Dignity

A few days ago, though it is difficult to keep track of time in camps, there was a NPR piece about the economic conditions in Greece.  A Greek man, either through a translator or directly, stated that while his job does not pay enough to cover his total expenses, at least he has a job, because a job is dignity.  I am paraphrasing this, but the basic idea remains, having a job is having dignity.

A coworker retorted that the idea of jobs as dignity is what caused the economic problems in Greece.  I took the bait, replying that I think, when you consider the entire situation, a job is probably necessary for dignity, and that it was probably the inflated credit rating from joining the EU that got Greece into economic trouble, not equating dignity and employment.  The conversation essentially died, but I continued to think about the idea of work as dignity.

Life in a camp lacks dignity.  As anyone who has had to use port-a-potties for an extended period of time, these destroy dignity.  The one I use here is cleaned weekly, and on Tuesdays, my bathroom situation becomes "less nasty, more splashy."  This is not dignity.

Yet, without employment, is there dignity?  A homemaker certainly has dignity, and is am important part of many households.  There is still an income in this.  There is a home, electricity, running water, etc.  These services that we have equated to basic rights are dignity, and these cost money.  I think it is likely that what the man in the NPR interview was saying was that with his job, he can afford (most of?) these services, which provide dignity.  What happens though, when one cannot afford this type of dignity?  What happens when an entire generation in entire nations cannot?  What will happen in the United States if the government continues to not spend money on necessary programs, and the economy continues to languish?

I have discussed these questions with various friends.  If, for example, I was not afforded the paycheck that accompanies my unfortunate restroom status, what would that mean.  Eventually, I would be faced with either homelessness, or with moving in with someone.  Conversely, if a friend or family member of mine was forced with this choice, I would gladly offer my home to them.  That said, in standard thinking, this means a period of months, and, in fact, my brother has extended this hospitality to me before.

In Greece though, these problems are not a problem of months, but of years.  Nay, likely decades!  If, for example, friends were to pool resources for 10 years, at the end of that period, would they want to part?  Pop culture has celebrated these arrangements in the television show Friends.  In fact, the idea of "roommates" is the basis of multiple television shows.  Frasier, Chuck, Firefly, and I am sure many others have some aspect of people being forced into a life together in order to maintain dignity.

Beyond the economic benefits to one or more members of the household, the environmental benefits are clear too.  Multifamily homes have smaller environmental footprints than single-family homes.  Thus, it may be possible that in the pursuit of personal dignity, these, dare I say, communes solve other problems that confront society.

For me, I see many ways that long-term, stable, relationships could form between people in the form of pooled resources.  I see a response to micro-sized apartments, shrinking or slow economies, and dwindling natural resources.  I see, a way for me to have dignity that includes a flush toilette.  Yet, it seems, that our collective dream of the future must shift from GM's Futurama, to something different, something that places universal dignity over consumption.

And a Side of Italy

When Sarah and I started talking about travelling more, the first two locations we discussed were Greece and Japan.  I favored Greece in the short-term, as it seemed logistically and financially easier.  Sarah favored Japan, because these two locations would allow for Sarah to do some work on her field sites that may lead to those data being slightly more useful, and Japan was the better research choice.  Then we were invited to a wedding in Greece, and Greece catapulted into the lead.  Once we decided that Greece was financially reasonable, Sarah started talking to some of her other friends to see where they would be.  Her friends in Stockholm were out of town during the best time to visit them, and it would be a long way to go for a quick trip.  A friend of hers from Australia was going to be in Italy, which seemed like a more reasonable side trip.  I had some reservations about the extra cost of essentially three days in Italy, but we decided to give it a try.  Accordingly, the trip to Italy was destined to be a different type of trip.

On the morning of our flight to Rome, we said one last goodbye to the bride, groom, and groom's parents, as they happened to be at the airport at the same time we were.  We went to our budget airlines, and flew to Rome, ending out Greek travels, though our final flight would leave from Athens, we would spend no more time outside of an airport in the country.  At the gate, we both lamented not continuing on with what proved to be a fun group of Australians to Paros to have fun on the beach.  That said, we both agreed that we were Greeced-out.  We would not be missing the smell of hot animal feces that permeates Athens, nor would we really be missing the slow and vegan unfriendly style of life that we left behind on Milos.  With mixed emotions about moving on to a new country, we boarded the plane.

When we arrived in Rome, we headed to the train station to buy tickets into the heart of the city.  The automated kiosks for whatever reason were not taking anything but very small bills, for fairly expensive tickets.  We had to go to a booth, and talk to someone.  Talking to people, particularly people who are trying to sell me something, is a chore that I find most undesirable.  As we would begin to learn, the Italians take this displeasure to a level beyond anything I had ever known.  Sarah did most of the talking, and after asking for two train tickets to Termini, the teller gave her a sales pitch for the shuttle bus.
"No, just the train."
"Where are you staying"?
"Just two tickets to the train."
"Okay, but where are you staying"?
"Hotel Americana Nardizzi," I regretfully added.
"The shuttle bus will go straight to your hotel."
"The train is fine," Sarah says.
"It is faster, and will leave in two minutes, before the train even arrives."  This nonsense continued.  In the end, I decided that if the shuttle left sooner, took less time, and cost essentially the same, we could use the shuttle, since this woman seemed completely unwilling to sell us train tickets.  We bought the bus tickets, and sat down to wait.
"I hate being bullied into things like this," I say to Sarah.
"Me too, and I like trains better."
"Yeah, I would way rather take the train, and I hate rewarding people for behaving like that, rather than supporting public transit."  We stewed on this for a while.  Ten minutes passed, the train arrived, but the shuttle bus had not.  Sarah offered to go request our tickets be changed.  The teller just kept lying.  She could have lied and said the tickets were nonrefundable, but she chose to drag out the conversation with lies until the bus was actually ready to leave, again, we were bullied into taking the bus.

We followed the bus driver with a group of other people who presumably were duped into the same situation because they also did not travel with a wad of small bills.  We arrived at the bus, and sat in it, waiting for more passengers to show up.  We watched the train leave.  To pass the time, we lamented our plight, and sat, more and more frustrated with the teller, and our mishandling of the situation.  We reflected on it, and decided we should have just walked away, lessen learned.

The bus finally left.  The driving was vomit inducing, and took longer than the train (this meant being motion sick for longer).  The girl sitting next to me was a reasonably friendly Chinese girl studying art in Germany.  She was interesting enough to banter with, except that I was having flashbacks to the Greek ferry, and not feeling that talkative.  This lessened my enjoyment of chatting with her, and she started to chatter with her friend instead.  They got dropped off first, then it was our turn.

We stepped off the bus, and our hotel was somewhere in a giant wall, with giant locked wooden doors.  Next to the door was a sea of buzzers, one was labelled, "Hotel Americana Nadizzi."  After we pushed the button, the door slowly opened revealing a massive staircase, and a door into a church (the ground floor).  At the first floor are church offices (that is, the first floor above the ground floor).  The second and third floors were residences.  On the fourth floor was the Hotel Oceania.  The fifth and top floor was the lobby to our hotel.  As we walked down the corridor to the lobby, another patron offered encouragement, "this is the right place, you're almost there"!

Sarah dealt with the check-in.  We were led by an employee down a corridor, into a stairwell, down two floors, through a locked door that you must be rung into, then down the corridor where our room was.  The bed was more of a cot, and the door to our corridor was commonly impossible to get opened without walking back up to the front desk.  Rick Steves describes this as an "authentic" Italian experience.  We decided to find a hotel a little less authentic for the night before we flew out.

We washed up from our travel day, and went out for dinner.  We walked to the restaurant, Ops!, which I highly recommend, and discussed what we should do with our single day in Rome.  We decided to ride bicycles around the city, and retired to our cot for the night.

The next morning, we got up, and went to breakfast at a nearby hostel.  The food was good, and was made in a space the size of a child's bedroom by a friendly, lanky German with a hotplate.  After breakfast, we made our way to the bike rental.  When we arrived at the location of Top Bike Rentals and Tours, we were initially disappointed, thinking the business had closed.  As it turned out, the closed business was a bike shop, but the Top Bike was just around the corner.  We rented our bikes, and rolled into Rome.

Our first stop was the Colosseum.  The line was atrocious, not only for tickets, but it would also appear to get into the amphitheatre once tickets had been obtained.  Rick Steves recommended getting tickets at the Roman Forum instead, to skip the lines.  We decided to ride our bikes around the Colosseum to check out that option, and in so doing, missed the turn, and dedicated our day to riding around the city.  From somewhere near the Roman Forum, we headed to a bike path along the Tiber.

We rode under historic arches of the bridges of the Tiber, then up to Ponte Sant'Angelo.  At this bridge, we carried our bikes up the stairs out of the channelized river, and took in the Castel Sant'Angelo.  Then we headed over to the Vatican City for a bike-by view.  We found our way along the Pope's elevated walkway back to the castle, then back to the Tiber.  After days of limited exercise, it felt amazing to ride, so we carried the bikes back down the stairs, turned our handlebars north, and road past the end of the bike path.  We turned back to get back to the end of the path, and road up into the city.  We checked the map, finding that we had ridden well off any map we had, and decided to wind through the ancient city until we could find ourselves, then make for a restaurant for lunch.

On our ride, we saw the outside of essentially every major tourist site in the city.  We went into none, but with only a day in Rome, after returning our bikes we felt like we had experienced the city in a way that touring one or two tourist destinations would not have afforded us.  After dinner, we headed up to our cot, ready to meet up with Sarah's friend in the morning, then be whisked south on the famous European trains.

We met up with Sarah's friend at Termini, then bought tickets on the slow train to Naples.  Having not ever been to Europe before, I was looking forward to experiencing the wonder of bullet trains, and public transit second only to maybe Japan.  The train left promptly, but our seven euro tickets bought us seats not on the glamorous coaches, but instead on a train more like something out of Slumdog Millionaire, though I do not think anyone was on the roof.

It turned out that it was not entirely wise to arrive in Naples without a hotel reservation, but in not too much time we found accommodation for very cheap in a hotel that, aside from being an all smoking hotel, was much nicer than the hotel in Rome.  We wandered the streets of Naples looking for a restaurant, that turned out to not be open, then into a natural foods store.  Judging from the stares, and shopping advice from other patrons and employees, Sarah and I were decidedly a sight to see in this small shop in a gritty neighborhood, which can occasionally be fun.

In the morning we took the train to Pompeii, and toured the ruins.  Owing to time constraints we did not make it to Herculaneum.  Pompeii was worth the trip, but not really worth writing about.  It was amazing how well preserved the paintings, carvings, and frescoes were, by both the volcano, and the archaeologists.  After Pompeii, we headed up Vesuvius.

At the train station outside the gates of Pompeii is a tourist kiosk that sells tickets for a bus to the top of Vesuvius.  There are, supposedly, two bus services.  One that goes up the normal road, in a normal bus.  One that goes up a four wheel drive road in a Unimog.  We wanted the normal bus.  We attempted to buy tickets for the normal bus.  We were promised we were buying tickets for the normal bus.  When the bus pulled up, it was a normal bus, and we piled in, still skeptical that the person in the kiosk had not been lying to us.

Sure enough, the normal bus stopped just outside of town, and we were herded onto a Unimog.  The salesman also told us that we could take a later bus down, we just had to tell our driver.  We spoke with the driver who insisted that this was not possible, ensuring we would not be able to make it to the summit of Vesuvius, just the crater rim.  The Unimog lumbered up a gravel road that anyone from the Western US would describe as a highway.  We disembarked and wandered the crater rim among the trinket shops.  With our time nearly expired, we headed back to the Unimog, and the train station.

Back in the heart of Naples, we had dinner at Sorriso Integrale, including a dessert of fried peaches, which is a culinary divinity.  The next morning we went to Solfatara, a phreatic crater in Naples where sulfur-rich steam still rushes from the earth.  After Solfatara, we wandered down  to the third largest amphitheatre in the Roman Empire.  In contrast to the Colosseum, the third largest amphitheatre has no lines, costs very little, and the basement is open for anyone to wander through.

After the amphitheatre, it was time for us to begin our journey stateside.  We took the train to the main station in Naples, then to Rome, and spent the night.  The next day we took the train to the airport, then flew to Athens, and spent the night.  Following that, we flew to Minneapolis, and drove to Babbitt.  I spent the night in Babbitt, then drove back to Minneapolis and flew to Seattle.  It was a lot of travel.  I read A Song of Fire and Ice for well over 20 hours, painting my subconscious with some sort of fantasy Roman Empire.

The travel also provided us with much time to discuss our trip.  A major change I would recommend to anyone wanting to go up Vesuvius would be to rent a car.  If you are travelling alone, you will lose money on this deal, but with two or three people, especially if you plan ahead and rent from outside Italy, you will save money.  What you gain though is enough time on Vesuvius to walk around the crater, which includes summiting the peak responsible for what may well be the most famous volcanic disaster.  I think in the end we both regretted the limited time in Italy, but were generally happy with moving out from Greece, as that much time in Athens during the hot season could have easily spoiled much of the great memories from the trip.  It is possible that going to Paros would have accomplished this, but riding around Rome was fast paced and fun.  While I probably would have traded it for a long run on Mt. Olympus, it is in the top three experiences of the trip.

Photos from Italy can be found here:  https://picasaweb.google.com/113802252094103841878/Italy2012

Sarah's Dancing

In my previous post, "What is your Dance," I state that some Greek wedding guests stated that Sarah's dancing was good for her spirit.  After brief chastisement, I feel that I need to clarify this.  First, it was the professional dancers who told her that.  Second, Sarah is the best dance partner I have ever had the pleasure to dance with time and time again.

Dancing has always been important in my relationships.  I still feel nostalgic affection for Heidi when I remember dancing in my dorm room at UAF.  In the first weeks I spent with Sarah after separating with Corinne, we would dance in a Vancouver condo until the upstairs neighbor would pound on the floor, then collapse in sheepish giggles.  Whether it is talent or spirit, there are few memories I treasure more than dancing with her.

What is Your Dance?

No one has ever asked me what my dance is.  If they did, I would probably be tempted to say something witty, but would inevitably look at them and say, "my dance"?  The groom at the wedding we attended was faced with this question, and responded politely along those lines.  However, the last post ended, or probably should have ended, on a Greek freeway, late for the first of the wedding festivities, which is where this post begins.

As motorways go, the Greek freeway system has a lot of lights, and a lot of tolls.  I lost track of how much we spent on our drive, but it seemed the highest tolls were on the section of freeway that have yet to be built, presumably to help pay for the planned road upgrades.  The drive went smoothly, and we worked hard to arrive at Avis with no diesel in the tank.  As the kilometers ticked by and the fuel gauge sagged, we found ourselves winding through the confusing Athens streets behind schedule, and concerned that we planned the fuel a little too closely.

There were no left turns at the intersection for our hotel, the next one, or the next several for that matter, but we arrived at the hotel to find the "reserved" street parking for loading and unloading was actually parking in the intersection the hotel sat on the corner of, than a standard parking space.  We hauled our bags inside, took a moment to take in the harsh LED lighting, and the sparkling black and red counter tops. We could not linger though, as even more precious than fuel was time.

Sarah did all the driving in Athens, after boasting, "I don't get stressed about city driving."  I attempted to navigate.  I took out the Avis provided map that had a red line running down the middle of the jumble of one way streets directly to the Avis counter from the two obvious directions one would be approaching from.  We were close to the red line, and followed it to a complicated intersection that could only lead us back the way we came.  We tried again on a parallel road, and found ourselves back at the same complex intersection.  We tried again, and found ourselves at a pedestrian mall that forced back to the complex intersection.  I began to be stressed about my ability to follow a red line on a map.  Sarah looped back, grumbling about running late.  We tried again, and I concluded that Avis must not have updated the map to show the closed roads.  We tried again, and when we were forced back to the complex intersection, I discovered that while city driving may not stress Sarah out, a bad navigator could.

I discarded the map, and winged it with a way I thought would work.  The fuel light was on, as we left the labyrinth of alleys and one-way streets, and returned to the land of the forbidden left turn.  We passed the Avis location, and a subway station.  Then I realized, the red line that led to Avis, was actually the Red Line of the Metro, it made sense in a way that only someone who really hated motorists could come up with, or someone who was not familiar with what Avis customers would be using the free maps for.  Eventually we made the left turn, hooked around, and began backtracking to Avis.  When we parked, we hurried inside, wondering how far we had driven since the fuel range calculator had given up estimating how far we could travel (it actually gave up with a significant range remaining, but somehow when it displayed only two dashes, I felt as empty as the tank).  When the clerk asked if we were returning it empty, we laughed, "yeah, its empty."

"Wow, that is really empty"! She handed us our receipt.

While I would normally enjoy basking in the victory of returning a prepaid refueling rental car with a dry tank, we hadn't the time.  It was ten minutes before we were supposed to meet the Australian contingent (Sarah knows the groom from Tasmania, so while we were the only Americans at the wedding, we were warmly welcomed as Australians).  We hustled back to the hotel, and Sarah sent the groom a $5 text message* to tell him we were running late.

We met the group in Syntagma Square, a sight familiar to the world only because of the Greek Economic Crisis, and then only in the sense that it is where all the protests/riots are/start, and not because it is where the Greek Parliament is.  We headed out for drinks with the crew, but called it a night early, exhausted from starting the day on Mt. Olympus, and finishing in a bar below the Acropolis.

When we got back to the hotel room we could finally stop to appreciate that someone decided to put the harshest LED lighting in a hotel room that had been fitted with sparkling black and red counter tops in the kitchenette.  When I say red, do not think of some rich and tasteful burgundy, but rather a fire engine.  When I say sparkly, think not of the day that fire truck rolled out of the factory, but rather the day it responded to the explosion at the glitter factory.  The decor and lighting was horrific, and every moment spent in that room was spent trying to figure out lighting that did not give one a headache.  As for the counter tops, I just sort of got used to them.

On the day of the wedding, we took a taxi to the church, and were the first of the Australian contingent to arrive.  This made us nervous, as there are close to 100 churches per block in Athens, and every third one seems to be named some derivation of St. Katherine's, but in Greek with a dizzying array of English translations.  Eventually, the groom's side arrived, the baptism that preceded the wedding ended, and the guests shuffled into the church.

Not familiar with Greek Orthodox customs, we lingered at the door, putting us at the back of the church after the ceremony had begun.  The ceremony had a lot of chanting back and forth between the two priests, and some symbolism, that mystified me in a way that showed on my face enough to make Sarah giggle every time she looked at me.  At one point, though I am taking a lot of freedom with the ceremony, as it was all Greek to me, it seemed that the priests went to an especially sacred chamber, chanted to Jesus about the marriage, then came and delivered the holy verdict to the betrothed.  None of it made sense to me, but I, admittedly, do not truly understand what all the kneeling was about in the one Catholic ceremony I have sat through.

While I gained no understanding about Greek Orthodox wedding customs, I did learn quite a bit about the parishioners.  This gave me enough knowledge to make sweeping statements about the religion in general.  For starters, while an entire Greek state is given wholly to monks, nuns must not be all that common, because no one there seemed to have an inherent fear of a yardstick befalling their bottom for talking.  Lutherans generally lack this fear, but I think I remember being threatened with hell and eternal damnation for transgressions that a Catholic child would be caned for.  Whatever you were threatened with to keep quiet in church, to silence your cell phone, and to leave cigarettes outside, the Greek Orthodox church lacks.  Nowhere was this more evident than with the devotional flunkies at the back of the church.

The wedding guests talked to each other, jostling through the crowd when they wanted to talk to someone else (no pews).  Cell phones rang, and guests answered, I imagine the conversation went something like this:
"Hello."
-"What's up"?-
"Oh nothing, I'm in a church at my [relation's] wedding."
-"Good, you have time to talk."-

Other guests pushed to the back, to smoke closer to the door, then would push back in.  Old women wandered in off the street, then wandered back out.  Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over, and guests were shoving into the courtyard, fistfuls of rice in hand.

Rice throwing is not something I had experienced firsthand before.  I know some people now use birdseed, leaving the cleanup to pigeons.  Regardless of the projectile, I pictured it being distributed at the end of the ceremony, and then tossed in celebration adoringly at the newly married couple.  This was not that.  First, the rice was produced from concealed places in the suits, cocktail dresses, and clutches that adorned the guests.  Perhaps, even some of the ladies' hats were actually apparatus for the smuggling of grains.  Once produced, the rice was not gently lofted into the air to softly snow down upon the couple.  Rather, this was ricing at its most competitive and violent.  I hypothesize that rice was chosen long ago because throwing it hard enough to hurt the bride and groom would destroy the thrower's shoulder before it left lasting damage upon impact.  Though physical impossibility of hurting someone with thrown rice did not dissuade the Greeks from trying, and try they did.  So we lined up, in the rain, and I watched the pelting with continued consternation at the customs of this strange and distant land.

We were herded onto a bus by a relation of the bride's (cousin?) who studied economics in London, which had resulted in an adorable mix of accents.  The bus took those representing the southern hemisphere, and the bride's parents to the reception.  The hostess checked each guest against a guest list before admitting them to the elevator.  The bus was slower to the reception than most of the guests with cars, so when the doors opened we walked into the bar area, mimosas (that may have been just spiked Tang) awaited each new arrival, and the air was already thick with cigarette smoke.

We found our way to our table, and pyrotechnics erupted to announce that the bride and groom had arrived. With their arrival, the festivities began.  In many ways, it was a cookie-cutter wedding reception.  The customs seemed less rigid (guests dancing during the first dance?), but all-in-all pretty recognizable. However, when the dancing truly began, the chasm between Greek and Western opened.

The first dance for guests began with some accordion riff spewing from the DJ's speakers.  The Greek guest young and old streamed onto the dance floor, and like the Whos down in Whoville, they joined hands.  The Australians looked at each other with confusion, then were prodded onto the dance floor, joined hands with the Greeks, and embraced a cross-cultural wedding.

Luckily, I was next to the cousin who studied in London, and an enthusiastic Australian.  I caught snippets of cultural information, and had someone to commiserate my inability to follow what seemed like it should be a simple dance. Step right, step right, step right, left knee kick, the entire serpent of hand holding Greeks smoothly slid to their right, dragging along the Australians who were still uncertain of what was happening.  Step left, step left, right leg kick, the cousin collided with me, as Kat and I were still stepping to the right.  Step back, right, forward, right, right, right, left knee kick.  I stopped trying to move my feet correctly, and just tried to move in the right direction.

The coiled serpent of people slithered rhythmically to their right, encircled each other, looped under links in the human chain, and dragged those of us with two left feet to our right.  The cousin shouted something at me, but it was lost in the din of the accordion.
"What"?
"I'm glad I'm not at the front, the person at the front has to decide what to do."
"Oh... So you're all just doing what they do"?
"Yeah, I don't like having to lead everyone."
Two horrifying thoughts rolled through my head.  First, that I might at some point be tricked into taking the ever changing lead position.  Second, that every single Greek person, grandmothers, grandchildren, economists, and professional dancers (there were between 1 and 4 at the wedding, reports vary) alike could innately follow the improvised steps, and I, like some court jester, could only make a fool of myself, lost in a sea of people who seemed to know the steps.

The song ended, and a vaguely new, yet nearly identical accordion solo filled the dance hall.  The cousin grabbed my hand, and I was in a circle dance again.  The steps seemed more familiar, right, right, right-knee kick, left, left, full kick...  I leaned over to the cousin, "how does everyone know the steps," finally convinced that the leader leads the line, like a conga, but not the steps?
"What do you mean"?
"Do you practice this dance"?
"Oh, not really, I've been doing it my whole life."
"Like at every wedding"?
"Yeah."
"Like the Chicken Dance," I thought to myself.  I supposed someone who had never done the Chicken Dance would be totally lost.  I consoled myself with the notion that the Chicken Dance never lasted long.  Nah-nah, Nah-nah, Nah; Nah-nah, Nah-nah, Nah; Na, Na, Na.  I could almost pretend that the accordion was playing the Chicken Dance, or the Quail Dance, or whatever bird the Greeks dance like.

The song changes, yet stays the same, and the cousin sweeps me into another circle.  Soon though she joined my hand to the person in front of her, and with my cultural envoy gone, I was on my own in a long line of Greeks ahead of me.  Which, thankfully, insulated me from ever being at the front.

As song after song droned on with the same accordion melody, and the same crazy circle dance I realized that unlike the Chicken Dance, this was not going to end any time soon.  I distracted myself from my insufferably bad dancing by wondering how an accordion, with what appears to be dozens of keys, can only be used to play one melody.  In Las Vegas, I had heard a youth accordion band play Christmas songs in a shopping mall, and each classic tune was instantly recognizable.  Thus, I concluded, with all 120 keys on one side, the Greeks must prefer to dance to a single melody.

I took a break, then got roped back in.  It seemed to me that the Greeks could hide among their own to take a break now and then, but that the Australians were always being corralled back into a circle dance.  Finally, for the first time ever, I was relieved to hear Lady Gaga.

Sarah and I danced to the "Western" music, and Sarah earned the respect of the Greek dancers when she stole the corner of the floor not occupied by the professionals.  I could compete with her only during LMFAO "Sexy and I Know It," where my shirt became more and more unbuttoned.  Her dancing prowess attracted attention from the Greek dancers, not for her talent, they noted, but for her spirit.  Her dancing spirit earned her a spot at the front of the next circle dance.  My wounded competitiveness assuaged by the relief of being excluded from that honor.

As those who had to work in the morning dwindled, the bar closed, and the servers began to loosen up, telling people they had now been working for 24 hours straight.  Sarah and I started making our goodbyes. Most of these people we would never see again, and somehow, people always seem concerned at these goodbyes.  The groom's uncle Phil, a character who was fascinated with Alaska, made me promise that I would invite him to my wedding in Fairbanks (an event that he was told multiple times, would never happen).  The Australians were headed to Paros, for a week of hanging out on the beach, kite surfing, and other island pursuits.  Each seemed disappointed that we were headed for Rome, rather than Paros.  We got in a taxi to head back to the hotel, we admitted that part of us wanted to be carrying on with that group, but were also looking forward to a whirlwind trip to Italy.

* I do not actually know how much Rogers charged per text message, but my bill was over three times what it normally is, so I assume it was quite a bit.

Greece, The Mainland

After getting off the previously described ferry, we headed to our hotel in Piraeus.  When most people think of Athens they think of the Acropolis, Olympics, Ancient Greeks, and the foundation of European civilization (which, arguably, would be the Middle East, but that is not the point of this post).  What people do not think about is Piraeus.  Piraeus is scummy.  Athens as a city is dirty, but Piraeus is scummy.  Thus began our excursion into Mainland Greece, walking, at midnight, through the main port of Athens.  Which is scummy.

Our baggage was somewhat unusual for this walk, as our luggage could not accommodate the rocks collected during Sarah's field work.  I was carrying a duffle bag as a backpack (the Patagonia Black Hole, which Air France managed to put a hole in) and a messenger bag.  Sarah had a backpack, and a cardboard box without tape (surprisingly difficult to find on Milos) which was quickly degrading in the humidity.  We wound through the streets of Piraeus, hitting every landmark we were supposed to.  Then, we missed the street.  This would not normally be an issue, but both of us were still dizzy, nauseous, tired, hot, and sick of carrying all that junk around at midnight.  We slogged back to the nicest hotel in Pireaus, a welcome reprieve from the world we stumbled out of when we entered the air conditioned lobby.

In the morning, we checked out of the hotel, loaded as we were the night before, the cardboard box worse for wear, still sea sick, and headed for the metro.  Boarding a subway when sea sick from the ferry ride the night before was nothing I was looking forward to, but it meant Sarah could set down the box of samples, which had torn at two corners at that point.  We transferred trains, then walked to where Google Maps said the car rental was.  Should you ever use Google Maps in Greece, and you think, "that doesn't seem right," it probably isn't.  Luckily, we were not too far off of where Sarah and I thought we should be, and we were at the car rental agency shortly.

We loaded our stuff into the Lancia Ypsilon, and Sarah took the wheel.  We headed north out of Athens with no real map, and Rick Steves' limited directions headed for Delphi.  In all honesty, for as crazy as driving looks in Athens, it is actually pretty straight forward.  There was a bit of adjustment to Greek driving.  First, all traffic laws are suggestions, so one must expect that drivers will only occasionally observe one-way roads.  Second, one does not have to get out of the way of emergency vehicles.  We stumbled onto this custom in Athens only blocks from renting the car.  An ambulance with lights and sirens was taking a left turn from oncoming traffic.  When Sarah stopped for it, both paramedics began enthusiastically gesturing for us to come through, and not wait for them.  Lastly, all roads in Greece are passing roads, and Greek drivers find at least one more lane than is painted on the roadway.  To accommodate this craziness, on moves onto the shoulder so cars may pass in the center, even with oncoming traffic.  With these lessons learned, we navigated north with nothing but Rick Steves.

Rick got a few things wrong, like the number of toll booths, but even when we purchased our Greek road maps, Rick's directions were pretty good.  We arrived in Delphi, getting turned around only once, to enjoy the ruins after the museum had closed, presumably indicating that fewer people were there.  Both Rick and The Lonely Planet suggest staying in Delphi town when touring Delphi.  I could not disagree with this recommendation more.  We headed back about 15 kilometers to Arachova.  While in winter this ski town may be pricier, during the summer season this cute mountain town had more character, more facilities, more hotels, and better views than Delphi for the same or a bit less money.  We found some food at a minimart for dinner, and ate on our balcony watching the sun set behind mountains and the Arachova clock tower.

In the morning we ran through the steep streets and stairways of Arachova, touring the alleys and back streets, then climbed the stairs to one of the towns churches, that housed several cannons in the courtyards.  We ran to the top of the town, then back to our hotel.  We showered off, ate breakfast, and climbed back in the Lancia for the drive over the mountains to Meteora, with promises of spectacular rock pinnacles, World Heritage Site history, hermit monks, and endless trails.

Once out of the mountains, the road to Meteora is flat, and as the miles passed, we began to discuss the fact that most sites are overstated by the guides.  Sarah maintained her generally more optimistic outlook that it would be awesome, I felt my own pessimism rising (this should not be confused with Sarah being an optimist and me a pessimist, just a statement about our anticipation of monasteries perched on sandstone pillars).  We arrived in Kalambaka after crossing the Plains of Thessaly.  My expectations, like the plains themselves, had flat lined.  While some might argue that such an outlook dooms any site to fail to impress me.  While they may have a point, it also lowers my expectations.  So I was impressed by the bluffs.  It is not Zion Canyon, but it is impressive none-the-less.  One also has to be in awe of the monks building these structures as well.  It is an impressive place.  Unfortunately, the most impressive thing about Meteora is not the geology or the monasteries.  It is, in fact, the road.

The road at Meteora is not so much impressive as far as roads go.  In fact, it is not much of a road at all.  The grades are not that steep, nor the corners that tight.  The traffic is not dense nor light, and the view points are impressive, but not notable beyond any other road that climbs a hill overlooking a valley.  What is impressive about the road are the vehicles.  The Lonely Planet suggested that Meteora was the most visited site in Greece (presumably outside of Athens).  All of those people have to get to the monasteries, and walking is out of the question.  Thus, the purpose of this road is to allow dozens of tour buses to get to the monasteries that hermit monks built on top of sandstone pillars hundreds of feet above the valley floor so that thousands of tourists can gawk at their way of life.  The endless monk's trails, now essentially a moot point with the road to each monastery, added up to less than 10 kilometers.  Sarah and I decided to head for Mount Olympus, with the hope of finding the solitude that led hermit monks to Meteora centuries before.

We drove east, towards the home of the old gods, and as Mount Olympus loomed into view, we were struck with essentially the same impression, "that's it"?  The southern, western and northern sides of Mt. Olympus are beautiful, but they do not inspire ideas of the home of gods, or stairways to the heavens.  The towns on these flanks are also unremarkable, saving their crazy traffic patterns.  With the disappointment of Meteora fresh on our minds, we headed for the access point for Mt. Olympus, Litochoro.  The Eastern face of Mt. Olympus does not disappoint.  While it is not a Saint Elias towering nearly three and a half miles above the coast, it is an impressive massif, reminding me strongly of the desert mountains of the Basin and Range.  We found a hotel, and wandered around the town, heading for the gear store.

At the gear store, we gawked the impressive mountain running selection, then spoke with two of the employees who run on Mt. Olympus daily.  We came to the realization that we could summit Mt. Olympus.  We wandered around the town a bit more, then headed back to the hotel.  We decided not to summit Mt. Olympus.  Doing so would require a crazy alpine start, and neither of us had been sleeping well.  We did decide to go for a run on Mt. Olympus, so we set an alarm for 05:00, and went to sleep.

Before the alarm rang we both got up, ate, and headed up Mt. Olympus.  At the parking lot at 1100 m, we started jogging, but the trail soon proved too steep for a continuous run.  We walked the steep sections, and ran the more gentle ones.  Between light rain, and cloud gaps, the sun rose on the summit above us, and the Mediterranean below.  We made it to the shelter ahead of schedule, but not enough ahead to summit.  We continued up until we were out of time.  As the trees thinned, then stopped, the cold wind took its toll.  When we decided to push our deadline a little, the wind chill started to tap our strength, and neither of us was disappointed to head back for the trees when the time came to turn around.

As we jogged down the mountain we discussed our trip to that point.  Cliff jumping on Milos was cool, as was swimming into sea caves and hidden coves.  Driving around Milos was unique, and walking up Profitis Ilias was great.  Obviously the ruins are pretty awe inspiring, but the thing that would bring us back to Greece was Mt. Olympus.  The trail map showed miles and miles of trails that seem good for long runs, and of course the summit still awaits.  We dreamed of running tours of Europe, and talked about including this mountain.  We talked about the lovely Macedonian mountain villages, and how lovely they would be to explore.  On the drive back to Litochoro to shower and check-out, we passed people driving, their horses tied to their bumpers to get the animals back into town.  Unlike a dog gleefully chasing after its owner's car, these horses looked stressed, and we were brought out of the mountain euphoria, and back to Greece.

On the drive back to Athens we drove through countless tolls, on a motorway that could be in any poor nation.  We checked into our hotel in Athens, with sparkly red and black counter tops and harsh, blue LED lighting.  We returned the car, and met up with the wedding's Australian Contingent a bit late, and went out for cocktails.  Introducing us to everyone else who would be experiencing a Greek wedding for the very first time.

A Painting of a Windmill, A Hot Boat, and High Seas, Inspired by the Music of Abba

I get motion sick easily.  I get sick on airplanes, sick in cars, even when I am the one driving, and worst of all, sick on boats.  When my parents and I went to White Island, both there and back were... Challenging.  So, it was with much apprehension when I agreed to travel by ferry to Milos.  My fears were assuaged by the argument that the Mediterranean is a sea, with mild weather, and not the "open ocean."  On the voyage to Milos, the assertions proved true, and the passage was smooth with only mild motion sickness typical of a car on a straight road.

After two calm days on Milos, the winds picked up, and each day we saw the ferry depart through the white caps on the sea.  I did not think critically about what this would mean for our trip off the island, only that the ferries seemed largely unaffected by the whitecaps.  We purchased our tickets to return to the mainland, and went to the docks with time to spare.  The crossing that night was cancelled due to wind (i.e. rough water).  We lugged our baggage back to the hotel, and stayed another night.

The next day, the wind was strong, and the chance of departure hung tenuously in the balance.  Not wanting to stay another day on Milos, I was hopeful that we would depart.  Yet, I could not help but be concerned that a voyage on such a day may not be one I wanted to sail on.  The vessel arrived, and we boarded with Mr. Bean playing on the on-board entertainment system.

Televisions are enormous distractions for me.  The constant motion attracts my attention, and I have to fight to look away.  As the ferry jostled out of the harbor, I pulled my eyes from the screens, and stared directly in front of me at a painting of a windmill.  In these situations, my best defense against both televisions and motion sickness is a precise point to focus on, and at the hub of the windmill, I found just such a point.

The first minutes of the passage dragged on, the ship climbing a wave, and slamming down the next side.  I started sweating, not a little, but pouring sweat.  The cabin was hot, and my seat received none of the air conditioned air blowing through vents along the windows.  The cabin grew muggy, and thick in the hot air was the smell of vomit from the previous sailing.  The man next to me complained that worse than the motion was the smell of the boat when the fragrance of cigarette smoke started to mix with the vomit.  Rowan Atkinson was replaced by the safety video, which was replaced by a melodramatic film, the audio of which was piped through the loud speaker.

Staring straight ahead at my windmill, sweat dripping from every pore, face pale, and a bit green, Sarah asked what the movie was, and I responded, "I think it is Mama Mia."  Moments later we left the Bay of Milos for the open sea, and the Abba started to play.

Outside of the protection of the island, the ship added rolling to its repertoire of nausea-inducing motion.  The climbs to the top of waves also became larger, as did the crash on the other side.  It seemed that with each crash a shudder went through the boat, and my world narrowed to the windmill, Abba, and Pierce Brosnan missing his ferry, lucky bastard.

Eventually, my motion sickness caused the blades of the windmill to appear to spin, and I had to find a new point on the painting to stare at.  A red pot laying on its side was the second best single point in the painting to focus on.  The stewards appeared with fistfuls of motion sickness bags and rolls of paper towels.  Almost instantly the first person vomited.  She was seated in the bulkhead row, with people not only to her left and right, but a rear facing row in front of her.  The smell drifted the short distance to our row, and Sarah started to lament our plight.

"Oh no," her battle with the spinning demons began.  Then a moan.  The audible portion of her battle continued, then stopped.  "I'm going to need a bag."

"How soon"?

"Pretty soon."

I raise my hand, make eye contact with a steward, and a bag is brought to each of us.  I hand Sarah hers, and return my gaze to the pot in the painting.  Always stare at the pot.  Always stare at the pot.  My brief effort to obtain silver-lined bags, puts me closer to my limit of motion sickness, and I fail to find the silver-lining anywhere outside of these little white bags.  I stare at the painting, focus on my breath, and listen to Sarah's pain to drown out the Abba.

Time passes in no measurable way.  Life in the boat is some sort of Purgatory, where the passage of time is impossible to gauge, save for Abba songs that never seem to end, and the woman in the first row vomiting again and again, challenging everything I thought I knew about how much the human stomach could contain and expel.

Sarah vomits.  The filled bag is passed to a steward, who seems unhappy to be collecting vomit filled bags from his passengers.  My eyes are off the painting, off the pot.  I feel my illness growing.

Sarah vomits again.  A different steward collects this bag, and issues her a new one and a wad of toilet paper.  In all the transactions my eyes are off the painting, and I lose focus on my breathing.  I look back to the pot, and the spinning demons have made the windmill spin even though I am not longer staring at it.  The motion attracts my attention.  My eyes dart from the pot to the windmill, the blades freeze.  Back to the pot, and the blades start spinning again.

Sarah vomits a third time.  Everything starts spinning, and I'm lost in some sort of Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole, where the only sounds are a shuddering ship, people vomiting, and Abba.

"Just let it go if you can, it feels better," Sarah says, panting in the cool air from the vent her seat is blessed with.

I say nothing, staring at the painting with the spinning windmill on the spinning boat, fighting the demons who are in my head, and my belly.  I wonder how far through the two and a half hour journey we are, and if it takes longer in bad weather.  I open my bag, hoping it is big enough.

I vomit.  I keep the bag at my mouth, convicted to only use one bag.  The bag gets heavier as the boat and I heave over the next waves.  My vomiting becomes painful and irregular, and I start to wish I had taken the dozen bags tactic of the woman in the bulkhead.  No matter now though, my stomach is nearly empty.

I look up, the man next to me has abandoned his seat.  He is either superhuman, or had vomited his dinner on his voyage from Thira.  I fold my bag closed and hand it to the steward.  He looks grumpy about this aspect of his job, failing to see the silver-lining that I would only produce one large bag of vomit for him to double-bag in plastic and take to the trash can.  I probably would not see it either if I were him, especially since some of his coworkers have started singing along with Mama Mia.  I look at my watch, we have only been sailing for an hour, but at least the windmill has stopped spinning.

The boat seems to be tossing less, and a steward passes through the cabin commanding people to put their motion sickness bags away, that the rough seas are behind us.  Sarah curls into a ball on her seat, head under the vent, and falls asleep.  My eyes get heavy with the reduced turbulence, and I follow her to the same reprieve.

I awake as the boat starts to arrive to port.  The Greeks prepare for the post sailing shoving match that is disembarking, and I have no desire to lose this match, as I want off the boat as much as any of them.  I shove to the luggage hold and collect our things, then the mob packs in around me, waiting for the hatch to open, and the gangway to extend to solid land.  While waiting for freedom some Australians are discussing how much worse Abba made their nausea, and pressed into a mob of hot and barfy Greeks, I can't really agree more.

Tickets to Greece

Sarah and I bought tickets to go to Greece leaving 3 September for about three weeks.  Much of that time will be spent working in one of her PhD Field Areas, trying to get her a publication out of it.  Her field area is essentially a beach in the Cyclades, so it won't be the worst field area.  We will also attend a wedding of a friend of hers, and possibly see another friend, time and funds permitting.

I am interested in being her field assistant, as I have never done the detailed work that she was/is doing on these rocks.  If it turns out I am not capable of this type of work for long hours, I will probably wander off, and try to justify my time by doing some slightly less detailed work that I will pretend will be useful. It really all hinges on my ability/inability to spend all day, counting the number of crystals in a given area of rock, or some such nonsense that does actually tell one quite a lot about the magmatic processes and eruptions.

Also in the planning stages are a running trip on the Superior Hiking Trail (SHT) in October, and a trip to the Southwest in November, with the hopes of some long runs before Sarah gets too lost in a Minnesota winter. We have talked about the SHT since we first discussed run-packing.  My Dad was concerned that the weather may not be good during our window to do it, and if his knowledge of weather patterns proves accurate, we may come up with an alternative destination.  We are shooting for post-bugs, with fall colors.  I think it may be after the peak of fall colors, but hopefully there will still be some.  This will be our first foray in run-packing, and the trail has enough infrastructure to make it a reasonable choice.

The trip to the Southwest is even more tentative at this point.  It is something we definitely want to do.  However, Sarah has been of no fixed address for years, and I have been off and on since about 2010.  Both of us are getting tired of this lifestyle, and are interested in the idea of living somewhere.  Thus, at some point we will be trying to find "the right place."  Sarah's sister asked me recently if I could live anywhere, where would I live?  That question that has been on my mind, and Sarah's, for years now.

There are two opposing forces in choosing a place to live.  The livability of the place, and the jobs that are available to one living there.  For example, Portland, OR ranks high in livability, but has little to offer in the jobs category.  Of course, we could live in Portland, and continue to work exploration contracts, but since Oregon has a state income tax, it actually becomes less attractive, as short-term contracts in many states and countries complicates state taxes.  Thus, Portland is most attractive to live in if one works in Oregon.  On the flip side, Vancouver, BC has a great job scene, but owing to visa issues ranks low for me on livability (without the visa issue, it ranks very high for livability, as a note).  It seems that one can make an argument to stay in purgatory until a job comes along, letting the place choose you, or one can choose a place and try to make it work.

If the place is to choose, then it is likely that the November trip will happen.  Employers are painfully slow at hiring, and there are not many jobs right now (that are "ideal" jobs).  In this scenario, the November trip will likely happen, as will a December trip, a January trip, and a February/March trip.  In which case, I need to spend some solid hours getting fit for some good desert running.

If we are to choose a place, than October and November will probably be spent trying to answer the unanswerable question, "where would you live if you could live anywhere"?  Then the "trip" would be moving to that place, and I can spend my days leisurely ignoring fitness.

Regardless, it seems that I will no longer have excuses for not posting more regularly to this blog.  While there may be some instances during travel that I do not have time for writing, it should provide something to write about when I return to a place I can sit with Penelope (my netbook), and write.


A note on photographs:  I still have some photos from New Zealand, and a handful from Ontario and Quebec to post.  However, I am using a smartphone hotspot for internet, and the cost of uploading photos would be prohibitive.  This means that there will probably be a flood of photos once I get into a position to upload them all.  As such, I will try to provide links in old posts to relevant Picasa albums so it is easy to find.  Conversely, by going to picasaweb.google.com/aillaud, one can see photographs dating back to 2007.