More on Greece
Sunday, 26 April 2009

Writing this has been on my agenda for a few days, but after arriving home in Paris, then seeing my room mate off to Berlin, I have had a rather unproductive batch of activity, colored by a mild cold (which seems to have been Greece's parting gift).  At any rate, here come some tidbits about the trip, bullet-style.

• Since Greece is primarily a series of islands, it can be hard to feel like you've had a truly representative or comprehensive tour of the country if you don't have two weeks to explore and island hop.  Five days was barely enough time for Athens and Santorini.  We could have easily stayed on the island for a week or more.
• Everything the travel books say about unreliable transportation in Greece is true.  Always have a back-up plan.  When we arrived at the Athens airport, the metro was out, so we had to take a 45-minute bus to a metro stop closer to the city.  That said, even when transportation was out, it was easy to find information and alternatives.
• The metro is easy to use.  It's easy to navigate; there are only a couple of lines, and just a few major stations where you can transfer.  At each stop the doors automatically open and the name of the stop is said over the speaker system.  Buying tickets is easy, too, at automated kiosks.

• Ferries are notorious for not keeping to their schedules.  We purchased tickets in advance (by about two to three weeks) using greeka.com.  Though the ferry didn't seem full when we were on it, we had trouble on the site choosing the ticket options we wanted (i.e. economy vs. business, etc.), so despite the risk, I do recommend booking early, especially if you're interested in the high speed or if you're traveling during high season.  By the time we were in Greece and ready to hop on the ferry, they had changed the ferry number, so we had to get our seats reassigned after boarding.  Also, if you're not a Greek student, you apparently don't qualify for the student discount, as we had to pay the difference once we got on board (though on the trip coming back, no one even asked to see our student IDs, so perhaps it's worth risking).  Our last full day in Santorini, our hostel owner told us that the high speed ferry hadn't arrived that day, and that it may not come the next day (when we were supposed to return to Athens).  Fortunately when we went to the ticket office the next morning to confirm its arrival, our ferry was in fact scheduled to come to the island, though again the ferry number had changed and so had our seats.  Had the ferry not come we most likely would have missed our last day (when we had planned to see everything in Athens), and possibly our flight (which required us to leave for the airport around 3AM that night).  So, as all the guide books advise, it's best to have more than one day on the tail end of your trip in case you have any boat problems.

• We chose the high speed ferry because it was significantly cheaper than a plane, still affordable, and not as long a ride as the regular ferry.  The high speeds supposedly take five hours to get to Santorini, one of the farthest islands from the mainland, though each way it took 6+ hours (about 7.5 on the way back to Athens).  If the regular ferries are as likely to take more time than noted, I'd be wary of the 12+ hour trips to the farthest islands.
• Riding on the ferries is quite comfortable, seat-wise, though there's not much of a barrier between smoking and non-smoking areas.  The fact that they even distinguish them is a step forward for Greece (all restaurants are smoking and there are no sections, smoking's allowed in the airport, etc.).  Smoking wasn't quite as omnipresent as it was in Eastern Europe -- like in Bosnia -- but it's more prevalent in Greece than in other EU countries like France, where they've banned smoking indoors.  None of us had any trouble with sea sickness on the high speed, and I'm notorious for my sensitive stomach.
• There's a snack bar on the ferry that sells chips and not-French-fresh baked goods, but if you plan to eat a meal while you're on board, you might want to consider bringing it yourself.  There aren't many options on board (mostly airport-like sandwiches).

• Greek food is ridiculously delicious.  Don't miss the yogurt and honey.  The yogurt has a texture almost like sour cream, and the honey is somehow more honeyful.  We didn't eat a single meal while we were there that was (a) expensive (especially by Parisian standards), and (b) anything but overwhelmingly delicious.  I recommend chicken with yogurt and honey sauce (really, anything that comes with yogurt and honey is win), tzatziki, oven-roasted feta with honey and sesame (again, anything with honey = something you want to eat), pastichio, any lamb dish, etc.  I didn't find any Greek donuts while I was there, which is either due to the difficulty in making them (having a donut frier), or perhaps because they are an American-Greek tradition?  Anyway, if you've ever eaten Greek food in Birmingham, Alabama, you can rest assured that you're getting pretty authentic stuff.  Except for maybe the yogurt.  It seems one can never have yogurt quite so delicious, thick, and creamy, as when one is traveling in Greece.

• There are many places to stay on Santorini.  If you're the kind of person who has an income and isn't a student scrambling for the cheapest options, I recommend staying in Oia, which was by far the most beautiful place we saw on the island.  I didn't bother to look, but I'm sure there are a number of ritzy and small hotels, spas, etc. as it is a major honeymoon destination.  There's a hostel in Oia that's 17€ per person per night, but we opted for a hostel on Perissa Beach called Stelio's Place, which I highly recommend.  It was only 8.50€ per person per night, and the rooms and service were as good as any hotel I've ever stayed in.  Perissa Beach is a little out of the way and much more secluded, but it has a great small community feel.  The hostel was literally meters from the black sand beach, and there are a number of affordable restaurants within walking distance.  The bus stop for the area is just outside the hostel, and it was easy to catch a bus to some of the larger cities and communities on the island.  I highly recommend Stelio's Place if you can put up with the other guests, who are mostly college co-eds and can be a little drunk and noisy if they're traveling in groups.  We only had trouble with noise one night, but fortunately they went out drinking around midnight and we didn't hear them after.  I suspect that during the high season there's more of this type of thing, but perhaps a good pair of earplugs is all you need.  The hostel staff is prefectly friendly and respectful, and they will pick you up and drive you back to the port for your ferry, free of charge.  During the low season (September-April), Perissa Beach is pretty quiet and secluded.

• Buses on Santorini all run to Fira, the capital of the island.  To get from any smaller city or community to any other part of the island, you must catch a bus to Fira, then transfer.  All bus tickets are purchased on the bus, and range from 1€ to ~3€ (each way).  Fira might be a good place to stay simply because you're near the main bus terminal of the island, and since it's a larger area there are more restaurants, places to stay, etc.
• While it's good to plan more than one day in Athens for the reasons I listed above, you can see most of what is there in one day, easy.  We happened to be there on the weekend of Greek Easter (a different date than Easter elsewhere), so all the monuments and museums closed at 3PM on Saturday.  Still, when we set out around 9AM we managed to see most everything, monument-wise.  Everything's pretty easily accessible by metro.  However, we didn't see any museums in Athens since the monuments were higher on our list, but had they held regular hours I think a day and a half tops would suffice.  Athens has a touristy flea market and restaurant area, and some more authentic pockets of local life, but as a city we didn't find it too exciting to walk around (as I would, say, Paris, Venice, Prague, etc.).
• Our first night in Athens we stayed at AthenStyle hostel, which was affordable and extremely nice.  Very clean, great common areas, incredible location (less than a five minute walk to the main part of town full of restaurants, shopping, etc.), easily accessible by metro, friendly staff.  It was a bit more expensive than other options but totally worth it.  Their private rooms include a kitchenette.  We didn't see it, but the guy at the desk told us they were about to complete their rooftop cafe and bar, which would have a great view of the Acropolis.
• The hostel we stayed in on our return, Hostel Aphrodite, was much less hotel-like, and much more like your average hostel/camping facility.  They had great breakfasts (not included in the room price), but the bathrooms, while clean, were a little strange, lacked hooks or shelves in the showers, etc.  The room had a sink and two bunk beds with pretty tight quarters.  It would be a good budget option if it weren't such a long walk from any metro, and in a part of town where there's nothing to see, and where, as females, we felt pretty unsafe at night (we hardly saw ANY women in the area who weren't tourists, and the men were often in big groups, though none approached us).  This was all despite good reviews of the area and the hostel.  If you're traveling with males and you don't mind a walk and a twenty-minute metro ride each way, it's a cheap place and it's not all bad.  We concluded that one reason they probably have good reviews is that you get a free shot at the bar your first night.
• As the clock moves toward midnight the night before Greek Easter, churches across the city shoot off fireworks.  This is something we discovered while trying desparately to sleep before heading to the airport around 3AM.
• I've read lots of warnings about taxis in Athens -- that the drivers are notorious for rip-offs, etc.  We managed not to use any except to get to the airport.  I think if you call to reserve a car there's no real trouble; it's primarily in tourist spots (like at the port or the airport) where the drivers will try to get you into a car so they can overcharge you.

• The metro in Athens closes on weekdays at midnight.  Our ferry was late arriving, so around 11:30 we booked it to the metro stop (a short walk from the port) and managed to make the last train.  Keep that in mind when you're booking ferry tickets -- that your ferry may be anywhere from 2-3 hours late arriving, and that after 11:30 or so, your only transportation options are night buses and taxis.
• The light in Greece is different than anywhere else I've been.  In addition to being very beautiful, the sunlight is extremely harsh.  While it seems that everyone needs reminding that without sunscreen, you will get sunburned if you lay out on a beach, my fellow travelers insisted that they tanned well and would have no trouble.  While I was religiously slathering myself with sunscreen (even if we were just sitting in direct sunlight while eating lunch), my friends were cultivating pretty wicked burns, which can be acquired in just an hour.  It's best to avoid direct sun between 12PM and 3PM especially.  With a generous application of 30SPF, though, you'll probably be fine.  It's also worth noting that sun stroke can be common, so drinking a lot of water (especially while on the islands) is advisable.  Check to see if the places you're traveling have potable water, though.  Athens certainly does, but most places on Santorini don't, since they don't have the proper desalination plants.
  

12:48 PM                    filed under: tourism

On Greece
Sunday, 19 April 2009

The strange thing about traveling, these days, is the sense of having manifested something.  When I was younger it was more about the act of departure and arrival -- the sense of moving away from people and coming back, the age-old idea of a trip that changes you, even if it is just for a weekend.  While much of that still stands, it feels different.  No longer do tray tables inspire scrawled journal entries about how exciting it feels to be in transit, to know the sensation of geographic movement.  Now I mostly try to sleep, I get knots in my back, and I try not to drool in public.  The taste of once-frozen dinner rolls and mid-morning vegetable spread isn't much condolence. 

I think maybe the romance surrounding air travel died on a flight from Atlanta to Seoul, when I spent four of sixteen hours in the airplane bathroom, throwing up and trying to stay conscious.  I have worked hard to train myself into napping uncontrollably, if only to avoid thinking too hard about my digestive tract and all the things I have put it through in life.  The romance of being in transit has completely fallen away; transit is hardly time to reflect on the places one has seen, or time to ponder where one is going.  Rather, it is a miserable experience one must endure between bursts of life.  Here are hours not wasted, but folded somewhere into time.  Though geographic movement seems to take forever while it is experienced, once you have arrived it seems quite sudden.  Suddenly you are home.  Suddenly it is tomorrow.  Suddenly it occurs to you how terrible you smell, how long you have been awake, that you have been on your computer for six hours, and that, for the second time in a day, the only meal you can assemble is farfalle with butter and a glass of apple juice.  It would behoove me to remember to stock a little something in the freezer for Sunday arrivals, when all grocery stores and markets in France are closed.

The strangeness and the delight, as I said, concern the manifestation of a trip -- to plan from start to finish, to assemble tickets, to gather information.  Even choosing destinations can inspire disbelief.  One moment there is a voice in your computer, and a few years later you are visiting a friend in Bosnia.  One evening you see a photograph and decide you must experience its subject directly.  One month you are collecting signatures on campus, then suddenly you are alone in an airport, about to move to a foreign country for a year.  Each journey can be traced by its own string of events, but as you experience them they can feel quite disconnected.  It is hard for me to convey how many times I have stood before monuments or looked out on a view and had an experience that abruptly changes from witnessing the site to an awareness that I really am there, that I decided to do something that seemed impossible and accomplished it.  Sometimes it feels almost by accident.  So often while traveling you are too overwhelmed for clarity, but every now and then a moment hits you and you realize you are standing in the spot you imagined you'd never reach, or that you'd only be able to visit thirty years down the road.  It's freeing.  Anything seems possible when, even if only for an instant, you feel you've controlled the course of your own life.

When trying to capture this sensation, I often return to this video, which ends with, "The end goal of this project, both in its vlog and documentary form is to share people's reasons and motivations behind their trip.  Most importantly, to share what makes or drives a person to leave everything behind: their routines, their friends, the things that are comfortable to us and give us a false sense of security.  There's an infinite number of stories and paths chosen that lead to leaving it all behind.  But even more important than sharing these stories is doing so in a way that helps break down the myths and false fears that people put up.  Because, in the end, it has almost nothing to do with the bike and everything to do with setting out to accomplish something that is intimidating, that is unknown to you -- something you know you have a good chance of failing at, but doing it anyway, and slowly but surely, proving yourself wrong."

9:21 PM                    filed under: daily

Parisian photo adventures
Monday, 13 April 2009

My days in Paris are numbered, and so, it seems, my camera finds itself out and about more frequently.  Here are some recent highlights.


Philip, Drew, and Daniel on the escalators of the Pompidou.


Drew on a pedestrian bridge.


Drew retrieving some photos from the old school photo booth at Palais de Tokyo.


Sunset on the banks of the Seine.


Philip, Daniel, and I at sunset on the quai.


Kite flying (well, sort of) at the Parc des Buttes Chaumont.


Me, giving Philip a hair cut in my apartment.


From the old school photo booth at Palais de Tokyo, when Logan was here during his spring break.

As always, there are a variety of photo adventures over at the flickr stream.

3:28 PM            comments (1)           filed under: photography

My life, the future, and everything
Wednesday, 08 April 2009

A few of you have submitted your votes (it's a good system, don't you think?  Let's me know what you think is interesting, and gives me a jumping-off point and a greater sense of purpose), so today's program will include an exploration of the landscape of my life as it has been shaping up recently.  I expect by the time I finish, it will have been a long and winding hike through the mountains, but perhaps we'll find a view of the horizon and someone can claim they see what's coming up ahead.  That person will probably not be me.

With every month that passes, I toss around phrases like, "It's hard to believe there are only ____ months left in Paris," if only to remind myself that this magical year will come to a close, and that Paris will not, in fact, remain my daily backdrop.  Today there remain less than two months, and before long the countdown will be in days.  Already I am putting off things like getting a haircut or seeing a film -- things that will be cheaper to do in America.

I have a lot to go back to, so it's not as if I'm dreading my return.  But it's hard to fathom what it will mean to leave Paris, and hard to convey to others even a fraction of what I think it will feel like.  I suppose the closest I can come with people my age is this: remember your freshman year of college?  Your new friends, your new lifestyle, the parties, the road trips, the late nights, the sense of community.  Imagine as a freshman on the eve of exams, you knew you'd go back to complete another year of high school in the fall.  It's hardly a sentence; there are classmates you'd love to see again, perhaps you miss your hometown, etc.  But there remains the fact that life has changed quite drastically, and returning to the same setting you found yourself in a year prior might feel a little strange.  Nevermind that they literally speak a different language, don't have delicious bakeries on every corner, and have considerably less museums to visit.

I keep thinking of a Czech proverb I learned recently, "Kolik jazyku znas, tolikrat jsi clovekem."  In English, it's something to the effect of "you live a new life for every new language you speak. If you know only one language, you live only once."  It's not as if Paris will vanish overnight -- a culture forever lost, a second Atlantis -- but access to French culture and language in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, can be a bit limited, even with the help of French clubs and tutoring jobs.  The little songs everyone sings to each other here cannot be exported; the cadence of my usual "merci, au revoir" at the bakery door won't be quite so beautiful and effective when I take my coffee and bagel from the disgruntled old woman at the café in the bottom floor of the university library.

As for questions about the future (to touch on the high school comparison once more), it's a bit like being a junior in high school and having people ask you where you'll be going to college before you've even taken the tests you'll need to apply.  So perhaps we'll start with something more immediate.  I've applied to a number of internships with museums and magazines, hoping to find some work in New York or D.C. for the summer.  Most of what I've applied for involves exhibit creation or research, film archiving/restoration, or art editorial work.  So far I have a rejection from National Geographic in D.C., and an interview with Harper's in New York.  With about fifteen applications submitted, I hope the net I cast is wide enough, but it's still a bit early to tell.  I'm still waiting to hear back from others like the Holocaust Museum, the Smithsonian's Postal Museum, the Notebaert Museum in Chicago, National Geographic Adventure, a book arts internship in Brooklyn, and a number of other small libraries and publications.  If I don't find anything I'll spend some time at my parents' and maybe return early to Tuscaloosa for summer school and work.

Other definites: a fall schedule that includes Intro to Linguistics, Printmaking, a seminar on ethnography and culture, Spanish 103, and a science credit I need to graduate.  After missing the dark room so fiercely this year, I regret that there's not room in my academic schedule to take photography, but I can still work as a dark room monitor.  Hopefully I'll have the time to create more work for my portfolio.

Which brings me to the Post Undergrad Question.  What will Glynnis do with her life?  I remain of the mentality that opportunities present themselves, and that one needs only to be willing, brave, and ready.  And that in the meantime one should work hard and stay busy doing things one loves.  This whole Paris for a year thing?  A crazy opportunity that presented itself via supportive parents, two generous scholarships, and an academic advisor who asked the question, "Only for the summer?  Why not go for the whole year?"  Oh yeah.  And there was a lot of paperwork.

So with the opportunity mentality in mind, there are a number of directions I'm considering.  I'm hoping one of them will suddenly become more appealing and plausible than the others, and soon.

• Grad school.  This may be tricky, since for reasons relating to personal history and the U.S. health care system, it'd be best to consider going right after I graduate.  Which means tests and portfolios and a mess of applications in the near future, when I'm still not entirely positive what I'm most interested in or where I should apply.  Possibilities I'm considering: an MFA in photography (Parsons?), or an MFA in book arts/library sciences (programs around the country).  I've also considered linguistics but am not sure yet whether it's something I'm committed or qualified to study at the graduate level.
• Re: a mess of portfolios, applications, and tests as soon as I get back to the States.  Graduating late.  Taking more time in undergrad to be sure of what I'd like to do when I finish.  The drawback: hanging around Tuscaloosa doesn't seem as appealing as some of the other options, and my scholarship runs out in the spring so it may be best to put the money toward moving forward rather than stalling.
• France!  I can come back and continue studying, get certified to teach French, or teach English.  Or all three.  And school/health care here is cheap.
  
• Entering the job market.  Work on magazines, in museums?  Teaching French?  Getting paid to be awesome and think about things?

So that's as much an update as I can give you concerning my life, the future, and everything, without degenerating into whines about how all of it will be more difficult and competitive with today's economy.  As more news rolls in and as the time inevitably passes, I'll try to keep the internet up to date on any new developments (beats repeating all this uncertainty ad nauseam via email, video chat, and phone calls).  But until then, I suppose it's best to enjoy all the questions of youth, eh?  The answers aren't always as important as we'd like to think they are.

9:17 PM            comments (2)           filed under: daily