Greece is a bit like Spain. It's as if you took Spain's Costa del Sol, whitewashed villages and all, and set a mischievous little fairy loose upon it. Dancing from street sign to restaurant menu she would go, tapping her magic wand on half the letters in each word at random and replacing them with geometric shapes and mathematical symbols as a joke on already baffled tourists. I would warn the Greek people and their fairy; history shows that it's far from the best idea to mess with already miffed tourists. Just ask the people of Savannah about Sherman's little "jaunt" through Georgia back in 1864 after they slipped a live round into his daily breakfast of cannon balls and milk (coincidentally, Sherman is said to have crapped thunder).
OK so the reality is that confused tourists are rarely so regimented in their response to adversity. Why, just last night at the hostel, I witnessed an exemplary study in the fine art of what is scientifically known as a "hissy-fit" thrown by a young lady (clearly a well-versed practitioner of the form) locked from her room and clothed merely in a towel. While the rest of us sat in the common room, guffawing at each others' clever quips, generally having a merry old time of it, this young lady repeatedly attempted to jimmy (Webster's definition: to ease open a stuck door, hinge) the lock on her room's door with a series of firm, repeated blows to the door's central plane, from where, apparently, the vibrations can be conducted toward the lock's pins most efficiently. Either that or she just wanted to make some noise. I'm not sure which, *wink* *wink*. Anyway the rest of the night involved a great deal more banging. Of her first on the door. The rest of us carried on below, despite the din from above, then smiled smugly as we retired to our comfortable beds, confident that such an unstable, attention-starved, and aggressive beauty (read: bitch) must somehow deserve this ironic and oh-so hilarious fate. Things quieted down around 2 AM, when I can only assume that she got zapped by the fairy into whatever letter of the Greek alphabet is silent. I dont know which letter that is, or even if there is one, and even after posing the question to a group of idiot teen-agers it remains of mystery to me.
I dont apply the label "idiot" lightly, in fact, in my book it's actually a quite difficult rank to attain. Sort of like four star general in the army, or Grand Dragon in Chinese cooking competitions, it's not given to small fries. It requires a truly outstanding lack of brainpower, and this group of young men appeared to be collectively in command of just the right amount of cranial current: none. They proved their qualification by repeatedly crippling random unlucky ducks, fowl who were simply trying to catch some rays on a rock embankment splitting a small river in the Cretan village of Verisis. In a vain attempt to impress a small contingent of members of the twin chromosome club (girls) by hurling fist sized rocks from their sniper's post atop a bridge. Bravo. Looks guys, if you want to impress girls, dont do it by throwing rocks at ducks. No one's impressed by the fact that it takes you six tries to land what might be generously considered a "warning shot across the bow". And judging by the number and density of the flock, I'd say that you'd have a hard time hitting a snowflake in a blizzard.
So here I am passing judgement on a group of kids I dont really even know, feeling pretty pretentious, pretty high-and-mighty. Many in my position would ride off into the metaphorical conversational sunset, having berated and derided his/her way to the top. Not me. I've got a suggestion for these fine young men if they want to catch the eye of a lass: If you want to show the ladies how much of a man you are, dont throw rocks, throw boulders. Preferably the sort you often see bulldozers and front-end-loaders struggling with. That way, everyone will know how strong you are, and you're guaranteed to flatten a lot more of those pesky ducks.
Back to the language issue. I'm actually really enjoying the challenge of learning to decipher the Greek alphabet. Having not been involved with the Greek system at Michigan, I'm really lacking in knowledge of the rich culture and language here. However, my observations over the past few days are leading me to suspect that there may be a disconnect somewhere in the relationship between the Greeks in Ann Arbor and those in Athens. Why, in all my wandering here I've yet to hear the traditional Greek mantras " BROSEF!!" or " KEGGER!!". Maybe I'm looking in all the wrong spots, but what better place for a traditional Greek kegger than at the Parthenon, atop the Acropolis and overlooking greater Athens? And there can surely be no more fitting spot to perform the ancient Athenian ritual of the keg-stand than high atop the teetering pillars of The Temple of Olympian Zues. What better way to put your Xtreme attitude (to compliment the reading of the word Xtreme, please defiantly cross your forearms ten inches in front of the face and shout "X-TREME!!". This emphasizes the extremity of your X-treme-ness, and after all, what could be more X-treme than a hand motion? Complete the effect by having four friends launch you (in a kayak) down the snacks aisle of your nearest 7-11 as you once again shout "X-TREME!!". I'm pretty sure that this is the longest aside ever, so if you've forgotten how the original sentence began, please refer to the 8 words preceding the opening parentheses) on display than by ingesting massive amounts of beer while suspended upside down? I'm not sure there is any other way, but I'll have to check with the pan-Hellenic council on that one.
Years ago, when this passage began, I think I was comparing Spain and Greece. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I got into all that, because the only real similarities I can see are their massive Mediterranean coast lines and the prominence of fish on the national palate. The first is a big attraction, who doesn't love beaches, but the second is more of a deterrent for me. I'm not sure what it is about fish, especially raw fish, but I simply can't stand the smell, taste, or even sight of it. Case and point: I'm currently on the island of Crete, in a city called Rethymnos (don't worry, I've been here for two days and I still don't know how to pronounce it), and I had to get up really early this morning so I could make it to the 8:30 bus for Imbros Gorge and spend the rest of the day hiking. So there I found myself, searching the streets for food at 8 AM. There really ought to be a law against recent college graduates without jobs getting up before 11. PM. But there isn't, so under a budding sunrise I waded through a sea of Greeks (the real ones, no brosefs in sight), in search of some early morning sustenance. The first vendor I came across was watering his fare. No, it wasn't flowers or fruit, but fish. Reopening the Book of Adam, to which I made reference earlier, this act can be found categorized under the section entitled 'Gross'. There's no real reason I ought to be repulsed by seeing someone douse piles of fish in water, but for some reason it just irks me. Maybe the mere idea of keeping dead things in a slimy state is what gets to me, and I apologize for boiling it down to such base terms for fish fans out there. But this simple act was not sufficient to warrant a 300 word tirade. It was the gigantic decapitated heads that really pushed the Repulsive Meter's pin from "Turn the other cheek" to "Oh wow... really??". How big? Roughly the size of the boulders that the members of Idiot Squad Alpha should have been throwing if they'd really wanted to impress the ladies. Big enough to fit at the business end of a fish of sufficient size to leap from the water, up onto the a sea-side boardwalk, swallow a small dog in a single gulp, and leap back into the water before anyone had a chance to yell "Get a real dog!". That size fish. Yuck.
Athens is a city about which I'd heard not great things. People had told me that it was boring, and just like any other major European city. The discrepancy between what I had been brought to expect and what I experienced was vast. It is entirely possible that those who were not captivated by the city's archaic beauty spent their time in the wrong places. Of course one has to visit the Acropolis and its figurehead the Parthenon. BUT there is so much more to this city than just the big attractions. I found the hostel's neighborhood, Plaka, wholly enchanting. Surely the main commercial roadways look like any other main street in Europe, but the mixture of ancient Greek architecture and ruins that one finds in certain neighborhoods is distinctively Athens. They really should be paying me for this kind of PR.
I left Athens because my hostel no longer had space, and I wouldn't want to stay any other hostel there. For anyone who's going to be in the area, Athens Backpackers is an awesome hostel, and there's a reason it's ranked among the top 5 European properties on Hostelworld.com. I headed next to Crete, where I hiked 'til I dropped (and was stalked for hours by a family of hungry goats), and am currently on the island of Santorini. There's a lot more to discuss here, and I'll try to cover it all in future emails, but for the moment the length of this email is passing into the realm of the ridiculous.
Some who've been tracking my progress will know already that I spent the 10 days prior plotting the seasonal migration of White-throated Dippers throughout Europe and the Middle East. This would have been a extremely formative and highly educational experience had I ever actually done it. Actually, I was busy taking advantage of the Birthright Israel program, and traveling 10 days all-expenses-paid from north to south, east to west. Truthfully, this portion of my travels begs a 10,000 word entry, one which requires a great deal more patience and time than either the writer or the reader has. Hopefully I'll find it in my heart to write with detail on my time in the country, but for now I'm busy working on a bit of freelance (paid) writing on my experience, and when that's done I'll make sure it gets out to all of you.
Photos are going to be done a bit differently this time. I'm going to upload them as batches to Flickr.com and just post the link to the album every time. Check out my first set of photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8396077@N07/sets/72157600245435901/
More soon, thanks for reading, eagerly awaiting your responses.
Adam
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