hand, pointing to what turned out to be a high school track field, and claiming that it was the center of town. She was four minutes from there, honest! Finishing our survey we headed straight into the steep, winding streets of the town, finally eluding the pursuit.

We wandered through the town, and liked it immediately. It had a cosy, lived-in feel and seemed to have some sort of life of its own. Unlike the white-washed (and often unfinished) concrete of Ios and Santorini, the houses here were old, some very old, leaning this way or that, with what looked like 300 year old timbers arching over three foot-wide streets. The town rose up from the water along a small hill, culminating in an old Venetian villa, a remnant of the empire that once controlled these waters. Parts of the structure were still occupied by the descendants of these merchants, and it also housed the local museum and the Island's only Catholic church.

The street we were following lead us to the doorstep of a large house the small owner of which immediately offered us a room. This seemed like a decent location (better than the high school field, at any rate), so we agreed to the price and settled in. Our room was just a couple of minutes (no, really!) from one of the entrances to the villa, and two blocks from the waterfront. We went wandering through the older part of town, and walking through an ancient (permanently opened) door found ourselves looking down a narrow downward-sloping street cut down next to the villa wall. From this vantage point, we saw a pinkish fireball sliding behind Paros, some roofs, the wall, and two cats. One was curled up on the right wall just above eye level, while the other was on the left side, and clearly unhappy there. As we were watching, it bobbed its head up and down a couple of times, and then sailed into the sun, crossing the street in an occluding streak. There was nothing left to do but to have a dinner that was to cost us twice as much as the price of room. The food, uncharacteristically, was quite good, although the local wine would have been better left in the bottle.

The next morning we set out for the interior of the island, seeking something. Having survived the bus trip, we couldn't quite figure out why we decided to come to this village. The church in front of the bus stop was closed, and there didn't seem to be much else to do, so we set out on foot to the next town, about four kilometers away. It was a pleasant walk through olive tree groves, although the roar of cicadas did not contribute to the serenity of the place. The walk offered a couple of photo opportunities and an abrupt encounter with a Mercedes. This exercise was rewarded with a filling lunch of grease and Amstel, shortly thereafter followed by a bus ride back. It would have been interesting to explore that town some more, but the next bus was two hours away, and we still had plans for Naxos town.

These plans included a healthy siesta to supplement the snooze on the bus. I cut it short to watch the encore performance by the sun- worshipping cats, this time through a 200mm lens. Unfortunately, the spot was overrun with tourists, and the cats did not appear. I did, however, manage to get a few sunset shots and a cup of the afore- mentioned wine. While I was waiting for the cats and the sun, an Aussie pair stumbled up. They had the foresight to bring a bottle of wine, but could not complete the thought: the cork screw was still Down Under. In return for bailing them out, they rewarded me with a plastic cup-ful of the vile stuff. This choice of vessel seemed somehow appropriate. In case you are wondering, yes, I had to provide them with an extra cup from my alcoholic emergency supply. I guess it was their lucky day.

The evening was rather uneventful. A series of leisurely strolls punctuated by greasy gyros sandwiches and an anemic Greek salad. In the morning, after depositing a bunch of drachmas at the local bakery, we visited the high school track field (just to cover all bases) and then set out to find the two archeological sites marked on the city map. We could not find the first one, and the second one turned out to be a dusty, fenced off pit tunnelling under a concrete parking lot structure. There was no sign describing the few visible remains of walls, no way of knowing what we were looking at. There was nothing left to do but down a couple of Heinekens and head for the ferry.

Miraculously, the boat arrived on time. Bob was going to spend the afternoon on Paros and then catch the evening ferry to Athens. I could not afford the delay because my flight left for Basel at 4am, so I arrived in Athens at 6pm on Saturday afternoon and was faced with the same problem of a week ago: Everything worth visiting was closed. I wandered around the touristy part, looking for a reasonable way to dispose of my remaining Drachmas. Not wishing to buy cheap porcelain, leather sandals or plaid carpets, I was reduced to eating my way through my stash. I wandered around, checked out a few menus, and randomly picked a restaurant with a large seafood display.

My choice was rewarded with a table 20 cm from this display and its aromas, strongly reminiscent of its market heritage. I ordered dolmades and grilled octopus as appetizers, and some pastitsio as the main course. The octopus was definitely the highlight of the trip. I cannot remember ever having something this delicate and flavorful. It was definitely worth the 1,800 Drachma I paid for it. The same could not be said for the pastitsio.

The meal with tip came to a total of 5,500 Drachmas. I put 6,500 on the table, not wanting to take home any small change. The waiter smiled, thanked me, and disappeared. I sat there for a while, and then finally was forced to remove that smile from his face by reminding him that he still owed me 1,000 Drachmas. This money-grubbing is quite amazing. When Bob went to get a 400 Drachma coffee on the ferry and gave the guy a 1,000 Drachma bill, he initially got 60 Drachmas back. The guy selling tickets on the bus had to be reminded of basic arithmetic with alarming regularity. It is rather difficult to imagine how the Greek economy can function in this sort of climate. Couple this with Greek time-keeping, and you have a prescription for disaster. No wonder the Greek civilization collapsed.

July, 1994

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