Escape to Rethymno

Hello everyone!

So ... I finally got my chance to escape the resort hotel and see a bit of Crete!

Unfortunately, I didn't have nearly as much time as I would've liked. I had great plans to hike through a wild gorge, visit a former leper colony on a remote, windswept piece of coastline, and take a boat tour through a sea cave. ("Mmmmmm, caves!!", you can almost hear me thinking.)  

None of those things happened. 

That's ok, though, because I'm leaving Greece with a very positive impression – I really like the 'vibe' of this country. And given that it's sort of on the way from quite a few places to quite a few others, I don't imagine this will be my last visit.

Shaded Alley with Motorcycle

Rethymno, Isle of Crete, 02.07.16

What I did manage to do was to explore the town of Rethymno, which is one of the few sizeable townships on Crete. 

Rethymno's extensive Old Town is one of those places where motor scooters predominate over cars, as narrow alleyways do over wide roads and boulevards. It's also a place where the locals have found ingenious strategies to shield themselves from the blistering heat ... so when you wander down these alleyways, you enter a cool, shaded world.  

It's also a place where, in labyrinth of the Old Town, you can find plenty of picturesque courtyards like this one, which could easily make it into the pages on an in-flight magazine:

Courtyard Inside the Labyrinth

Rethymno, Isle of Crete, 02.07.16

It's the kind of place where (as in much of 'Old Europe') straight lines and precise corners don't seem to have been the main priority of many builders, but simple, rustic elegance was always high on the list.

Crooked Alley

Rethymno, Isle of Crete, 02.07.16

And where you can almost forgive yourself for peering nosily into people's windows, just to see what daily life might be like for those living inside. 

Nosy Tourist Gets A Living Room View

Rethymno, Isle of Crete, 02.07.16

So yeah ... with just an afternoon to spare, that was how I spent most of my time: wandering about, detouring down the smallest alleys I could find and peering into windows. 

I particularly liked this one – the window of a bakery, where the baker had at some point decided to get creative and make loaves in the shape of a semi-nautical, wholly mythical creature with her hungry brood:

Bakery Monsters

Rethymno, Isle of Crete, 02.07.16

Then finally, I retreated back to the gate of the Old Town, near the bus stop where I could catch the bus back to Resortland. Stopped there for an hour or so to enjoy a cappuccino (which turned out to be from a Nescafe machine – yeuch!!) and to use the FREE WI-FI proudly advertised on the door.

You have to imagine the words "FREE WIFI" sparkling and dancing here, because this is something that the hotel where I'm staying pointedly refuses to offer. Or rather, they do offer it, but it doesn't work. When you talk to the manager about this, he shrugs his shoulders and says "We have 800 guests in our hotel. What can we do?" 

I have several answers to that question. All of them contain offensive language.

Heraklion Port and Mountains at Sunset

Heraklion, Isle of Crete, 03.07.16

But now, thankfully, my resort days are over. I'm on an overnight ferry across the Aegean, arriving in Athens tomorrow morning. 

Travelling by sea is something I've done a bit of in recent years, and I find it quite relaxing – especially when compared to flying! And the sunset over Heraklion port as we departed tonight was pretty stunning, I have to say. So that set the mood for a very pleasant voyage :-)

I'm also aware that this is an incredibly safe ferry, since we have The Lord on Board with us. How do I know that? Well, because of the rather frighteningly colourful Greek Orthodox chapel located just inside one of the doors leading to the outside deck. Provided enough of the passengers stop in to pay their respects, there's simply no way anything can go wrong ;-)

We Got The Lord On Board!

Crete-Athens ferry, 03.07.16

Now it's totally dark outside, in the way that only the sea can be dark. As I sit on the upper deck sipping my Ouzo and lemon (a highly delicious mix, which the barman at the hotel introduced me to), I can't wait for the next adventure. 

Tomorrow I'm flying to Copehagen to stay with friends ... but not until I've finished my breakfast at the Acropolis!

See you :-)

Anthony.

Volodya

Volodya stumbles out of the breakfast room, stuffed with sausage and bacon and bread rolls. His belly hangs in front like a huge vertical stingray with its tail missing, nestling its head on his rib cage.

Volodya’s sunburn evokes fiery dried chilis hanging on a porch in some country where people appreciate spices a lot more than they do where he himself comes from. And yet, before he reclines on the banana-shaped sun lounge, does he erect the flaccid umbrella handily positioned right next to it? No, he does not. 

He's on a mission, and umbrellas are definitely not part of it.

Volodya is from one of those parts of the world where people are SO conscious of the apparent lack of sunshine that they will drench themselves in it at the slightest opportunity. They will do this even if it ultimately ages them beyond their years, and even if it takes a sizeable portion of their annual salary to get them into position under the brutal UV rays. 

They will even pay by the hour for access to tiny, sterile beaches in soul-destroying non-places like Sharm el-Sheikh, where sun lounges are packed together like commuters on a London tube, or like male Emperor penguins circling the Pole while balancing eggs on their feet.

And in a way, this is exactly what Volodya is. He is one of an apparently growing number of people who disappear from their homes in Russia, Ukraine, Germany and other self-identified sunless countries each summer, to cram themselves with cold cuts and trudge around in small circles - sometimes on the periphery of the impeccably manicured sunbathing lawn, and sometimes in the centre. 

Personally, I have a few different reactions to this, and none of them are good.

First off, I find it possibly the single most depressing thing about Europe (other than the resurgence of the xenophobic Far Right), that when they find a stretch of coastline which might reasonably be called a ‘beach’, their standard reaction is to stack it with these sun lounges, then pile middle aged people on top of said lounges, so that they may spend roughly a sixth of their year desperately trying to become redder than a bleeding walrus. 

And secondly, I wonder: are these people really as sunshine-deprived as they think they are?

I mean, certainly the Russian and Ukrainian winters are long, and the body’s supplies of Vitamin E or D or whatever-that-sun-vitamin-is probably become a little depleted during this time. But actually, despite the low temperatures, there’s plenty of sunshine in those places. 

In fact, some of the most beautiful mornings I’ve ever woken up to (and this is coming from someone who’s avowedly not a morning person) are the crisp, cold and gloriously sunny mornings you get during a Russian or Ukrainian winter. Not only that, but when spring and summer roll around, there’s as much sunlight to go around as there is in most other places. 

And as for Germany: in their case, I just don't get it at all. They have relatively mild winters and long hot summers when the Sun hangs around until 10pm, even in August.     

So why this desperate flocking to the beach? Because “desperate” is exactly what it is, and that’s what makes it such a sad spectacle. There’s a sense that, if you find a square metre of sand adjoining a body of water that has any kind of tidal motion, you should immediately organise to put yourself on it and to stay for as long as possible, even if it’s actually pretty crap and you’re being charged extortionately for it by the locals.

I don’t know the answer to this. But I’d like to.

Meanwhile, I’m sharing one corner of the island of Crete with a few hundred Volodyas. My summer school had to downsize one of its camps in Finland, and reduce the number of teachers. So they asked me to come here and do this camp instead. 

The Gates of My Sun-lounge Prison

Skaleta, Isle of Crete, 22.06.16

The island itself is beautiful, in a harsh and red-hued way (though the weather is appalling - 35 degrees every day!). But rather than hire a school or college, the summer camp people chose to hold this camp in a resort hotel, where the Volodyas gather to do their sun-worshipping rituals.

My dislike of resort hotels (already quite considerable, as you’ve no doubt noticed) is growing almost by the hour ... but I'm only here for about 12 days, and there should be at least one or two opportunities to get out of this sun-lounge prison and explore the island properly.

In the meantime, at least it’s a resort hotel in a country that understands food. So the meals are good, if nothing else.

See you :-)

Huge Cocoons and Tiny Stars

Hello!

It’s a funny word, "cocoon", don't you think?

I ask that because I’m sitting in one now. 

Today is one of those brutal travelling days that your mother warned you about ... or at least, she would've done if she'd been a hippie backpacker in the 60s, who'd spent several years trekking through Asia and Africa and possibly some time on a kibbutz. If not, then she probably focused her warnings on other stuff like running with scissors. 

But anyway, it is (brutal, I mean).  

I only managed about two hours' sleep last night, and the journey started at 6:15 this morning when I left my flat in Almaty. There’s a hotel room in Athens with my name on it, but that room (and more importantly, the bed it hopefully contains) is still more than ten hours away – four and a half of flying, an hour on the Athens metro, and about five hours of sitting around in airports like this one in Baku, Azerbaijan. 

So far, my five-hour transit stop at Heydar Aliyev airport has been about as much fun as a transit stop can be – which is to say “not that much, really, but there have at least been a few entertaining moments to leaven the boredom”.

Zvjozdochka

(larger than actual size)

The first of those moments happened shortly after we landed, while I was unloading my pockets to walk through the security screening thingie. Inspecting my minutiae, one of the staff there noticed with some delight that I had a zvjozdochka in amongst my keys and loose change. 

The word zvjozdochka  translates as sth like ‘tiny little star’. Ex-Soviet peoples use it to refer to a miniature tin of kampfa (a.k.a. 'tiger balm'), which comes emblazoned with a bright yellow Communist star on the front. 

When she saw it, the security guard let out a little gasp, grabbed the tin and opened it. She held it up to her nose and inhaled, savouring the kampfa smell. And I got the distinct sense that this was a nostalgic moment – as if the zvjozdochka was something she remembered from her childhood but hadn’t seen for a long time, and taking in its aroma was sending her back in time.

That in itself fascinated me, because the zvjozdochka is one of those things that’s absolutely ubiquitous in the ex-Soviet countries I’m familiar with – especially in Ukraine, where babushkas sell them in the street. In my mind, it almost qualifies as a symbol of those countries. 

But Azerbaijan, since it frantically boarded the escape pod and jettisoned itself out of the imploding USSR in 1991, has turned more towards the Turkic world. It was a natural move – both Turkey and Azerbaijan are Eurasian Muslim nations, and their languages are closely related (the Azeris speak a language often called ‘Azeri Turkish’, and just reading signs in the airport was enough to see the striking similarities). I suspect there may also be a kind of ‘enemy of my enemy’ type bond between them, given that both countries have what you might euphemistically call a 'rocky relationship' with neighbouring Armenia.

It's also done better economically than most of its former ‘sister republics’. To an extent, I imagine this has made it possible for the Azeris to throw off the old trappings of Soviethood – and perhaps the poor zvjozdochka has been a casualty of that process.

Anyway ... I offered the little star as a gift to the security guard, but she declined with a smile, even after my second attempt. 

I guess her unwillingness to accept gifts from passengers in the security screening area could be seen as a good sign for Azerbaijan, too :-)

I then arrived in the transit lounge, where my first concern was to find the smoking area. After that, I took a wander to acquaint myself with the space where I was going to be spending the next four hours. It was then that I spotted the words  “cocoon area” on a sign, right under “toilets” and “worship room”, with an arrow pointing diagonally left.

Obviously, this was a sign that I had to follow.

A minute later, I was surrounded by these rather unusual things:

Cocoon Cafe  

Heydar Aliyev Airport. Baku Azerbaijan, 20.06.16 

Basically, what you've got here is a bunch of two-storey oversized cubby houses, a couple of them with cafes or shops inside and most with seating upstairs and downstairs. They're in a rather large hall with an ornate patterned skylight, a few scattered trees and some songbirds. 

Now, I'm not going to say this is the greatest architectural masterpiece of our age, but I do think it's quite nifty. When you've got an airport building, you can either make it a series of bland rectangular halls, or you can, y'know, do something interesting.

Obviously the second one is preferable. And the cocoons are kinda cool – they're playful, 'organic' in style, and interestingly, slightly Islamic-looking at the same time.

As it happens, I've had several conversations this year with people who wanted to attack modern art, architecture etc. etc. I always find this a tiresome thing to talk about, because I'm a fan of both classical and modern architectural styles. I get tired of defending the latter from this weird belief that a building can only be 'beautiful' if it was built (or looks like it was built) more than 100 years ago.  

When it comes to visual art, the conversation is even worse; here I'm a committed modernist, with zero love for, say, classical painting, or impressionism, or pretty much anything that came before the surrealist movement. None of it speaks to me, or ever has.  

In fact, if you want to have an argument with me, here's a tip: just repeat the line which appears in nearly every media story about modern art. You know, the one about how today's artists are talentless wankers, incapable of doing anything apart from painting a few black squares on a canvas, writing some meaningless nonsense about it and selling it for a million dollars. 

I'll tell you, in turn, that you're doing the work of the Dark Side by encouraging people to remain relentlessly conservative and literalist in how they view the world. I'll then go on to explain that I find Monet less interesting than most traffic signs, that I simply could not care less about van Gogh's use of light and shade, and that looking at a Cezanne painting reminds me of that moment when the hypnotist clicks his fingers and you immediately fall into a deep sleep*. 

Mission Accomplished: the argument is on ;-) 

Empty Nest

Heydar Aliyev Airport. Baku Azerbaijan, 20.06.16

But I don't feel argumentative today. More than anything, I feel sleepy! So I'm just going to quietly appreciate Baku airport's modest example of the joys of modern design, meditating on the fact that when you let a modern architect off the leash, you don't always get the functional concrete monstrosities that people complain about. Sometimes you get big fun coccoons :-)

Btw, the other cool thing about today is that it's the first of 58. I'll be visiting half a dozen countries, working in two of them, staying with friends in another, and no doubt collecting some tales to tell along the way. So in all likelihood, I'll be ranting wildly over the next 7-8 weeks.

Hope you'll join me for some, if not all, of the journey :-)

Bye!



(* Notice, though, that I didn't say any of those people were bad. They clearly weren't. I only said that I don't like them, which is a key difference between me and most 'anti-modernist' folk.)

 

Introducing The World's Most Unpronouncable Sentence

This is one for the hardcore Word Nerds :-)

It's my first night in Warszawa, and I'm spending the last part of it in a little wine bar on a very stately avenue called Marszalkowska.

I've been to Poland's capital twice before, but both times I was just passing through and had no time to look around. Now I've got around 10 days to acquaint myself with the city.

It's gonna be GREAT!

I don't quite know how the conversation got started, but I've been chatting on and off with a friendly waitress here, and the subject of the Polish language has come up.

Polish is one of the most beautiful languages I've ever heard (though you wouldn't guess it from the written form, which looks like an enormous flock of 'z's has crashed recklessly into another language and knocked all the vowels out of formation). However, it's also one of the most difficult to pronounce. 

We started talking about difficult words, and the waitress has just handed me a Polish tongue-twister which she wrote on a little slip of paper.

Here it is:

w Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie.

It means sth like "In small villages, crickets chirrup in the long grass". And if it looks completely and utterly unpronouncable to you, you're not far wrong. I've been trying for several minutes, and I'm still a couple of hundred attempts away from getting it.

Indeed, I've just been told that this sentence is extremely difficult even for Polish people to say, and that if a foreigner can crack it, that will be "Something really unbelievable!"

Obviously, at this point, I have no choice but to try.

You can try too if you like. Just bear in mind these one or two simple rules:

- w sounds like English 'v'
- sz sounds like English 'sh', but with a little bit more 'voice'
- cz sounds like English 'ch' (as in "cheese")
- rz after another constant sounds like the 's' in pleasure
- y sounds like being hit in the chest, but not too hard
  (kind of a gentle 'ugh!' sound)
- ie sounds like "Yeah!"

That's the first two words dealt with! Easy, isn't it?

A lot of these sounds crop up later too (e.g. in chrząszcz you've got another sz and another cz), so you can re-use the same rules.

But chrząszcz also has a few extra sounds you need to know. They are:

ch     This sounds like it does at the end of Gaelic words (think 'Loch')

ą       A tricky beast, this one, as the devilish tail suggests. 
         If the consonant after it is voiced, it sounds like 'arm' (in a UK accent).
         If the next consonant has no voicing, you say 'arn' instead. 
         In this word, you need to say 'chrzamszcz' (the sound of the insects).

Then to do brzmi, just remember your rz rule, and when you come to the last word, watch out for the c on its own. That sounds like 'ts' - the sound of a hi-hat cymbal on a drum kit.

Ok ... got that? If so, you're ready to crack the Polish tongue-twister. Good luck, and let me know how you go :-)

Meanwhile, I'll be sure to report back on every little thing that happens in Warszawa.

See you!

Old Moats

I'm on a train with wi-fi. No doubt those of you who live in developed countries are thinking "Yeah? And?". But for me it's a first, and quite fun :-)

I mean, I've seen signs before that say there's wi-fi on the train, and even on coaches. But I figured it was one of those things that's only real in Norway, and never actually works anywhere else. Apparently I was wrong ... cool!

Anyway ... we're speeding towards a town called Ostrava, about 30kms from the Czech-Polish border. Here I'll start the next leg of my cycling journey.

The last couple of days have essentially been rest days. I pitched up in the town of Olomouc on July 30th, very curious to see it for myself; as I mentioned in the previous entry, it's garnering a reputation as a bit of an 'undiscovered jewel'.

So is it?

Well ... er, yeah, I think so. I mean, it's not likely to knock Vienna or Prague off the top of a few million tourist itineraries, but it certainly has some pretty parts.

Btw, just in case you're wondering, the town's name is pronounced roughly as o-la-MORTS. Before I came here, I found it useful to think of the phrase "old moats" to help me remember the pronunciation.

Sadly there aren't any old moats in Olomouc - that would've been great! But it is a very likeable place; one of those European 'regional capitals' where poky laneways abound, and where, if you're near the centre, you usually spy something grand and a bit monumental if you peer down the lane to the next big street or open space.

Take The Tiny Lane to The Giant Church ... 

Olomouc, Czech Republic, 31.07.15

It also has the wacky thing pictured below – which is known as a 'plague column' – in one of its central squares. I'd never seen or even heard of plague columns before, but apparently this is the biggest one you'll find anywhere in Central Europe. Kind of an intriguing concept.

There's No Plague on Us! 

Olomouc, Czech Republic, 31.07.15

You can only see the bottom half of the column here, because it's frikkin' enormous. A bunch of Moravia's most exciting architects designed and built it in the early 18th Century, to celebrate the end of plague in the region – but in a fit of local pride, the ordinary citizens of Olomouc helped out with its construction. Now, it just sits in the middle of the square, all baroque and massive and happy-about-the-lack-of-plague.

The town has quite a studenty, artsy vibe, with lots of street art and so on. This little piece decorates the wall of one little underpass, near the city museum.

Underpass Art 

Olomouc, Czech Republic, 01.08.15

But probably my favourite bit of 'public art' in Olomouc is the astronomical clock on one side of the old Town Hall.

If you live and/or have travelled in Europe, you know these things pop up fairly regularly in large European cities. And let's face it: they're incredibly kitschy. Usually they feature a bunch of Jesus' disciples, a Wise Man or several, and a crowing rooster, whirring out from behind little wooden doors on the hour, as bells and other 'special' effects mark the occasion. And without wanting to be too mean, I have to say I find it a little sad when tourist crowds gather round these clocks in anticipation, as though the cheesy little spectacle is worth the price of the plane ticket.

What makes the one in Olomouc so different is that it isn't the work of some 16th Century watchmaker; it was created during the Communist era, and its design seems, as much as anything, like a playful parody of the whole astronomical clock idea.

Pocket-sized Socialist Heroes Greet The Hour 

Olomouc, Czech Republic, 01.08.15

It also seems (rather bravely for the time) to thumb its nose at the cliched 'socialist heroes' who were the artist's constant subject during the Socialist Realist period (whether s/he liked it or not). Here they take the place of disciples, Wise Men etc., parading out of their little doorways – farmers, athletes, scientists and the whole Socialist pantheon, all looking utterly plastic and fake and caricatured. I'm actually surprised that the artist got away with it.

At the same time, there is a certain elegance to the mosaic portion of the clock – and again, a playfulness that was very noticeably missing from most Socialist Realism. Rather than showing Holy Days, like your 'traditional' astronomical clock, the dials here rotate to show Lenin's and Stalin's birthdays, as well as Communist holidays like International Workers' Day. It's really funny, and kinda brilliant :-)  

But while Olomouc doesn't disappoint for either quirkiness or architectural splendour, it does lack one crucial ingredient: life. It's weird; I mean, I definitely prefer a medium-sized European city with a laid-back atmosphere to a huge, crowded capital (see my comments last year re beautiful, chilled-out Antwerp vs. ridiculously packed and slightly repugnant Brussels). But here, in Olomouc, you often find yourself wondering "Where are all the people?" 

A Strangely Empty Square 

Olomouc, Czech Republic, 31.07.15

I don't quite know why there are so few folks here, either locals or tourists. Maybe it's the heat – we almost reached 40 degrees this week, which would certainly encourage me to stay home if I was a local! Or maybe there's a cool part of town that I don't know about, where all the students go. Don't think so, though: I think this intense quietness actually pervades the entire city.

At times I find it quite pleasant, but at other times it's almost eerie – especially late at night, as empty trams rumble along the dimly-lit, cobbled ring road at the Old Town's edge.

Julca's Meat Cup 

Olomouc, Czech Republic, 01.08.15

Anyway, now I've said goodbye to Julča (a cute tabby kitten who lives outside the very Soviet-looking hotel where I stayed, and who is spoiled every morning with leftover processed meat from the breakfast hall), and I'm heading east to begin the next leg of the cycling tour.

I'll cross into Poland tomorrow, arriving in the city of Cieszyn. From there I'll head to Bielsko-Biała, at the edge of the southern Polish / northern Slovakian Tatra mountain range – a region which I've long been planning to visit. Finally I'll go north to Oswięcim, better known by its Germanic name "Auschwitz", before hopping a train to Katowice and then to Warszawa (Warsaw).

As usual, I'll let you know how if anything noteworthy happens along the way.

See you!