Chapter 11 - Not another dusty old pile of rocks

Athens

I had not planned to visit Athens on this trip, as I had been there about 15yrs ago. A big part of the reason I change my plans and headed to Greece was to spend more time with Nirmapal, which I am very glad I did. As a result of changing my plans and leaving Gran Canaria early, I arrived a day before the Atlantis Cruise that Nirmalpal and his friends Curtis and Keith were on.

The last time i was here was about 15yrs ago. Some things had not changed others had. The impact of the Euro certainly has made things more expensive, the Acropolis is under a lot more restoration construction; a lot more people seem to speak English, which is not always a good thing – although a lot of signage and metro system announcements are made in both Greek and English – which does make getting around a lot easier. But the hubbub, heat and grit of the city remained relatively unchanged. Athens as a city is nothing special; it’s a big, sprawling, crowded, dirty, hot and humid – which pretty much does describes most large cities in the world. The metro system has improved significantly since I was there last, there are now three lines instead of one - although it was reasonably easy to walk to most of the places we wanted to go. What makes Athens spectacular is the abundance of ancient sites that can be experienced and explored.

Since I had arrived a day earlier than Nirmalpal, Curtis and Keith, I decided to go meet them at the port. Catching the metro down to Piraeus, the port of Athens. As I was waiting for them to disembark I got chatting with someone (randomly) who had already disembarked (it takes a long time to get 2000 people of a boat). It turned out this guy was from Sydney, lived in Newtown. We were chit chatting about this and that, told him I was here to meet this wonderful man I had meet in San Francisco etc. Then I finally mentioned his name – his eyes lit up and he goes – “I know him, I meet him in San Francisco long time ago, friend of a friend. He was in the hypnotist show on the ship. The hypnotist called him Bill because he could not pronounce his name and he had him dancing as a ballet dancer”

Since Nirmalpal was not expecting me, (I like surprising people – as some of you know), I snuck up behind him and said “Hello Bill, hows my pretty ballerina”. He was not only shocked to see me, but shocked that I knew about something that had happened on the ship. It was a great way to start our time together. I introduced him to Phillip Ruble from Newtown and the two worked out where/when they had last meet, which was some time ago.

We headed into the old part of Athens, called the Plaka, which is situated next to the ancient Acropolis. This is part of Athens that is of most interest. The Acropolis is a huge piece of rock, a high point on the Athens landscape, not so large as Uluru, but reasonably large. The acropolis contains the remains of the entrance to the Temple complex, the Parthenon, the temple of Athena and a rebuilt amphitheatre - the temple sections of the Acropolis remain standing in various states of disrepair. The original site would have contained several temples. There is a significant amount of construction work going on at the moment, so there was a lot of scaffolding around parts of the complex – but it was still impressive none the less.

The Parthenon itself was pretty much intact until 300 years ago. The Turks were using it as a storage facility for ammunition. The Venetians invaded and managed to fire a canon and hit the ammunitions depot, with disastrous results. So after a couple of thousand years of surviving the ravages of time, weather and humanity, the temple exploded and was almost entirely destroyed. They are now attempting to piece it back together. In addition to restorative work using stone from the site – they are also carving out new pieces to complete the structures where necessary. I am somewhat torn about this restoration work, torn between the desire to see the temples as they were and how they are now, or have survived over time. The photographer in me is drawn to the expression of time, as depicted by 2000+ years of carved stone. The romantic in me wants to walk amongst the temples, as the Greeks would have done 2000 years ago.

Around the Acropolis are a number of other temple complexes, the most complete been the Ancient Agora (market place). There is a Greek temple that is nearly complete and there is a building that was reconstructed in the early 20th Century with money from the Rockafeller family. This part of the Agora has lost its ancient feel, but it does give you an idea and feel for how these building would have been in ancient times. They certainly understood the importance of wide and airy verandas with high ceilings.

Everywhere we went we encountered what I termed the ‘Whistle Witches’, these were generally middle aged greek women. Every monument or ancient site you went, you would find at least one, but usually there were several, often hiding in hidden bunkers. If you so much as stepped on an ancient pebble – the whistles would start shrilling, usually accompanied by wild hand motions – ‘get the feck off that piece of rock’. It was a little comical and annoying at the same time. One of the other interesting things was that in the museums they did not mind you taking pictures (no flash), but you were not allowed to take a picture of your friends or loved ones with a statue, so no posing beside the torso of Apollo or any other Greek rock for that matter.

Athens was in low session at the time of our visit – a large percentage of Greeks taking holidays in August and heading to the islands or other destinations. But despite this, it was still pretty crowded with tourist around the Plaka and visiting the ancient sites.

I enjoyed immensely spending time with Nirmalpal and getting to know his friends Curtis and Keith. It was a wonderful bonus to my travels around the world.

Delphi

On Monday we headed to Delphi. Delphi is another ancient site, about 2.5 hours drive from Athens. It contains a large temple complex with a main temple dedicated to Apollo, amongst others and a large sport stadium/arena that is relatively intact. The site itself was lost for a long time, which I could understand, being situated on the rocky side of mountain. Not many people would venture up that way. What amazed me the most, was that ancient Greeks would have made a rather long and arduous journey from places like Athens etc to this temple complex, to give worship to their gods.

On the way we visited an old monastery, unfortunately we arrived about five minutes before it closed for the day, so only got to see a small bit of it. Our driver, who had been to Delphi many times, had never been to this monastery, so we had some trouble finding it and then he joined us in looking around the grounds, when we did eventually arrive.



Mykonos

On Wednesday Nirmalpal and I headed to Mykonos. We took the ferry, which takes around 6 hours. It certainly was an experience, but not one that I would care to repeat in a hurry. Although there were some cute boys to look at, Australian boys that were doing their best to pick up girls before they had even made it to the island.

The island of Mykonos is stark, rocky and there is little vegetation. Once again I encountered eucalypts (what is it with the gum tree that it has gotten around the world so much – it has done more travelling then I). The old port/town of Mykonos is reputed to have been a fishing village, but another story I heard was that it was actually a village mostly occupied by pirates. The town itself is a labyrinth, more than once I found myself lost. As the story goes the town was built this way so that the pirates could easily disappear into the narrow streets and evade the authorities, a very believable story. According to one Greek I meet (a cruise ship captain), the descendants of these thieves are still ripping of the tourists today – his words not mine. It is an expensive place to holiday - so make sure you have well stocked credit cards.

The town has the narrowest streets I have encountered to date, and I seem to keep encountering narrow winding streets. But in many places it would be hard to walk two abreast. Mykonos has a reputation, as been THE gay island destination. Well it is also the island holiday destination of every Greek and Italian person under 25 as well. The lonely planet describes the island as a place of debauchery. I am not so sure of that, or my idea of debauchery is somewhat different to that of the lonely planet writer. August as I discovered is the WORST time to be on the island. Or best time if you want to party hard and spend all night Raving on the beach or in small cramped clubs. In Europe many people take summer holiday at the same time, so all of Greece and Italy take a part of the month of august off. In August Mykonos is inundated with vacationing Greeks and Italians and a fair number of Australia’s (I discovered), if fact Australians were the third largest group of people I encountered, after that, lots of Americans. I was told by some locals that the best time to come to Mykonos is either late May early June or early September, note to self – book next vacation in the off season.

For the first couple of days Nirmalpal and I hired scooters to get around the island. This is the most dangerous thing one can do on the island of Mykonos. There are thousands of people riding scooters around the island, many of them having no previous experience with riding before, many of them doubling another friend (both having no experience on a bike). I saw a family of four on a single scooter, two adults and two small girls. I saw people riding while holding up a video camera pointed back at themselves – going ‘Look Ma – no hands’. They go to the beach, lie in the sun, get drunk and then get back on their scooters and head to their hotela. Needless to say there are a large number of accidents involving tourists and scooters and i saw a large number of people with arms and hands bandaged. Thankfully we both avoided any serious encounters and have lived to tell the tale. I must say, it was a lot of fun….

Even as a pedestrian you are not safe. Imagine walking through the narrow streets of the Rocks in Sydney on a busy summers sunday, hordes of tourists pressing around you as you bustle your way from shop to shop, enjoying the hubbub. Then beeping and pushing through the throng of people, a scooter appears, then another, then a motorbike, then a small vehicle delivering beer – then a posse of five scooters appears and bears down on you. It’s chaos, madness and oh so much fun…. Although after the third time a scooter wheel bumped into me – I was starting to get a little annoyed.

Working around at 2am in the morning is nearly impossible with the crush of people on the streets of Mykonos, most of them headed to there favourite nightclub to experience some of the famed debauchery ie get drunk, dance and throw up.

The buildings of Mykonos and i am sure you have all seen photo's are whitewashed, most places have brilliantly painted door and windows with a deep blue colour. I learnt that this blue was a colour used to ward of evil. You can readily buy a pendant made of blue glass with a eye in it - to ward of the evil. Many of the cobblestone (large cobblestones) are also whitewashed, the grout between the stones been painted almost nightly by shop owners to give the street a fresh clean appearance.

The beaches on Mykonos are beautiful, or more accurately the water is beautiful, crystal clear blue/green water, that you only tend to see in Australia up around the barrier reef. The beaches themselves are gritty cat litter like sand. And the popular beaches are covered in permanent umbrellas. So the vast bulk of the beach is covered with umbrellas and deck chairs. Which of course you need to pay to use, three euros for an umbrella and three for each deck chair – it starts to add up. The water is a lot colder than I was expecting, which considering how hot it was, was very refreshing.

Delos

About twenty minutes by ferry from Mykonos is the ancient island of Delos. This island was a centre of commerce and worship in the Aegean. It is said to be the birthplace of Apollo and his twin sister. His sister was born first, matured into a fully grown women in a matter of moments and then helped to deliver the infant Apollo.

It is the largest archaeological site in Greece. It is extraordinary, like many sites in Greece it is another pile of dusty old rocks – but here you get a sense of streets, homes, shops as well as the temple complexes. In the homes of the ancient Greeks, you get to see WC’s and water cisterns for storing water. Some of the homes still having their original tiled patterned atriums. The atrium floor was always covered with a couple of inches of water and open to the sky. The homes did not have any windows, to block out noise from the streets, so the open aired atrium provide both light and air for their homes. A lot of reconstruction has taken place on Delos, the site been work on by the French for a couple of centuries now - how much reconstruction is a closely guarded secret.

One of the great things about Delos was the absence of whistle witches. You are pretty much free to explore the ruins and experience them first hand. There are some areas that are locked or barricaded to prevent access - but for the most part you had free run of the place. In addition to this - there were not hordes of people, most of them not getting out of bed early enough from the previous night of partying to make the trip to Delos. The island is only open until 3pm, which is when the last ferry leaves to head back to Mykonos.

If you are ever in the vicinity of the Delos, then it is a must see.