Greece: Santorini, Ios, Athens and Parents: The Visit
April 24, 2007
Hello Everyone!
I know, it’s been a long time. In case you were wondering, no, I did not die on the sinking cruise ship near Santorini. I was, however, on the island of Ios at the time, and my ferry was delayed for several hours because it was rescuing people from the cruise ship.
Huge photo update!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/webmoof/sets/
I have uploaded about 500 photos from Greece. I will also try and put photos up from Hungary soon too.
I just had a Number Theory midterm and I think I did about average on it. Last week I was contemplating dropping the course, but I studied most of the weekend, so I hope it paid off. Even if it didn’t pay off grade wise, I have a much better understanding of the concepts now. And I find the problems interesting now instead of overwhelming. I only have one more month or so left. On Friday I am going to Istanbul and then the next weekend I am visiting family friends in Denmark. After that, I will busy studying (most likely) until finals. Onto Greece.
I absolutely loved Greece. I went with ten others from the BSM program and one person from McDaniel college (who goes to school in the same building). We flew into Athens around three in the morning and without spending more than four hours in the city, we were already on our way to the Greek Isles.
Santorini (Thira)
We took the long, seven-hour ferry ride in Economy class to Santorini, which means sitting at tables in a fast food restaurant on the ship. In other words, we didn’t get much sleep to make up for our sleepless night of travel (one of many to come). We had many fakeout islands that we thought were Santorini (like the fakeout hills of Bismarck…hehe), but Santorini definitely stood out from the rest. It is a circular group of volcanic islands (once one before a big blast) in the middle of the Aegean Sea between Athens and Crete. In fact, Santorini was the sight of one of the largest recorded volcanic eruptions. Some people even think Santorini was the sight of the ancient city of Atlantis (destroyed by the eruption). The main island is a crescent-shaped island with a lagoon containing the other islands (and the volcano) in the center. 
The inner crescent has high cliffs—it even looks like there’s snow on top, but no, the “snow” is actually the slew of white buildings on the cliff tops that form the major towns. It was a twenty minute drive up windy roads to get to the main town, Fira. After getting situated, the person at the hostel recommended a good place for Gyros—Lucky’s. Lucky is actually the owner of the Gyros stand, and everyone on the island affectionately calls him “Lucky”, and he, in response calls everyone his “friend”. I like that. “Friend” is so much more personable than “sir” or “madaam” or “hey you over there”. Lucky’s excellent pork Gyros topped himself. To go along with Lucky’s Gyros, I tried Fanta, which was the best Fanta I’ve ever had. Greek Fanta is 20% juice, compared to Hungarian (5%) and US (0%—figures). That night we went to a traditional Greek restaurant where I had an authentic Greek salad (the feta was excellent) and a chicken dish.
The next day we decided to rent two cars and drive around the island. Our first stop was a pastery shop outside of Fira, where we tried an assortment of pastries including Baklava and bread that was saturated with olive oil when baked. We checked out the black beach (named for the tiny, igneous pebbles blanketing the beach); however, it was cold (and off season). Next we went to the red beach in the south part of the island. The red beach is aptly named for its abundance of red sand and rocky cliffs. I decided to climb one of these cliffs. It was basically an uphill rock stream (boy did it flow) with bigger rocks on the banks. 
And when I was about 80 feet up, every single rock I grabbed a hold of came loose and the same with the person climbing above me, so I decided it was too dangerous to keep climbing, especially when a softball-sized rock almost hit my head from above. But how could I possibly get down? Everything was breaking around me. So I decided to slide down the rock stream and I created a little land slide. It was very thrilling. I decided to take it easy after that adventure. The other Dan and I (actually, there are four Dans on the program), decided to climb some safer hills near the beach where the others were basking in the light. We could hear the sounds of small creatures retreating into bushes as we wandered along. They turned out to be small lizards. Also, there were lots of thorny plants that smelled like oregano. Then we went searching for the ancient town of Thira. To get there, we had to hike to a clearing between two mountains. When we arrived at the top, Ancient Thira was closed. But we could see both sides of the sea from this point, and it was very windy. I could lean my entire body weight into the wind and not fall. Also I ran with the wind and it felt like I was the Flash. So we had fun playing in such high winds. At night we went to the northern town of Oia to see the sunset and we had dinner at a Polski-Greek restaurant.
The next day, four of us rented four-wheelers and the others rented a jeep. This was my best day abroad. What can be better than driving around an island in the Mediterranean on a four-wheeler? We drove along the inner crescent for awhile and then we found an off-road trail that went to a shore on the opposite coast. Along the way, we nearly ran over a rooster. It was standing in the middle of the road guarding it from our vehicles. Though, we kept driving and the rooster ran and flew down the narrow road for its dear life. I felt bad for the rooster, but it was so funny to chase. We took a break in a cave near the water. Then we drove to the southern-most tip to a light house on a massive rock. We climbed on the rocks, sat, looked at the Aegean while contemplating life for an hour or two and then we headed back to Fira. The sunset the first night wasn’t satisfying, so we decided to go back to Oia on our four-wheelers. To get there, there are some very windy mountain passes without guard-rails that were scary in our car and much scarier on our four-wheelers especially at night. And it was cold! The sunset still didn’t match the Santorini promotional pictures. Oh well…it was really hazy and cloudy. The next day we headed to Ios.
Ios
Ios is known as the “party island” of Greece. We arrived in the midst of the off-season, so we were literally the only people on the island; we could count the other tourists. Our hostel boasted the party image and each night we had “welcome shots” in the hostel’s bar. During the welcome shots and subsequent drinks, all of us at the hostel got to know each other (guests and workers included). I tried many different types of mixed drinks (When in Rome…). Our bartender was very nice, I would ask her to surprise me with a different drink every night. Then, after the hostel bar closed, the bartender led us to other open bars where we could meet up with the other four tourists on the island (ok, there were more like 20). We were in the main village of the island, which is a web of small passageways between buildings on stone sidewalks. The buildings were bright white and some sported blue trim forming endless Greek flag-like symbols throughout the island. Everyone was getting ready for something. They were painting the buildings a fresh white. The workers on Ios are from all over the world and the workers and the natives are very segregated. 
Our bartender was from Canada and just moved to Athens, but works in Ios during the summer. A nice man who drove us to the beach one day was from South Africa and lives in Ios for six months and vacations in Brazil for the other six. Very interesting ways of living! Ios had its rival to Lucky’s called Porky’s, which had nearly comparable Gyros. We had one full day in Ios, so I spent the morning doing homework and the afternoon at the beach. Ios was a relaxing stop before going Athens. There were many stray cats on the island, but that was nothing compared to Athens…
Athens
Because of our ferry delay, we didn’t get into Athens until 4 am, but I was too excited to sleep. So I got up early and walked by myself down to the Acropolis, which was about a forty-minute walk. I didn’t realize how high the Acropolis was from the rest of the city. Then I walked back and waited for the others to get ready and we went back to the Acropolis with stops at the open air market and the Roman Agora. At the open air market there was a man carrying a dead, skinned lamb on his shoulders. Next we saw the Agora and Hadrian’s Library. But I hurried along to the Acropolis, which was a Mecca of sorts for me. Actually seeing the Parthenon was one of my favorite things. Since Ancient World History in High School, I knew I wanted to visit the Parthenon some day. In the Great Conversation, we even had a plenary about what the Acropolis looked like in ancient times, and not to mention reading many relevant primary sources from ancient Greece. I knew I would go to Greece someday, but I never thought I had the opportunity so soon! It was so special to actually experience such an ancient city and to see the residue of the ancient city modulo many years and wars (sorry—I’ve been thinking Number Theory a lot this week). I couldn’t help but imagine I was walking in the ancient Agora meeting with the who’s who of ancient Athens. That night we talked to some guys originally from Australia and then some Belgium kids on the street. We had good conversations like why Belgium is the best country in Europe (apparently) and why the Europeans hate Bush (agreed).
Athens is a big, ugly city…and I love it. My last day I was standing on the tallest hill in Athens and looking into the sea of endless white buildings slowly being engulfed into the city’s smog. Athens is even whiter than St. Olaf (take that how you wish—I’m talking about the limestone). But I loved it because it was so different from the Central European cities that I have been to, in fact, it was so different from anything. Athens has a population of about 4 million humans, and, by some estimates, 150,000 dogs. Yes, stray dogs were everywhere in the city. Some were very cute, but they smelled terrible. My friend Christian petted one and said he never smelled such a bad smell. The area around the Acropolis, though, is very nice, especially the the area called Plaka, which has many nice restaurants. We ate outside right below the Acropolis two different nights.
The second day I wanted to go to Delphi, but no one else wanted to go; they didn’t want to travel anymore. So instead we took a bus ride to the Temple of Poseidon, which is on the Eastern-most tip of Attica. It turns out the bus ride was about two hours long and the Temple was closed. Also, we could have spent one more hour in the bus and seen Delphi. Oh well. I’m already planning my next trip to Greece, anyway. During the day we went to the Ethnographic and Archeological museum. At the Ethnographic museum, we saw many primary sources—official records of Athens and other cities carved into stone. At that moment, I really wish I would have taken Ancient Greek instead of Latin. The highlight was seeing Agamemnon’s death mask. We did a lot of wandering around the area too.
We ate below the Acropolis and I had a great meal, but I left early to go to a midnight Easter service. At midnight, every church bell in Athens was ringing. It was like a big clap for Jesus. Haha. First I went to a really small, Greek Orthodox church. Everyone had candles and two people were singing Bible verses back and forth like a debate in a melodic form sort of like the way we sing Psalms. Every once and awhile a pastor (or priest??) would come around and aerate the room with frankincense. While I couldn’t understand anything, hearing the chants (or whatever they were) was very powerful. One old cantor chanted with such gusto that I personally think he won the debate. On my way home, candle in hand, I went into a much bigger church and listened to more chants. I liked the smaller church better.
On my last day, everyone but Christian and I went to the beach. Apparently they thought “the beaches of Athens” would be better than on the islands. So Christian and did cultural things and we hiked up the highest hill in Athens. Then we went to Filopappos Hill and surrounding areas where many orators gave their speeches, where St. Paul preached a sermon, where Socrates was supposedly imprisoned and it also had a nice view of the Acropolis. Then we worked on Geometry because we were tired from hiking so much. Yes, we did modern Geometry perhaps a few hundred meters away from the place where the geometry greats of ancient Greece roamed.
In short, I loved Greece.
Parents Visit
A few days after I got back from Greece, my parents visited! It was good to see them. I could tell embarrassing stories about their visit, such as the time they lost their passports or the time my dad lost his camera lens cap or the how touristy they were (not that there’s anything wrong with that…I just like making fun of tourists since I am basically a resident), but I won’t tell those stories because I don’t want to embarrass them. We went to lots of restaurants on my street that are more expensive than where I usually go. We took a boat tour along the Danube. My roommate had his frat buddies in town, so they let me stay in the hotel for a night! On the weekend we rented a car and drove through the Hungarian countryside visiting Szentendre, Pécs, Esztergom and drove along the Danube bend and through many small towns. I think they’re ready to move to Hungary. I was very busy that week, so I didn’t see them much during the day except on the weekends.
Have a nice day!
Daniel