A Monastic Weekend

I said goodbye to Athens this past Friday and set out with a group of CYA students and professors to spend the weekend in two other fantastic Greek towns: Meteora and Metsovo. Located about six hours north of Athens, Meteora and Metsovo rank as two of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited. Both towns have spectacular local landscapes and a lot of traditional Greek charm. Since we were quite a bit north of Athens, I even got a taste of the fall weather and foliage that I’ve been missing here in the southern Mediterranean.

I’m not sure it is even possible to describe the magnificence of Meteora, but I’ll try to put it into words. This small area of Greece is known best for its towering rock formations. And as if that doesn’t sound amazing enough, those towering cliffs are the foundations of monasteries that date back to the Byzantine period! Of the twenty-four orignal monasteries that were built in this area, only six survive today.  Over the course of the two days we were in Meteora, our group visited four out of these six working monasteries. Since they are located on top of island rock formations, getting to these buildings is no easy feat. Roads can only get so close to the cliffs, so bridges and many many steps are used to reach the top of the rocks. I was exhausted after just a day and a half of walking to these monasteries, so I can’t even imagine how difficult it was to construct and access these places hundreds of years ago! However, the stairs are well worth the effort.  Once I reached the top of the first monastery, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the mountains and cliffs. The view is so beautiful that it almost doesn’t seem real. In addition to the amazing scenery, the monasteries provide great examples of Byzantine iconography and manuscripts. Our group was lucky to have three great professors with us who gave us so much information on the modern Orthodox Greek Church as well as Byzantine architecture.

After spending most of Friday and Saturday in Meteora, our group packed up and headed to our next destination: Metsovo. This small mountain town was the perfect place to spend a fall weekend. I was so happy to kick my feet through the fallen leaves and sit down to a warm meal on a cold night.  In addition to spending time looking at the wood-working and cheese shops (Metsovo is known for these two products), we also visited a local folklore museum where we got a taste of life in Greece during the 19th century. Before heading back to Athens on Sunday, our group had the privilege of attending a Greek Orthodox church service and sitting down for coffee with the local priest. His congregation was very inviting and he openly answered our questions about his church and his religion. My weekend in Meteora and Metsovo was definitley one of my favorites so far in Greece and I can’t wait to go back some day!

Freaks and Greeks, Pt. 6 "(Un)Civil Disobedience"

So, let's deal with the elephant in the room. Greece is going through a widely publicized economic crisis at the root of a much deeper issue plaguing all of the Eurozone. As it stands, around 25% of the population is unemployed. For the Greek youth, that number basically doubles, if I'm not mistaken. And there's nothing more unstable than an unemployed, disgruntled, and unmarried young male. Throw all of these in the mix with the pervasive culture of demonstration and protest in Greece, and you've got a recipe for what the media would call anarchy. Demonstrations occur on a weekly (if not daily) basis in Syntagma Square outside of the Greek Parliament. These demonstrations are normally very peaceful, if not a little chaotic. However, it's become pretty standard for these protests to be infiltrated by anarchists or (more often than not) young men that are bored and restless, looking for trouble. Their frequent skirmishes with the Greek police are typically mild, but the standard response for riot control is tear gas. As a result, the international media has a somewhat skewed perception that Athens is burning, a real life Armageddon.

Having attended several of these demonstrations, I'm starting to get the sense that all of the focus on the protests and their violent turns have shifted attention away from their purpose, both in and outside of Greece. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, visited Athens last week in a show of support for the German-backed austerity measures that are meant to reign in the astronomical debt here in Greece. It was her first visit since 2007, and I'm frankly not surprised - thousands of demonstrators gathered outside of Parliament dressed up in Nazi uniforms, bearing signs condemning the German "fascism", or protesting European interference in Greek politics and economics. But what struck me most about the demonstration was the diversity of attendants. I talked to several different people about their thoughts on the situation, and there was no one general consensus. Everyone there was protesting something different. I talked to a university student that was protesting the austerity measures, but thought that nothing would come of the protests, because she "had been going to them since she was 16 and nothing has happened." Another woman represented the Immigrant Workers Union and was protesting the radical Golden Dawn political party in Greece. A third was there just to attend, and said they didn't have any problem with Merkel at all. And the so-called anarchists, the ones that instigated the eventual violence and police response? They're easily identifiable by their motorcycle helmets, gas masks, or scarcely concealed clubs. The ones that I saw before leaving the demonstration couldn't have been much older than teenagers. I got the feeling that they weren't there to protest the economic situation, but rather to stir up trouble.

I've been fascinated by the economic situation here - it's a large part of why I chose to study in Greece. Rather than focus on the protests, I've been more interested in talking to people about their opinions on the austerity measures and the entire crisis. All of the responses are mixed and there isn't any consensus besides the opinion that austerity is more hurtful than helpful. My marble carving instructor claims that Greece is embroiled in the "Third World War" of economics with Germany. A taxi driver blamed the Greek troubles on the growing immigrant population (one of the main arguments of the far-right Golden Dawn party). No one has any idea how things will pan out - if Greece will stick to the Euro or go to back to the Drachma, if the EU will remain intact. Needless to say, it's an incredibly interesting time to be in Greece. There are protests for sure, some of them violent, but not nearly on the level the international media makes it out to be - I only heard about a protest turning violent several weeks ago because I read about it later in the New York Times. I worry more that everyone will lose sight of why these protests are occurring in the first place.

Academic Adventures

It’s been a little while since I last posted an entry, but I’ve been busy keeping up with my schedule of classes and homework. In addition to my four graded courses, I am also participating in a three week conservation workshop. Over the course of the three, two hour sessions, our class will learn how to piece together and reconstruct a broken ceramic jar. Each student was asked to bring a ceramic vase or pot and a bag of rice to the first session. Since I really liked the jar I brought, it was slightly painful to watch the instructor place it in a bag and smash it on the ground! During the first session, our instructor taught us how to slowly determine which pieces of our pots belong where and how to move in a clock-wise rotation when gluing them back together.  While wating for certain parts to dry, we stabilized our jars by placing them in a small basin of rice. I am proud to say that I did a decent job piecing together my jar and I am now looking forward to phase two of the reconstruction process: applying plaster. In order to simulate a real archaeological find, our instructor told us to leave out a piece of our jar (as if it couldn’t be found). During our next session, we will apply plaster to this void and later paint it as if we were preparing a museum quality object for display. I forgot to take a "before" picture but I will definitely upload a shot of the finished project!

In addition to my conservation class, another cool academic experience from this past week was a second trip to the National Archaeological Museum. In my Aegean Prehistory class, we are currently studying bronze age Minoan and Cycladic cultures. Therefore, we took a trip to the museum to see in person the cycladic figurines and pottery we’ve been studying in class. Below are a few pictures of some objects our professor talked about during our visit. I feel so lucky to be able to see in person the artefacts I am learning and reading so much about!

Since I feel like my time here is flying by, I thought I’d end with a poignant quote from Seneca’s Troades (the play I am reading in my Latin class):

Quidquid sol oriens, quidquid et occidens

novit, caeruleis Oceanus fretis

quidquid bis veniens et fugiens lavat,

aetas Pegaseo corripiet gradu. (382-385)

("Whatever the rising sun,

whatever the setting sun discerns,

whatever the Ocean washes

coming and going twice with its

blue gulfs, time will snatch up with Pegasean pace.")

-Sam 

Freaks and Geeks, Pt. 5, "Come Sail Away"

If you and six of your friends were given the opportunity to spend the weekend sailing the Mediterranean from one beautiful Greek island to the next, you'd take it, right? Good. That's what I did too. Nadia, our amazing program director at CYA, gave us all of the information and put everything in motion to create the best weekend I've had in Greece so far. I'll try and keep it brief in the writing section so I can just bombard the page with pictures.

We woke up before the sun on Friday morning and took the metro (did I mention there are archaeological sites in every metro station? That's pretty cool) down to Piraeus, the busiest port in all of the Mediterranean. From there, we took a hydrofoil (a high speed, aka terrifying, ferry) down to the island of Poros, where we would meet our Captain, Nikos. Poros was a beautiful island with churches and houses clinging to the hillsides, its narrow cobbled streets winding between buildings, up and out of sight. My sister would say it was something out of Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, but I wouldn't know anything about that, right?

We set sail on our boat (I'm terrible at guessing the dimensions, but it was about 48 feet or something like that) for the Peloponnese, stopping at the island of Dhokos along the way to swim in a sheltered bay. We tended to do that a lot. This was also the first time I've seen dolphins in the wild - they loved to swim alongside the boat because of its wake and do tricks with the waves. I knew this would be an unforgettable experience, but COME ON.

After docking at a small village on the shores of the Peloponnese, we got on land at last to restock our supplies. I think the biggest lesson I took from this trip would be "you can never have enough water." Learned that the hard way. for three days in a row. Sometimes I'm a slow learning. Anyway, after we had dinner in the village we set sail again to reach the island of Hydra overnight - needless to say, I slept under the stars and the Mediterranean sky. We don't get to see that many stars in Sommerville, at least in comparison to here.

We spent the day on Hydra, walking around the old marina and running errands for our captain. It was a really beautiful island and I wish we could have spent more time there. After that and a stop on the nearby island of Aegina, we had to make our way back to Athens. I'll just let the pictures do the talking.
Ant

Thirty Days in Greece!

I can’t believe it’s been a month since I arrived in Greece! Some days it feels like the time has flown by while at other times it seems as if I’ve been here forever. Now that  I have lived here for four weeks, I thought I would share some interesting anecdotes about the cultural and political atmosphere in Athens.  In addition to the crazy driving and the abundance of dogs and cats, which I’ve already mentioned, another constancy is the presence of frequent demonstrations. Although I am careful not to get too close or to be involved, I feel privileged to be able to witness such a pivotal time in Greek history. As we have been told by CYA staff members, most demonstrations are not violent protests but planned expressions of Greek democracy. I’ve walked past three or four demonstrations since being in Greece and have never felt unsafe. That being said, this past Wednesday was a day of general strike and some violence erupted in Sytagma Square. I live about a twenty minute walk from this area of Athens so fortunately I was not anywhere near these protests.  I did however feel a small effect of the general strike, as I was supposed to meet my art history class at a museum but couldn’t because it was closed.

Another slice of Greek culture that I’ve experienced came in the form of the local farmer’s market. On Friday, my housemates and I decided to explore the farmer’s market that is held once a week in our neighborhood of Pangrati. It stretches uphill in the center of the neighborhood with vendors lined all along the street. We arrived at about 11 in the morning and were immediately engulfed by the crowds of people. Vendors yelled out prices while eager shoppers picked out the best fruits and vegetables. We ended up getting a ton of fresh peaches, grapes, carrots, and even thirty eggs! On our way back from the market, I looked up and noticed a gas station. I read the sign and took note of the price of gas. The sign read 1.235 euros per liter (that’s not exact, I can’t remember the specific number). Anyway, I was curious to convert this to dollars per gallon so I could compare it to prices in the states. After consulting with my housemates (and google), I discovered that the price of gas in Athens is currently about $9 or $10 per gallon! That’s right, next time you pull up to wawa just be thankful you’re not buying gas in Greece!

In addition to our adventures at the farmer’s market, this weekend a few friends and I decided to spend a day at Cape Sounion. We left Athens on Saturday in the early afternoon and took the 90 minute bus ride down the coast. The scenery we passed while on the bus was beautiful so I didn’t mind the trip. After arriving at Sounion, we ate lunch and then headed to the beach! The weather was gorgeous as usual and the sea was so clear and blue! Thanks to Anthony’s previous post, we kept a look out for sea urchins and avoided stepping on the few that we saw. After our swim, we headed up the hill to visit the Temple of Poseidon. This amazing Doric temple stands on a promontory overlooking the Aegean Sea. I don’t think I can describe how beautiful the view is from this cliff, but hopefully you can get a sense of it from the pictures.

Hope you enjoy!

 Sam  

Freaks and Greeks, Pt. 4 "Crossing the Gorge"

Since Sam pretty much covered everything there is to cover about Crete (and did so spectacularly) I figure I'll talk about the last day of our program wide trip: the Samaria Gorge. Located in the southern part of western Crete, the Gorge is a national park of Greece and a phenomenal place to hike. They argue about the distance, but it's somewhere between a 16 and 18km descent from the mountains, through the dry river bed and out to the sea (facing away from mainland Greece toward Libya). CYA hadn't been able to do the hike for several years because of inclement weather, so it was truly a special treat to be able to see such a natural wonder.

Despite the 5:30 AM wake up call, I managed to stay awake on the long bus ride from our hotel in Chania (on the northern side of the island) up the White Mountains to the beginning of the gorge. The hairpin, switchback turns up the sides of the mountains brought me back to my time in France and my unrelenting fear of the bus skipping a barrier and rolling down a canyon. Wonderful thoughts for 6:30 in the morning, of course. Luckily (and obviously, or I probably wouldn't be writing this post) we made it to the top unscathed, ready for the descent from the north towards that oh-so enticing goal of a black rock beach to the south. One look at the rising sun peaking over the mountain tops was all it took to get me excited for the day.

The first few kilometers are considered the hardest of the relatively straightforward hike - you spend the first hour winding down the side of the mountain on loose stone paths, dropping in elevation at an alarming rate. It can be killer on the knees if you're not careful.

When the beginning path finally leveled out we found ourselves at the beginning of a dry river bed - the very same river that created the gorge the same way that the Colorado River made the Grand Canyon. Springs and pools still dot the hike, and towards the end the river reemerges and follows the path. I'm glad that we did the hike at the end of summer - I imagine that the river must flood the trails when winter ends and the snow melts away from the mountain tops.

I was in the first group at the front of the pack, taking the hike at a brisk pace, so it was about two hours in when we reached the 8km halfway mark and the abandoned village that serves as a rest stop. It was a beautiful but chilling sight to cross the high bridge over to an almost empty settlement. The main inhabitants of the village these days are the kri-kri, a type of small mountain goat that's only found in Crete and on another small island. You're technically not supposed to feed them, but they're too adorable to ignore. Needless to say, I gave away all of the snacks I had packed to a baby kri-kri. I'm sorry to say that of the many, many pictures of a pygmy mountain goat eating from my hand, none have yet been posted. I scoured facebook for any sign of them, and this is the best I could do.





After that wonderful and animal filled pit stop we got on our way down to the lowest point in the gorge, leaving us with an 8k straight shot through the mountain pass. The sides of the mountain suddenly rise up above you on both sides, nearly blocking out the sun and reminding you of how small you really are and how big and grand the world can be. Mother Nature has a love of "Shock and Awe," I suppose. It was at this point that the river started running again, and we had to cross over from one side to the other multiple times, running over precarious wooden bridges that were missing just a few too many log rungs.

 After nearly 4 hours in the gorge we made it to the end and were greeted by the soothing sounds of the ocean. Or, at least I wish it were that easy. There was another few miles of poorly paved roads to navigate before getting to the beach and the ferry that would eventually bring us back to Chania. I got to witness a mountain goat fleeing from our group by climbing a minivan, though, so I guess it was worth it. The beach, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, was truly spectacular. The beach was entirely black sand and pebbles (which were boiling lava hot in the early afternoon sun, but who's complaining?) and the water had the most amazing blue tint that I've seen yet. It was the perfect way to cool off after the hike, and the perfect end to an incredible trip to Crete. And a preemptive thank you to Will and Mary, from whom I've "borrowed" these last two photos because my camera died before I made it to the beach.

γειά σας,
Anthony

A Journey to Crete!

      There are so many stories I could share about my time in Crete, I don’t know where to begin! I’ll warn you right away: this is going to be a long post! To start off, I’ll just mention a few things about the island itself and about the cities I traveled to while I was there. Crete is the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean and the largest of all the Greek islands. It has been under the control of many civilizations and empires over the course of its history and its art and architecture reflect these many cultural influences. Therefore, not only did I get to see the very oldest Bronze Age Minoan ruins but also Venetian and Ottoman structures and art work.  Over the course of five days, our group visited three of Crete’s major cities: Heraklio, Rethymno and Chania. Each of these cities is along the northern coast of Crete and contains a beautiful mix of mountain and sea views. In order to arrive on Crete, our group left the port of Piraeus in Athens and traveled by ferry (overnight) to the port at Heraklio. The ferry ride itself was a new experience for me so I was already so excited to begin the trip! We arrived on Crete early in the morning on Tuesday and launched right in to our busy schedule.

                                                                     On the Ferry!

 Day one began at the Minoan palace and city of Malia. Although it is difficult to picture now, Malia was once a thriving town during the Bronze Age. It was initially built around 1900 BC and was rebuilt several times only to be devestated once and for all in 1450 BC. I still get chills every time I step on a walk-way where I know people stood some four thousand years ago. After visiting the site of Malia our group continued to a second Bronze Age city, that of Gournia. This site, much like Malia, contained many of the standard features of a Minoan city such as a central court. Below are a few pictures from both archaeological sties.

                                                                   A giant Pithos!

                                      

                                                                The view from Gournia!

                         

                                                          The Mediterranean!

    After a long ferry ride and two hikes around Malia and Gournia, our group was ready for some relaxtion. We headed to the small (modern) town of Pacheia Ammos where we stopped for a late lunch and a swim in the Mediterannean! There is just nothing like floating in the clear blue water of the Mediterannean while taking in the beautiful mountain views. 

   Day two of our Cretan journey centered around a visit to the most famous Minoan palace: Knossos! Having learned the most about this particular site, I was so thrilled to be able to see it for myself. In addition to walking around the enormous palace complex, we also visited the Archaeological Museum where I got to see the Leaping Bull mosaic that I studied in my very first art history class at Tufts (see pic below). Much of the original archaeological site of Knossos was reconstructed by the archaeologist Arthur Evens so many of the pictures I took include views of his reconstructed columns and mosaics. The original columns were made of wood and thus do not survive.

                                                                    Knossos!

After seeing many Minoan palaces and cities, our group spent much of the last two days of our trip visiting more recently built structures. These included two Venetian Fortetsa castles, one in Rethymno and one in Chania, as well as a Venetian monastery. The Venetians occupied Crete during the 12th-17th c. AD and were eventually ousted by the Ottomans during the 17th century. It is still possible to see traces of both Venetian and Ottoman occupation on Crete. One example of this can be found on the original Venetian fortetsa in Rethymno where a church was converted by the Ottomans into a mosque. Evidence of traditional Turkish bath houses, called Hammams, can also be seen in Chania.

                                        Venetian fortress (above)/ Venetian church (below)
                                                    

                                  Another Venetian fortress (above)/ Church turned mosque (below)

                                                        

                           Church at the Arkadi Monastery (above)/ Turkish hammam (below)

It would be impossible to recount all of my experiences in Crete, but I’ll leave you with a few of my favorites: walking down 4,000 year old steps, swimming in the Mediterannean, visting the only remaining synagogue on Crete, holding a 3,500 year old pomegrante, seeing a reconstruction of a Minoan ship...and many many more!

Hope you enjoy!

Sam