Iraklion and Katalagari - Crete!

March 4, 2008

We went to an ancient site today, the site of Lato. The sign said that it was open, but the gates to the site were locked! So we decided that we would hop the gate and risk having to explain ourselves rather than skip the site. Leading us in the gate-hopping was 83-year-old Olin Storvick. That man is truly an inspiration. I only hope I can be that lithe when I’m his age. So, we get through the first fence and realize that there was yet another fence. About half of us hopped over that fence before someone realized that that gate actually was not locked. Good to know. We walked in, and it was another example of Minoan ruins (ruins being the key word there); so we wandered about in all of the rocks. In the ruins was a temple; even though most of the structure had fallen down, it's amazing how easy it was to tell that it was a place of worship of some kind. Another interesting thing that we learned there was about the shape of the orchestra (the stage, essentially) in theater, also known as the place where the chorus would hang out; in Roman times, there was an elevated stage and so that was where the action would take place, and the circular "pit" below the stage was where the orchestra was. In Greek times, there was only one level, and so the entire stage was called the orchestra. In Lato, there was a circular building called a tholos (every circular building is called a tholos) but this one was where the Greeks would meet to celebrate and dance after the harvest was in. The building was circular because the Greeks dance in circle, and people would start to sing and dance in the circle when they were celebrating. As we learned, the chorus in a play would also sing and "dance" and so that is why the stage was origionally built in a circle, or a half circle.
After that, we went to a church that was only about five minutes away. It is a very old church; the center aisle of it was built in the 13th century, and the other two aisles on either end were built in the 14th centuries. The icons in the church are obviously also that old, but exceptionally well preserved. The icon writers had to be fast painters, because they would coat the walls in fresh plaster and then paint on them before they had the chance to dry. This process made the colors very vibrant and also preserved them for a very long time. Some of the plaster had fallen off of the walls, but most of it was left. It was absolutely gorgeous. It was really hard to believe that they had been painted so long ago, because you could still see the brush strokes in many of the paintings. There were also quite a few icons in there that I hadn’t seen before; the right section was dedicated to the story of Mary, beginning with her conception and Anna and Joaquin’s celebration over Anna’s pregnancy, which are some icons that aren’t around very much. They had many different scenes from anything that I’d seen before, or if they were the same, then the interpretations were different; the murdering of the innocents had Elizabeth and John hiding in the background and the bodies of children were on the spears of the soldiors. The icons had a more realistic quality in their faces; you could truly see the wonder and surprise on Mary’s face at the annunciation and the tenderness between Anna and Joaquin at the conception of Mary, and the different tones of color in the faces of the icons was just amazing too. There were different shades that made you see nuances in emotion and even suggest the age of the people in the icon. Also, the dome in this church was different from any other that we had seen because it had to be held up with beams, it was so heavy. Therefore, the top dome was separated into four sections of Jesus’ life instead of just one pantor crator. That was closer to the front of the church, in a circle like it would be if it was in a dome.
We didn’t go to the other site that we were going to go to after that, because it was too close to the time that the aquarium was going to close!
The aquarium was really cool! We saw a squid that was about to die because she had just had her babies in eggs and even though she was in a tank with no other fish, and nothing else to threaten her children, she still will not eat so that she can watch over her babies and not be distracted. It’s a little like Charlotte’s web, I thought. Anther thing I learned about aggressive fish in aquariums was that if you wave frantically at them through the glass, they can see that motion and will come over and swim towards you, thinking that there might be something to attack. The person there explaining some of the fish and stuff to us told us that they feed the aggressive fish way more often than they need to be fed, just to be sure that the fish won’t attack each other. We also saw a paisley flounder with both eyes on one side of his head, because he spends his life swimming on his side. There was also a jellyfish tank that was pretty awesome, just because jelly-fish are.

Wednesday March 5, 2008
At Nikos Kazantzakis’ tomb, on the wall of a Venetian fortress, Rachel gave her presentation on the religious philosophy of Kazantzakis. We had quite the debate about the humanity and divinity of Christ, namely which one should be emphasized more. The Orthodox Church believed that the divinity of Christ was the element that should be at the forefront and Nikos believed that the human element of Christ was most important. They both believed that Christ was both divine and human, but it’s sort of a question of what ratio that should be in, for lack of a better word. Because of a lot of his beliefs and books that he wrote, he was eventually excommunicated from both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Some of his texts were “Christ Recrucified” and “The Last Temptation of Christ” which is still banned in some parts of Greece, it was so controversial. Blockbuster refuses to rent it out, but you can buy it on their website. I thought that it was a very interesting movie, because I think that the Lutheran Church, the faith I grew up in, tends to gloss over the human aspect of Christ, and his struggles and temptations and the ways in which he was like every other human on earth and mainly focuses on his divine attributes. I would recommend the movie to people over 18 looking for a thought provoking 2 and ½ hours.

I played clarinet today in the afternoon! I didn't bring mine to Greece, both because of weight restrictions and also fear of it being ruined, but David Wintersteen's son brought his to practice on, and I persuaded him to let me borrow it for a few hours (he hadn't practiced on it yet anyway). It was absolutely wonderful. I didn't bring anymusic with me, but there is a website called www.8notes.com that has free sheet music for any instrument. Most of it was pretty simple, but also quite beautiful. There were many pieces that I recognized, so that was great too!

Thursday March 6, 2008
Today was our first free day!!
After some necessary shopping (it is really warm here, and I did not bring enough short sleeved shirts), three of the girls and I walked toward the beach and lay out in the sun on the sand. It was wonderful. I went and walked in the water, and then some Greek teenagers came up and hung out beside us; they did go swimming in the ocean, which was a little too cold for me, even after having grown up in Grandma’s lake. :)
After supper, around 9:30, Peggy and Carrie took about 17 of us out to a hookah bar, which is mostly popular in Turkey, but this one had some Greek influences, naturally. We all smoked a little bit of hookah, which I thought was interesting. We tried orange, apple, and fruit cocktail flavor. Orange was my favorite. We also tried some tea that tasted like oregano or maybe thyme, or some kind of spice. It was really interesting, really bitter, but the baklava that they gave us tasted really really good. They were sorry, I think, because they were kicking us out early. Not many in our group ordered alcoholic beverages, and tonight was a special night with live music and a belly dancer, and we were taking up the room without buying enough. But, we did get to see the belly dancer, which was kind of a surreal expirience, but really beautiful all at the same time.

Friday March 7, 2008
We went to a Food Co-op that one of our tour guides, Dmitris, is a part of. It is basically a group, a rather small one, that gets together who grow vegetables organically, and set them out for people to buy. We tried some falafel, which is a chickpea patty with onion, parsely, cilantro, onion, salt, cumin, and other wonderful tastes, and it was really tasty! We had amazing tomatoes, and olive oil, and raisins, and such tender broccoli; I haven't had broccoli since I've been here. It was great! I am really going to have to buy a cookbook so I can at least attempt to make some of this food when I get home.
After that, we went to a ceramics shop, which was really neat. The guy who did the pottery wheel was amazing. He started out with a lump of clay on the wheel, and changed it from a bowl to a vase to another small type of vase, to a small shot glass, to a pitcher all with the same piece of clay, which is really difficult after the clay has been worked and shaped for so long. The other guy showed us how he did pottery without a wheel, by flattening it out and pressing the sides together to make pitchers and sail boats and plates out of clay. His wife was the person who paints and decorates all of the pottery that they make. I bought raki glasses there and also a pitcher to go with them and I really hope that it doesn't break on the rest of the trip! Carrie and David bought a sink! There are only 5 in the world, because the pottery wheel guy decided that it wasn’t worth it to make them because they rarely turned out. So hopefully that doesn't break on the way home either!

Saturday March 8, 2008
Today we left Iraklion and travelled to a small town called Katalagari.
The place that we are staying is amazing; in our normal hotels, there are about 3-4 of us shoved into a room together with 2 normal beds and 1-2 cots. Here, 3-4 of us have our own little apartment/duplex kind of thing. We have a living room space, a kitchenette, an actual bedroom, a really nice bathroom with a jacuzzi bathtub and a WASHING MACHINE!! The material that the mattresses are made out of are Swedish foam, which is really nice. It conforms to the shape of your body, and I've not slept so well on this trip yet! We still have 2 cots for two of us, but even the cots have this foam on them. And it is so nice to have free washing facilities, and finally have really clean clothes. It is great. I'm definatley looking this place up for our honeymoon.
The first thing we did once we got there was travel around the hillside to try and find some wild greens for the spanikopita we were going to make! Well, it was a spanikopita of sorts, because we didn't actually make it out of spinach; we found about 3-4 of the millions of different types of wild greens that we would need for our "spinach pie" and salad. We also saw some mandrakes, and for all you Harry Potter fans, no, they didn't scream at us when we pulled them out, but the flower itself is deadly poisonous, but the roots are used for medicinal purposes. We didn't put them into basket for the pie, obviously, but Katarina, our cook/teacher, wanted to show them to us, to make sure that we didn't touch them. We went to her house to roll out the dough and clean and chopp the greens for both the pie and the salad. She also explained to us that the phyllo dough was exceptionally thin, and Vassilis backed her up by saying that usually it was made by machines, but it could also, by adding an inordinate amount of flour, be made exceptionally thin. Apparently Vassilis does a fair amount of cooking. Katarina also gave a presentation using slides that looked like they came out of a Grecian Betty Crocker cookbook, explaining that the staples of the Cretan diet are wine, bread, fish and meat very rarely, and beans and wild greens, things that are cheap and easy to find, perhaps free to pick. The olive oil that she had for us was also extremely wonderful. We cut and chopped and washed in her house; she had just moved and the room where she normally does her teaching was full of boxes, the way that I understood it. We had a really great time, making our own food, and finally making some food that we’ve been eating this whole time from bakeries.

Sunday March 9, 2008

Today was the last day of Carnival. I have concluded that Carnival is awesome, even in the small town that we’re in. We left our little hotel around 1:00 after having a small meal, and walked about 1.5 miles into town. When we reached the taverna from where we would be watching the parade, the first person we saw was our cooking teacher Katarina! She looked happy to see us, and also a little tipsy, and we would find out in just a minute why she was so happy. We sat in the porch of the restaurant/taverna for a few minutes and watched some small children running around and chasing each other in costumes. For the little kids (and some adults) it’s kind of like Halloween back home; I saw at least 3 Supermen, a cowboy, multiple fairy princesses, and a Minnie Mouse, among many others. They were all so cute! We sat and chatted for awhile, and then *someone* (not our esteemed Concordia professors!) discovered that there was free box wine, water, and snacks across the street, and suggested that we should all go over and experience Greek culture. Needless to say, it didn’t take long before we all headed over there, but not before a man, dressed up as a, shall we say, not so very attractive woman, came over and “flirted” and danced with all of us. If nothing else, that definatley prodded us across the street. There was music on the street that was so loud, it was pounding all over the street; the music that they played was mostly American music from the 1980’s or so. When we reached the other side of the street, there was much more room for dancing, and we had a really great time! There were some guys dressed up in doctor costumes who started dancing the Zorba dance to “Ain’t Nobody Gonna Break My Stride,” which was pretty amusing. The longer we stayed there, the more loosened up everybody got and pretty soon, our professors were all dancing with us too, mouthing the words and busting a move. It felt like the after-party of a footrace, such as the Bix! :) This went on for a couple of hours before the parade started, which was very short, but exceptionally cute. There were a lot of small children there, showing off their costumes, and it must be a universal occurrence for teenage boys to spray the crowd with water guns and silly string; here I thought it was just our teen boys who were into that stuff! Silly me. After the parade, we decided that it was time to get back to the hotel, but not after some more dancing! It really was a huge street party, even though it felt like the crazy Americans were the only ones dancing . . . but there were 27 of us, including wives and children and tour guides, so we had enough of us that we didn’t feel too conspicuous. We left the party with most of the group a little bit happier than when they had first arrived. We walked back to our hotel, singing pep band songs and just generally having a good time. A few people poked their heads out their windows to stare at us, but in return we just shrugged and said, as an excuse, “Carnival!”

When we arrived back at the hotel, we were pretty warm, having hiked up a few hills to get back, and so a few people ran into their rooms to change into their swimsuits, thinking that they were warm enough to jump into the outdoor, unheated pool. Turns out that the pool was way colder than they thought it was going to be, so needless to say, it was an in and out kind of deal. However, a couple of girls in the group decided that they were going to jump in with their clothes on to cool off; after that, it was all pandemonium. It felt like we were on the raft at the lake, with people chasing other people all over and trying to catch them to throw them into the pool. I’d say that a good third of our group jumped, were pushed, or were thrown in the pool. One of the guys on the trip is a body builder of sorts, and he did not want to jump in the pool. However, a professor, his wife, and about 6 other students were adamant that he get wet; it took all of them to get him into the pool. I did not get thrown in, thank goodness, because from what I heard, the water was absolutely frigid, even though the sun should have warmed it up a little bit. What I learned today: Carnival is a complete blast, and don’t get too close to the pool when other people have had access to free drinks . . . :)

Monday March 10, 2008
Clean Monday!
Today is Clean Monday, which is the Orthodox Church’s equivalent to our Ash Wednesday; their Easter is way later than ours this year, around the end of April. Around 11:00 we went into town for lunch, which was one of the best soups that I’ve ever had, and it is always made as the national meal for Clean Monday. It was like a minestrone-type soup with white beans, carrots and a really thick aromatic broth. It tasted so wonderful. Another type of food that is special for Clean Monday is a type of bread that is baked with fish eggs in it; it is only made one day a year, on Clean Monday, because it is so difficult to make. We went to a school building for the meal, and watched some 5th-6th graders playing soccer, and David’s son Cameron played with them for awhile. Kohlrabi, homemade bread and butter pickles, olives, pepperocini, cauliflower, and fish eggs (pink caviar) were some of the other foods that were set out to eat. There were a whole bunch of other Greek people there, and I just felt so welcomed by them, letting a group of foreigners come take part in their special celebration. There was a man ladling the soup, a whole box full of bread that a little boy kept coming around with and putting more and more bread on our table, and then paper plates with vegetables and olives on them. Even though the meal was rather simple, it was still exceptionally festive. That meal is what is always served on Clean Monday. Like Catholics, the Orthodox Church abstains from meat during Lent, but apparently that doesn’t extend to guests, because at supper that night we had roast beef. Another tradition on Clean Monday is the kite flying. Vassilis wasn’t sure exactly sure how this tradition got started or why, but he knew that it had gone on for a long time. We went back to our hotel and put together some kites and tried to fly them on the front yard of our hotel, but the buildings were blocking most of the wind. We decided to go up the mountain behind the resort and fly the kites there. We were much more successful. Ingrid and Molly and I decided that we were going to make a wreath out of olive branches, and it was pretty neat! Then we got into an olive fight. Olive season is in the winter and ends in the early spring (beginning of February), so the trees were ready to be rid of their olives anyway, so it was okay that we were picking them off the tree and throwing them at each other. Everyone in our group was in agreement that Carnival and Clean Monday were awesome traditions, especially when it comes to the free alcohol.

Tuesday March 11, 2008
We started today at 9:30 with a bus ride to a local winery. Our tour guide there said that the wine brand, Boutari, has four production sites around Greece; the one we visited was the smallest of the four. It only produces 55,000 bottles a year. The woman who showed us around was the resident chemist for that site. She is the one who tests the wine to make sure that it is good; she is also the taste tester. White wine is made just from the juice of the grapes, but red wine is the juice of the grapes in with the skins and the seeds to make the color of the wine darker. The skin of the grape dyes the juice, and is also the reason why red wines are more bitter and better for you. They have to taste the red wines everyday to make sure that the wine is not in the skins in the vats for too long. We saw the place where they first produce the wine and where they make experimental new wines with different types of grapes throughout the regions of Greece and even other places in Europe. She explained to us that white wines need to be kept cooler than red wines as they are being processed, and then she took us into the room where they store the wine in huge barrels. The room was quite dark, and bit chilly, and rather humid, all which helps to retain the flavor of the wine. She also said that the wood from the barrels also helps give the wine some flavor and body, and that they don’t allow smelly items like onions into the room because that can affect the flavor of the wine also. We were then ushered into a room that had exceptionally deep and comfy chairs, where we watched a movie that was supposed to be about how to taste wine, but was a little bit trippier than I expected. I mostly napped during it, but then when the woman narrating the film said “now it is time to taste your wine,” we all woke up rather quickly. That was about a 30 second segment in the 10 minute movie, so I’m pretty sure that we were all using the extra time for a bit of reposition. So, to effectively taste wine (I am turning 21 in two days, so this is really useful knowledge), first you need to look at the color of it. Then, you need to swirl it around to release the aroma; then, obviously, you would smell it and try to identify all of the nuances in the fragrance of the wine. Then, finally, take a small sip and swirl it around on your tongue to try to taste all the flavors of the wine. The red wine we tasted, I thought, was rather sweet. I liked it. We went upstairs to try another red wine and a white wine. The white wine was called Fantaxometocho, which is what the actual wine production places are called. The root of the word relates to the English word Phantom. This word came about a while ago; when people owned large vineyards with large production plants, other people in the village would try to break into the production room and steal the grapes and wine. However, one smart vineyard owner began telling stories about how his vineyard was haunted, so then, of course, no one would want to sneak in his winery for fear of the ghosts, and to this day, wineries are still called Fantaxometochos. I liked that type of wine better than the red one that they had us taste. Oh, another bit of information I learned was that you always taste the white wine first, because it is the milder of the two. Also, when you go into small villages and order red wine, you will get a more rose colored wine. This is because people would manually squash the grapes and leave the skins and seeds in with the juice, but because of the immense amount of oxidation out in the area where they were producing the wine (probably in the middle of someone’s yard, as they do not have the production facilities that larger cities do. . . I’m picturing an I Love Lucy episode right now), they can only leave the wine to set out for a day with the skins in it, so it does not turn as red.

I hope everyone had a great Daylight Savings Leap; Greece does not partake in the wonderfulness of losing an hour, so now I am officially an closer to you all! :)

Traveling . . .

So, I haven't written for a while. We've had really sketchy internet access, there was one hotel that we were in where only one person could be on at a time, the next hotel we had to pay for it, and then we were on a ferry, where we also had to pay for internet access, so this hotel is doing pretty great in my book! In order to do some catching up, this post might be rather long, but it is in chronological order, and hopefully this takes my mom a couple of days to read. :)

Saturday February 23, 2008
We traveled from Delphi to Ancient Olympia today, which was another five hour bus ride south. We are heading towards the Peloponnese on this bridge that took six years to build; if it wasn’t there we would have had to go four hours out of the way to get to where we wanted to go. It was finished in 2004, just before the Olympics took place in Athens. The first official crossers of the bridge were the torch bearers for the Olympic Games. However, it was very expensive to build, so expensive that our bus had to pay a 56 euro toll, which is like $80. We figured it was probably worth it, considering we would have had to pay for the gas in the four hour detour. The bridge was really cool looking. According to Wikipedia, it is a true suspension bridge, with thin cables holding it up. The legs of the bridge are not dug into the floor, attempting to try and prevent damage from earthquakes. They are basically just sitting on top of the ocean floor so that they can move with the earthquake and not against it. It was a really pretty bridge. We arrived at Olympia, and met our guide at the Ancient Olympic museum. Olympia is most definately an ancient city; it mostly consists of , the site of the ancient Olympics, a few tourist kiosks, and the museum. A lot of the sculpture and artifacts in the museum were put there for when the 2004 Olympics were held, so people could tour it. The actual grounds of the Olympics themselves were pretty much ruins, due to all of the earthquakes that have occured since 393 A. D. It basically looked like a whole lot of stones strewn all over a quite large patch of earth. The few pillars that were up had been reconstructed so that people visiting the Olympic grounds during 2004 would be able to see what these temples would have looked like. The first “building” we saw was Hera’s temple, and experts really aren’t sure why there was a temple dedicated to Hera in the stadium, but it could be because this stadium was also where the women’s Olympic Games were held. Women, with the exception of the Priestess of Demeter who was allowed to attend the games, were not allowed to spectate or participate in the men’s games, because they all competed in the nude. However, a little known fact (or, at least a fact that I recently learned) is that the women had games also. Men were allowed to watch, and only women competed. They wore long white dresses with one breast exposed, to pay tribute to the fierce Amazonian women who were some of the best and most dedicated athletes of early history. The Amazons got so frustrated with their right breast getting in the way of archery and javelin throwing that they cut them off. So, that’s something else I learned today. Another thing I learned was that a marathon is 26.2 miles because, after the Spartans defeated Darius's Persian invasion, that is how far a Spartan soldier ran in his exceptionally heavy army and shield from Marathon to Sparta to tell the people that Greece had defeated the Persians. Because of his exhaustion, he died after uttering just those few words. The marathon is run in honor of this soldier, a general in the army. Another thing about the Spartans I learned was that retreat was a great dishonor. In the movie 300, the queen tells the soldier that he should either come home with his shield or on it, because to come home without a shield meant that he had shown cowardice and retreated. The shields are so heavy that it would have been exceptionally detrimental to getting away fast, so the retreating soldier would throw it away. When that man came home without his sheild, everyone would know that that man was a coward. Around the grounds of the games, we saw the 200 yard race, and almost all of the people in our group ran on the exact same grounds that countless athletes in the Olympic past had run. What a thrill that was! I just jogged it with some other girls, but it was still amazing to think about. It was a gorgeous day, only a few clouds in the sky, and the sun shining brightly, clear blue sky. Also on the grounds we saw the workshop where one of the ancient wonders of the world, the Gold Statue of Zeus, was built. However, the Turks stole the statue and attempted to confiscate it via boat, but it was so heavy that the ship started to sink halfway back and the statue was lost in the ocean. The shop had been converted into a Christian church. We walked around the ruins and lay in the sun, and it was altogether a very delightful time, other than the fact that we were all exceptionally tired. We also saw the house where Nero stayed in when he was a dignitary at the Olympics, and the place where the wrestling and boxing took place.

Sunday February 24, 2008
The day dawned lovely and bright as we got back on the bus to go to Areopoli. It was a great bus ride here, though, aside from all the twists and turns. It was totally gorgeous. We stopped for our break at a bakery, where I had a chocolate covered mousse thing with a cookie bottom and a cherry on top, which was absolutely delectable. For lunch we stopped at this restaurant that over looked the Aegean Sea. It was absolutely, stunningly lovely . . . wonderful scenery with traditional Greek music playing the background. I couldn’t help but think "this is Greece; we have finally arrived." It wasn’t the Parthenon, Delphi, the monasteries, or anything like that that made me feel all Greek-like; that mostly made me feel all touristy-like. It was sitting at a restaurant, eating souvlaki on a skewer, looking out over the gorgeous ocean that was so clean that you could see to the bottom of it from about 100 feet up, and it must have been about 10 feet deep. Wonderful, wonderful Greece.
We went down to the water afterwards, and saw a very small octopus!! It was really cool, it was in the very shallow water, and we only noticed it because one of the girls almost stepped on it! We waded in the Aegean Sea and skipped rocks. It was really lovely. Then we had to leave to go to silly small town that they thought had a castle and churches that we could go explore, but the castle remains (basically the foundations and the bottoms of the walls) were across the hill, down a valley and up another hill that would take way to long to get across than the hour that we had, so we didn’t go over there, and all of the churches were closed. So, we walked around the town and saw a hunter with two dogs, and also two donkeys and a horse.
Then we went to the hotel, but they weren’t ready for us, so we went and saw the sunset as close as we could get before it vanished in the haze. At the hotel, there was a spear fishing convention going on; at least, it smelled like fish and all of the guys were walking around with the words “spear fishing” written on their t-shirts and “scuba diving” written on their sweatpants, so we thought that those were pretty good clues; us goes 2 koleg.

I had a cold shower this morning. Apparently, the water here is heated by solar panels and so in the morning, when there has been no sun for the past 8 hours, the water is cold. We got on the bus, and traveled for about an hour to a place where there were a bunch of caves. There was water in the bottom of the caves, and so we got poled around in them by Greek tour guide people who did not speak any English. At least, the guide on our boat did not speak any English. It was really beautiful though, all of the stalactites and the water reflecting them. We were there for about 45 minutes and then we headed down to the beach for awhile. We all thought that the caves were going to be quite chilly, but we didn’t got down very far, so it was actually warm and even kind of humid. We trekked back up to the bus and rode for about another hour, during which I mostly slept. Travelling around all the time is tiring! We knew that we were going to be hiking around, trying to find a castle, but we weren’t exactly sure where it was and there wasn’t really anybody around that we could ask, so, pretty much we wandered into some bush and over rocks and prickly bushes and lots and lots of feces. It smelled quite a bit too. The view, however, was wonderful, with the mountains and the water, and there were some very pretty flowers; poppies are freely grown here and they really pop out against the grass. But, there were also a lot of rocks hanging around too, left over from the building of the walls, I suppose, and that made the hiking quite treacherous as well. Castle Tigani was the name of the castle that we were looking for, and it turns out that we were definately not headed in the right direction; we pretty much had to turn all the way around and go back in the opposite direction of where we had first headed. The climbing on that hill was pretty dangerous as well, since there were just rocks everywhere. But, most of us made it up the hill, braving prickly bushes, poop, and wobbly rocks. The castle was pretty much a ruin, but the view from it was fantastic; it was easy to see why someone would build a castle there. In one spot, you could hear the water rushing around inside of the caves in the cliff that the castle was on. It would be an amazing place to live, but it also seems like you would seriously be cut off from society, way up on a cliff that leads to nowhere. I guess maybe that’s how the royalty liked it. So, we had our picnic lunch up by the castle and it was warm and lovely. It was basically hot. Hot hot hot.

Tuesday February 26 2008
We left Areopoli bright and early to make it to visit all of the places that we were going to before arriving at our final destination of Tolo. Our first stop was the ruins of a Frankish castle. It reminded me of the movie “Timeline,” with the arrow windows that had a very large radius so that the person aiming the arrow behind the window has a very big target range, but the enemies outside of the castle have just a narrow slit through which to shoot their own arrows. It was pretty cool! There were also many look out towers with stairs so we could climb up them, even though they were kind of rickety, and there was also an old orthodox church that I don’t believe is working anymore because there wasn’t an iconostasis and the icons on the walls were pretty faded to the point that on some of them you couldn’t really tell what exactly it was supposed to be, but some of them we could still tell what they were because we were so well versed in iconography. We have done quite a bit of hiking on this trip, at least in the past week or so. After we got back on the bus, we traveled for another hour or so, until we got to a town that had 1000 steps that led to the top of a fortress on the top of a mountain, but the castle on the top was closed (it closed at 2:30) and so instead, some of the other girls and I went to go explore the town. Except that there wasn’t much to explore in the way of shopping, at least, since almost all of the stores are closed from 2:30 pm until 5:00 and then they’re open until 11:00 pm or so. It’s that way in pretty much all of the towns that we have visited. It would be nice, taking a break in the middle of the heat of the day and then hanging out late. The night life doesn’t really start until midnight anyway, and then they party until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning.
On our way to the hotel, we went through Sparta. There was really nowhere to stop, so on our way through, in recognition of the movie “300” and one person on this trip who is very much, shall we say, obsessed with the Spartan way of life, we all yelled “This . . . is . . . Sparta!!” Quite epic, if you ask me. We were at the Hotel Tolo, which had a beach view and a nice access to the public beach. I walked around the city, which naturally had quite a few restaurants and cafes with beautiful ocean views.
It’s gotten be a disaster with the showering facilities in nearly every hotel: in this one, it was that the water pressure is so great that you couldn't hang the shower head on the clip above your head. If you do, it flew straight up and then sprayed water above the shower curtain all over the floor and the mirror and got the whole bathroom wet, including pajamas . . . not to mention that the shower curtain nearly ate you because it sucked up on your body like a leach. In another hotel, there was no place to hang the shower head, so you had to hold it up yourself; taking a shower like that is rather difficult. So yeah, in a word, showering is almost always a fiasco.

Wednesday February 27 2008
Wednesday was another performance day, with everyone choosing a section from the play Agamemnon. It’s about the arrival of Agamemnon back home after he had gone off to fight the Trojan War. When he left, the winds were not favorable and so he sacrificed his daughter in order to appease one of the gods to get a good start on his expedition. However, in doing so, he angered almost every other god, and so had to know that disaster was awaiting him when he got back home. His wife, Clytemnestra (who had been sleeping with his cousin behind his back) claimed fidelity and then tricked him into committing hubris, which is thinking that you are better than the gods, over stepping your bounds. She then lured him into the castle and killed him in the bathroom by stabbing him three times. Two other girls and I did the scene where Clytemnestra is re-enacting for the chorus (and the audience) how she murdered Agamemnon. It was really fun! We all presented in the theater in Epidaurus, in the theater dedicated to Asclepios, a physician who was a mortal turned into a god by Apollo, his father. When we were in the theater, trying to do our performances, we didn’t exactly have exclusive access to the area. Other tour groups were coming in, and wanting to demonstrate the acoustics of the place, and this lady kept telling our group to leave. But . . . we kept coming back. There was also a small music/recital hall type ruin there that was being constructed, but we couldn’t see what it looked like. It was difficult even to imagine what it would have looked like, considering that the theaters are so big, and the room that was supposed to be the Music Hall was very small, seating for maybe 50 people at the most. It was definitely more like a recital hall than anything else.
We also went to Mycenea, which was considered to house the kingdom of Agamemnon and also his tomb and the tomb of Clytemnestra, which was very exciting! The tombs were kind of shaped like beehives, which was really interesting in itself. There were to sort of sarcophagi or anything like that in them; just an empty beehive that was exceptionally tall and the architecture and physics of it all were very interesting to look at. All of the bricks had to lay at exactly the right angle so that it would not collapse in on itself. It has been standing for quite a long time with little reconstruction, I think, so it worked! We went to where it is speculated that the bathroom is in the castle, and also we went in to a cistern where they kept water back in Agamemnon’s day; there was not any water in it but there were bats, which was kind of freaky. It was totally dark in there; we had to bring flashlights so that we could see. And what we saw was a lot of stairs; some poles; and also a lot of bats, in case you missed it the first time. They must have been used to humans, though, because none of them woke up and started flying through the air.
We went to bed that night, setting the alarm for 6:30 in order to see the sunrise over the water.

Thursday February 28, 2008
The sunrise was absolutely stunning. There were mountains in the background, and just enough fog to have some clouds to turn really rich colors of orange and pink, and it was gorgeous with the clear blue sky ahead and cool blue water stretching to the edge of the horizon, giving the sense of eternity and continuity of it all. We were headed to Corinth! It was not much of what I expected, though; I had always pictured it as this really biblical place, which it was obviously, but apparently there are usually groups of people praying at the site where we know that Paul stood, known as Beme. There is also reason to believe that the site where Priscilla’s (whose husband was Aquila) tent shop was located. Also, apparently Corinth was the Las Vegas of its time, both in Grecian and Roman periods. The word “Corinthian” means to pimp or to whore, which was news to me. On the Acricorinth, which is a hill/mountain on the outskirts of the town, there was a fortress and on the other side of the hill there was a temple to Aphrodite, where women would sell themselves (this was an honorable profession, mind you), becoming the person of Aphrodite in the temple. There were also aqueducts there that still had water in them. Corinth was so heavily populated that there had to be a huge supply of freshwater. We also got to see one of the most slender canals in the world. From the conception of the idea to the final carrying out of the plan, it took about 2000 years.
As we were going to be traveling by ferry to Crete that night, we decided that it might be prudent to first visit the temple of Poseidon, the god of the sea, to ask for a favorable wind and safe trip. We did not sacrifice anyone, though. It was truly another fabulous place, with the sea breeze in the air and the temple with the sea and the sun in the background. We climbed all over the rocks, and we also met up with a professor emeritus, Olin Storvick, who would be teaching us for the next week in Crete. He’s an archeologist who made a Newsweek worthy discovery of gold coins in Israel. He is eighty-three years young and is one of the spryest men of his age that I have ever met. He and his wife have been married for nearly 60 years, and he has been all over the world, teaching students and making archeological history. We traveled back to Athens in order to catch the ferry to Crete. It was a really nice boat, kind of like a moving hotel. A really smoky, moving hotel. We tried to watch a movie, but we were all so exhausted that we pretty much went to bed right away, around 10:30. Our professors told us that we had to meet in the lobby at 6:45 to get off the boat; however, the boat docked earlier than they had expected and right around 5:30, an automated voice kept repeating, in both Greek and English, that we needed to turn in our key to the front desk. Needless to say, we were up and at ‘em a long time before we needed to be.

Friday February 29 2008
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ASHTYN!!!!

We’re in Heraklion, the capitol of the island of Crete!! We made it to our hotel, exhausted and crabby and completely ready for another day out looking at rocks that had fallen down many years ago, and then reconstituted to what some Sir Arthur guy (not of the round table . . . that totally kept running through my head) thought that they should look like. We went to another palace that was built around the same time as Agamemnon’s palace, except in a completely different region of Greece. It was the castle at Knossos, the palace of one of the sons of Zeus and Europa, King Minos. When this site was discovered, it was the first time anyone had started to discover the ancient Minoan civilization. It was the place where it was thought that the Labyrinth that the Minotaur destroyed his victims was, and where Theseus finally defeated the half man, half bull creature. There was a lot of bull iconography and mural work there because Zeus was a bull when he and Europa “mingled.” We saw some people excavating with toothbrushes, which looked like a completely time-consuming task. We saw places that people thought might have been his throne room, and also reconstructed art work and also in the museum we saw a lot of art, pottery, sculpture, and statues. It wasn't really a long day, but we were all really tired from the lack of sleep that morning; I had an early bedtime!

Saturday March 1, 2008
We got up again at 8:30 am and we were off to see another castle, some other Minoan ruins in Gortyn, and then the beach! We traveled to southern Crete, to the second largest castle in Crete, called Phaestos. This was the place where a clay disc was found with many hieroglyphic signs on it that helped archeologists interpret the language linear B, which was used to keep track of economic things such as the number of sheep that a person owned, or how much one person owed another. Olin took us around the site, and commented on the proposed actual use of these rooms. It is all speculation, but many rooms have pithoi in them, which are extremely large ceramic vase-shaped holding tanks, basically, that were so large that the room they were fired in was the room that they had to stay in because they could not be moved. They held seed, oil, wine, and grain and other foodstuffs like these. They were as tall as an ancient human being, and some of the math majors in our group estimated that if they were full of water, they would weigh about a ton. These huge jars were also at the palace at Konossos, they seemed to be the best place to store food items during this time period, which was the late Bronze Age. We then traveled to Gortyn, which was the Roman capitol of Crete. What is so neat about this place is that the Law of Gortyn, which was a wall about fifteen feet long and seven feet tall filled with ancient Greek (Doric) writing with all of the laws of the city. The interesting thing about that is how the writing was written; "as the cow plows," that is the first line read left to right, and the second read right to left and the third read left to right and so on. It was also interesting because when the lines read from right to left, not only was the sentence backwards, but so were the letters. It was like trying to read in a mirror! We also saw the tree under which Zeus and Europa “mingled,” which was pretty sweet. There is also a cathedral at Gortyn, one of the first Christian cathedrals to be built. It was dedicated to St. Titus; yup, the one from the Bible. Apparently he was the first bishop of Crete during the sixth century. There is also a theater there and we had a “discussion” about whether or not both Greek and Roman temples had scenas.
After that, we headed back to the bus to hit the beach! It was a very nice day; most of us had already stripped down to the last layer we had. The town that we went to, however, was pretty much a ghost town. It is definitely not the tourist season here, and there was basically only one restaurant place open, but I did have my first taste of lamb. It really wasn’t that great, because it was mostly a bunch of bones and fat, but I also had a Greek salad, which consists of green peppers, onions, olives, feta cheese, and tomatoes. The olives on Crete are different than on the mainland; here, they are much smaller with hardly any meat on the seed and a lot more bitter than any olive that I have ever tasted. Good, but I can only eat one. After that, we went down on the beach, which was very nice and warm and laid out; I put on sunscreen, of course. The place we were at is called Matala, which is where Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, and a bunch of other hippies went to escape the world and live in the caves/crypts made in the Neolithic age up in the mountain for a few years. It is also where Zeus and Europa “mingled” for the second time, this time with Zeus in the human form, presumably. We were there for a good two hours just laying in the sun, relaxing with the sound of the waves crashing in the background. It was wonderful, one of the best things that we’ve done this whole trip, in my opinion.

Sunday March 2, 2008
Today was another 8:30 day; we were off the see the last castle on the island of Crete, Molia. It is the one that had the least amount of reconstruction done on it, but it was still really easy to imagine what this castle must have looked like when it was first built. I don’t consider myself to be an expert, but after seeing two partially reconstructed castles in two days, it actually comes pretty quickly. This castle was at least a two story one, with maybe a basement also. There were other structures around there too, where houses had been and where other people lived. There were these strange rocks here that were circular in shape and had small holes bored into it around the outside, and then one larger hole in the middle. Archeologists think that it was used for libations to the gods as some sort of holding place for food and wine that could be accepted as sacrifices to the gods, but no conclusive evidence has come out of that. It was interesting also because the height of the stairs was only about four feet or so, and we were wondering if that was all the taller that people were, because otherwise they wouldn’t fit on the bottom level of the house/castle. What probably happened is that the stairs have fallen after much wear and tear, and the stairs actually went up higher than it looks, but something interesting if the people were actually four feet tall is the size of the statuary that was created in that time. Those statues are larger than lifelike as it is; they’re six and seven feet tall, but if the people at the time they were created were four feet tall, that’s ridiculously out of proportion! Also, something around here smells like maple syrup when you walk through the fields. We have a couple different theories on that too; one is that there are underground bee hives, and the smell comes when there are larger than normal holes in the ground. The other is that it comes from the anise plant. The Greeks use a lot of anise here; in their drinks, in their desserts . . . there must be anise around here somewhere, but I’m not sure what exactly that plant looks like. We walked through the building on the site that had some of the pictures of the excavation and models of what the buildings were thought to have looked like.
After that we went to the cave where Rhea (Gaia, the mother goddess, one of the original three gods) gave birth to Zeus so that she could stay away from Cronos, the father who ate all of his children so that they couldn’t take over his position as king. It was a fifteen minute climb to the entrance of the cave, and I was expecting just a hole in the wall of the mountain, but when we reached the entrance of the cave, it was definitely more like a cavern. There were about 115 steps down to the bottom of the cave that was filled with water, and the cave is so old that the stalagmites have stalagmites. It was really deep, and not at all where I would choose to have a child, but it worked for Rhea. The cave totally blew me away; it was so amazing to see a place that existed for so many centuries and no one found it for a very long time. It is just mind blowing to see a place that you have only read about in mythology, and I don’t know how they decided that this was the place that Zeus was born, but either way, the cave was so amazing. The stalagmites were so long and had a green tint to them and water was dripping from the top of the cave and it totally defied my expectations. It was really awesome.
We also had an amazing lunch at this place; we had pork that was locally grownoff of the grill , and cheese pie with honey on them, and a good Greek salad, and good bread, and oranges for dessert, and then some kind of fig preserve thing with anise in it and covered in like, corn starch. I liked it, because I like black licorice. I thought it was really good!
After that we visited a monastery that was home to six nuns and the church there had some very old icons, many of which were faded off of the walls, but there was an interesting one of Jonah coming out of the whale, a fish with arms and legs. There were also chains there, a relic, and the people who came into venerate them would cross themselves, kiss the chains, and then wrap them around their bodies. It was very interesting to see, but because the nuns did not speak much English, it was difficult to ask them to explain what had happened or why the chains were in the monastery.
We came back to the hotel to see a ton of little kids and their parents walking around in costumes! Carnival has officially started! There was confetti all over the streets and later that night, I kept hearing these huge sonic booms, but I figured it was something dangerous and violent and didn’t want to look out on my balcony to check. A minute later, I heard Linka, one of David’s kids, running down the hall yelling about fireworks! So, I headed out to my balcony, but I couldn’t see them, so I ran across the hall to Nina’s room, because her balcony faced the optimal direction for viewing the fireworks. It was very exciting! Very Fourth of July like and fun! There were just a bunch of people out in the street watching and cheering, and of course more people from my trip in the balcony right next to mine. At supper tonight, we had a farewell for Olin, because this is supposed to be the second-to-last abroad program that he visits, making 35 trips, teaching around 500 students, and, if the time was consecutive, about four years. He is one brilliant man, he just seems to know everything but he is also very modest about it, knowing when he is right, but also knowing when to make concessions, and he always admits when he doesn’t know or isn’t sure about something. He is just a really great guy to have around, and I’m glad that he was able to come to our trip!

Monday March 3, 2008
We went to a museum that had information in Nikos Kazantzakis, who was a controversial Greek author. He wrote books such as “The Last Temptation of Christ” and “Christ Recrucified” which we are reading on this trip. He had some pretty different philosophies about Jesus’ divinity. The museum also had information on the Church of Titus that we went to the other day in Gortyn; it had the altar and iconostasis from that church and some relics and also had a picture of how the layout of the church might have been. There were some folk art instruments, like a bag pipe and a flute (maybe a fife, really) and some instruments with strings that you would bow. The bows had bells on them! They also had information on World War II in Greece, and how they were occupied by both Italy and Germany.
After that, we went to the biggest church in Crete. There were a lot of iconic scenes on the ceiling of the church and not too many on the walls of the building, which made for some serious neck craning. This church also had stained glass, which is one of the first orthodox churches I’d seen with colored glass of any kind. It also had very high ceilings.

Well, I'm going to do some more homework! I'll also upload some pictures sometime soon and add the link to this blog; it's a lot easier to do it that way. Thanks again to those of you who are sending notes to me! It's great to know that there are actually people reading all of this stuff I'm doing everyday.