I'm alive

Greetings from the Hotel Delta in Lamia, Greece (a rather decent hotel, 60 euros or so for three of us, great air conditioning in the rooms, free Internet in the lobby, and a decent breakfast (like 5 euros extra or something) - after our hotel last night in Delphi, the Hotel Olympic, which has air conditioning in name only, I had to pull my mattress to the hallways by the front door since it was cooler on the marble floor away from the window - our room was 90 degrees all night - anyway, after that, I'm now making hotel recommendations :-)). Half of Greece is on fire, and I'm here visiting family. Nice. Above is the view from the highway. The video, below, is from downtown Athens. We were getting our car rental when we saw this huge billowing smoke coming from across town. We had a hunch that this was related to the fires, and I think it was. (Just uploaded the video, so may take a few minutes.)



We found out yesterday that the road down south to our family, and half the country, has been blocked off by the police because of the fires. No one is going anywhere. So we headed north, visited Delphi yesterday, which really is an amazing place, and then went to the monastery of Holy Lukas, a monk from like 900 AD or so. Lukas' remains are in the monastery, on display (okay, it was kind of creepy and cool). Voila, the monastery.



Delphi was huge compared to what I remember. I think they've uncovered, or prepared for the public, a HUGE amount more than was previously available. The cool thing is that Greece is becoming like Rome, in that more and more of the antiquities are finally becoming readily viewable by the public. Previously, so much work was yet to be done on the ancient stuff, but now they're really moving into high gear, or at least it seems. It's really great to see. This is the view from the top of the Delphi looking down at the theater (where they bega the Pythian Games) and then the Temple of Apollo where the oracle sat and did her thing (it's also where Oedipus killed his father, married his mother, then flipped out).



And today we head to another series of monasteries atop some mountains in northern Greece (Meteora). Mom is big on the monastery thing, but it actually is pretty cool - anything 1000 years old isn't too shabby (well, okay, maybe Ann Coulter). Not sure what the rest of the week will bring, since much of my trip was going to be visiting the family down south.

In other news, I'm trying to remember all the interesting things I've seen in the past several days. Ah, the museum at Delphi. Very interesting. They had a beautiful statue of Antinoos. I seemed to remember that he was the lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, and was shocked to see the description of the statue state that fact outright (it's not often that the gay gets left in historical accounts). Especially gay history going back 2000 years. Here's the description the museum gave.



Anyway, it's very interesting being back in Greece after 20 years - I've been here 3 times before, but the last time was 1988. People are way nicer than I remember, and there are signs of major advancements in the country over the past two decades, such as the Athens metro, and this really cool bridge that goes to Corinth, I believe.



Here's some video of the bridge that I took - it's called the Rion-Antirion Bridge. Totally cool.



Then again, some things never change, like the traffic jam we had yesterday on the way to the town of Lamia, which is right next door to where King Leonidas took on the Persians in the story they redid for the movie "The 300," which mom and I watched halfway through 2 weeks ago, and hated.



Then again, perhaps the goats felt that turnabout was fair play after our dinner at my Aunt Mary's the other night. (Two points if you guess the mystery meat.)



Speaking of food, we had probably our best meal yet in Greece at a little restaurant in Lamia. If you ever visit this town, run to this restaurant. It's called"O Tselykas (or Tselyikas), meaning "The BIG shepherd," and the address is 22 Karaiskaki street (just off the main town squar, across from a pastry shop). It's all roast and BBQ'd food, Greek style. I had a to-die-for roast pork, and dad had lamb. Mom shared a Greek salad with us, also to die for (and I don't even like salad). The owner is a young guy who waits the tables and cooks all the food. He runs around like a madman and is the nicest guy. And it's cheap - our main courses were 7 and 9 euros, salad 3.50, etc.

Speaking of Aunt Mary's and grilling, I was grilling her on our various ancestors and she mentioned something that even my mom didn't know about. We come from southern Greece, on both sides of my family, and knew that, but found out that on mom's side, the famous-general-during-the-revolution side of the family, actually came down from northern Greece (near Albania) and had a reputation as being quite the vicious "don't f-with-me" crowd. My peeps were apparently mercenaries in the north, protecting villages from whomever (Turks mostly, I'd assume). They were called the "Souli," and our home village in the south became known as Soulima, derived from "Souli mas" - meaning, "our Souli." Their nickname, once they came down south, was "Dreddes" or something like that - apparently, it means something in some unknown language that is akin to "they're really scary people" (because we were known as warriors). Kind of a weird thing to learn about your family, but also kind of fun, and cool, and always fascinating to find out more about yourselves. (Any history buffs or geneology buffs out there who have a suggestion as to how I can research more about our family? My concern is that anything written about the Souli or the Dreddes, is probably in Greek - and I can speak okay, but reading, ugh.) Holy cow, there's an entire Wikipedia entry about my people - okay, I gotta admit, the Internet still continues to freak me out. I loved the following snippet, which my mom did actually know about:

In a famous incident on December 16, 1803, the so-called Dance of Zalongo, 22 Souliot women were trapped by enemy troops and committed suicide to avoid capture. According to tradition they did this by jumping off a steep cliff one after the other while dancing and singing.

Our ancestor who was a revered leader in the revolution against the Turks was named Papatsoris (I think he was a general, and a priest - have to ask mom). There's a statue of him in the center of the town of Soulima, and his uniform is in the museum in Athens. He's the one I'm really trying to find out information about, though any of his ancestors or beyond would be most welcome - if any of you Greek-info sleuths are interested in snooping around :-)

At first, I'd forgotten how unlike western Europe Athens is. But after 24 hours, I'm home again and really enjoying being here. It's a good life... when half the country isn't ablaze.

In closing, here's a picture I took of relatively nothing. It's not anything particularly beautiful, and it's not a particular nice photo. It's just an example of how damn beautiful the water is here. I didn't retouch this photo at all, this is the color of the water. And contrast it to the pale landscape. My mom said "it's like someone took a bucket of blue and just dumped it into the water, forgetting the rest of the landscape." It really is a beautiful country in such basic ways.



I may not find an Internet connection for several days. Will check back when I do.