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! :)