Regarding my travels to Greece, a few people asked me if I saw any signs of Greece's economic problems while I was there, and I would have to say that I did not. It did not feel like a country that was falling apart, though obviously I did not have to engage with the country's healthcare system or state apparatus.
The only thing that came close to indicating the country's economic problems was the train system. This has been severely curtailed as a result of the tightening of public spending, to the extent that there are no longer direct train links between Greece and neighbouring countries. If this had not been the case I may have travelled to Greece through the Balkans rather than by getting an overnight ferry from Bari in Italy to Patras. And because the train line to Patras has been shut down, I had to get a bus from there to Athens.
Apart from that I did not see any direct sign of the crisis: no people rooting through rubbish bins for food, no more beggars on the street than you would get in any country, no obvious signs of there being masses of people sleeping rough in Athens (unlike in prosperous Milan where I saw quite a few rough sleepers). The centre of Athens felt like a prosperous enough place and while the city has its seamier bits, so does everywhere. Sparta (the least touristy place I visited) also did not feel like somewhere in the grip of an economic meltdown. I am not saying this to suggest that the Greeks are only pretending to have endured one of the most extreme declines in living standards ever experienced by a developed country, just to say that the effects of this fall off were hidden from me.
I did see a guy protesting outside the Greek Parliament (holding up a sign informing passers by that Wall Street is where he defecates), but I see that kind of thing all the time in Dublin so it was not really much of a novelty. On my last day in Athens there was a big demonstration against austerity. I wondered if it would all kick off with me in the middle of the action, but this proved not to be the case.
One hears a lot about how the far right is on the rise in Greece. I did not see any fascist gobshites parading around, but I did see some instances of graffiti featuring the sunwheel cross, a far right emblem. In most places, any instances of these were defaced, often with an Anarchy sign drawn over or beside them. The only place I can recall seeing an undefaced sunwheel cross was in Sparta. I have read guidebooks saying that Sparta prides itself on being Greece's most rightwing town, which seems appropriate given its ancient history as a centre of slavery and brutal militarism. Apart from that one piece of graffiti, however, modern Sparta did not come across as an obvious hotbed of the far right.
There was a fair amount of graffiti in Athens, some of it political and some of it less so. I do not think you could link the amount of graffiti to the crisis and I suspect that there was as much political graffiti before the crisis as there is now. Possibly my favourite piece of graffiti in Athens was done by someone who wrote "A. MERKEL" in Roman script. I do not know whether the writer was interrupted before finishing his work, or maybe the German chancellor herself was passing by and decided to put down her mark.
Actually no, this is my favourite bit of Greek graffiti:
Cthulhu ftagn!
An account of my travels in Greece: part 1
An account of my travels in Greece: part 2
My Greece pictures
Pictures of Graffiti in Greece
An inuit panda production
Showing posts with label Greece. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greece. Show all posts
Saturday, April 26, 2014
Thursday, January 02, 2014
An account of my travels in Greece, Part 3: Sparta, Mystras, Kardamyli
FINAL EPISODE!
Previously: Athens; Nafplio, Mycenae, & Epidauros
From Nafplio I made its name to Sparti, the modern town built on the site of ancient Sparta. The handy thing about going there is you can say, "This is Sparta!" without fear of contradiction. Walking around naked but for leather kecks is also not something that attracts odd looks - for in Sparti it is nigh mandatory. There is not that much from ancient times to see there, however, as the ancient Spartans did not hold much with stone buildings. I did see the ruins of some ancient temple where older Spartans used to flog the youth as part of some crazy religious festival (it might be the Festival of the Naked Youths mentioned by Herodotus). I also saw the rubbley remains of some effete Roman settlement near the ancient Spartan acropolis, which boasted that most un-Spartan of buildings, a theatre.
Aside from being able to say "This is Sparta!" and visiting a town in Greece that seems largely untouched by tourists, the other big attraction here is the nearby abandoned city of Mystras. At one time it was the capital of the Peloponnese, now it is a Hellenic Pripyat, showing to the world how quickly nature retakes a town deserted by its inhabitants. For although Mystras flourished in the middle ages, it was only abandoned in the 19th century when the Bavarians built modern Sparti and persuaded the locals to all move there.
Mystras is a strange and interesting place and it surprises me that it is not better known. Being built on a 45ยบ angle would make any town look scenic, even if trees and plants were not growing everywhere. It also has a castle at the top, fortunately less than 900 steps up. And there are old orthodox churches with icons and frescoes and stuff. And a shop, where I bought two CDs of Byzantine music by some fellow called Costas Zorbas. One was of Byzantine religious music (kind of like you would imagine) and another of Byzantine secular music of somewhat nautical bent, which turned out to sound rather Middle Eastern in its sound.
I probably had my nicest and most enjoyable meals in Sparti, in a restaurant called Elysse that my guidebook recommended in a lukewarm manner but which turned out to be a purveyor of tasty noms. And I generally enjoyed Sparti as the most Greek of the places I went to, for all that it was built by Bavarians.
From Sparti I travelled across the Taygetus mountains (by bus), on crazy hairpin bends where I only thought we had driven off the side of a cliff once or twice. The mountains were very scenic and featured some old ladies selling honey by the side of the road. On the other side I arrived in the town of Kalamata and hung out in the local bus station trying to get my fare together before heading on to the town of Kardamyli. This is in the Mani peninsula, albeit near the top, and is famous for being where Patrick Leigh Fermor lived for a bit. It also has a hotel that is always advertising in the London Review of Books. When Fermor was there it would have been a pretty remote and wild spot but now it is basically another tourist town, albeit a very small one. It is not the worst place in the world (they are all nice tourists) but I was hoping for somewhere a bit more… something. Still, the town is nicely situated for walking in the countryside, which was nice.
On my second day there I had the great idea of going for a walk along a dry riverbed. The bed was made up of loads of small white rocks that always threatened to move as I walked on them, making a trip and perhaps a sprained ankle an omnipresent risk. There were also places with overhanging walls of rock, with ominous signs warning passers by to beware of falling rocks. Were something untoward to happen that would have left me immobile, I would be unable to telephone for help, as the high walls of the river valley blocked any mobile single. And I had cleverly not told anyone where I was going and was talking on my own on a desolate route on which I met no other hikers. "What a clever fellow I am!" I thought.
Nothing untoward happened on my walk - phew. But I did come round a bend in the river and find myself only a few metres away form a monstrous snake. I nearly jumped out of my skin and uttered an involuntary expletive. But the snake seemed equally perturbed by my presence, hastily slithering away. I then continued on my journey without further incident.
I returned to Athens by bus, falling asleep on the fellow beside me on the way. Then I flew home with popular airline SAS, with a stopover in Copenhagen. So now I can claim to have also visited Denmark, albeit not entirely convincingly.
More pictures:
This is Sparta!
Mystras - Pripyat of the Peloponnese
Kardamyli!
All my Greek pictures
An inuit panda production
Previously: Athens; Nafplio, Mycenae, & Epidauros
From Nafplio I made its name to Sparti, the modern town built on the site of ancient Sparta. The handy thing about going there is you can say, "This is Sparta!" without fear of contradiction. Walking around naked but for leather kecks is also not something that attracts odd looks - for in Sparti it is nigh mandatory. There is not that much from ancient times to see there, however, as the ancient Spartans did not hold much with stone buildings. I did see the ruins of some ancient temple where older Spartans used to flog the youth as part of some crazy religious festival (it might be the Festival of the Naked Youths mentioned by Herodotus). I also saw the rubbley remains of some effete Roman settlement near the ancient Spartan acropolis, which boasted that most un-Spartan of buildings, a theatre.
Aside from being able to say "This is Sparta!" and visiting a town in Greece that seems largely untouched by tourists, the other big attraction here is the nearby abandoned city of Mystras. At one time it was the capital of the Peloponnese, now it is a Hellenic Pripyat, showing to the world how quickly nature retakes a town deserted by its inhabitants. For although Mystras flourished in the middle ages, it was only abandoned in the 19th century when the Bavarians built modern Sparti and persuaded the locals to all move there.
Mystras is a strange and interesting place and it surprises me that it is not better known. Being built on a 45ยบ angle would make any town look scenic, even if trees and plants were not growing everywhere. It also has a castle at the top, fortunately less than 900 steps up. And there are old orthodox churches with icons and frescoes and stuff. And a shop, where I bought two CDs of Byzantine music by some fellow called Costas Zorbas. One was of Byzantine religious music (kind of like you would imagine) and another of Byzantine secular music of somewhat nautical bent, which turned out to sound rather Middle Eastern in its sound.
I probably had my nicest and most enjoyable meals in Sparti, in a restaurant called Elysse that my guidebook recommended in a lukewarm manner but which turned out to be a purveyor of tasty noms. And I generally enjoyed Sparti as the most Greek of the places I went to, for all that it was built by Bavarians.
From Sparti I travelled across the Taygetus mountains (by bus), on crazy hairpin bends where I only thought we had driven off the side of a cliff once or twice. The mountains were very scenic and featured some old ladies selling honey by the side of the road. On the other side I arrived in the town of Kalamata and hung out in the local bus station trying to get my fare together before heading on to the town of Kardamyli. This is in the Mani peninsula, albeit near the top, and is famous for being where Patrick Leigh Fermor lived for a bit. It also has a hotel that is always advertising in the London Review of Books. When Fermor was there it would have been a pretty remote and wild spot but now it is basically another tourist town, albeit a very small one. It is not the worst place in the world (they are all nice tourists) but I was hoping for somewhere a bit more… something. Still, the town is nicely situated for walking in the countryside, which was nice.
On my second day there I had the great idea of going for a walk along a dry riverbed. The bed was made up of loads of small white rocks that always threatened to move as I walked on them, making a trip and perhaps a sprained ankle an omnipresent risk. There were also places with overhanging walls of rock, with ominous signs warning passers by to beware of falling rocks. Were something untoward to happen that would have left me immobile, I would be unable to telephone for help, as the high walls of the river valley blocked any mobile single. And I had cleverly not told anyone where I was going and was talking on my own on a desolate route on which I met no other hikers. "What a clever fellow I am!" I thought.
Nothing untoward happened on my walk - phew. But I did come round a bend in the river and find myself only a few metres away form a monstrous snake. I nearly jumped out of my skin and uttered an involuntary expletive. But the snake seemed equally perturbed by my presence, hastily slithering away. I then continued on my journey without further incident.
I returned to Athens by bus, falling asleep on the fellow beside me on the way. Then I flew home with popular airline SAS, with a stopover in Copenhagen. So now I can claim to have also visited Denmark, albeit not entirely convincingly.
More pictures:
This is Sparta!
Mystras - Pripyat of the Peloponnese
Kardamyli!
All my Greek pictures
An inuit panda production
Wednesday, January 01, 2014
An account of my travels in Greece, Part 2: Nafplio, Mycenae and Epidauros
Previously...
Outside Athens I went first to Nafplio, a compact town that was briefly Greece's capital when the country first became independent. It is now mostly a tourist town, though when I arrived it had a strange end-of-season character as everyone seemed to have gone away and wind blew through the picturesque but empty streets. Come dinnertime, Nafplio was revealed as being not quite so empty, but it was not as rammed as I bet it must be in high season.
Attractive enough in its own right, what drew me to Nafplio was its proximity to two other sites. Firstly Epidauros, which in ancient times was famous as a cult centre of the healing god Asclepius. The place is mostly another picturesque rubble park now, but its great claim to fame is its well-preserved Roman-era theatre, where theatrical events would have been staged for the entertainment of people looking for healing and the various other people who lived or visited the town. It is famous for its astonishing acoustics, with the jangling of keys or the rustling of a plastic bag in the centre of the theatre being clearly audible on the back seats. People kept testing this out, and other people would demonstrate the acoustics by breaking into song, which would typically generate a round of applause from the tourists present. Another great thing about the theatre, in which they stage ancient Greek plays in the summer, was the presence of a cat who went up to two visitors and despite their clear lack of interest kept trying to see whether they had any tasty treats in their bag.
The other great site near Nafplio is Mycenae, an olde palace whose heyday was around 1600 BC. They say that it was the residence of Agamemnon, who led the Achaeans at Troy. It is now largely fetching rubble (you may sense a theme here) on top of a hill, but it is beautifully situated beside two enormous hills and does still have the famous lion gates guarding its entrance. There are also a number of flash tombs, named fancifully after various figures from Mycenae in the myths of the Trojan War. In one of these was found the so-called Death Mask of Agamemnon; in another, the jewels of Clytemnestra. There is a sense of the great passage of time here, a place that was mysterious and ancient to the classical Greeks and which is much older than many of the things I saw in Egypt.
I mentioned that Nafplio itself is something of a tourist town. It is also somewhat Italianate, as it was owned by the Venetians or some other lot like that in the Middle Ages. Above the town - some 900 steps above it - there is a fortress that of course I climbed up to. There are amazing views from there, but the strange qualities of the fortress itself were most astonishing - it seems to have been designed by MC Escher and reminded me very much of the Doctor Who story Castrovalva - linear movement between two points is impossible and advancing in any direction seems to bring you to somewhere completely different than the place you expected.
The other Mycenaean-era site of Tiryns is just outside Nafplio. I did not visit it but I did see it from the bus. It looks quite impressive in an and of itself but its setting is far less spectacular than that of Mycenae.
The journey continues and concludes here.
More pictures:
Nafplio
Epidauros
Mycenae
All my Greek pictures
An inuit panda production
Outside Athens I went first to Nafplio, a compact town that was briefly Greece's capital when the country first became independent. It is now mostly a tourist town, though when I arrived it had a strange end-of-season character as everyone seemed to have gone away and wind blew through the picturesque but empty streets. Come dinnertime, Nafplio was revealed as being not quite so empty, but it was not as rammed as I bet it must be in high season.
Attractive enough in its own right, what drew me to Nafplio was its proximity to two other sites. Firstly Epidauros, which in ancient times was famous as a cult centre of the healing god Asclepius. The place is mostly another picturesque rubble park now, but its great claim to fame is its well-preserved Roman-era theatre, where theatrical events would have been staged for the entertainment of people looking for healing and the various other people who lived or visited the town. It is famous for its astonishing acoustics, with the jangling of keys or the rustling of a plastic bag in the centre of the theatre being clearly audible on the back seats. People kept testing this out, and other people would demonstrate the acoustics by breaking into song, which would typically generate a round of applause from the tourists present. Another great thing about the theatre, in which they stage ancient Greek plays in the summer, was the presence of a cat who went up to two visitors and despite their clear lack of interest kept trying to see whether they had any tasty treats in their bag.
The other great site near Nafplio is Mycenae, an olde palace whose heyday was around 1600 BC. They say that it was the residence of Agamemnon, who led the Achaeans at Troy. It is now largely fetching rubble (you may sense a theme here) on top of a hill, but it is beautifully situated beside two enormous hills and does still have the famous lion gates guarding its entrance. There are also a number of flash tombs, named fancifully after various figures from Mycenae in the myths of the Trojan War. In one of these was found the so-called Death Mask of Agamemnon; in another, the jewels of Clytemnestra. There is a sense of the great passage of time here, a place that was mysterious and ancient to the classical Greeks and which is much older than many of the things I saw in Egypt.
I mentioned that Nafplio itself is something of a tourist town. It is also somewhat Italianate, as it was owned by the Venetians or some other lot like that in the Middle Ages. Above the town - some 900 steps above it - there is a fortress that of course I climbed up to. There are amazing views from there, but the strange qualities of the fortress itself were most astonishing - it seems to have been designed by MC Escher and reminded me very much of the Doctor Who story Castrovalva - linear movement between two points is impossible and advancing in any direction seems to bring you to somewhere completely different than the place you expected.
The other Mycenaean-era site of Tiryns is just outside Nafplio. I did not visit it but I did see it from the bus. It looks quite impressive in an and of itself but its setting is far less spectacular than that of Mycenae.
The journey continues and concludes here.
More pictures:
Nafplio
Epidauros
Mycenae
All my Greek pictures
An inuit panda production
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
An account of my travels in Greece, Part 1: Athens
In September I went to Greece. I went there without flying, travelling to London by a strange combination of boat, car and train, then using the Eurostar and TGV to reach Milan, the Italian train system to reach Bari, and then a ferry boat to reach Patras in Greece. It was all very exciting. Milan was a nice place to spend a day but, as anyone who has visited there will say, the majesty of the Duomo cathedral always seems a bit oversold when you have the Milano Centrale railway station to compare it to. The latter is an astonishing piece of architecture, I think from the Mussolini era. It certainly establishes the notion that the State is big while you are small.
In Greece I was in Athens and some places on the Peloponnese (you know, the bit that is almost an island but is not). Athens was a bit of a pleasant surprise. Before I went there, people kept saying,"I hear Athens is a smelly polluted kip." But the city seemed to lack a polluted atmosphere or any kind of all pervasive pungent aroma. Instead it was a surprisingly pretty place, with lots of great things from antiquity to see. I crossed off a list of key things here - the Acropolis (with the Parthenon and Erechtheum); the ancient Agora, which is basically a park full of evocative bits of rubble but also a nice little temple to Hephaestus; the Temple of Olympian Zeus, one of those temples that was once enormous but is now just a number of huge pillars; the Theatre of Dionysos (Roman theatre built on the site of the theatre where the plays of Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus would have been first staged); etc.
I visited the Acropolis twice. The first time in the early afternoon was very busy, full of visitors wandering around, photographing each other, admiring the buildings and the view. I was fascinated by how people approached Acropolis photography, as they seemed to be mostly trying to take pictures of the buildings without other people in the background. To me that seemed like both a futile effort but also to be misrepresentation of what the crowded hill was actually like. My own pictures deliberately show the site with all its teeming humanity.
One other photographer I was intrigued by was this guy in a black vest who kept trying and failing to get a woman (most likely wife or equivalent) to photograph him just the way he wanted it. She was not attuned to his artistic vision, so I kept hearing him say things like "That's not the picture I want, I'll show you the picture I want". I found it hard not to think of him as a bit of dick, but there was a twinge of recognition for I was once that soldier. But I am older and wiser now and know that if you want to be in photographs you need to take them yourself.
I had quite a few people, members of couples or other groups, asking me to take photos for them. One nice Australian woman offered to return the favour. I declined, but I was reminded of Rob Newman in the Mary Whitehouse Experience, half yearning to go up to happy couples with my camera to say "Excuse me, would you mind taking a picture of me, on my own?"
My second visit to the Acropolis was in the evening of the night before I flew home. That was quieter in terms of visitor numbers, which lent it a different atmosphere. The sky was clearer and the low sun provided us with lengthened shadows. I took in more of the place's ambience and pondered how a flat hilltop with only two ruined buildings (not counting the cluster at the entrance) can feel so otherworldly. And then a bunch of Greek squaddies marched in to take down the flag on the Acropolis' Second World War memorial.
I also wandered around on the hills near the Acropolis, stumbling onto the Pnyx, the hillside where the citizens of Athens met and decided public business, bequeathing democracy to the world. I also found the cell where it is said that Socrates was held before his execution, though the attribution is somewhat fanciful, and a small shrine to Pan that is mentioned by Herodotus (he reports that it was built after a messenger to Sparta met the God on his journey, with Pan complaining to the runner that the people of Athens were not showing him proper respect; Herodotus' account suggests a certain scepticism). The hilly bit of Athens is a strange and oddly otherworldly place, probably the part of Greece where I most imagined I might stumble onto some fauns or maenads, for all that they lie in the heart of the city.
Click here for Part 2 of my account, in which I visit the Italianate town of Nafplio, the unbelievably ancient site of Mycenae, and the famous theatre at Epidauros.
More pictures:
Athens!
The Acropolis of Athens
Classical Stuff in Athens
All my Greek pictures
An inuit panda production
In Greece I was in Athens and some places on the Peloponnese (you know, the bit that is almost an island but is not). Athens was a bit of a pleasant surprise. Before I went there, people kept saying,"I hear Athens is a smelly polluted kip." But the city seemed to lack a polluted atmosphere or any kind of all pervasive pungent aroma. Instead it was a surprisingly pretty place, with lots of great things from antiquity to see. I crossed off a list of key things here - the Acropolis (with the Parthenon and Erechtheum); the ancient Agora, which is basically a park full of evocative bits of rubble but also a nice little temple to Hephaestus; the Temple of Olympian Zeus, one of those temples that was once enormous but is now just a number of huge pillars; the Theatre of Dionysos (Roman theatre built on the site of the theatre where the plays of Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus would have been first staged); etc.
I visited the Acropolis twice. The first time in the early afternoon was very busy, full of visitors wandering around, photographing each other, admiring the buildings and the view. I was fascinated by how people approached Acropolis photography, as they seemed to be mostly trying to take pictures of the buildings without other people in the background. To me that seemed like both a futile effort but also to be misrepresentation of what the crowded hill was actually like. My own pictures deliberately show the site with all its teeming humanity.
One other photographer I was intrigued by was this guy in a black vest who kept trying and failing to get a woman (most likely wife or equivalent) to photograph him just the way he wanted it. She was not attuned to his artistic vision, so I kept hearing him say things like "That's not the picture I want, I'll show you the picture I want". I found it hard not to think of him as a bit of dick, but there was a twinge of recognition for I was once that soldier. But I am older and wiser now and know that if you want to be in photographs you need to take them yourself.
I had quite a few people, members of couples or other groups, asking me to take photos for them. One nice Australian woman offered to return the favour. I declined, but I was reminded of Rob Newman in the Mary Whitehouse Experience, half yearning to go up to happy couples with my camera to say "Excuse me, would you mind taking a picture of me, on my own?"
My second visit to the Acropolis was in the evening of the night before I flew home. That was quieter in terms of visitor numbers, which lent it a different atmosphere. The sky was clearer and the low sun provided us with lengthened shadows. I took in more of the place's ambience and pondered how a flat hilltop with only two ruined buildings (not counting the cluster at the entrance) can feel so otherworldly. And then a bunch of Greek squaddies marched in to take down the flag on the Acropolis' Second World War memorial.
I also wandered around on the hills near the Acropolis, stumbling onto the Pnyx, the hillside where the citizens of Athens met and decided public business, bequeathing democracy to the world. I also found the cell where it is said that Socrates was held before his execution, though the attribution is somewhat fanciful, and a small shrine to Pan that is mentioned by Herodotus (he reports that it was built after a messenger to Sparta met the God on his journey, with Pan complaining to the runner that the people of Athens were not showing him proper respect; Herodotus' account suggests a certain scepticism). The hilly bit of Athens is a strange and oddly otherworldly place, probably the part of Greece where I most imagined I might stumble onto some fauns or maenads, for all that they lie in the heart of the city.
Click here for Part 2 of my account, in which I visit the Italianate town of Nafplio, the unbelievably ancient site of Mycenae, and the famous theatre at Epidauros.
More pictures:
Athens!
The Acropolis of Athens
Classical Stuff in Athens
All my Greek pictures
An inuit panda production
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