Thursday, August 07, 2003

Lost and Found: Thoughts   International Worst Drivers Award, goes to:  Well, Morocco was definitely a front runner, with Portugal perhaps a close second.  Upon further review, its clear that Morocco has the worst pedestrians, no contest at all in that category.  It is the custom there that if you don’t have anything better to do it is expected that you spend the day standing around in the streets, preferably while talking on your cell phone.  Moroccans rarely have anything better to do.  That custom, plus the amazing variety of modes of transport, from donkeycarts and bicycle rickshaws to huge cargo trucks in a mishmash of a swirling ballet of vehicles and people, makes driving through Moroccan towns feel like the dog fighting scenes in Star Wars.  But the winner is – Greece.  We are driving on a single lane road.  We come to a traffic signal and stop for the red light.  We immediately have a car along each side of us, to the right and to the left.  Are they turning?  Of course not.  This is simply the Greek idea of an opportunity to pass.  The light changes to green and the two cars duel for the front spot.  Could I floor the gas pedal and make the game more interesting?  Well, perhaps if we were driving a Ferrari Camping Van, not sure they make one.  Traffic coming from the other direction is doing the same thing of course.  So, we’ve got six cars in a space maybe big enough for three, horns honking, lights flashing.  Emergency flashers in Greece have much more significance than they do in the rest of the world.  Turn them on and you suddenly have permission to pass anywhere, on either side of the road.  With the flashers going, you have the right to park anywhere… double, triple, block the entire street, it doesn’t matter, you’ve got your flashers on.  I don’t know how many times I’ve come around a tight corner to find someone in my lane heading right at me, emergency flashers going.  You would think that with such behavior the roads would be littered with smashed cars, burned out hulks.  You would be right. I can only assume that if you take a driver’s training course in Greece, they teach you to drive like that.  They probably have a whole chapter in their text about the powers granted by emergency flashers.  But, before you even get to the part about being able to drive a car, you have to spend an apprenticeship as a teenage kamikaze Moto rider.  At about the age of twelve daddy turns you loose on an underpowered Vespa or Honda 50, and you work your way up (if you survive that long) to a full fledged crotch rocket, proudly wearing Mad Max leathers with the 200 KPH skid pad between the shoulder blades.  Motos have rights not even granted to cars with flashers going.  They can ride on sidewalks, the wrong way on one way streets, and at high rates of speed through pedestrian only shopping streets.  In Italy I started noticing the broken thumbs, hands and wrists, white plaster casts, and arms in slings everywhere.  Casualties of Moto crashes, I’m sure.  I have not seen the same amount of bandages here in Greece.  I think that either Greek Moto riders are more skillful… or perhaps the narrow streets here are so crowded that they can’t actually reach the velocities necessary to cause serious bodily harm.  It just feels that they are going that fast when they are heading directly at you.  Oh, it just occurred to me… maybe they are going that fast.  Maybe their injuries are much more serious.   I’ve been meaning to write something about the campgrounds, here goes.  Basically there are two general types, those that have well defined spaces, usually divided by shrubs or trees, and the free style, open field type.  I am definitely more comfortable in the ones with designated spaces.  Especially the older ones, where the trees are tall enough to give good shade.  We’ve stayed in some very nice, obviously relatively new campgrounds, where I’ve thought, yes, it would be nice to come back twenty years from now when all these little  twigs will be big enough to keep the blazing sun off our heads.  In Greece we’ve found several places with artificial shade.  Frameworks of steel pipe with bamboo on top.  When they are tall enough to clear the open roof of the van, they are very nice indeed.  But even the shorter ones provide a good shady area for our table and chairs.  In the open field type, we’ve returned from a walk to town to find someone has pitched their tent immediately alongside our van.  Using it for a windbreak, I suppose.  So far no one has actually tied tent ropes to our bumpers. There are several things that determine our feelings about a campground; how comfortable we are, therefore, how long we are likely to stay.  Perhaps one of the most important things is totally beyond the control of the owners… the wind.  Most places we’ve stayed near the coast, any coast, have been very windy.  I think we’ve gotten used to it, but it does wear on you after a while.  I don’t know if it’s the sound, that white noise sound of wind, or the dust, or the way things sometimes skitter off the table.  The people in tents are much more bothered than us.  However bad it gets our old solid van is never likely to be sent cartwheeling across the campground.  Usually the first thing we do when arriving is check out the bathrooms.  Sit down toilets are a big plus.  Sit down toilets with toilet seats are a rare luxury.  Toilet paper in the bathrooms is good.  Toilet paper in the actual stall, where you don’t have to make and advance prediction of possible usage, is in the four star category… with seats, clean dry floors, and a lock on the stall that works; we are talking five stars.  I think the only one we found in that category also had life-sized marble statues of naked Romans and fresh flowers.  Too bad we couldn’t afford to stay there longer. (Even the ones with the fewest amenities are usually very clean, the only time cleanliness has been a problem is when there are busloads of teenagers at the site. RH) Showers are another make or break item.  My favorites are the places with Solar water heaters on the roof… we see them more and more.  It is amazing how well they work; abundant water, as hot as you like, for free.  Of course, I’m very conscious that Americans are considered water wasters, so I keep my showers quite short. (not me RH) That ex-Catholic guilt thing again, I guess.  But size is important… can we actually keep our towel and clothes dry while we shower? (Kara the green backpack work great for this) Every once in a long while we come across showers with large stalls and a little bench, oh what a thrill!  But the normal is a small phone booth sized stall, a battered shower head that shoots water in unexpected directions, or worse, just dribbles.  Consistent water temperature is rare.  I’ve learned to look for the shower stall closest to where the hot water enters the building, pick the one on the end of the row and you are asking for European water torture.  Of course, sometimes there is no hot water, or you have to put a coin or token into a meter.  No solar water heater in those places, obviously.  But our all time favorite shower… Said’s place in Morocco, where we had to dump plastic buckets of cold water on our heads… that was fun. (It has been so hot that cool showers have not been the problem I would have thought. RS) I do confess, a big issue for me is the neighbors.  Call me a bigot, but when I hear loud conversation going on, it’s usually in German.  It’s not their fault, there is just something irritating about the German language… Dutch also, they are very closely related.  I’ve read that Americans are considered real loudmouths, but we’ve met so few in the campings this year… not hard to understand why.  Here in Athens, we are hearing a lot more American English being spoken in the street.  The Greek and Italian languages are very pleasant to listen to, especially the Greek.  The other night there was a loud conversation, perhaps a friendly argument, going on nearby in Greek between several people, and it was almost melodic.  Like different tones of cascading water, the words tumbling over each other, very soothing to listen to.  With, of course, no clue to what they were talking about.  We have had very good luck in campground restaurants.  There is one in this campground we haven’t had time to try out yet, but it looks very nice, a windowed deck overlooking the Med.  Maybe tonight.  We’ve had some great, and often inexpensive, meals in campgrounds.  The place in Ronda, Spain was a definite highlight, great meals, great wine.  You know you are in luck when you walk in and there are local people who’ve come for dinner.  Location is a big thing.  A few times the campground wasn’t that great, but the view was incredible.  Something about being near water, the almost mythical campground with the private beach.  The place in Ioanina, Greece, on the lake, with the rowers in their racing skulls going back and forth, was very soothing.  Convenience can make a big difference.  The campsite in Pompei for example, with the train station and the ruins just outside the gates.  Made it easier to tolerate the crowded bathrooms and blowing dust. I guess the main thing is that each place we’ve been has it’s own personality.  We’ve been very happy in places where the facilities weren’t that great (now I’m thinking of the Dutch place in northern Portugal with the animals grazing) but the spirit was so positive and uplifting.  Other places with the best landscaping and sparkling facilities, somehow just felt impersonal and barren.  We just didn’t want to hang around longer than necessary.    Another area I’ve been meaning to talk about is the people we’ve met so far.  One of the most fun things I remember from my first trip to Europe were the friends we made along the way.  Mostly young Americans we met in the campgrounds.  Of course, we were hitchhiking, and that is a great way to meet people.  I had hoped that we could return the favor and pick up a few people – but hitchhiking seems to be a thing of the past.  Actually, at inconvenient times (like walking, for example) I think we’ve seen three people, two guys hitching together, and a single (brave, or crazy) young girl with their thumbs out.  But the reality is, either because of the poor economy or fears of terrorism, there seems to be very few Americans traveling in Europe this year.  Here and there we have met the occasional exception.  The great old couple from Hermosa Beach, touring once again in their cool 70 something green Oldsmobile, they send over by container ship.  The couple Rhona met in Cinque Terra with their hammockjunkies.com email address.   At Ionina in that campground by the lake one afternoon a sudden thundershower came up.  I climbed in the van and converted from sleep mode to sitting around in the rain mode.  Just an amazing amount of water was coming out of the sky.  In a couple rainstorms in Spain we had a problem with rainwater collecting on the gazebo tent.  There’s a tube frame, with a light canvas roof, and where the roof crosses the side tubes it would belly and collect water, I’d have to push it out in the mornings.  Well, Rhona was cooking dinner, I was playing on the computer, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a corner pole of the tent go by the window.  I jumped up, out the door, and found total disaster.  A tent peg had pulled up, the canvas had huge bellies of water collected on two sides, a roof pole had collapsed, the corner pole I had seen go by was tipped into the center, a side pole was broken, and the rain was coming down like someone had a fire hose pointed at us.  I struggled to pull the tent upright, but the water on the roof was so heavy I was making no progress.  Suddenly these three big Dutch youngsters ran up, within moments we had the water pushed out, a splint gray taped to the broken roof pole, and the tent righted, repegged.  We shook hands all around and went back to waiting out the storm.   Later, Rhona made a trip to the bathroom and stopped to thank the boys who were sitting in kind of a community picnic shelter not too far from the van.  She came back to the van and told me I should go talk to them, that they worked with SolidWorks, my solid modeling software.  They were university students from Leyden, Holland, I hope I’m spelling that right.  Anyway, we talked about CAD programs and engineering, and the Dutch university system… and as such conversations do… rambled off into all kinds of directions.  I’ve got their names and emails written on a paper here, it’s a bit hard to read, I hope I’ve got it right, there was Remco, his brother Gert-Jon, and their good friend Ad.  What Rhona and I remember about them was how intelligent they were, what a bright clear vision of the world they seemed to have.  Very friendly, very interested in what we had to say.  We talked about how European engineering schools make sure the students have hands-on training.  We talked about Amsterdam and my memories of how things were there in the seventies.  I mentioned that I had heard a lot of negative comments about the city, about heavy drug use, how the charm of the city seems to have been ruined.  They strongly disagreed, and reaffirmed a lot of my cherished memories of the Dutch society…  there are now government sponsored krack houses… no, not what you are thinking.  A krack house is a building that has been broken into, usually by groups of young people.  It happens because of the strict Dutch rent control laws.  Landlords let apartments stay empty until the last occupant moves out.  Then they sell the building for a huge profit, and the new owner can set new rents based on the current market.  So all these apartments sit empty, at the same time that young people can find no where to live.  While Jaine and I were in Amsterdam we were living illegally in a small room (where Kris was born), but we had friends who took over a building where only one apartment was legally occupied.  The landlords don’t care that someone moves in, as long as rent is not paid… legally, the building is empty and can be sold.  At that time, of course, anyone living there is evicted… but it can take years for the last legal tenant to move out.  We found out that the power company had specially trained crews to check the krack houses for safety and turn the power back on.  They had been trained to deal with people who were basically trespassers and might be paranoid about dealing with authority.  We were at a party once where a crazy guy (American, as I remember) decided to entertain us with a trumpet solo.  After a little while there was a knock at the door and two smiling young Dutch policeman were in the hallway.  They were very quick to tell everyone to relax, that we were not going to be arrested or kicked out of the building; but the trumpet had to stop, the neighbors were complaining.   According to our three new Dutch friends, the Dutch government has gotten involved with the game, it’s going to be very interesting to find out what’s going on.   Rhona made a trip to the campground store and bought some beers, and we sat and talked about life.  They were very curious about my experiences in Viet Nam; we talked about international politics, the Bush family war, sex, drugs and rock and roll. (The boys paid Larry an excellent compliment that I guess he was too modest to share. One of the boys told Larry, “Talking to you has been a revelation”. I think they will remember many of the things talked about that evening as they grow from boys to men. RH)    Yesterday we met a very nice young French couple who both speak excellent English.  They are planning to visit a Greek island also, we are sharing the information as we gather it from the agencies we visit.  Today I hope to download a bunch of information off the Internet…  The problem is, there are so many islands, so many options….  They, like us, want to avoid crowds and the all night party islands we hear so much about.  They are such nice, clean cut kids, not a tattoo or a piercing between them.  Actually Rhona and I could probably handle a party island better than they would.  Anyway, what I’m saying is that part of this traveling experience is the people you meet.  We automatically have a lot in common, dealing with the same challenges, with pretty much the same goals.  Camping people really don’t have much in common with hotel or tour bus folk; they are traveling in a different world, with their own set of problems and ambitions.  We occasionally see them being herded from place to place.  Occasionally we will eavesdrop on their tour guides in museums or cathedrals….    Anyway… I do miss that tight little community feeling of a cluster of Americans in the campgrounds…. Maybe that experience is down the road a bit further.   Rhona and I were talking about the way our feelings about being tourists are changing.  It’s really not a matter of burnout, but we do notice a sense of been there, done that, sometimes.  Really do not need to see any more huge Cathedrals…  oh, maybe one more, but it better be spectacular.  Rhona is about done with ruins, and I have to admit fields of hot rocks, no matter how old they are, are losing their fascination.   We drove up to Mikines, on the way here.  Once the capital of the Mycenae civilization, the walls were built somewhere around 1400 BC.  That is seriously old.  There are supposed to be a couple headless lions carved on some huge blocks of stone, one book said the biggest monuments in Europe.  Oh well.  We got up to the parking lot, looked at the huge old walls for a while, watched the people clambering over the witheringly hot hillside, and I thought, do we really need to pay another 12 Euro admission to another pile of rocks?  I was looking forward to seeing the gold armor that was found in the Myceaen tombs, but they are all in the museum in Athens… the one that’s closed for renovations for the 2004 Olympics….  I think what’s happening to us is that we are still open to the interesting and unique, but the man made stuff is losing it’s appeal.  The natural sights, they are always interesting, the waterfalls and canyons and vistas, that never gets old.  I still enjoy visiting, especially the smaller towns, just to see how the people are living, how they make their living (hopefully not just off the tourists that come through).  I still enjoy reading about the history of an area, how it got to be what it is today.    We’ve realized that the European travelers are really the lucky ones.  Americans are doing good if they can get one trip to Europe in a lifetime, and then their time is usually very limited.  Europeans just drag the old caravan down the road for a couple days just about anytime they feel like it.  In the States we’ve got the old choices, the mountains or the beaches, but a two week tour of campgrounds doesn’t get you very far.  And the cultural experience surely isn’t near as interesting.  Well, maybe the folks that can get down into Baja or Mexico itself can have something like the European experience… but even then, there are those long empty highways that must be crossed.  Yep, the Europeans have it pretty good.  We bought the van from a guy who used it to buzz down to Portugal every so often.  Probably a two or three day trip, a whole different world from London to northern Portugal, for sure.   All in all, the bottom line is that Rhona and I know that we are incredibly fortunate to be having this experience.  Whatever the irritation of the day might be, we know it means nothing compared to the memories we are collecting.  I hope you enjoy coming along with us through our pictures and words. 8:39:14 PM    comment []

Looking back at Naples, Pompei, Sorrento, Herculeum   The area of Naples has a great tourist deal called the Art Card.  For twenty five Euros each we got a three day pass on all the trains and busses in the area, one round trip boat ride, free admission to two sites of our choice, and fifty percent off any others we visited.  It was really great to be able to jump on any train or bus that we wanted.  We spent the first day walking through the ruins of Pompei, about a hundred yards from our campsite.  We do like things to be convenient.  The train station to Naples and in the opposite direction, Sorrento, was just across the street, just outside the campground gate.  The new town of Pompei, with it’s stores, internet office, and restaurants, was a short walk farther on.   I’ve had a difficult time trying to describe what visiting Pompei feels like.  It’s really not the snapshot of Roman life that the books I read in high school lead me to believe.  You have to really use your imagination to picture the city the way it have looked almost two thousand years ago.  It was very hot, and the rugged stone streets and sidewalks were tough walking.  The most amazing thing is the sheer size of the place.  You realize, this was a city where 20,000 people lived; ate in street corner restaurants, attended plays and athletic events, worshipped their gods.  It was interesting to see that the homes of the wealthy were designed to impress their visitors, the way the entry opened into an atrium with statues and fountains, made sure that the social status of the owner was immediately clear.  People really haven’t changed much.    A day later we took the train to Naples to see the Museum.  When excavations first began, the archeologists removed wall paintings, floor mosaics, statues, and took them to Naples where they could be protected.  Museums can wear on you after a while, but we had a wonderful day.  Hopefully you can get some idea from the pictures we posted in our Yahoo Photos.  Naples itself, out on the street, was everything the guidebooks said.  Dirty, noisy, crowded….  I guess the city is surrounded by so many ruins that they don’t believe in paint and plaster.  Rhona enjoyed the people watching, maybe we should have given it the three or four days the books say is required to fall in love with Naples.  Next trip, perhaps.  The place we loved was on the opposite end of the Bay of Naples – Sorrento.   Naples is to Oakland as Sorrento is to Carmel.  Maybe not quite so high end.  The place has been a tourist destination for a least a thousand years, they’ve got it down.  Not in the least bit tacky… oh, if you must buy a T shirt, I’m sure you can find one.  I’ll always remember the empty little club we walked into just off the main square.  A series of connected cave-like rooms.  A tiny dance floor.  Friendly waiters that set us up with a bottle of the Italian bubbly Proseco, a little basket of nuts, a little basket of chocolates.  Rhona was in heaven.  The musician was a distinguished looking fellow with a bank of keyboards, a one man orchestra with a wonderful voice.  He alternated romantic American and Italian songs, and Rhona and I danced.  That song… “I couldn’t love you, any better, I love you just the way you are…”  (have no idea what the title is, was it a Chicago song?)  Anyway, it’s officially our Song now.    The next day, we visited Herculeum.  Covered by the same eruption of Vesuvius that Pompei was, but not in the same way.  Pompei was buried in ashes, all the roofs collapsed.  At Herculeum, there was a tremendous pulse of hot air that charred wooden beams, but many of the buildings are intact.  Gave a much better feel of how it must have been.  It was a much smaller town, not the big religious and political center that Pompei was, mostly houses… and the mandatory Roman baths, of course.  Later we took the train back to Sorrento and took our free boat ride down the Amalphi coast.  It was just an absolutely gorgeous day.  Picture Big Sur with villages tucked into the cliffs.    There is a whole lot of Italy collected into a small area, the Bay of Naples.  The volcano, Vesuvius, is the backdrop, life goes on unafraid that it just might erupt again.  It’s part ugly, part beautiful.   The story of what happened, what might happen again, is horrible, frightening.  The wonderful people who live there seem to love it just the way it is. 8:37:40 PM    comment []

8-7-03, Rafina, near Athens, Greece   I guess when we thought about going to Athens, we didn’t realize that the preparations for the 2004 Olympics were going to be such a problem.   It’s hard to believe that they are going to be ready in time.  The road to Athens from this area has been torn up.  Why they don’t repair one section at a time is beyond me… for at least twenty miles they are excavating, diverting traffic along a narrow barricaded path.  In Athens yesterday we discovered that the main attraction, the Archeological Museum, is closed indefinitely for remodeling.   They couldn’t do it one room at a time?  The Greek Tourist information office had a sign in the window that said “Closed Until April”.  Which April, I wondered?  We did see some kind of sports complex that looked finished, from a distance, anyway.  We went up to the Acropolis yesterday afternoon to discover that the major sites are under construction.  Scaffolding covering the Parthenon, the Temple of Athena Nike is gone,  taken down to be rebuilt.  But we did ride on a bright spanking new Metro, it’s ready.  Unfortunately for me, the thieves are ready also.  A team of pickpockets got my wallet.  We had met a young French couple waiting for the bus at the campground, we were following them to the (closed) tourist office.  We went down to the Metro station, got in a very jam packed car, and rode to the next station.  There was a guy alongside of me who put his forearm into my left shoulder as if to push me out of his way.  The door opened in front of me, I moved towards it, the guy continued to push, there was some old woman in front of me in my way, I was struggling to get to the door, and I realized my wallet was taken from the zippered pocket on the front of my shorts.  I turned just as the door shut behind me, it time to see the guy who had been pushing on me duck out the open door on the opposite side of the train.  There was no way I could have got to him, but I’m pretty sure that if I had, it was someone else who had actually taken the wallet, and perhaps a third person who now had it.  I’d been warned, several times.  Many times from London to here I had been aware of the danger.  I had often told myself, when something weird happens, reach down, protect the wallet.  Well… I didn’t.  The good news is that I lost very little, considering.  My California driver’s license won’t be hard to replace, I have an International permit safe in the van.  I called the credit card company to tell them my emergency card had been stolen, so that’s not a problem.  I had maybe eighty Euro in cash, I guess I’ll call that tuition.   But it did hurt my feelings.  I’ll get over it.  Rick Steves says, if you are going to travel, it’s going to happen…  but not to me, Rick, not to me….   Last night was fun.  After the day in Athens (first day, our blunder around, get our bearings day) we found our bus back to Rafina, the little town on the opposite side of this peninsula from Athens.  Signs in Greece are a definite challenge.  Two different versions of names in Greek in two different alphabets, neither one recognizable.   It’s bad enough when you can’t read the words, but when you don’t even know the letters, it’s twice as hard.  A word just won’t stick in my memory if I can’t interpret the writing.  We often find signs in English, but no such luck in Athens.  But we found our way (Rhona found our way) back to the park were the bus had dropped us off, and after asking only twice (a new record, I’m sure) we climbed on the right bus homeward.  So much nicer to be riding through the construction, letting the bus driver deal with it all.  Made me almost giddy with delight.  Pretty soon we recognize downtown Rafina, the square.  Very nice little town, Rafina is…  a port where boats to some of the Greek islands depart and arrive.  We walked down to the docks, little restaurants alternated with fish shops, all kinds of good looking fish, squid, octopi, all nicely set out on crushed ice.  Guys standing out in front of their little restaurants, chairs and tables out into the street, asking us to sit and eat.  Which to choose?  I decided I was in the mood for a cold draft beer.  Maybe several.  So that narrowed the possibilities quite a bit.  Finally we choose a tiny little spot, walked through the kitchen and climbed two flights of narrow wooden stairs to the top floor, an open balcony.  The waitress came, we asked if they had fish, and she said, nope, only meat.  Well, I was thirsty, and we had climbed those tiny stairs, so we ordered a beer and a glass of wine for Rhona.  While waiting, we read the small menu….  Chicken on a Stick in a Pie caught my eye.  1.60 Euro.  Chicken on a Stick in a Pie.  How could I pass that up?  We decided we’d come back another evening for the fresh fish dinner at one of the other places.  With my Chicken on a Stick in a Pie I had a pork Gyro, which I thought was going to be a sandwich, but turned out to be chopped pork in onions, very tasty indeed.  Rhona had the chicken version of the same.  Oh yeah, that was the funny part.  I usually just order something and take my chances.  Rhona always asks the waitress what something is…  She asked… the waitress said, “Just like his, only with chicken….”  Okay….  Rhona also had her eye on something called Fiery Meatballs something, but the waitress couldn’t explain that one, so she went with the chicken version of whatever it was I was about to eat.  And we shared a Greek salad…  which I am really developing a taste for…  big chunks of tomatoes, cucumber, sliced mild peppers, olive oil, and a big hunk of Feta cheese on top.   Ummummm…  turned out, as usual, to be more food than we could handle.  Chicken on a stick?  Well, it made sense… Shish Kebab chicken, lightly spiced, in a hunk of delicious pita… The beer was cold and Rhona liked her wine.  We watched the ferry boats come and go and the crazy Greek parking going on down below…  a little more than 20 bucks total.    Back down the stairs and back into the town square.  Lots of people sitting around, enjoying the cool evening.  We explored a few side streets, and for a few Euros took a cab back to the camping.   (GIRL STUFF…Athens really is in a mess currently, it is a fairly windy city and dust and construction debris are blowing everywhere. Many sidewalks are torn up which means you are forced to compete with the cars & mopeds for a place in the streets, it gets pretty crazy.   I am once again amazed at how much all the cities are the same. Polo, Calvin Kline, Armani are everywhere, if you are close to a beach O’Neil and Oakley are ever present along with McDonalds, always good for a bathroom and drink with ice at a reasonable price. A coke can range in price from a low of .50 euro to 4.00 euro, just depends where you are and if you want to sit down. RH)       8:36:42 PM    comment []

8-3-03    Tolos, Greece   We found what may be the best campground yet.  It is a bit noisy and crowded, but all Europe is this month.  What’s more important to us, the facilities are large enough to handle the people.  And the location… I don’t think it gets much better than this.  We have gone beyond Rick Steves.  Our last travel day was Delphi south onto the Peloponnesian Peninsula.  Our target town was Nafplio, another Rick recommendation, but our maps didn’t show any campgrounds nearby.  People tell you that things are much closer together in Europe, and of course that’s true – although there were some stretches, central Spain for example, that did feel a bit like Texas.  But Greece is all wrinkled up with mountains; you can drive twenty miles and be in a totally different place.  We had no problem getting to Nafplio, a very pleasant cruise, much of it on an inexpensive toll road.  We drove through town to the harbor and found a café on the rocks overlooking the small bay.  A Club Med ship was anchored offshore, we sipped our drinks and watched a couple rubber boat loads of tourists snorkel near the breakwater.   We did have a lead on a campground.  The place we stayed in Delphi is part of a chain, they gave us a map and brochure of their other campings, there was one in a little place called Tolo, a bit farther south.  Tolo turned out to be a beach town, the camping looked dry and dusty, on a corner of two busy roads.  We drove on, around a couple corners and we found a small camping sign pointing to a dusty parking lot next to a rough looking Taverna.  There are some kind of ruins on the other side of the lot.  But a dirt road heading back into some trees…  and a wide lawn with a row of big palm trees… a very nice reception office, more like a resort than a campground.  We’re home again.   We are three rows of tents from the more or less private beach, patches of sand and small pebbles.  The water is warm; Rhona is down checking it out at the moment. (The water was very warm, clear, few waves and no seaweed either. Kara, you would have loved it. I took several swims and read on the beach most of the day. Not a ruin in sight, unless you count the old gals in bikini’s RH) Let’s see… we drove in on Friday afternoon, got setup and had dinner, took a walk on the beach in the dark, just a sliver of moon.  I promised Rhona a break from ruins; she’s about ruined out.  I have to admit that climbing up and down steep hillsides in 100+ temps looking a piles of old rocks does lose it’s charm after a few days.  I guess it’s been weeks….  Yesterday was her fault.  She’s the one who noticed that there was a play last night in an ancient Greek theater just a few miles from the campground.  She found out from the lady in the reception office that we could still get tickets at the site.  Got out the green Michelin book.  It’s called Epidavros.  Kristina Marie, you have to check this place out.  Your whole life, summed up in one huge pile of rocks.   We decided that since we really hadn’t got into full camping mode, we might as well take the car and drive to Epidavros in the morning, see the ruins, hopefully buy tickets to the show, and then decide what to do next.  It looked like a long way on the map, from one side of this little finger of Greece to the other, but it took about twenty minutes.  Kris and Matt, this is pretty much where your profession began.    Okay, I glanced at a few books in their museum shop yesterday, and with the green book, this is the story I got.  The Mycenaeans were a group similar to the Minoans from Crete, who flourished in this part of Greece around 1500 BC to 1200 BC.  There was a spring near Epidavros where they had a temple to a god, who among other things, was believed to have the power to heal.  So sick people in the area would travel to the spring, pray to god, and hopefully, be cured. The Greek version of this story begins around 600 BC with a cult that worshipped a god named Asklepios.  Homer wrote that this was an actual guy, an early doctor, who had two sons that he trained.  The sons were doctors in the Trojan war, the first medics, I guess.  Anyway, it seems the Greeks took the Mycenaean traditional healing place, the story of Asklepios, rolled in a few stories about Zeus and Hades, and made Asklepios a god, and the center of a healing cult.  In the Greek legend Asklepios was a son of Apollo who had been taught surgery and the art of healing with plants by Cheiron, a wise Centaur.  (This all comes from the Green book.)  He became such a good doctor he was able to bring people back from the dead.  (I guess in those days that must have seemed a big deal.)  Anyway, Zeus and Hades figured he’d gone too far, bringing people back from the dead was their job…  so they nailed him with a bolt of lightning (their favorite method of medical training), and his body was buried at Epidavros.  In the legend instead of two sons, he had two daughters, named Hygieia and Panaceia.  Had to look at that a couple times myself.  The famous Greek doctors, including good old Hippocrates, all claimed to get their authority from Asklepios.  One more thing… Images of him showed an old man leaning on a staff with a pair of serpents, which later of course became the caduceus.  I believe Matt has some jewelry…. Anyway…  They built a temple around 600 BC on his supposed gravesite, brought in some sacred serpents, built some baths in the spring and went into the faith healing business.  Sick or crippled pilgrims would come, offer a sacrifice to the gods, be “purified”, and sleep on the skin of the animal they had sacrificed.  Sometimes they would be spontaneously cured in the night, or the god Asklepios might come to them in a dream.  In that case, the priests of the temple would interpret and decide treatment, which might include exercise, relaxation, baths, or, as the book says, intellectual pursuits.  Thus, the stadium and the incredible theater.  Yes, I did take a while getting to that part.  This spot began as the typical shrine, faith healing center, then became more of a spa.  Another part of the treatment was that they believed the patient should have dinner with their God.  They would prepare a special meal and serve it with a lot of mystic ritual.  So diet was also a part of their healing.  What better way to get people to change their eating habits than to tell them they were dining with God?  As the centuries went by, the families that worked there learned more and more about medicine and surgery and became very skilled at treating illness and injury.  People traveled long distances for treatment.  A huge stone building was built for the people to stay in while being treated.  The first hospital?  When the Romans came the religious element was gradually eliminated, the emphasis was placed on science.  A Christian church was built on the site in the fifth century AD, and Asklepios – and eventually Epidavros itself, was forgotten.  Until the archeologists began excavating in 1822.   But the theater, Larry, the theater.  Tourists come to see the theater because of the perfect acoustics.  They stand in the middle of the orchestra (the performance area, basically the stage, although it is not raised) and whisper, and the sound can be heard throughout the huge half bowl that seats 1700 people.  Rhona and I found a better way to test the acoustics.  We got to the site, walked around the ruins, which seem to be in the process of restoration.  Don’t know what the plans are, but it looks like they may be intending to rebuild the complex of temples and buildings.  I’ve mentioned it before, one of the big questions whether we are talking about art or archeology is, how much to restore.  Does restoration mean destroying the existing relics?  Is there a danger that historical sites like Pompei could become like Disneyland, for the entertainment of tourists?  Would that be a bad thing?  I’ll bet there are some passionate arguments going on between those who want the old sites preserved intact, and those who want to see the maximum tourist dollars extracted…  with many shades between.  I couldn’t help imagining Epidavros rebuilt as it was in 400 BC, snakes and all.  A few animatronic Greek gods?  A costumed, trained cast of doctor-priests using the latest medical techniques with a dose of faith healing thrown in for good measure?  Can I hear an AMEN?   Oh yeah, the show….  Okay, so Rhona sucked it up, spent the afternoon following me around the pile of rocks.  We bought our tickets, and then went back to the van for a picnic lunch.  By this time it was about five, it really didn’t make sense to drive back to Tolo.  We had thought that we could take the van back to the campground and take the special bus to the show (I have avoided driving at night, daylight is tough enough.)  But we took a little drive around the area, checked out a tiny beach at the end of a single lane road, and came back to the site.  Campers got priority parking right up front, that was cool.  The show was a musical done in the style of 1900 era Greek musical comedy, of an ancient Greek Comedy by Menander who lived in Athens between 341 and 291 BC.  Kris, you would have loved the singing and dancing in period costumes.  And yes, the acoustics really are fantastic.  The dialog was all Greek of course, but the program did have a summary of the plot in English, so most of the time we had some idea of what was going on.  But the music and dancing required no translation.  The main character was a chubby guy who reminded me of Zero Mostel.   We sat in a theater that was built 400 years before Christ was born and watched a play that was written maybe 80 years later.  Wonder what showing next weekend?       8:35:43 PM    comment []

7-24-03 IOANINA, GREECE   Sometimes the reality just doesn’t match the concept.  Camping on board the ferry to Greece, that sounded like a great concept.  I imagined the van parked on deck under a starry sky, stiff breeze of cool air blowing, Rhona and I snoozing peacefully on our nice comfy bed. The reality was somewhat less.  A steel parking garage, the rumble of eighteen wheelers idling, the stink of diesel fumes, and the randomly repeating bleating of nearby car alarms; that’s a more accurate description.   There were openings like big windows in the ship’s sides along the deck.  You would think that fresh sea air would be blowing through the openings, you would think.  You would be wrong.   The ferries have cabins of various levels of luxury, aircraft-like seating, and deck passage.  Oh yes, and the proudly advertised Onboard Camping, same fare as deck class.  Upstairs we saw the poor deck passengers huddled in the hallways, stretched out on carpets, and we pitied them.  By the end of the night we envied them.  We should have taken our sleeping pads and found a spot among the Turkish families for ourselves.  At least then, the van would not have been in sleeping mode.  It would have been ready to roll at 3 AM in the morning.  Also, we would have heard the announcement that the ship had completed the trip in half the time scheduled.  You would think that a quick passage across the Aegean Sea would be a good thing.  Again, you would be wrong.   We prepared for the crossing to Greece so well.  Not our fault the trip turned into a waking nightmare it took us this entire day to recover from.  When we were in Pompei we took the laptop to a friendly little Internet shop.  Download a whole bunch of webpages with fares and schedules of the Italian-Greek ferries and did the research.  Discovered the Romantic Concept of On-Board Camping!  Oh, Joy.  We did find out some critical info…  They have three seasons and rates to match, low, middle and high season.  But it’s a daily thing, without any apparent logic.  We discovered that Tuesday the 22nd is considered low season, so that became our target day to sail.  Looked at a several different options for departure and destination ports, Brindisi, Italy to Igoumenitsa, Greece was the fastest and cheapest.   Then we drove across the Italian boot to a camping just north of Brindisi.  Monday we drove into the city and found the ferry company offices at the port.  Got a price from one company, then went to another that we had looked at on the Web.  Everything was as we had thought, no unexpected problems, saved fifteen dollars from the first company to the second, $135 for the two of us and the van, all taxes, port charges included.  And, On-Board Camping!  I was feeling pretty proud of us.    When we crossed the Straits to Morocco we learned that making the arrangements at the ferry terminal the day before was a big stress reliever.  On departure day, we had tickets in our hands, knew what the game was, knew how to get to the terminal, what we were supposed to do….  Spread the stress over two days, definitely worth the effort.  What is confusing is the all the different places you can buy the tickets.  In Spain, little ticket offices were everywhere, same thing in Brindisi.  Lots of horror stories in our guidebooks, especially about the Italy-Greece ferries.  Agents selling tickets on non-existing lines, all kinds of crazy stuff.  But why so many?  How do they all stay in business?  Can one agent actually sell the same ticket for less than another?  I suppose we could have worked harder, but then you wonder, how much is our time worth?  Let’s see, if we spend a couple more hours and saved 10%, that’s $13.50/2 = 7.25/2 of us, $3.66 an hour, pretty low wages.  I figure a little effort is definitely worthwhile, in terms of self respect, if nothing else.   On sailing day the campground people were nice enough to let us hang around as long as we liked, they knew we didn’t have to be at the docks until five in the evening.  We walked across the road to the little beach and spent a few hours; the water was warm and pretty clean.  Around four we loaded up and headed for the docks, soon we were parked in the garage deck.  The best thing about the ferry ride was meeting the Dutch couple, a retired high school art history teacher and his wife.  Their van was parked just in front of us.  This trip is their 44th visit to Greece.  Boy, we can really pick people to park next to.  There is nothing more valuable than talking to fellow campers who know the area we are heading towards.  But this couple really knew Greece.  We sat down with them on deck, got out our maps and had a great time talking about Byzantine art and all kinds of stuff.  We got on the ferry without a   clue.  Now, thanks to the Dutch couple, we have highlighter spots all over our map of Greece.  Thanks to them we are sitting in this wonderful campsite, watching rowers crossing back and forth in front of us on a beautiful lake at the edge of a small town called Ioanina.  Today we will be visiting the local sights, the castle and old village, the tiny wooded island in the lake, and spending the heat of the day in the Perama Caverns, just on the other side of the lake.    I think I’ve recovered from the night from boat ride hell.  My paralysis of the brain seems to have been only temporary, the fog is lifting.  At about eleven or so in the evening found our way down to the van.  Opening the door to the garage deck we left the cool air-conditioned interior of the ship and stepped into the hot stench of diesel fumes.  Determined to keep a positive attitude, we climbed into the van and stretched out. The first car alarm went off, about twenty feet away.  Soon it was joined by a second, a different melody, more obnoxious.  Soon, they quit.  Then a third, farther back.  It would have been much more irritating if the constant rumbling sound didn’t mask the horn honking siren beeping.   I had assumed it was just ship engine noise, but as I lay there I realized the rumble was the sound of the parked diesel trucks idling like they do in truck stops.  Little snatches of sleep, broken by car alarms.  Then a rap at the window, an unfriendly Greek face, what did he say?  I have no idea, I doubt I’ve been more dazed and confused.  Rhona grabbed her watch – it’s 3 AM.  People are coming onto the deck, doors are slamming.   We struggle into our clothes.  I pack up the bed.  Get the roof down and locked.  Rhona is outside with a crewman loading our table and chairs into the van.  Headlights are on, cars are moving.  Crew guy says, “Fix outside!  Fix outside!”  Okay, but I have to be able to drive the thing.  Seats up into position, climb behind the wheel, engine fires up.  Crewman waving, I make the U turn to follow the line down the ramp, out onto the dock.  Clear of the ship we see our Dutch friends parked off the side, waiting for us.  She tells us that the ship was very fast, made the crossing ahead of schedule.  She invites us to follow them to their campsite 80 kilometers south.  In my confusion it sounds like an attractive offer, but I’ve been avoiding driving at night (the headlights are a bit dim, and daytime is hard enough), and also because of their fine advice, our first destination is not south, but eastwards.  I see a parking spot off to the right.  We thank them so much for all their advice, and say farewell.  I pull over to the curb next to a smashed RV and we sit in the cab, waiting to see if someone tells us to move.  There is a big diesel truck parked fifteen feet away, the driver is underneath, working on something.  A Port Security car comes out, slowly drives around the truck, ignoring us.  I take that as a good sign.  Rhona says she can’t sleep; she wants to sit up and read.  I fold down my seat and try to get some rest.  A couple hours later, there is a new security guard at the window telling Rhona, “No parking here, park outside.”   The sky is light gray, the sun will be up soon, more sleep is out of the question.  My brain is functioning, but barely.  We drive out into the town, Rhona does some crisis navigation and soon we are on the right highway, heading up a steep winding road, eastwards through the Greek countryside.   First impressions – it’s one thing when you can’t understand the words, when you can’t read the letters it’s a whole new ballgame.  Frat boys and Sorority girls (hi Kris!) probably have a shot.  For us most street signs are unreadable, but every so often we spot a sign in English.  Scenery is already spectacular, tall mountains, rugged steep canyons, gorgeous vistas.  In Italy the succession of bridges and tunnels cutting through the mountains was amazing.  Greece is even more rugged, but obviously they haven’t been able to afford the tunnels.  The roads wind up and around, zigzagging up the mountains.  The old van is great at this kind of travel.  Third gear most of the way, shifting down to second on the tight 180-degree switchbacks.  Downhill the engine compression makes braking almost unnecessary.  It’s a camel; it’s a mountain goat.  A couple hours driving and we reach Ioanina, our city by the lake.  We’ve got a vague idea where the campground is, too vague.  We drive up into the hills, give up, stop and ask a friendly gas station guy.  I’ll bet he’s spent some time in the States, I’d guess Philadelphia by his accent.  He sends us back into town.  Our problem is, as usual, our map shows us approximately where the campground is, we just don’t know where we are and which direction we are going.  I guess the compass should have come out, but Rhona and I are both pretty much brain dead; we just keep driving.  I prefer to think of it as preliminary sightseeing.  We’re not lost and confused, we’re exploring.  Ah… the blue camping sign, little tent with an arrow, home again at last. 8:34:37 PM    comment []

7-20-03, a bit north of Brindisi     We are staying in a big campground on the west coast of Italy about fifteen miles north of Brindisi.  It feels like we’ve moved into the middle of an Italian village.  The campground is full, everyone else is Italian, and they’re all very pleasant folks.  A group of people walked up just after we finished setting up, I thought maybe it was the Welcome Wagon, but it turned out that one of the guys owned a Bedford just like ours….  Not much English was spoken, but it was a very friendly visit.  I’ve been waiting a long time for this to happen, a few English people recognized the van, but this is the first time we’ve ran into somebody that used to own one. It was very windy yesterday and last night.  We are so happy to get out of the heat, humidity, and dust of Pompei that we’re not complaining.  There is something about a gusting wind that grates on me after a while.  I do sleep well when it’s windy… the sound is almost like water, I guess.  But today has been much nicer, the breeze is just enough to keep things cool.  The Med is just outside the campground, across the road.    As usual, our planning is a bit vague.  We know we’re getting on the ferry.  Not really sure where we will be going or what we’re going to do once we get to Greece.  As usual, I have the high school fantasy places in my head to check out… the Parthenon comes to mind.  Rich Steves says that the tourists all gather in the predictable places and that the rest of the country is relativity unvisited.  Sounds good.  But we’ll have a lot of decisions to make.  Once we’ve wandered around Greece, we have several options…  The Brindisi ferry can be round trip, then we can travel north through Italy to Venice.  Or, we can take another ferry onwards to Turkey.  That could also be round trip.  Or, we can skip Turkey, drive north out of Greece into what used to be Yugoslavia, and loop around back to Venice.  Or… we can head north from either Greece or Turkey into Bulgaria, skip Venice, and head to Budapest, Prague, and eventually into Germany from that direction.  Or perhaps some other route that hasn’t occurred to us yet.  A big consideration is that August is the month most Europeans take their vacations.  We have to figure that the campgrounds most everywhere are going to be crowded.  That hasn’t been a problem so far, it seems that a certain number of people are moving on in the mornings, leaving spots open in the most crowded places.  The weather is another issue, but we’ve been about as hot and damp as it seems possible, hard to imagine that August can be hotter and more humid.  Lots of questions to answer – should we save Venice for another trip?  It won’t be at it’s best in August, that’s for sure.  What about Albania, Macedonia, Croatia?  We hear they are peaceful now, as long as you avoid the areas where all the landmines are buried.  Good old Rick Steves raves about Turkey, and he has not lead us wrong yet.  Was it Davy Crockett who navigated by spitting in his palm and smacking the gob with a finger to see which way it flew?  Maybe we’ll try that. 8:33:31 PM    comment []

I’ve taken a couple shots at writing about Pompei and I’m not happy.  Thought I’d try something different.  Explain it to Lauryssa.  She just had her tenth birthday, and that’s pretty exciting because now she has two numbers.  She’s my first Granddaughter, I remember being there the night she was born, just like I remember her mother’s birthday.   That’s where we are, honey, Pompei.  Maybe your Mom can show you on a globe where that is.  Italy looks like a boot, Naples is right where the ankle meets the foot.  There is a big volcano, called Vesuvius, just south of Naples, and Pompei sits right between the volcano and the Mediterranean Sea.  In the year 79 the volcano exploded… actually, August 24, 79, and the eruptions went on for three days.  Let’s see, it’s 2003 now, so it happened 1,924 years ago.  Can you imagine how many people have lived and died since that year?  Hot ashes and lava covered everything for miles around, including Pompei.  Scientists think that the people had some warning.  There were about 20,000 people living in Pompeii before Vesuvius erupted, and most of them got away.  But the volcano completely buried the entire city.  Years went by, trees and bushes grew, and the city was completely forgotten.  About 250 years ago, some men were digging a hole for a well, and they discovered the stones of an ancient road.  It took a long time, but archeologists dug through the dirt and volcanic ash covering the city to find this ancient Roman town pretty much as it was the day the volcano exploded.   It is a very interesting place for several reasons.  It was an important and rich city because it sat on the coast at the mouth of a major river.   We don’t really know much about the very early years, but we know there was a village in this place before 300 BC.  There were local people who lived here, but there were many other people who came to visit and trade.  The people from the center of Italy, near Florence, where Rhona and I were last week, were called Etruscans.  They had a very old civilization, and they visited Pompei for centuries.  The people who lived in Rome, the original Romans, also became very important to the history of Pompei.  There was another group, called the Samnites, who came from the mountains northeast of here who had their own society, and they visited this area also.  All of these people had their own languages, their own religions, and often fought wars with each other.  It seems that for most of the very early history, the local people were able to get along with everyone and peacefully farm, make products like wine and bread, do business, and become very prosperous. We don’t know very much about was really going on that long ago, because not very many written records survive from those days.  We do know that in 63 AD there was a big earthquake that caused a lot of damage in the Pompei.  The people didn’t know how earthquakes happen; they thought that their Gods were angry with them.  They went to work fixing the damage and building bigger and better temples hoping to please the Gods.   When the volcano erupted there was still construction going on all over the city.  It’s still possible that the volcano could erupt again and cover everything once more.  Sometimes people just don’t understand how powerful nature really is.   Because Pompei was buried by ashes, most of the roofs collapsed.  When the archeologists began work they moved everything they could to a museum in the nearest city, Naples.  So when we walked through the streets it was hard to imagine what it must have looked like when people still lived there.  We saw little corner shops, with marble counters that had been Pompei style fast food places.  The marble countertops had round holes where they sat large clay pots.  They built small fires underneath the counter, and served hot food from the pots to their customers.  We saw big homes where the rich people lived, they had beautiful courtyards with fountains and statues.  Many of the floors where covered with mosaics, do you know what they are?  Pictures made of small pieces of colored tiles, kind of like jigsaw puzzles, that they covered floors and sometimes walls.  They painted the walls with designs and pictures, that’s called a fresco.  The best ones were removed from the buildings and taken to be displayed in the museum where they could be protected from the weather and vandals.    We also went to a smaller city called Herculeum.  It’s different from Pompei because it’s more like a suburb… not as many businesses and temples.  Also, it wasn’t buried by the volcanic ash like Pompei, so many of the roofs are still intact.  That made it easier to imagine how the city looked when people lived there.  One of the most interesting things for me in both places were the Roman baths.  I had read about them a long time ago in school.  They were places where the Romans would go, like you go to the gym.   There was an exercise area, a room like a locker room, where they would change clothes and clean themselves with cool water.  Then they would enter the warm room, where there was another large pool.  From the warm room they would enter the hot bath… like a sauna or steam room.  It was an important part of Roman life, every Roman city had several baths, where they would meet friends and discuss the business of the day.  We saw a window in a bath in Herculeum that still had some broken pieces of glass in the opening.  Can you imagine window glass almost two thousand years old?   One thing I liked was being able to walk on the streets where Roman people had walked so many years ago.  They actually traveled by chariots, pulled by horses.  In Pompei we saw deep grooves in the stone streets cut by the steel wheels of chariots.  It sure must have been noisy!  I could picture in my head the chariot drivers in their togas, holding the reins of their horse with one hand, popping the whip with the other, shouting, people scurrying on the sidewalks, the big steel wheels of the chariot squealing, the smell of food cooking on every street corner, the rumble of the mountain, the sky filling with ashes. 8:29:58 PM    comment []