Exercise Minotaur - A Journal (Part 3/3)

General Comments

It occurs to me that it seems almost all statues of Greek males have been castrated. Maybe they're the Greek equivalent of the Chinese Tigers' Penises.

All Greek restaurants have cover charges. It's irritating, but beats higher prices built into the menu, I guess. The menu prices also include taxes, which makes bill calculation and payment much simpler.

Our guide was good. She made only a few minor errors (fewer than those I'd have made), and my own memory was rusty, so I didn't correct her. It seems that only "specially licensed guides" are allowed to guide in the archaeological sites. Stinks of a cartel to me.

All around Greece, there were French/German youths going around in beach wear. Wth.

Olympic merchandise has saturated Greece. Everywhere you go, no matter which street you walk down, you will see a shop selling merchandise with the deformed Olympic mascot's image emlazoned on it. Worse still - you can get gigantic dolls of him/her/it to use to perform unspeakable acts. Olympic merchandise aside, it seems that there is a factory in Greece which churns out tourist souvenirs, and ships it to every corner of Greece. At least the Saronic Gulf islands were mostly spared.

It seems the Orthodox icon makers are more fond than Catholic icon makers of using gold and silver in their icons. With the amount of precious metals embossed on some of the icons, it's a wonder they can last a year without collapsing under their weight - let alone a century.

They pump classical music into the Athens metro. Beats the irritating announcements we have here.

McDonalds in Greece is hardcore - they have beer.

Day 6 - May 6th - Olympia-Mycenae-Corinth-Athens

Thursday morning saw us trooping down to Olympia's museum the first thing in the morning, both to avoid the later hordes and to get an early start on our drive to Mycenae. The museum was pleasant, with such gems as the sculpture of Zeus abducting Ganymede, the helmet Miltiades dedicated after Marathon, the Hermes of Praxiteles and the sculpture from the west pediment of the Temple of Zeus (the Battle between Lapiths and Centaurs).

For lunch, we stopped at the Kolizeras Restaurant, where I had schnitzel. Not too bad, but Paulaner Brauhaus does better. Anyway what was interesting about the restaurant was that it had been visited by many Republicans from the USA, among them Jesse Holms and Trent Lott. There was also a picture of someone (presumably the restaurant's owner) with Dan Quayle, and of George HW Bush with a flag behind him (what that meant, I do not know. I, for one, could frame up a photograph of Che Guevara and put it in my restaurant too). Also framed up was an invitation from the Republican National Committee to join the "Five Hundred Club" (whatever that is). Perhaps the owner raises lots of funds for Dubya. (Aside: It seems there is a picture of Bill Clinton in Tom Mazarakis Flokati shop in Athens.)

At Mycenae, we first visited the museum, where we saw replicas of items from Mycenae that have since been spirited away to the National Archaeological Museum, including the Mask of Agamemnon. At the site itself, we were walked past the Lion's Gate and also saw Grave Circle A, the sole Circle excavated by Schliemann. After that, we left, which incensed me, for I was looking forward to explore the site of Mycenae, or at least climbing to the remains of the Palace.

We were then bused to a large shop with an extensive collection of souvenirs - more than could be found elsewhere. I mention this only because we saw a humongous dalmation there, I think the largest dog I saw in Greece. It was so big that standing, it reached the waist level of a Chinese woman. Later, we had a brief look at the Corinth Canal and then returned to Athens.

In Athens we were introduced to Hotel Balasca. Since, in its name, the word "Hotel" came first, it was a foregone conclusion that it would be a sucky hotel. Indeed it wasn't, and it was located in a slum. Normally that wouldn't warrant comment (not even its lack of toilets outside the guest rooms), but for one thing - the system to enable power to the rooms. Now, as we all know, some hotels, in order to save power lost when inconsiderate guests do not turn off the power before leaving their rooms, have a slot by the door to put your key into when you are in the room to start the power supply. In Hotel Balasca, not only was there no courteous delay between the removing of the key and the cutting of the power (in case you accidentally take it out or something), but my usual trick of folding a card to insert into the slot to keep the power flowing (I was charging batteries) did not work! The gross incongruity of the lousiness of the hotel and the high tech power-cut system was most infuriating and insulting.

For dinner, my father and I walked to Omonia square, and had dinner at a nice cafe - Neon. I had a generous serving of pork gyros, which was full-flavoured. When I asked them to pack the leftovers, they cheerfully did so in a nice container, and otherwise the service was also good. My father wanted to leave a tip of <10%, but I protested and in the end we left a combined tip of >20%. On our way back, I saw a cute white dog in a car and took a picture of him, but he barked at me just before I pressed the button on the camera, so the picture came out blurry.

Day 7 - May 7th - Poros-Hydra-Aegina

On our last full day in Greece, 9 of our 13 went for a short cruise to 3 islands in the Saronic Gulf - Poros, Hydra and Aegina (in the order we visited them). The ship was well-furnished, but the atmosphere was very campy - there was guys playing muzak, and one idiot dressed as an FBI agent brandishing a wanted poster (where the villian looked like a moron). They also had some activities during the cruise, one being lessons in Greek dancing, so we were treated to the spectacle of old Korean women strutting their stuff on the small stage of the ship.

As we set out to sea, I went up on deck, not only to counter my slight sea-sickness, but also to look at the view and feel the sea spray on my skin. I happened to wander outside the bridge, and the captain invited me and some others in to have a look and use their binoculars.

Hydra is famous for donkeys, and while I was there I got to ride on one. An interesting experience, but not particularly exciting. The donkey keeper led the donkeys down alleyways, and there were metal bars and poles sticking out of the houses near my head level, so I had to duck every now and then.

At one point, we saw dolphins leaping into the air near the ship! This was especially exciting, because I don't think I've seen them before. Furthermore, I didn't know they lived in Greek waters, though the tales of Apollo and the Dolphins should have tipped me off. Sadly, by the time I got my camera out there were quite far away and indistinct.

At Aegina's Temple of Aphaia, my father commented that after a while, all the sanctuaries were the same. My sister commented the same about castles during last years road trip, asking if I wasn't "Castled out". I seem to be more immune than most, apparently!

On the way back from Aegina to Athens, I asked the captain where the isle of Salamis was. He not only told me where it was and pointed it out to me, but even brought me to a compartment at the back of his cabin to point the isle out on a navigational map. What a nice chap :)

Seagulls followed the ship at various points during the cruise, but after Aegina, there must have been at least 50 trailing in the ship's wake. Neither words nor photos nor even video clips can describe the wonder of seeing so many seagulls soaring in the wind above and behind the stern of the boat, darting every now and then to snatch a choice morsel in the ship's wake.

By the time we returned to our hotel, it was very late - past 8, if I recall correctly. Acting on a tip-off from someone, my father and I turned a corner and headed in a direction which we hadn't gone before, ending up in a residential area with several restaurants, the most popular of which was "Whetapia Taverna". Not only was the food good and cheap (some of the items - the pitas, especially, were cheaper than they'd be in Singapore), but the joint also served the only good french fries in Greece outside of McDonalds - all the other restaurants we'd been to served chunky but soggy fries (Neon's fries were crispy, but overcooked and they didn't give me many with my Gyros). We were so impressed that we (and some others) returned the next day for lunch.

My souvlaki was especially tasty, with huge and succulent chunks of meat. I'd actually ordered souvlaki at a cafe in Plaka on the second day, but had gotten only a few miserable shreds of limp meat. The souvlaki from Whetapia was what souvlaki should be! The only complaint about the place was their speed, or lack thereof - their definition of "one minute" seemed to be variable, as with a Swatch minute.

Day 8 - May 8th - Athens-Larnaca-Dubai-Singapore

We had the morning of the last day free, so I decided to visit a museum or two. The first was the Byzantine museum, but its galleries were closed (surprise, surprise) while their collections were being moved to the new extension. Gah. I bought a book on Byzantine fortifications and left huffily. Undaunted, I proceeded to the Benaki museum.

Though the facade of the museum was being renovated, it was thankfully open. My father saw the entrance fee and balked, so he loitered outside while I examined the collections. Sadly, the museum did not allow even non-flash photography so the images of neolithic tripods will forever be trapped in my mind, unable to find expression as bits and bytes on my hard disk.

A disturbingly large amount of pottery throughout Greece (and especially at the Benaki museum) had been "restored" or "reconstructed". Looking at the restored pottery, I saw that they constituted of shards of the original pot embedded in a large mass of modern material. How, then, do they retrieve the original shards if they need to - for example, if someone wants to study it, or they improve their restorative techniques? Somehow it seems sacrilegious to me to blatantly mix original and new material in a seemingly irreversible way.

Moving on, I saw Neolithic and Minoan figurines, and their crude forms made me feel much better about my abysmal art and craft skills. In another room were examples of Greek pottery, which made me realise that I still have not decided whether I prefer the red on black style of pottery or the black on red style. And in one item's description, Hades was called Pluto, while in another talked of the "form of Eros or Bacchus". How unseemly!

Being the narrow-minded philistine dilettante that I am, once the exhibits dated past the fall of Constantinople, I lost interest and just skimmed through them. My lack of interest was naturally encouraged by the fact that much of the post-Byzantine material consisted of Greek traditional costumes! Meanwhile, overtly Turkish items were conspicuous by their absence - a measure of the residual historical antagonism between the two peoples.

At the very end of the exhibition was a painting - "Spyros Papalouleas - the Sea in Paros", a study in what's wrong with modern art. It consisted of (going from the bottom of the canvas): a green band, a blue band, a green band, a blue band, a very thin green line and a wide light blue band (the sky) with some white daubs (clouds), and looked nothing at all like what I'd thought the sea in Paros looked like.

At a supermarket later, I picked up a packet of "V6 white + advanced whitening formula sugafree dental chewing gum" which purported to polish teeth, protect them from discolouration and neutralise acids causing caries. Other packs advertised their "calcium formula" and that they were fo "fresh breath control". This is the sort of good stuff that we Singaporeans are unable to consume, due to our paranoid, unjustified and simply ridiculous chewing gum ban.

At the airport's duty-free shop, I bought some sweets for people in camp (though they weren't very well received). I would have bought more and used up more of my remaining Euros, but my father rushed me through the gate prematurely.

Emirates

Assorted Observations
- The video that Emirates screens to boast about their in-flight entertainment systems is very irritating, especially as it's inflicted on passengers in both Arabic and English.
- Their in-flight entertainment interface is very buggy, and both mine and others' crashed more than a few times.
- Emirates was too cheapskate to license existing video games for its flights, so it got some company to program clones of existing games like chess. The only problem is that the games look horrible, with a blocky interface and rudimentary graphics, as if they'd been made with Visual Basic.
- The censorship of Scary Movie 3 (which I watched over someone's shoulder, sans sound, on the way to Dubai) was draconian. The show is already as tame as a pussy compared to Scary Movie and Scary Movie 2, but the overly-sensitive censors had to cut the KKK, priest pedophilia and Simon Cowell shooting scenes (and probably more that I didn't notice). Bah.
- When the announcement "please fasten your seatbelts" is made in arabic, the gurgling sound makes it sound like the announcer is being throttled by someone
- The stops in Cyprus were almost intolerable, as an already long flight was made even more draggy. I pity the people who flew from Athens to Adelaide
- Emirates' implementation of seat to seat calls is superior to those of other airlines. Instead of you having to opt-in to receive calls from another seat, you receive calls by default, but can easily bar all future calls. Seeing as some people have problems even figuring out how to use the handset, this practice is most welcome
- Dubai-Singapore must have been the coldest flight I'd ever been on. Hell, it was colder than than it was in Greece (sans the wind, of course). I wonder how the air stewardesses stood it

I caught "Peter Pan" on the Larnaca-Dubai leg of the journey. Because I was making unconscious comparisons with the Disney cartoon, the sanitised version that we are all raised with, I was uncomfortable with many aspects of the movie. Further research though, reveals that the movie was actually quite faithful to James Matthew Barrie's original. Except for the part about Peter Pan and Wendy Darling falling in love. And the telekinetic explosion that Peter caused around him after Wendy kissed him, flinging all the pirates down to the deck. *loud cough* And I suspect that having one actor play both Hook and Mr Darling was meant as some post-modernistic commentary on Father Figures and Villains.