Tag: tourism

Posted on

The Theatre

The amphitheatre at Epidarus supposedly has nearly perfect acoustics.  We walked up to the top and indeed we could hear people speaking down in the center.  Evidently the sound waves flow up the hill and then some bounce off the stone seats in back of each audience member.  Given the speed of sound, this is not enough to produce a discernible echo, but prolongs the sound.  This is not perceivable and our brains make the necessary corrections so the whole thing enhances our senses.  At least that is what I heard.  This is one of the birthplaces of drama.  It started out as story telling and gradually developed into the kinds of things we would recognize as a play. 

This theater is still intact because it was isolated and people didn’t have as much incenitive to steal the stones.   Many ruins are not wrecked by time, but rather by salvage.

Epidarus started out as a healing center dedicated to the god of healing, Aesclepius.  People would come here to make offerings to the gods.   After a while the priests developed a modicum of physician skills and you can trace the origins of medicine to these places.  Of course most of what they did had little more effect on actual sickness, other than the value of the rest and psychosomatic benefits.  The ancient Greeks were profoundly superstitious people.  All pre-modern people were/are superstitious because they don’t have any scientific alternatives.  Even those of us who should know better still fall for faith healers, shamans and other charlatans.

The natural setting is beautiful and if you got to hang around here watching plays and not having to work, I bet many people did recover their health, so I suppose it worked.  The proximate cause is not always the apparent one, or that one advertised.  I remember reading that in the 18th & 19th Centuries many of the very young women who married old rich guys were evidently barren.  Their husbands sent them off to “take the waters” at some spa, where lots of young men worked and the miracle of the spa restored their fertility.  

Posted on

The Workers – United – Will Close All Museums

I would have to tell the story of today by telling what we didn’t do.  We didn’t go to the Archeological Museum.  We didn’t go any other museums.  We didn’t even go to the park.  All these places were shut because of a strike/demonstration by government unions.  We DID see them marching and chanting.  It was very 1930s except the banners are more colorful: less red, brighter pastels. 

Demonstrations are always the same.  You get the big march and the chanting in simple words and cadences that the cognitively challenged can repeat w/o too much trouble, something like “The workers – united – will never be defeated.”  We saw on the news that some fire bombs and tear gas were used after the main demonstration.  The protestors looked peaceful enough when we saw them.  I think most were just ordinary people, but there are always some of the violent guys who take any opportunity to make trouble.  

We walked a lot, since the Marriott shuttle couldn’t drop us or pick us up in town. I had a good time being with Mariza & Espen.   Above is one of the steep paths we climbed.  Since I didn’t get to go to the museums, I have rationalized it away.  It is true that actually seeing the real thing is sometimes less satisfying than seeing a really good photo, since you can usually see more detail in the photo and there is more explanation.  That is what I am telling myself anyway.  It is not entirely wrong.  I recall when Chrissy and I saw the Mona Lisa in Paris.  It is smaller than you think and farther away than you would want.  The same went for Stonehenge.  On the other hand, even on this short trip the Acropolis and Mycenae were more than I expected.

Anyway tomorrow we have an island cruise day and then the kids go back to America and I go back to Iraq.  They rhythm of that reminds me of Davy Crockett’s campaign slogan.  I will recall as best I can.  “If you reelect me, I will serve you well and honestly; if you do not, you can go to hell and I shall go to Texas.”  I felt funny not being in Iraq for a few hours, but I came to my senses.  Still I have to go back so I may as well make the most of it. 

Espen has decided he will look angry (and tough) at all the photo sessions from now on, so whenever he notices the camera…well you see.  Who knows why?  But I will post in any case.

I did get him when he wasn’t looking, however.

Posted on

Cyclops’ Wall

The ancient Greeks thought that giant Cyclops built the walls of Mycenae, since they could not understand how such big rocks could be brought to the site and stacked.  When I looked at the place, I could see how they were astonished.  The rocks are big and the hill is high, but with simple tools and a lot of persistence the ancient Mycenaeans did not need the help of Cyclops. Nevertheless, despite all the monumental precautions their civilization was destroyed and Mycenae abandoned.  These Bronze Age warriors were no match for Iron Age weapons of invaders.

BTW – it is not true that a man armed with iron weapons was so much superior to one armed with bronze, but iron is more common and so more men could be well armed. Of course the most famous representatives of Mycenaean culture were Achilles, Agamemnon, Menelaus & Odysseus.  The Iliad makes it sound like these sorts of heroes were the only guys who counted on the battlefield and they were.  With bronze weapons and kit, only a few can have complete armor, horses and chariots AND even fewer have the talent and time to develop the skills of an expert fighting man.  The Homeric heroes were a lot like tanks on a battlefield.  They could mow down the opposing infantry until they ran into a hero from the other side, hence the importance of single combat.  Besides, it makes a better story.  The later Greeks developed the phalanx, where they all stood in lines with spears and shields and pushed the other side until somebody broke.  Individual valour was merged with the larger group. It was an excellent war machine, but not as cool as Achilles v Hector. 

The 19th Century amateur archeologist Heinrich Schliemann used the Iliad to find both Agamemnon’s Mycenae and Helen’s Troy.  When he found a body in a tomb and took off the death mask, he thought he had looked on the face of Agamemnon and the gold death mask is still often associated with the face of Agamemnon, but modern historians think that the king with the golden mask predated the Trojan War period by a couple centuries.

We still take much of our understanding of the period from Homer, who wrote centuries after the events based on oral tradition, which tends to be corrupted.  The Mycenaeans had a written language.  There was great excitement when it was deciphered, about 50 years ago now, but all they wrote about were lists of who owned what and where things were stored.  It did prove that they were indeed Greeks (or proto-Greeks) but there is no literature or sense of history.   Knowing that Agamemnon owned a dozen sheep &  three cows in a particular local valley was probably really important back then, but fails to capture our imaginations today.  Mycenaean civilization remains pre-historic in the practical sense of the term.

Nevertheless, Mycenae is impressive even today in its ruined state.  The Lion Gate you see in the picture is sort of a reverse arch, with the triangle in the middle bearing and spreading the load. 

The natural setting is beautiful.  Most of the scenery we saw as we drove past Corinth into the Peloponnesus was beautiful.  The mountains in Greece go right down into the sea giving the country an unusually indented coast and long coastline.  Greece has more miles of coastline than all of Africa and no place in Greece is very far from both the mountains and the sea.  Little fertile valleys sit next to barren rocks and all have access to the sea.  It is a unique combination and scenery is not the most important consequence.  Geography helps explain much of Greek history and achievement.  

The picuture is a fish farm, BTW. Sorry for the blurr. I took it from the moving bus.

It has been really great to see the geography of the places and people I studied since I was a kid.  I realize how little I understand.   It is possible to know lots of facts and understand little.   When you put your feet on the ground, it is easier to understand the history.

Posted on

Things Are Getting Better

I talked to an English guy named Joe, who evidently made a lot of money selling prosthetic and orthopedic devices.  Exciting as that business was, he preferred history and knew a lot about it.  He said that he had been coming to Athens for more than 20 years and had seen a lot of improvements.  That is why I didn’t find the smoggy, dingy Athens I had expected, he explained.  He pointed out that 20 years ago you couldn’t look out from the Acropolis and expect to see the mountains because they were usually obscured by smog.  The green space had been much less green and was filled with garbage back then.  The Greeks had made significant progress.  He also confirmed that much of the forest I had seen coming in was a recent improvement. 

Contrary to what you might think watching the news, things have generally been getting better, especially in Europe and North America, where forest cover has increased and water and air quality has improved remarkably.  As a teenage environmentalist, I recall reading all those books that predicted mass famines by 1985, resource depletion and general collapse of the environment by now.  Instead we get this (see below).

What a beautiful place.   That is not to say our problems are all finished.  China is already making our pitiful attempts are planet wrecking look like a junior varsity effort of a class C team, but if we in the West can make such progress, I suppose they can too.  If they work really hard, maybe the athletes at this year’s Olympics in Beijing will be able to breathe deeply as they compete and that temporary improvement might be the start of something bigger.

Below is a parade next to the Greek parliament.  I just happened on it.

Posted on

Kids Arrive in Athens

Mariza & Espen arrived about an hour & a half late. They were tired, which was good since they arrived late and could go to bed soon.  We had supper at a place called “Goody’s” a fast food place.  Even with all the money I get for being in Iraq, we cannot afford (or at least I cannot tolerate) to eat at the restaurants in Marriott.  It would be costing around $50 a person.  It is expensive around here in general and it is not only the strong Euro.

I let the kids sleep late and we had the Euro tourist breakfast of bread & cheese and then headed down to see the Acropolis.  Marriott runs a shuttle bus to the downtown.  We walked up the steep path to the Acropolis.  This place is not handicapped friendly and the rocks are worn smooth, shinny and slippery but it is worth the trip.  Actually, there is not much left of the monuments on the Acropolis, but standing amid all this history and at the origins of our civilization is a special experience.  Espen and Mariza enjoyed it too and that made it a much better day for me than yesterday when I scouted it out alone – and yesterday was a good day. 


I have grown old and softer especially my feet.  I walked all day yesterday and most of the day before and on the third day my feet hurt.  Tomorrow we plan to go to Mycenae.  It is a bus trip, so I figure I will walk a bit less and the old feet will recover. 

Mariza got sick.  We don’t know why.  She ate all the same things we all did, but she threw up a little.  As I write now, she is feeling better and I hope she will be in shape tomorrow.  


The irony of trying to eat in Athens is that the gyros are not good or not available.  They just don’t have those rotating meat things I saw in Turkey or that I remember from the Greek restaurants in Madison.  I had a poor imitation of the legendary Zorba’s of Madison gyros. It was actually just little pieces of meat with the bread and sauce.  I may never again enjoy the total experience.  Last time I went to Madison, I found only one gyros place and it was run by Mexicans.  Evidently there are not enough Greek immigrants anymore and these guys were way too polite.  I recall the Zorba’s experience as something like the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld.  YOU! They would say and if you didn’t answer quick enough “no gyros for you.”  Well, not quite that, but the feeling was the same.  

As important as gyros is to human happiness, there is much more to the country.  I expected to enjoy Greece, but I have been pleasantly surprised so far. My disappointments are that I will not see it all.  For example, I will not go to Thermopylae.  It is not on the beaten track, even after the success of “The 300”.  As I understand it, silt and erosion has widened the pass since the time of Leonidas, so it is hard to picture the battle anyway.  Maybe it is best to keep it in the imagination.  I saw the old movie “The 300 Spartans” when I was in 5th grade and that is what started me reading about the ancient Greeks.  Forty years later I know that movie was not accurate in most details and the real Greeks were much more interesting than those in the movie, but I still acknowledge what started me down the path.  After so many changes, I guess we sort of stay the same, or more correctly I think we circle around the same places.  

I was worried that the kids would get sunburned.  I am a little tan from living in Iraq – and I have a hat – but they are still pale.  Sunblock is expensive and harder to find around here than I thought but we got some.  It cost 20 Euro or around $30.  Note to self – bring sunblock.

Posted on

Travels in Kuwait & Greece

Blue Collar Expeditionary Force 

A guy called Wayne helped get me from the Ali Al Salem to the Kuwait International airport.  He was an American from Georgia who had owned a construction company of his own, drove trucks in the U.S. and Iraq and now worked for KBR taking care of State Department people transiting Kuwait.   

When he drove truck, he was headquartered in Al Asad.  He was in Anbar when the heavy fighting was still going on and it was very dangerous to drive around.  He told me that for security reasons they would not stop when things fell off the trucks.  Sometimes they were just little things like pallets of water, but often the were higher value items such as building supplies.  Local Iraqis could make a good living scavenging.  It is a variation of that old “it fell off the back of a truck” saying.

Wayne moved to Kuwait from Al Asad because he was beguiled by the idea of getting back to “civilization”.  He regretted the move and missed the Marines at Al Asad.  He was less fond of the Kuwaitis. With the immense oil wealth, few of them actually do any useful work, at least not much of it.  They are also largely nocturnal.  This makes sense because of the heat during the day.  This package of traits formed the basis of Wayne’s grievances.  Muslims fast during Ramadan form sun up to sun down.  This is really no hardship for most Kuwaitis since they can sleep during the day and enjoy life al night.  But the law in Kuwait enforces Ramadan rules on non- Muslims too, so outsiders like Wayne, who work during the day, are the ones who pay the big price.

A couple of Bosnians actually gave me the ride to the airport.  Their outlook was similar to Wayne’s.  They had worked in Iraq and liked it better than working in Kuwait.  I guess I can understand.  As I am writing this from Athens, I am feeling a little anxious about not being at Al Asad.  It is a totally unexpected feeling.  You know what is what at Al Asad.  There are no real options.  You eat at the chow hall, go to work and sleep in your can.  Outside you have to plan a lot more AND things all cost money.   Don’t get me wrong, Athens is great so far and I will write about that too.  But I do have to acknowledge the anxiety that others have told me about and I never understood.

I think it is harder for Wayne and the Bosnians.  From my short exposure, I think I would hate to live in Kuwait. On to a physical environment no better than Iraq’s is grafted a society that is simultaneously decadent and puritanical.  When I drove through the place at night, it looked like it had snowed.  A dust storm covered the ground and the trees.  In the light of the moon and the street lamps, it looked like snow, but snow is clean and new fallen snow is fresh. There is nothing pleasant about a layer of dust.

Greece

My flight to Athens was scheduled to leave at 0310.  In fact it left a bit later.  I got into Athens at around 0700 local time w/o having slept more than a couple minutes on the plane.  Athens is nicer, cleaner and greener than I imagined and the mountain relief is higher.  The mountains on the way from the airport are covered with pine.  I think it is a new forest, however.  Most of it looks young, less than 50 years old, although since I am unfamiliar with the local species and growing conditions I may be wrong.  My guess is that the trees are recently established and before that time goats and sheep prevented forest regeneration.  When you look at old pictures, you see that the hills of Greece were a lot more barren a in the past.  I was looking at some prints from the Ottoman times in the late 18th Century.  They usually feature shepherds with their flocks picturesquely denuding the landscape.

I was a lot less tired than I thought I would be, so I used the morning to scout out some of the places I might take Mariza and Espen.  It was good I did.  I followed a path that said “to Acropolis.”  It wound through closely packed houses and through what looked like people’s backyards.  After following the serpentine path up the hill, I ran into a fence.  This was probably a back way up to the summit.  It was an interesting walk.  A couple of steps behind me was a group of old ladies in comfortable shoes.  I had passed them on the way up and when I passed them on the way down, I told them about the fence.  They seemed less amused that I had been and grumbled loudly in their British accents about ancient civilization being unable to handle simple contemporary tasks.

This is a picture from the path and below is part of the path.  All in all, it was worth the trip.

Posted on

The Citadel, Mamluks & Mohammed Ali

This entry is one of the late ones I mentioned.  This is the last of my Egypt entries.

Saladin built the Citadel and it became the home of Egypt’s rulers for the next 800 years.  You can see why it was built here.  The high ground commands Cairo.  All medieval fortresses have a similar feel and this one reminded me of those I have seen around Europe.  Europeans learned the art of making stone fortifications from the Muslims during the Crusades, but Muslim inherited much of the knowledge from the Romans and stone walls are stone walls.  Anyway, the feeling was familiar, except for the minarets. 

Mohammed Ali, ruler of Egypt not the fighter, added a lot to the complex, including the big Mohammed Ali Mosque.  He was an Albanian born in what is now Greece who evidently never spoke any language well other than Albanian.  It gets even more complicated.  He took power from the Mamluks, slave soldiers seized from the Balkans and Caucuses, among other places.   The Turks ran one strange empire.  Mohammed Ali invited the leaders of the Mamluks to a feast at the Citadel and then murdered them on the way out.  That is a dish best served cold.

The Citadel features an interesting military museum with lots of weapons and uniforms.  The big drawback is that it was restored with the help of the North Koreans, so many of the exhibits are comically propagandistic.  Although the list of recent Egyptian war victories is short, they managed to imply some or at least a few heroic stands.  The N. Koreans made a panorama of the Yom Kippur War that looks like the D-Day landings.  They probably copied the D-Day pictures.  They have a painting of the British in Egypt in the 19th Century showing a couple of guys who look like they came out of a 1990s GQ.  I bet that is what the N. Koreans used as models.  How dumb is it to ask the N. Koreans to help with something like this, but despite the propaganda veneer and the mislabeling of some exhibits, it is worth seeing.  Alex especially liked it.  

The Mohammed Ali Mosque is an interesting place.  It is Turkish, not Egyptian style, and looks like those you might find in Istanbul.  Mohammed Ali is an interesting and important historical figure.  He rescued Egypt from chaos, helped modernize the place  in the 19th Century and ruled for many years, yet we hear very little about him in our history classes.  I think he suffers from being a non-European leader when most history was written in and about Europe.  He also doesn’t get much support from nationalists or the new PC crowd, which venerates non-western leaders, because of his peculiar origins.  He was essentially an imperialist and sort of an adventurer, who could capture the imaginations of Victorians but leaves modern readers cold.

Posted on

Heliopolis

I was interested in seeing Heliopolis because I am interested in planned communities from the “garden city” era in the early 20th Century an era and concept that produced some of the most livable cities.  Many of the places where people want to live today, but usually cannot afford – Beverly Hills, Grosse Point, Chestnut Hill & Coral Gables – started out as garden cities.  Unfortunately, the idea fell out of favor with planners and architects by mid-century and we were building some of the ugliest and most dysfunctional communities in human history.  The hideousness was worldwide.  It is hard to believe that someone created places like Nowa Huta, Cabrini Green or Brasilia on purpose.  I think we can learn from successes and failures.

Heliopolis is still relatively more livable than the rest of Cairo, but the population and squalor of the larger city have overwhelmed it.  In theory you can walk around, but the Cairo driving habits make that dangerous.  The inhabitants and authorities are making efforts to clean up some of the squalor, but a prerequisite for a livable city is control of traffic & overcrowding.  Unless you do that, it is like cleaning the birdcage w/o feeding the bird.

The most interesting book I read on this sort of topic was “A Pattern Language”.  The authors went around the world to compile the factors that people want in their cities.  Galleries or porches are one of the important factors they found.  Heliopolis has them. Another factor was access to shops.  These are also present.  I think if they got the traffic problem under control, this place would be just fine.   From the guidebook I thought this would be a more pleasant place.  I guess in a city with nearly 20 million people packed so tightly together, that is something you just do not get.

Some of the shopkeepers & taxi drivers we met alluded to this.  They complained that their upscale customers were disappearing, drawn out of Cairo to the controlled and agreeable resorts.  At first, people went to the resorts when they visited Egypt.  More and more, however, they are just going to resorts that happen to be in Egypt w/o regard to the rest of the country.  The Red Sea resorts are where they are because the sun shines every day not because they are in Egypt.  They could be anywhere in the world.

The take away lesson from this is that if you do not provide people with the pleasant amenities they want, they will find them someplace else, and the most influential people will leave first.

Posted on

Great Pyramids

We saw the pyramids.  They are magical and more impressive than you would think from pictures.  The sphinx is smaller, however.  We rode up on camels to see these wonders.  It cost more, but it was a good experience and now that I have done it I will never have to do it again.  The camel is a horse designed by a committee.  They are truly odd looking and unpleasant animals.   They burp, spit and stink. 

We had a good guide who had relationships (i.e. gave money) with the guards to let us “park” near some of the pyramids and we had the pleasure of being almost alone in the quiet near some of the smaller pyramids. It makes a big difference. We could see the thousands of people in the distance touring the macro sites. When we went down to see the sphinx we had the crowd crush experience. There is always somebody around who wants money. It detracts.

Below I am sitting with our guide. He spoke good English and claimed to have spent his whole life near the pyramids, at first as a child selling little tokens.

Posted on

A Long Way From Graceland

Memphis was the capital of Egypt for hundreds of years.  Today there is nothing but palms trees and a big monument area in the nearby desert.   This is Saqqara.  In some ways it is more interesting than the pyramids at Giza.   The first pyramids are here.  At first they are just a pile of rubble, but then you get a step pyramid (pyramid of Djoser) that is the precursor of the pyramids we all know.

We got to Saqqara early enough to avoid the crowds.  In fact, we were just about a half hour ahead of a bus caravan of Germans.  They were hot on our heels throughout the area.  Going in tour groups has some advantages.  You get some lecture by the guide and the numbers help dilute the effect of the ubiquitous pseudo guides who show you how to get into a monument or point you to the clearly marked path and then want money.

I do not believe that the average guide furnishes accurate information.  Just listening to those around me I heard all sorts of conflicting stories.  The guides’ main goal is to make the listeners happy so that he will get a bigger tip, so he tailors history to suite what he thinks the audiences wants to hear or a narrative that is easier to tell.  I am not sure it really matters very much anyway.  I cannot believe I just wrote that.  Those who know me know that I am very particular about historical accuracy, but in this case the person is going to remember only that he saw something very old.  The details will be buried in the sands of time, shrouded in the mist of antiquity or lost like a drunk’s car keys on a dark night, depending on the metaphor you like best.   This is tourism, not scholarship.

After Saqqara we went to the probable site of Memphis. Layers of mud had covered the place, but they still sometimes dig out interesting things.   There was a giant stature of Ramesses laying on the ground and they built a viewing area around it  Ramesses was evidently the vainest man in world history.  He wrote his name on everything, including the statues of previous pharaohs, but this was supposedly really him.   We got to Memphis a few minutes ahead of the Germans, but that is about all the time it took to see the place. 

Our driver took us to a carpet “museum”, i.e. a place where they show you an exhibit of carpet making for a minute and then try to sell you carpets for the next hour.  Drivers get a kickback and I don’t begrudge them this.  We went to a papyrus museum yesterday, same thing.  And they tried to draw us into a perfume factory.  We were immune to these enticements, however, having already been already fleeced at papyrus and perfume museums near the Egyptian museum.

For me the most interesting part of the day was a visit to the Coptic area.  Copts still make up about 10% of the population.  The churches are reminiscent of the Romans & Byzantines.  I like that history.  According to the narrative at the museums, Egypt has more relics of early Christianity than anyplace else because the climate preserves them. Besides, Egypt was a center of early Christianity.  It is interesting to see how Islam so obliterated Christianity in all but a few pockets in what really was its homeland in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor and of course the Holy Land itself.   

We wanted to go to a nearby restaurant, but the driver told us that we would get food poisoning if we even walked in.  He took us to an authentic tourist buffet restaurant.  Those Germans who, had been just behind us all day, were now in front and already sitting at the restaurant.  We had the Egyptian meal auf deutsch. 

It was a busy day.  Back at the Marriott we went to the restaurant that called itself Egyptians and called ourselves content.  Then a strange thing happened.  It rained.  People are accustomed to water flowing in the river and are a little surprised to see it falling from the sky.  The waiters were all exercised & talking about it.   After living in Al Anbar for a couple of months, I understand.I will post pictures of all the things above when I get back to Al Asad.