Macedonia: There's Something In The Water

A big part of our kids’ education while traveling the Mediterranean is centered on history: particularly Egyptian, Greek and Roman history with some Ottoman Empire thrown in as well. Throughout their (and our) travel-based history lesson, it has occurred to us that the Balkan area of Macedonia has disproportionately contributed more world leaders than just about any other region in the world, save for the long line of Roman emperors from the Italian peninsula.

Present day Macedonia is a landlocked sovereign country bordered by Kosovo, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania and is one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia. Ancient Macedonians lived in the alluvial plain around the rivers Haliacmon and lower Azius in the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula. The Battle of Chaeronea, where the Macedonians defeated the Greeks in 338 BC, marked an end of Greek history and the beginning of the Macedonian Era. The kingdom of Macedon was established by the 8th or 7th century BC and their first ruler of note was Philip II (“Philip of Macedon”) who ruled from 359-336 BC.

Under Philip of Macedon the Macedonians are credited with numerous military innovations, chiefly among them the phalanx (a rectangular mass military formation) and the sarisssa (an extremely long spear or pike). He united Macedonia, Illyria, Thrace and Greece by bringing the various city-states into his empire through military victory, persuasion or by bribes. Probably his greatest legacy was his son Alexander, also known as Alexander the Great. When Philip II was assassinated by one of his bodyguards, Alexander took over.

Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) led the Macedonian armies into Asia and conquered the Persian Empire, enabling Macedonia to become the world’s largest Empire, stretching from Europe, to North Africa, to Asia and India. Alexander was tutored by Aristotle (who in another interesting line of succession, was a pupil of Plato, who was a pupil of Socrates) and was influenced by the classical Greek thinking of that era. Alexander’s death led to a Macedonian civil war, as his generals fought over who would succeed him. Ultimately the generals carved up the empire with Antigonus I taking Macedonia and Greece, Seleucus I taking Asia and Ptolemy I taking Egypt. While Antigonus and Selecus formed dynasties on a smaller scale in their respective territories, Ptolemy’s dynasty in Egypt lasted for 275 years (from 305 to 30 BC), taking over what was the grandest and longest-lived empire that man had seen to that point. Over a dozen successions into the Ptolemaic dynasty, Cleopatra VII came to the throne.

Cleopatra was the last of the Ptolemys to rule in Egypt and after her death, Egypt became a Roman province. Most Ptolemaic rulers spoke Greek and refused to learn Egyptian, which is why Greek as well as Egyptian languages were used on official court documents (as well as the Rosetta Stone). In contrast, Cleopatra learned Egyptian and represented herself as the reincarnation of an Egyptian Goddess (Isis). While there is some evidence to the contrary, Cleopatra is typically cast as a great beauty and her conquests of the world's most powerful men (eg., Julius Caesar, Mark Antony) are taken to be proof of her allure. French philosopher Blaise Pascal argued that Cleopatra's classically beautiful profile changed world history: "Cleopatra's nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed." While she certainly charmed great Roman leaders, other Romans were not so smitten with her, highlighting her Macedonian goatherd family origins in many off-color jokes.

In the 20th century, Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, was born in Salonika (Thessalonika) to an Albanian father and a strong-willed Macedonian mother. It’s pretty amazing that this Balkan pastureland between the high peaks has produced so many great leaders. For a bunch of goatherds, the Macedonians have done pretty well for themselves.

The Reality Of Traveling With Kids: Routine Can Be Good

In an earlier post I wrote about how we involved our kids in the planning process of our trip. ("A New Beginning") We all voted for the top places we wanted to go and our preferred things to see and do. We also talked about what we didn’t like about our 2005 six-month trip through Central America and Spain. The consensus number one dislike was “packing and moving too much.” We were all in complete agreement that we wanted to slow it down this time, to take a deeper dive into the cultures around us instead of just collecting stamps in our passports. In addition to experiencing more of the culture, we noticed that our kids just enjoy it more when they have more time in one place. They seem to thrive on a little bit of routine.

A 4/29/10 Wall Street Journal article by Nancy Keates observed that “Slow Travel is tied to a burgeoning movement to return to a time when life’s pleasures were savored, to a time when people appreciated the going as much as the getting there.” The article continues, “But slow travel isn’t only about the mode of transportation—it’s also about the way people are traveling. Instead of moving from one big hotel to another and racing to cross off one tourist attraction after another, slow travelers rent a place to stay, often off the beaten path, and focus on interacting with locals and sampling new customs.”

So while we are not alone in slowing down the itinerary, the added benefit to our kids is that they enjoy being one place – even if only for a week – and savoring the things that come with settling into a semblance of routine. We spent 10 days in Cairo and the kids really enjoyed getting to know the hotel staff, ordering their 24/7 complimentary tea like “regulars” and going to our favorite falafel place (Al-Tabeh) just around the corner. It’s hard to have a “favorite place” if you’re only somewhere for 2 days. We spent 6 months in Cusco, Peru and at least once a week my daughter would say, “Let’s go for gelato,” at La Dolce Vita near the Plaza de Armas. There is something comforting in having a favorite place, particularly when you travel frequently from place to place. We spent a month in Florence in a great apartment and the first thing my son did was start rearranging furniture. He knew we weren’t going anywhere for a while and he was setting up his space just the way he wanted it.

There is a great temptation when planning a trip to see as much as possible. Even in the middle of a long one like ours it is sometimes unavoidable: It’s not that far from where we’ll be. We’ll just stay there one night. Famous last words. When we were in Southwestern Turkey we had planned to see two of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World: The Colossus of Rhodes and the Temple of Artemis near Ephesus. My daughter successfully lobbied us to take a detour to go see another “wonder,” the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus in Bodrum, which would allow us to see six of the seven wonders on this trip. We’re glad we did it but at the time it was not fun racing from town to town. It wasn’t until we got to Athens, where we had an apartment for a week that we felt that we could kick back and relax.

Even though the word “routine” has negative connotations – staleness, boredom, sameness—in the context of traveling around the world with a backpack, it can be a good thing. For us we’ve found that a little bit of routine for our kids is a really good thing.

Homeschooling: The Mediterranean's Fluid Borders

One of things that our kids (and their parents) are learning from our travels in the Mediterranean is how fluid borders are. Roman outposts in Morocco, Greek colonies in Italy, Macedonia dynasties in Egypt, Genoese watchtowers in Corsica and Venetian cities in Greece are but a few examples. It can be easy for non-historians to fall into the trap of thinking that a present-day border contains the history of that country. Our kids have learned that this is not true; a great example of this is Turkey.

When planning the Mediterranean portion of this trip, the present–day countries of Egypt, Greece and Italy were high on our collective list, so for the kids’ homeschooling we decided to focus on the respective histories of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, figuring that those cultures comprised the underpinnings of Western Civilization. With those three civilizations as our focus, the present-day country of Turkey was not on the radar screen, despite the fact that my wife and I had been there before and were both surprised and pleased at how diverse and interesting it was. It was only later, a few months into this trip, that we decided to add Turkey because of its proximity to both Egypt and Greece. Now that we’ve completed the Turkey portion of our trip, we’re thankful because not only have we learned much about Turkey, we’ve learned a lot about the Greeks and Romans as a result.

Present-day Turkey’s history dates back to the aftermath of the WWI and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, so there is only 90-odd year’s worth of modern history to consider. While that history is interesting, especially Kemal Attaturk’s founding of the secular Turkish Republic, it is the couple thousand years prior to that which is instructive. The Hittites, Greeks, Persians, Armenians, Romans, Goths, Byzantines, Kurds, Ottomans and Turks have lived in or occupied the Turkish peninsula known as Asia Minor. The Romans called this peninsula “Asia” and after the true size of continental Asia was known, it became known as Asia Minor (“Little Asia”).

We learned more about the Romans than the Turks when we visited Efes (Roman name: Ephesus), Bergama (Roman name: Pergamum) and Bodrum (Roman name: Halicarnassus) on the Aegean coast of Turkey. In Istanbul we learned more about the Greek-Byzantine era of the city -- previously known as Byzantium, then Constantinople -- than we did about modern Turkey. In essence, our trip to Turkey was just as much a glimpse into ancient Greece and Rome as it was a view of Turkey. We feel like our kids have an appreciation of this, of how borders can change over time. So do their parents. Who says homeschooling is only for kids?

Welcome To Athens: Where's Your Wallet?

First impressions can be lasting and for Athens’ sake let’s hope not. After taking a long bus ride from northern Greece we hopped on the Athens metro to get to our apartment where we planned to stay for a week. At our final metro stop we alighted and stood in front of a street map with quizzical looks and our mouths open…a gesture that instantly branded us as tourists. After about 15 minutes of reconnoitering our position, we headed up the escalator confident that we had an idea of where we going. While on the escalator, three young men stood very close to me, which I thought was odd but quickly forgot. We started walking on the street and reached a narrow, crowded pathway and I once again saw the same three guys, this time standing very close to my wife. I quickly called out to my wife, “Stop right there…wait for me,” which allowed the three men to pass. They continued walking, turned right and headed into a different metro entrance. As we continued walking, I looked back and saw them watching us – a family of four with about ten bags clearly not knowing where we were going…in other words, a target. I made eye contact with one of them and he smiled at me and returned to the metro as if to say, “I didn’t get you, but I’ll get someone else.”

After our adventure with our Athenian greeting party, we settled in to our spacious apartment. My wife has a genius for finding great apartments whenever we are staying somewhere more than a couple of days; this one was found on VRBO.com. Athens is fairly expensive so having lots of space with a kitchen, washing machine and DVD player is a travel luxury for us. The next morning we went on a walking tour of Athens and started out in the National Gardens. While looking at the Roman ruins, which were discovered while digging the metro station in preparation for the 2002 Olympics, my daughter found a purse in the bushes. Clearly, the purse had been pinched, money and credit cards taken out, and had been tossed aside. We held on the wallet and continued our tour, hoping to run into a policeman or police station. We finished our tour without seeing either and spend another hour walking around looking for a police station. We were starting to wonder whether Athens was a safe place or not. We got back to the safety of our apartment and watched a movie that night.

The next morning we went to visit the Acropolis and the Parthenon. We had brought sandwiches and we stopped at the Beule Gate to have a picnic lunch. We found a stone bench in the warm sunshine that was out of the wind and sat down to eat. While there my son found a wallet under our seat. Same story: no cash or credit cards and dumped somewhere after it was stolen.

Yes, it was a first impression – okay, a strong first impression – but we did not let it disturb our enjoyment of Athens. We enjoyed all of the Acropolis, had a fine meal in a local restaurant in the Plaka and loved seeing the gold death mask of Agamemnon in the National Archaeological Museum. The changing of the guard at the unknown soldier tomb was interesting, my wife and daughter really enjoyed the Sunday flea market in the Plaka and we walked what felt like the entire city without further incident. Most importantly, we left the city with our wallets.

Where Are The Spartans?

Prior to visiting Sparta, we had viewed “300,” the animated movie about the 480 BCE battle of Thermopylae, the clash between the Spartan-led, Greek city-state alliance and the Persian Empire. While the Spartans lost this battle and almost every warrior in it, their heroic last stand inspired their allies, the Athenians, to drive out the Persians and prevent them from conquering Greece. The film does a good job of capturing the Spartan ideals of discipline, austerity and honor as well as detailing historic events. As we drove to Sparta we felt our kids had a good foundation for learning more about this important culture. When we arrived in town, however, we looked around and asked ourselves: Where are the Spartans?

Where we expected to see ruined castles and fortresses we saw quite a few multi-story apartment buildings lining the town’s modern streets. Where we thought we’d see serious, athletically-proportioned citizens purposefully marching to some important task, we saw smiling youngsters hanging out in trendy cafes. There was a clear disconnect between the modern town we were seeing and its illustrious reputation. The only reminders of Sparta’s glorious past were the King Leonidas statue in front of the soccer stadium and the unimpressive ruins of Ancient Sparta behind that stadium. It was almost as if Sparta wanted to forget its militaristic past. Completely unimpressed, we decided to skip boring Sparta and stay in Mystras, the ancient Byzantine capital about 5 miles away.

The Spartans were conservative, xenophobic and a little strange. Spartan obligations to the state overrode any duty to self or to family. Spartan nurses taught babies to not be afraid of the dark, to not cry or scream and to not throw tantrums. From the age of six, boys were removed from their homes and subjected to a tough state-sponsored education that instilled obedience, discipline and resourcefulness. By sixteen they were part of a secret police force, by twenty they began military service and by thirty they were full citizens. It’s clear that self-actualization was not a Spartan value. The austerity of their lifestyle gives us our word "Spartan." The Spartans also had a reputation for extreme economy in the use of language, and the term "laconic" derives from the Spartan aversion to long speeches. (Lakonia is the region surrounding Sparta) In the hands of the Spartans, however, brevity could be put to good effect. When Philip II of Macedon sent the Spartans a letter threatening to “raze Sparta if he captured the city,” the Spartans’ letter allegedly returned with the one word reply: "If"

The next morning we toured Byzantine Mystras and afterwards took a drive up to the Langada Pass. The beautiful pass is between Sparta and Kalamata and cuts through the spectacular Langada Gorge, the place where Spartans left babies who were too weak or deformed to make the cut as Spartan warriors. The gorge was beautiful and at several points in the winding road, dramatic tunnels and rock overhangs were cut into the granite and limestone. We saw some rock climbers with technical gear but no abandoned babies left in the wilderness. That night, we went back to Sparta to have dinner. We found a small diner, sat down, ordered four souvlaki gyros and looked around us. At the table next to us a pack of teenage boys slouched in their chairs and sat around with bored expressions. 2,500 years ago these kids would be members of the secret police force, with impending military service on their minds. The only thing on the minds of these kids that evening was winning the attention of the young waitress serving them. It made us again wonder: where are the Spartans?

Skype: Indispensible Travel Tool

Skype was a name that I’d heard a lot prior to our trip but I’d never had any direct experience with it. While exchanging emails with a potential NGO employer a year and a half ago, my contact suggested we Skype each other to conduct our interview, adding that all I had to do was download the free software and we could call from one hemisphere to the other for free. I gave it a try and we had a crystal-clear phone call interview that lasted 45 minutes without any interference or static. I was sold.

As we got further into planning our trip, one of my biggest worries was my Mom. I ‘m her only child and she’s in her mid-70’s and we are the only family that she has. I talked her into upgrading her computer and helped her get a high-speed DSL connection and then signed her up for Skype. A few weeks into our trip, it became clear that Skype was a godsend; we were able to have video calls with her every couple days, she could see and talk to her grandkids and she felt “connected” to us in a way that was not possible without Skype.

Skype also allowed us to occasionally see our dog, which was being cared for my sister- and brother-in-law in Los Angeles. My wife and her sister would start the Skype call, covering the latest news and then at some point my sister would say, “Would you like to see Nacho?” At this point the kids would howl “Ooohhhhhh!” and we’d all crowd around the computer screen and talk to our dog. Nacho would wag his tail and wonder where the strangely familiar sounds were coming from as my wife and kids would say “It’s a puppy!” or “It’s a wee-bitty-bit-of-a-Natch!” in high voices. We also had a few “Wine over Skype” evenings with family friends along the way. We’d schedule a time for a call, pull up some chairs to the computer and open a bottle of wine. These calls started out fun, but a four-way video call on Skype can be difficult. Anytime two of the four people would talk at the same time, no one could understand what was said.

Along the way, we’ve noticed that Skype is not a well kept secret. Many internet cafes, advertise their ability to host Skype calls. While checking my email in such a café in Baños, Ecuador, an Irishman next to me was calling his family on Skype. His voice was loud and I couldn’t help but listen to him as he explained to his father why and how he spent the night in a Panamanian jail: “Well geez Da…I really thought it was the guy who pinched me camera. After I punched him, I said I was real sorry.”

Just when we thought our Skype experience couldn’t get better, we learned that it had a feature buried within its VOIP functionality that we really needed: U.S. toll-free dialing from abroad. Traveling through many overseas countries means that from time to time, we have to make calls to U.S. credit card companies, banks and airlines. These companies have toll-free 800 numbers and they all have their own convoluted process that promise free international access to them, but in our experience they never work and we end up paying for the “free” phone call. In Dahab, Egypt my wife made several trips to the internet café in order to make a bank wire transfer. In Istanbul she had to march across town to call our credit card company to reassure them that it was us going on a shopping spree in Turkey. In Athens, many Euros were lost trying to make a change to our flight itinerary with Orbitz.com. It was in Athens that she discovered that we could just dial the number in Skype for free. No hunting for an internet café, no costs and we could make the calls from the comfort of our hotel room. Even my son got in the act. With the Skype iPhone app loaded onto his iPod Touch, he paced our hotel room a few weeks back and called Apple’s toll-free customer service number to follow up on a problem.

We’ve yet to explore the Skype services that actually cost money, but we’ve been extremely happy with the free ones. In our experience, Skype has been an indispensible travel tool.

Heinrich Schliemann: Genius Or Fraud?

He made a fortune in the California gold rush and dined with the President. He traveled the world extensively and was conversant in 13 languages. He increased his wealth by cornering the Russian market for indigo in the 1860’s. Based on his reading of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, he found the ruins of Troy and the site of the Trojan War. Based on those same readings, he later uncovered copious treasure at the ancient Greek city of Mycenae and personally unearthed the gold “Death Mask of Agamemnon.” German-born Heinrich Schliemann accomplished a lot in his colorful and eventful life but he had his share of detractors.

To be primarily responsible for the unearthing of a World Heritage Site is pretty special and to have two attached to your name is almost unprecedented. Both Troy and Mycenae were key city-states in the Trojan War and both ruins are on UNESCO’s list. (Jean-Louis Burckhardt stumbled upon two World Heritage Sites: Abu Simbel in Egypt and Petra in Jordan - see earlier blog entry here) Schliemann was born in Germany in 1822 and had a pretty uneventful childhood. His luck changed in 1850 when he left for California to become a buyer and seller of gold dust. While in the U.S. he made a fortune and in his memoirs he claimed to have dinner with then-President Millard Fillmore. His doubters say that the Presidential records don’t show any such meeting and neither do the newspapers. They also say that he left California abruptly under a cloud of suspicion.

He left California in 1852 and arrived in Russia and married Ekaterina Lyschin and began to invest in the Russian indigo market which he was able to control, thereby increasing his already considerable wealth. He expanded his fortune further as an ammunition component contractor to the Russians during the Crimean War. After three children with Ekaterina, he divorced her and married Sophie Engastromenos. In 1868, based on his reading of the Iliad and the ongoing work of a British archaeologist Joseph Calvert, Schliemann decided that the Hisarlik site in Turkey was the site of Ancient Troy. He worked with Calvert to begin excavations and over two separate campaigns uncovered much of the Troy written about by Homer as well as other cities built both over and under it. No one doubts his role in unearthing ancient Troy (or his language fluency, for that matter) but detractors point out that he absconded with many artifacts and one account details that some of the treasures were found adorning the garden at his home. He was constantly battling Greek and Turkish authorities over possession of the historical artifacts that he was finding. Perhaps the biggest knock on Schliemann was that his archaeological methods left much to be desired. When we toured the Troy site a few weeks ago, I overheard a tour guide take pains to point out a large chunk of the site allegedly dug out by Schliemann and said, “Unfortunately, we have lost everything here because of Schliemann’s ‘amateurish’ methods.” At ancient Mycenae, the site was well known but Schliemann found 19 graves and a treasure trove of gold and silver objects, including the aforementioned Death Mask. Skeptics think that he may have manipulated both the mask and the location of the find to suit his theories about Mycenae.

Despite Schliemann’s methods there is now little doubt that the sites of Troy and Mycenae, as depicted in Homer’s books, are real places and not imaginary settings for historical epic poems. He was not the most ethical or professional archaeologist but he may have been the luckiest. Say what you will about him, but before Heinrich Schliemann the Trojan War was just a nice piece of fiction about some dudes fighting over a pretty girl.

Easter Week In Santorini

It was a good idea that my wife made our hotel and ferry reservations for Santorini a few months prior. On its own, Santorini is a popular destination but add the Greek Orthodox Church's most popular holiday of Easter, the synchronous celebration this year with Roman Catholic Easter and toss in Spring Break for good measure and you have a crowded island -- a crowded island that used to be much bigger. (Santorini is an island community that sits perched on the rim of a blown-out and submerged volcanic caldera. The white towns with their connecting sugar-cube houses sit on the steep edge of the crater and look down at the azure blue Mediterranean Sea. Geologists estimate the eruption around 1630 BC and describe it as one of the largest earthquakes ever, similar in scale and magnitude to the 1883 Krakatau volcanic eruption.)

Pyrgos on Good Friday

The Holy week festivities started on Holy Thursday when the tsoureki bread is baked and the hard-boiled Easter eggs are dyed red – symbolic of the blood of Christ. We spend the day touring two beaches: a red-rock beach sprinkled with white pumice stones and a pebbly black beach. When we got back to our hotel, the wife of the proprietor knocked on our door with some red-dyed eggs and some sweets. We learned later that the Greeks have a tradition that is similar to the American tradition of the Thanksgiving turkey wishbone; they knock the red eggs against each other and the one holding the un-cracked egg is supposed to have good luck.

Holy Friday is the day that the church's priest takes down the Christ icon from the cross and wraps it in linen, reenacting ancient burial rituals. The icon is then placed in a casket surrounded by white lilies, and paraded through the town as worshipers lament the death of Christ. While many people refrain from meat on this day, we could not resist the pork and chicken gyros at the local take out restaurant on the main square in Fira. After eating, we went to Pyrgos, a pretty hill town about a 10 minute drive from Fira. We climbed up through the maze-like town to reach the church on top of the hill and gathered with a few hundred Santorians dressed in their somber Sunday best. After the mass, the action began. Scores of teenage boys with blow torches started lighting the candles that sat on every wall and rooftop of the village. The candles were coffee cans with filled with citronella wax and wood shavings and the boys did their work quickly. Within a half hour, the entire village was adorned with thousands of these lit candles, an incredible sight that we’d not seen anywhere else in the world. After spending some time milling about the town and admiring the view, we climbed down and got some hot tea to warm up. Afterwards we walked back to our car and turned around to see the entire town glimmering in the distance, as if on fire. The town was even visible from our hotel in Fira.

Greek Easter eggs

The next morning, Holy Saturday, my wife was reading a description of that night’s festivities. She described the late night mass and the special mayiritsa soup, a “traditional soup composed of…” and her voice trailed off after that. The kids were distracted but I knew that meant there was something in the soup that might make someone think twice about trying it. I decided to wait until after I tasted it to ask about the ingredients. Late that night we milled about in front of the church during the mass. At midnight, the priest called out Christos Anesti! (“Christ has risen”) and others responded Alithos Anesti (“Surely he has risen”). At this point, everyone lit their candles, supposedly from the same eternal flame that is brought to Greece each year from Jesus’ nativity cave in Jerusalem. With Easter officially arrived at midnight, everyone went for a meal and the mayiritsa soup. The soup was not very good; it was a whipped, green vegetable soup with some unknown pieces of meat in it. After getting down about half the bowl, my wife told me the meat was sheep intestine.

The next day we woke late and headed out at noon looking for our Easter lamb dinner. We had made reservations in one restaurant in Pyrgos because we were told that they would have traditional dancing in the square below it. When we got there, the restaurant was empty and there was no dancing. We decide to continue on to the south side of the island. We saw many lambs rotating on spits but many were in somebody’s front yard intended for a private family party. We headed for a beach restaurant we’d seen the day before with about 10 lambs on spits, figuring that they were set up for the public. While going there we passed a restaurant on a cliff overlooking the water and the owner gave us a friendly wave as we went by. We arrived at the beach restaurant and were told “Sorry.” At this point all of us were hungry and we’d stopped by a handful of restaurants that were closed to the public; it was time to go back to man with the friendly wave. The restaurant was great and it had only a few local families in it; no spring breakers or tourists from huge boxy tourist buses. We had roast lamb and vegetables washed down with some dry Santorini wine overlooking the Aegean Sea. Our dinner was the perfect ending to a great Easter week at Santorini.

Kalambaka: Grecian Ghost Town

The bus pulled over to the side of the road as soon as we got to Kalambaka. We were expecting to stop at the bus station but the driver hurried us out of the bus, unloaded our bags on the side of the road and then roared off in a cloud of exhaust and dust. When the dust cleared and we caught our breath we saw the imposing stone pinnacles of Meteora rise above the town of Kalambaka. We also saw that in addition to our 10 scruffy, dark-colored bags there was also a large, red travel bag that none of us recognized.

With neither bus nor bus station in sight we loaded up the red bag with ours and started walking to our hostel. It was late afternoon and overcast in Kalambaka with very few people on the streets, many businesses closed and no taxis in sight. The hostel where we had a reservation was over a mile away so we started walking while looking for a taxi. After 40 minutes of uphill walking we arrived at our hostel and found out why the town was so empty: there was a taxi strike and the following day was a national holiday. The son of our hostel owner told us that we should immediately buy food because nothing would be open tomorrow. He graciously offered to take the red bag to the police station for us. Our plan for the next day was to hike through Meteora, a forest of towering stone pinnacles, many of which were crowned with monasteries.

My wife and I walked to town to find a supermarket while the kids did their homework. We could find nothing open in this Grecian ghost town until we found a solitary older man who spoke a little English. He greeted us in English and we asked the one-word question “Supermarket?” He energetically told us to follow him and led us through a parking lot, a back lot and a deserted alley. “Tomorrow holiday. Everything closed,” he said. “Yes, Greek independence holiday,” I said, referring to the anniversary of independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821. At this point he stopped, impeded my progress with the back of his hand against my chest and said “We beat those bloody Turks. We keep Europe safe from those barbarians!” We were taken aback at how deeply he felt about this. His arm dropped from my chest and we started to move forward when the arm shot up again. “We keep the world safe for YOU!” he said. After this he seemed satisfied that he’d made his point and we continued walking. We rounded a corner and came to a Carrefour supermarket, possibly the only place to buy food in town. We thanked our patriotic guide and bought our food supplies for the next day.

The next day we started out early with lots of food and water to explore Meteora. There was no one else staying at our hostel and we saw no one on the trail until we reached the first monastery. Meteora is the name given to a group of massive stone pinnacles that were formed by weathering and erosion over thousands of years. At one time twenty pinnacles had monasteries on top but nowadays only six or seven of them remain. Without taxis or buses, we would try to see as much of Meteora as possible on foot. We walked up the trail leading to Agios Triados, the monastery made famous in the 1981 James Bond film “For Your Eyes Only.” In the film Roger Moore climbs with ropes and technical equipment to reach Greek bad guy Kristatos’s hideout. Instead of ropes, we climbed the stone steps that circled around the pinnacle until we came to a door and found that it was closed. No taxis, no buses and now no monasteries.

Our luck was better at the Agiou Stephanou monastery, which was open and had a large tour bus in the parking lot. The impressive site was high above Kalambaka and was accessed only by a narrow wood drawbridge. There was a small museum and some newly painted frescoes in the church. While the monastery was interesting, the inside was nowhere near as dramatic as its physical location. After a picnic lunch with a panoramic view, we walked to the Agias Varvaras Rousanou. Again, it was a nice monastery – frescoes of the resurrection and transfiguration of Christ -- but the site was what was interesting. Rousanou had a rope ladder hanging from the side of the building – a throwback to the days when monks climbed them and pulled them in to escape invading Ottomans. We hiked back on one of the monopati (footpaths used by monks) but must have got lost en route. We spent more time crawling though bushes than walking on a trail or path. Aside from the tour bus, we saw very few people in one of Greece's largest tourist destinations. We arrived late in the afternoon and got to bed early that night.

Next morning was Friday and Kalambaka was back to normal. We walked down to the bus station and watched old men chat, flip their worry beads and drink strong coffee in cafes while women bought produce at the bustling market near the main plaza. The sun was shining, people were smiling and the town was jumping. Apparently the taxi strike was over -- we saw a line of them near the market. We'd caught Kalambaka on an off day; it was no longer a Grecian ghost town but a vibrant and festive community.

Civilization In A Cup

Living out of backpacks and staying predominantly in inexpensive hostels can be wearying at times. With all your belongings in a single backpack there are times that you crave a quiet, civilized moment. That is when we break out our favorite travel gadget: the immersion heater. It’s basically a metal coil connected by wire to a wall plug, but it has transformative properties. It can transform even the most dreary of situations and cheer them up a bit. Just stick the coil into some water, plug it in and in less than a minute you have a boiling cup of water. Add some tea and sugar and you have civilization.

After recently travelling all day to get to Bodrum, Turkey, we found ourselves tired and hungry in an empty hotel in a residential neighborhood at 9:30 at night with no restaurants open. We whipped out the immersion heater and made Cup-a-Noodles soup for the kids to satisfy their hunger pangs and brewed some tea for my wife and I to feel civilized and relax after a long day. Credit for us having the immersion heater must go to my wife who has long extolled the virtues of this travelling appliance. She carried it with her twenty years ago when she did her 2-year around-the-world backpacking adventure. When she packed it in her bag for this trip I thought “there’s a waste of space,” but I have been proven wrong countless times.

The Istanbul-Kayseri train was clean, modern, spacious and comfortable and our cabin came with a small refrigerator but the train didn’t have a dining car. Whenever we needed a cup of tea for the long 19 hour journey, we unplugged the refrigerator and plugged in the immersion heater for our boiling water. We don’t typically carry tea mugs with us because we usually find some kind of vessel to use. On this train, we found two very thin plastic cups – the kind that you’d think would melt with hot water in them – and they worked fine. While on the road we’ve used many different vessels for tea cups: clear-glass drinking glasses, melamine and ceramic mugs and for awhile we even carried 4 small, hard-plastic jello molds that also doubled as mini cereal bowls. Besides tea and Cup-a-Noodles, we’ve also made hot chocolate and instant soups.

The immersion heater allows us our moment of civilization on our own schedule. On our Piraeus-Santorini ferry, the restaurant closed about 2 hours before we arrived at port. I went and purchased some drinking water and acquired two flimsy plastic cups then dug in the bag for the immersion heater. I asked my wife “Would you like a cup of tea?” She smiled and nodded, understanding that this was code for “Would you like to feel civilized?” I plugged it into the wall socket behind our chairs, and had two cups of tea ready within a minute. Now that’s civilized.



This post was part of Vago's Lonely Planet Blogsherpa Carnival Essential Travel Tools at Vagobond.

The Seven Wonders Of The Ancient World

At some point it was getting a bit ridiculous: get up early, run to see some ruins that weren’t there, jump on a bus, connect with another bus, arrive late at the next town and then do it again. And again. This is what our itinerary was like for the better part of last week. We made the mistake of ordering a Kids Discover pamphlet titled “7 Wonders of the World” and making our kids read it as part of their homeschooling. Unfortunately, our daughter decided that we must see as many of them as possible. “We’ve seen the pyramids and the lighthouse at Alexandria and we are planning to go to Rhodes,” she said as she browsed the pamphlet, before continuing. “You know…Bodrum is not that far from Rhodes and the Temple of Artemis is right next to Ephesus, which you said we were going to anyway.” Control of our itinerary was gradually slipping away from us and into the hands of our 12-year old daughter.

The Seven Wonders of the World is a well known list of remarkable constructions of classic antiquity. Alexander the Great’s conquest of much of the known world in the 4th century BC gave Hellenic people access to the great civilizations of Egypt, Persia and Babylon and a consensus formed from such writers as Antipater of Sidon, Philon, Herodotus and Pliny the Elder. The seven ancient wonders are the Great Pyramid at Giza (Egypt), The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (Iraq), The Lighthouse at Alexandria (Egypt), the Temple of Artemis (Turkey), the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (Turkey), the Statue of Zeus at Olympia (Greece), and the Colossus of Rhodes (Greece). Ironically, five of the seven wonders were celebrations of Greek or Hellenic culture (all except the Great Pyramid and Hanging Gardens) yet these days five of the seven are in Muslim lands (all except the Statue of Zeus and the Colossus of Rhodes).

The thing that you have to remember about the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World is that, with the exception of the Great Pyramids, they are gone. The Hanging Gardens, Alexandria Lighthouse and Colossus of Rhodes were toppled by an earthquake and fire did in the Statue of Zeus and the Temple of Artemis. There are a handful of other lists like the Seven Modern Wonders or the Seven Natural Wonders and even the recent internet vote for the New Seven Wonders, but we focused on the ancient list because it dovetailed so nicely with our itinerary. In Egypt, the Pyramids and the Lighthouse at Alexandria were easy to get to because they are near large cities. At Alexandria, we visited the site and our kids touched some of older stones of the Quaitbay Castle, allegedly from the Lighthouse. Having also touched the Great Pyramid, our daughter was now on a quest to touch at least a part of them all. (I should mention that we have no intention of going to Iraq to look for or touch the Hanging Gardens; six out of seven will have to do)

We arrived at the Rhodes harbor via ferry from Marmaris. After checking into our hotel, we went to the old harbor entrance that was supposedly the site of the Colossus and saw nothing but a small fortification and lighthouse. The Colossus was a copper statue of Helios, the sun god and was built in 226 BC. It was about 110 feet high and only stood for 60 years. We looked for pieces of copper in the shallow water; we’d later learned that the copper ruins lay around for almost 900 years before invading Arab armies looted it and sold the copper pieces to a Syrian merchant. We left Rhodes by the same route and made our way back to Marmaris, Turkey so that we could catch the last bus to Bodrum, the location of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. We arrived at our Bodrum hotel at around 9:00 pm and went right to sleep. We woke up early the next morning and marched over to the ruins of the Mausoleum. The site was predictably unimpressive and had a couple dozen column pieces scattered about the site. The structure was built in 351 BC for King Mausolus, which is where we get our name for mausoleum. There is a beautiful marble frieze from the mausoleum that, like many antiquities, sits in the British Museum. After the initial fire, crusaders looted the site to use for other purposes.

After 45 minutes at the site, we picked up our bags and jumped on the first of two buses to Selcuk, the site of the Temple of Artemis. At Selcuk, while rolling our bags away from the bus station and towards our hostel, we caught a glimpse of the lone remaining column from the ruined site. Checking my watch with my daughter, we realized that we had seen 3 of the 7 wonders within a 24 hour period. The site was also unimpressive but we had to visit so the kids could touch the remaining column. The temple was built in 550 BC and may have been the most beautiful of all the wonders. We headed back to the hostel so that we could get much needed naps. Five down and one to go. Within the next few weeks we’ll be visiting the site of the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the site of the first Olympic games. That is unless our daughter gets control of our itinerary again.