Location: Heraklion/Matala
Roommates woke me up early this morning, whispering hurriedly in Greek. I really believe I got ripped off by this ticket seller; for as many Euros as I spent, I feel like I should’ve received a lot more room. Oh well, getting ripped off seems like part of the international travel experience. There were taxis waiting for the disembarking ferry passengers, and I flagged one of them to take me to the Heraklion airport. Taxi is the most expensive way to travel here, but I’ve found that the number and quality of English speakers dramatically decreases the farther I get from Athens, and I am not sure how to navigate the public transportation system here on Crete (and was certainly not feeling up to figuring it out at five-thirty in the morning). The driver only ripped me off a little bit, so I was okay with it.
I was also okay with it because it let me fully experience driving in Greece. The rules of driving in Greece are that there are no rules. Stop signs and lane delineations are really just kindly suggestions, there appears to be no enforced speed limit, and cars will park and drive just about everywhere they can. Pedestrians walk in the middle of the streets, drivers swerve around them honking angrily, and bikes sneak in and out between them all. My taxi driver roared through neighborhoods at sixty miles per hour, and he’d viciously tailgate anyone going less than that until they moved out of the way.
Currently I am sitting in the Heraklion airport; it is 8:20a and I’m not meeting the rest of my group until 9:45. For breakfast I ate a pie made of fresh flaky puff pastry and filled with cheese.
LATER: met up with my group at the airport - all Americans. My Greek has been coming along quite well, between the letters I’d picked up wandering around reading signs the last couple of days and the few words I knew (“Pah-rah-kah-LOH, mee-LAH-teh ahn-glee-KAH?”). It’s helped a lot with my vocabulary; words are a lot easier to remember in terms of letters ("παρακαλώ, μιλάτε αγγλικά") rather than in nonsense syllables. However, after spending just a day in American company, my Greek is in shambles. The problem is I keep forgetting to use it, because I’ve only been talking to English-speakers for the last few hours.
Thoughts on the Greek language: it *sounds* a lot like Spanish, but the emphasis of the words is drastically different than anything I’m used to; a lot of words are pronounced with the emphasis on the last syllable, which feels unnatural to me. Take the word for Thank You, ευχαριστώ, pronounced “efh-khar-ee-STOH.” Any English speaker would instinctively pronounce it “efh-khar-EE-stoh,” which is how I say it if I’m not thinking. Aγγλικά, the Greek word for the English language, pronounced “ahn-glee-KAH” is another one - I want to say “AHN-glee-khah.”
We’re in Matala, a touristy little town on the southern coast of Crete. I’m a bit disappointed in my company; they’re all nice enough, but I was hoping to connect with a fellow adventurer. These people haven’t even bothered to learn any Greek! We made a stop at the ruins of Knossos Palace but found that the long arms of the strike have reached Crete, as well, and they are not open for business. This is very disappointing, as this was one of the few historical Greek sites I wanted to check out. This is the palace that was supposed to have housed the Minotaur and his labyrinth.
After we were assigned to our hotel rooms (I’m bunking with a very nice girl called Alexis), we were unleashed to explore the area. Matala Beach is nice, if you’re into that sort of thing. More exciting were the natural caves that line the coast. A fun scramble, this is where Bob Dylan and Cat Stephens secluded themselves to find inspiration in the 60s (this place is a huge former hippie hang-out, and there are still a few tie-dyed vestiges of its bohemian past here and there around town).
We lunched at a local restaurant run by an old Greek woman; I was looking for something light, so I ordered the yogurt & honey, a snack which I am desperately hoping I will be able to recreate back in the states. I’ve been carrying around this little Greek phrasebook, and it has a fairly sizeable list of Greek foods and their names, and one of the items in the list is brains; this piques my interest immensely. Everywhere I’ve been so far has just served gyros, souvlaki, or sandwiches, I hope I’ll get to try something a bit more unusual before the trip is up.
A lunch anecdote: The weather’s been really crappy here lately (you can see the cloudy skies in all my Athens pictures), so we were all relieved when the sun started to shine here in Matala. When it actually started getting hot out, I pulled a water bottle out of the fridge of the restaurant we were at and took a biiiig swig… only to find that I’d accidentally grabbed a bottle of raki, a clear powerful liquor that Greeks are just mad for. I’m a whiskey-drinker, and it goes down a lot smoother than whiskey, so I was able to hold it together despite having just done about three shots of it in one gulp, but it wasn’t quite the refreshment I was looking for. Since I’d started the drinking, everyone else took sympathy shots.
Also, happy 24th birthday to me!
EVEN LATER: Awww, they threw me a mini-birthday party at dinner tonight! I ordered the grilled octopus, but I got to try mousaka, a swordfish dish, and some sort of lamb-cheese-potato thing that I forget the name of. Maybe it’s Lamb Keritoki, or maybe that’s the name of a Hello Kitty character. Then as a surprise at dessert, they brought out baklava (which I love) and everyone sang Happy Birthday! This left me with a pretty positive feeling, as I had been sulking for most of the evening about having to make small talk. I’m starting to feel like a little kid hanging around my parents’ friends - they’re sweet to me, but we have absolutely nothing in common. Hopefully none of this will be as big a problem when I’m bone-tired every evening from paddling all day.
Roommates woke me up early this morning, whispering hurriedly in Greek. I really believe I got ripped off by this ticket seller; for as many Euros as I spent, I feel like I should’ve received a lot more room. Oh well, getting ripped off seems like part of the international travel experience. There were taxis waiting for the disembarking ferry passengers, and I flagged one of them to take me to the Heraklion airport. Taxi is the most expensive way to travel here, but I’ve found that the number and quality of English speakers dramatically decreases the farther I get from Athens, and I am not sure how to navigate the public transportation system here on Crete (and was certainly not feeling up to figuring it out at five-thirty in the morning). The driver only ripped me off a little bit, so I was okay with it.
I was also okay with it because it let me fully experience driving in Greece. The rules of driving in Greece are that there are no rules. Stop signs and lane delineations are really just kindly suggestions, there appears to be no enforced speed limit, and cars will park and drive just about everywhere they can. Pedestrians walk in the middle of the streets, drivers swerve around them honking angrily, and bikes sneak in and out between them all. My taxi driver roared through neighborhoods at sixty miles per hour, and he’d viciously tailgate anyone going less than that until they moved out of the way.
Currently I am sitting in the Heraklion airport; it is 8:20a and I’m not meeting the rest of my group until 9:45. For breakfast I ate a pie made of fresh flaky puff pastry and filled with cheese.
LATER: met up with my group at the airport - all Americans. My Greek has been coming along quite well, between the letters I’d picked up wandering around reading signs the last couple of days and the few words I knew (“Pah-rah-kah-LOH, mee-LAH-teh ahn-glee-KAH?”). It’s helped a lot with my vocabulary; words are a lot easier to remember in terms of letters ("παρακαλώ, μιλάτε αγγλικά") rather than in nonsense syllables. However, after spending just a day in American company, my Greek is in shambles. The problem is I keep forgetting to use it, because I’ve only been talking to English-speakers for the last few hours.
Thoughts on the Greek language: it *sounds* a lot like Spanish, but the emphasis of the words is drastically different than anything I’m used to; a lot of words are pronounced with the emphasis on the last syllable, which feels unnatural to me. Take the word for Thank You, ευχαριστώ, pronounced “efh-khar-ee-STOH.” Any English speaker would instinctively pronounce it “efh-khar-EE-stoh,” which is how I say it if I’m not thinking. Aγγλικά, the Greek word for the English language, pronounced “ahn-glee-KAH” is another one - I want to say “AHN-glee-khah.”
We’re in Matala, a touristy little town on the southern coast of Crete. I’m a bit disappointed in my company; they’re all nice enough, but I was hoping to connect with a fellow adventurer. These people haven’t even bothered to learn any Greek! We made a stop at the ruins of Knossos Palace but found that the long arms of the strike have reached Crete, as well, and they are not open for business. This is very disappointing, as this was one of the few historical Greek sites I wanted to check out. This is the palace that was supposed to have housed the Minotaur and his labyrinth.
After we were assigned to our hotel rooms (I’m bunking with a very nice girl called Alexis), we were unleashed to explore the area. Matala Beach is nice, if you’re into that sort of thing. More exciting were the natural caves that line the coast. A fun scramble, this is where Bob Dylan and Cat Stephens secluded themselves to find inspiration in the 60s (this place is a huge former hippie hang-out, and there are still a few tie-dyed vestiges of its bohemian past here and there around town).
We lunched at a local restaurant run by an old Greek woman; I was looking for something light, so I ordered the yogurt & honey, a snack which I am desperately hoping I will be able to recreate back in the states. I’ve been carrying around this little Greek phrasebook, and it has a fairly sizeable list of Greek foods and their names, and one of the items in the list is brains; this piques my interest immensely. Everywhere I’ve been so far has just served gyros, souvlaki, or sandwiches, I hope I’ll get to try something a bit more unusual before the trip is up.
A lunch anecdote: The weather’s been really crappy here lately (you can see the cloudy skies in all my Athens pictures), so we were all relieved when the sun started to shine here in Matala. When it actually started getting hot out, I pulled a water bottle out of the fridge of the restaurant we were at and took a biiiig swig… only to find that I’d accidentally grabbed a bottle of raki, a clear powerful liquor that Greeks are just mad for. I’m a whiskey-drinker, and it goes down a lot smoother than whiskey, so I was able to hold it together despite having just done about three shots of it in one gulp, but it wasn’t quite the refreshment I was looking for. Since I’d started the drinking, everyone else took sympathy shots.
Also, happy 24th birthday to me!
EVEN LATER: Awww, they threw me a mini-birthday party at dinner tonight! I ordered the grilled octopus, but I got to try mousaka, a swordfish dish, and some sort of lamb-cheese-potato thing that I forget the name of. Maybe it’s Lamb Keritoki, or maybe that’s the name of a Hello Kitty character. Then as a surprise at dessert, they brought out baklava (which I love) and everyone sang Happy Birthday! This left me with a pretty positive feeling, as I had been sulking for most of the evening about having to make small talk. I’m starting to feel like a little kid hanging around my parents’ friends - they’re sweet to me, but we have absolutely nothing in common. Hopefully none of this will be as big a problem when I’m bone-tired every evening from paddling all day.
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