Six Weeks off the (Flying) Boat ~ Updates

Penned on Jan 24, 2020.

Back from Greece 42 days now ~ six weeks exactly.  I've been pretty busy since my return: housesat twice; put 100 hours or so toward the Eleusian Epiphanies; wrote a second preAmble; went to the Y nine times; signed up with a half-dozen employment sites; scooted down to the Texas coast; crashed an HI retreat in Round Rock; dashed up to Tennessee to ogle the Nashville skyline and take a job interview in Chattanooga.

Yeah, I don't feck around.  Life, ho.

I came back to gather momentum for my 2021 return to Greece but Austin hasn't been behaving like the launchpad it should be: too expensive, too busy, too many ghost-mothering moments and while work is plentiful, the income:expenditure ratio is kinda nuts.  Stick around here and I might make it home by the end of the decade. 

So geo-refocus is in the works.  As resources are running a bit low, it's hit (no miss) this time. Texas or Tennessee or . . .?

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I'd been nudging resumes along via ZipRecruiter, so this week's jog up to the other T-state was triggered by an interview in Chattanooga. Looking at car rentals, I saw that prices went flying through the roof after the end of January, so I scratched up a few bucks and took a 4-day road trip.

The beginning omen was when some galoot in a Ford F250 started th'owing dollar bills out of his window and on to Interstate 35. 
(I poop you not...)

Arriving early Monday morning, my car radio found the Nashville Roots radio station and started blasting a wonderful medley: Charlie Louvin, Jompson Brothers, Sarah Jarosz -- then a curiously apt "She's Gone" by John Oates, followed by "Wild Thing."  Suddenly I was 21, and the city was strange, cold and sweet.  Arriving to my friend's place in Berry Hill, snowflakes drifted into my hair, the welcoming waterkisses.

With mere hours to glance at Nashville, my friend served as unreluctant (I'd say 'enthusiastic' but that might be overselling his willingness to brave the cold). I then zoomed up the highway to see Chattanooga.  Chat has been presented to me as a kind of proto-Austin (which I am definitely old enough to remember). Friend-of-my-friend Shelby hosted me in a sweet old red-brick apartment building which had the original transom windows, shiplapped walls and hardwood floors.  I won't say how low the rent was, but yeah, way affordable.

Alas, about 10 miles before I arrived to this charming little city, here came the News:  NO.

"Eh? what do you mean 'NO'?" I probed my Intuition.  "What do YOU mean 'what do you mean?'" It replied.  "The answer is NO.  Pay attention." (Fair enough. The reasons for the 'no' purled into view over the next 24 hours.)

The drive from Nashville on Interstate 24 was marvelous, withal.  JackDaniels whiskey-stone lined the the highway, and since it was sub-freezing all the seeps had turned to ice, dazzling the rock walls.

As you may know HzO is a Thing with me.  As in: IT'S ALIVE, and by the Knees of Venus, it can be the Nemesis or it can be your Bestest Frien'.  The waters poked out frozen to see me see Them. We seent us. This water, y'all, was some kind of clean.  Way better than the Texas drek we are drinking, post-fracking swill that it is.

And that alone, may serve as the Reason for the Tennesseason.  Heh.  

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Whole Housetifarian(ism) and 3rd Millennium Beguine†

Outside ...  

About four years ago I gave up my apartment in Albuquerque and wandered off to Cyprus (the island, not the tree) for a writing residency at the Cyprus College of Art. Although my legal digs  are in Texas - it seems I have become a semi-professional houseguest or -sitter . . . (and, while abroad, an AirBnB inmate).

Homeless? "Not hardly," as my ancestors would say. But in the last few years something of a house-dancer... 

2019 was embroiled in a family health situation that finally rolled to a halt in September.  After taking a break in Greece, I will be returning to the States and the *formal* world of housesitting. I am signed up with Housesitters America, so you can take a look at that site for more my experience there, and this post will establish some of my other bona fides.

Inside... 

Rates:
$50 a week for basic housesitting (organic plant care, mail and bill management, light yard and housework);
$75 includes first critter care e.g. cat, dog, snakes/lizard, hedgehog, foxes, birds (including parrots). 
Add $25 per week for second critter-care. And $25 for each additional pet.  Flocks or bird pairs are considered 'first critter.'

The Breakdown:
House = $50 week. House+cat= $75/week. House+cat+parrot= $100/week.  House + cat + parrot + geese = $125 week.

Gifts for the Air hosts...
Chocolate! shopping bags!
Incense! Rubbergloves? 

Oh, while I am 420-friendly, I do not partake.  Nor do I  smoke tobacco. Nor do I have rowdy
Tupperware parties. I do meditate, so I'm not that boring.  And yes, all of this is negotiable. HMU.

Need more?  There's always my public profile on Air... Or write to me for references and I'll shoot them out to you.

Thanks for riding along with me on this, and feel free to distribute to your networks!

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†First published on May 8, 2018. Republished on Nov. 19, 2019.  

Summer <--> Fall <--> 2019?

In May I flew up to Indiana to pick up a car -- one that belonged to my sortasister Lisa (only sorta-sorta... it was a relationship close enough to piss off both of our sistersisters).  She passed away in the summer of 2016 and her car had meandered up to her parents' house in Bloomington. Her daughter, husband, son ("sortafamily") and I thought it would help get the 33 Names workshop encircuited, so I took it for what was to be a 6-month lease.

Driving South --through Cherokee territory in Oklahoma-- there was absolutely NO data available; data, phone, hotspot were all dead.  I was avoiding toll roads (which had me driving through a reservation) and the electronic quiet was both eerie and reassuring.   Suddenly Lisa's presence filled car.  She rode along with me, our communication not really sayable here in fingertip-language-land, but clear enough. 

When I got back to Texas, I took a call from her husband who asked me to go to Alabama and retrieve Lisa's art.  It was, I was told, in an indoor storage unit, and a 10-foot truck would be adequate to bring it to California.  As I love this woman like my eyes, I was honored by the request, and agreed handily to the task.  "This should take about two weeks," we all agreed.

Now, four months later, I am in California -- unpacking the art, the books, the offices and household effects, and trying to snag enough furniture from Craigslist to fill in the blanks.   My goddessdaughter and her dad are on their way to London today.  He has never seen the British Museum and it may help jumpstart his writing again - which has been stalled since Lisa's death and his own unhappy health challenge.  So EE is now Easterwood EveryHERE . . . in SoCal.

A/k/a:  One of my least favorite places on the planet.  LA county is patchwork urbanity, thrown together in a louche, erzatz manner.  It's not that there isn't beauty to be found, but it seems hyperlocated, bound to a particular block or part of a block, then freeways come and cut through everything.  Extend your attention in any direction and it'll be filleted into seventeen layers...none of them speaking to any of the others.  Damnit.

My own work (Eleusian Epiphanies) could find some footing here, so I'll have to ponder that ...

Truth:  I'd rather (re)start in Greece.
Sigh.
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Can you Insure my Angel? (and other riddles of the road)

Is that a travel angel? or
just really good insurance? 

 The "E[...] Everywhere" claimed by the blog title may be a tad oversold, but in the last four years I've been to Greece four times, Cyprus twice; and back here in the States, bounced repeatedly from Austin to Atlanta (with long  spindowns in Birmingham), then  Austin to Denver/Boulder.  Add February's sortie to New Mexico and it feels like my personal odometer might need a seventh digit before the decade is over.  

So how did I not know about travel insurance?  Oh, I'd seen it pop up on my flight options, but thought my car insurance or credit card warranties would do just fine, thank you.  I'm already paying for those, so what the hey... why would I need more coverage?

And. When I get do get sick (as a post-fifterian is wont to do), I've been in this body long enough to have developed a pretty reliable toolkit for its maintenance and repair.   But I've just discovered that travel insurance goes a few clicks beyond medical support.  As I read down through the coverages, I wondered if some frisky daimon hadn't used that list as an inverted template for my last journey.  Beginning with my bag detained by TSA (knocking a hole in my budget even before I arrived in Athens); racking my knee on the ferry from Corfu - then,  about a month into the journey, sortafamily news called for a retreat back to the US (which, as I couldn't afford it, I delayed).  It turns out, a cheap policy would have covered all of that.  {{facepalm}}

My journeys to the Eastern Med have been more on the order of relocay than vacay, but I gotta tell you, travel insurance is going on the packing list, next to the tea tree oil and earplugs.   Iammas. 

Vajra-Bath in Aetolia

Easter(wood) Everywhere hasn't gotten much love during this journey ~ or really, since last Spring after I returned to Texas.   As mentioned in the preceding post, I've been here in Greece since late November 2017, intending to stay until mid-February.   I had hoped to set up the merest framework for living/working in Greece, but was surprised (again and again) by the challenges of establishing the communication system upon which my work depends. 

So... much of this trip has been spent in technical quagmires, which made the respites and unveiled beauties more welcome.  One of those was discovering that the second apartment I rented was mere steps from the Corinthian Gulf.    I have walked on the beach almost daily, and been gently surprised by its many moods - including nights in which the water was almost flat, becalmed as a lake. 

The sea is backed up to the western edge of the Agrafa mountain range (the one that includes Parnassus), though at this point in the geography, those are foothills, not mountains.  My front balcony has hills to my right; but the sea, on the left, is much closer!

Although daily temperatures have been from 10-16ºC (45-60ºF), and the waters are pellucid and mild,  I haven't been able to shake off my quasi-hibernation to consider a swim.   The other day it struck me that I could take some of the sea to my bath and mix it with the warmer tapwaters.  'Thought a few gallons would make a nice addition.  

I hauled 10 gallons in two trips, and since the apartment is on the second floor, it was four trips.    I was still muttering-through the workshop I came here to create, so I decided to wait until later in the evening to set up the bath. 

Intuition:  This water would like to be left outside, please.   So I set the buckets on the back balcony.  More intuition: Got any seastones for us? Went back down and collected a handful of shore pebbles and put them in the water.  Thank you. 

The workshop I am developing comes in odd little bursts, so I was twirled up in that work until 3 a.m.  Too late (early?) for the bath.  I fell asleep and woke to thunder and downbursts of rain. Thought about the buckets of seawater, went to the balcony to check on them.  Yes, they had collected an inch or two of the storm, but all cloud-birthed - no run-off from the roof.  I watched lightning play through the trees behind the apartment and realized the new water would descend from that flashing mirror.

It was going to be an excellent bath.

On the chemical side I was hoping the sea water would stand in for some of the magnesium sulfate I didn't have.  As it had been almost a month since my last Epsom salts bath, my body had a background ache that I had managed to ignore, but it wasn't sweetening my mood. 

Turns out that the Med has an small, almost homeopathic percentage of both magnesium and sulfate, but still higher than ocean water.   Per litre? Let's see, 10 gallons is around 35 liters, so I would be soaking in, say, 200 mgs of magnesium sulfate. About one aspirin-worth.   But the carrier, oceanic sodium chloride, seemed to make a potent difference.

After checking on the balcony buckets, I discovered the storm had knocked out my electricity, so no hot water until it was restored (six hours later!).  One of the more sensible differences in European household management is the attitude toward hot-water: 'what is this, a hotel? heat the water when you need it.'  So water stays cool in the tank until 20 minutes prior to bathing.    

When I had written as far as I could ruminate, I drew the bath, pouring the cooler sea/rain water into hot tap water, then added the stones.  "No soap." Okay.  By now I had picked up on the presence of a few curious sea nymphs, who came up with the seawater to check me out.   I don't see them with what my friend Bobby calls 'meat eyes.' I perceive their presence with my visual imagination (the eye's mind, as it were), a kind of liquid architecture that was both structured and mobile, like music. 

I once rested in a garden in Mexico between two atmospheres, cooler on my right, warmer to the left, and felt them meet and resist one another just over my face.  Conversing with this presence was a little like that, as we misunderstood and resisted each others' eidos, being from two very different realms.  They asked me what kind of 'dolphin' I was - and it took a while to understand that they were joking, as they knew full well that I am human and mostly landlocked.

The bath was so rich, even as it cooled the water felt heavier, like melted tapestries.  I dozed and soaked, occasionally waking up enough to scrub a patch of skin. I didn't use soap, but I did put handfuls of sodium bicarbonate on the bath brush.  To my surprise, I peeled as though I was sunburned, layer after layer sloughing anything I could reach, even the inside of my arms and the backs of my knees.   The body that emerged felt lighter, less knotted, cooler somehow.  Stood up and rinsed the soda-seawater off me, then reached for the plug.  Wait.  The question was light but clear: could I take the water back to the sea?  Some of it, anyway?  I agreed, but added that this needed to wait till tomorrow.  Fine...  I hauled 3 buckets to rest on the balcony, left about 8 inches back in the bathtub.

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It has continued to rain off and on through the day.  The water isn't as limpid now - winds have whipped the waves, which roils up the silted seafloor.  But I caught a few minutes of sun and hauled the buckets downstairs, down the half-block to the gentle, curling edge of the sea.  As I approached, the waves got bigger for a minute, throwing themselves a few feet beyond the water line.  "Happy to see us, are you?" as I poured the first 3 gallons back into the bay.   The wind rose and sky brightened to silver, then swept back down to pigeonbreast blues.
 
I don't think I've ever been so clean.

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Greek-in-the-Box

Preamble: In the Spring of 2017 I made a couple of blogposts designed to help my readers with communication and transportation systems in Greece.  So much has changed in the last six months that it neutralizes most of that advice.  But here's an update, may it be of some small use. . . 

Late in 2017 I returned to Greece to finish up the Ten Senses workshop - a project that got shelved last year as family obligations prevailed.    Upon arriving to Athens in November, I discovered that Greek communication systems had been bought and sold and bought again, so new dispensations were in place. 

Getting the car was moderately complicated (yes, you will need that International Driving Permit as well as your license and passport - and carry photocopies!), but CarNMotion still serves the larger cities.  Their people are funny, kind and efficient - so I continue to recommend them for a quick rental. 

Phone/net service was strangely difficult to obtain.  Six months earlier I had purchased SIM cards from Cosmote for my iPhone and iPad, but the iPad wouldn't recognize it.  I went to Cosmote stores and found pretty close to sheer chaos... workers looked tired and anxious, questions were shrugged off and technical support non-existent.   Moreover,  Cosmote (and most carriers) had broken their data and minute packages into tiny, specialized slivers so you pay 5€ for social media, 7€ for music, 3 for 'general data' (which can only be sent out as hotspot data), etc.  Oh and everything purchased expires in 1 day, 3-days or a week.  Nightmare. 

Vodafone works well in the cities and small towns, and seems less dysfunctional as a business.  The stores have enough personnel and no one appears to hate their job.  The data packages are a wee bit less expensive than Cosmote, but marginally.  They have an introductory packet of 5GB on a 10€ SIM card, but be aware that they burn up around 60-100 MB per hour - if you are not streaming video or music.  Then it shoots up to 200mb per hour. 

I make my living as a writer, so keeping a line open to the Net is essential for a number of reasons.  This trip had another family emergency pop up as well.  My exasperation was bottomless for a good bit of this journey, as Net access was stymied again and again, and my only quasi-reliable communications system was a wifi hotspot (through my iPhone) which burned out the battery. 

About two months into this fracas, Vodafone saved the day, sending a tech named none other than Soterio ("Savior") who set up an inexpensive wifi hotspot and sold me an introductory data pack. Total: 50€.     I had to buy another 22€ of data for the next three weeks, but it has been well worth it.  Be sure and look for the Pre-pay pages. 

Funny thing is, you won't find this router or service on their Vodafone Mobile Network website, you have to ask for it in person.  But here's a link.  I paid about 22€ for the router, 18 to set it up and 10 for the first data packet.   I strongly recommend getting some form of wifi  independent of your hosts or hotels while in Greece.  Cosmote has the biggest network in Greece, but they are dropping the ball, big time. 

(PS... if you *do* go to Cosmote, be aware that as of this writing Cosmote will not set up the router for you and they will NOT allow returns/refunds  if their hardware doesn't work with your systems. Caveat emptor, on steroids.) 

Travel Knots - Part II

Last week --48 hours after my return from Europe-- I doggedly pushed a few words into this space; upon reviewing that post, I see the fragile mortar between ideas, infelicities of word choice, awkward alliterations.  Oh well. I wanted to get it done, no matter how crappy I was feeling.

And I gotta tell ya, coming back is always about as much fun as I can have outside of an Iron Maiden. Not that I do not feel love for and from my community here (starting with the Darling Companion, then on through the sortafamily who show up smiling and warm).  But the atmospheric difference can be tough to negotiate.  My body's reaction is predictable: develop some kind of transient infection and pull it all down for a few days.   (And then we throw Mother's Day into the mix.  Yeah. Good times.)
But onward:  Last blog gave a few key ideas about timing your journey, what to expect food-wise, how to move across Greece, the availability of lodging.   This post will look at acquiring connectivity and maybe some language.

There are a half-dozen phone companies in Greece, and while I did use Vodaphone briefly last year, for the most part I have stayed with the Ma Bell of Greece, Cosmote (unlike ATT, they are not affiliated with the CIA).  Wind and Vodaphone are ubiquitous, but Cosmote seems to serve the most remote villages (and beyond, while crossing the Pindus mountains or 800 kilometers out to sea) almost without interruption.  Their offices are in every town square, and there is usually a tech/salesperson on the floor who can configure your devices.  The two prepaid plans are What's Up for your phone and Kosmokarta for tablets/iPads.  The links provided here will take you to the webpages, but do yourself a favor and just go to the Cosmote store.  Once you've bought the SIM card (10€ includes installation/configuration), you can register the account online and top-up through PayPal or credit card.   The total to set up new SIMs in your phone and tablet with about 1 gb on each them should be less than 30€.

In the event that you run out of phone-data before getting back online to top-up, your alternative is to buy a top-up PIN from any kiosk - the storelettes that dot sidewalks all over Greece.  You just say: Yparkhi Cosmote? Do you have Cosmote? and the guy (usually) behind the counter will assent with a little diagonal headbob (he's not saying 'no' - 'no/okhi' is a nod). "Deca evro, parakalo."  Ten euro (card), please.

You then send a text to 1314; in the body you key in the word ANA, then the PIN you just purchased. That puts the entire value (minus taxes) on your phone.  To convert to data, you text 1330 and send the number '200' in the body of the text.  In a minute or two you'll get a text back from Cosmote saying that 600 mb has been added to your phone, with about 10 minutes of talk time left (you'll be able to receive phone calls beyond that limit, but outgoing is restricted to 10 minutes).

Also, I gotta say, customer service with Cosmote (well, until the tourist season) is sterling.  Kind, patient, cheerful.  And their techs are actually competent.  But really, do as much as you can in the store itself. It will save you a LOT of time, and costs about the same as trying to shimmy through the website.

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As for language study, I must confess that during this most recent journey, I let lapse most --if not all-- of my daily practice.   At some point I grew weary of 'chasing' the language like a reluctant romance, so I just stepped back and said: maybe --one fine day-- it'll just appear inside of my mind. Hah.  Greeks know, and were constantly commenting on, the fact that theirs is a curiously resistant language, especially for people raised in the Saxon sounds.  Now that I am back in the States, the study has begun in earnest again.   

Here are a few of my favorite apps...

Duolingo •

(arrrghhh... Blogger just dumped half of this blog, and I don't have it backed up yet... So now the language section will have to be pieced together again next week.  Sorry!)

Combing Out the Travel Knots...Part I

Returning to Austin late last week was as arduous as getting to Greece a few months ago.  Both ways, I had completely new itineraries.  While there are no assurances that I have learned anything recycleable during our milieu of Daily Fruitbasket Turnover,  I'll drop the dime anyway and see if you can use any of my experience.

First night back in Austin (the first 'day' according to my ruffled circadians) I serendipitously met a young hellenophile. We wound up having coffee at 4 a.m. to talk about Greece.    His questions spurred this blogpost, since it seems I might know one or two things worth sharing.

As my friend Wu pointed out yesterday, there is a difference between a tourist and a traveler, and I hope my readers consider themselves the latter.  Not a tourist, nor a refugee or ex-pat, but like me, willing to spend the time and energy to actually dwell (albeit lightly) in the faintly bedazzled sweetness of an unfamiliar sky.

[Full disclosure: I will probably affiliate this blogsite with some of the services mentioned herein, so if you do get to clickin', please look for the clutter on the margins of this post. Inelegant, yes, but perhaps helpful for both of us...]

First, let's talk about dates.  People, you want to be in the Eastern Mediterranean from late September until early April.  Maybe until Easter.  No later.  I have now experienced ellenikaApril and the onset of tourist season in early May, and it isn't pretty.  Not only are there a welter of very confused UK drivers on the road (who wind up in your lane on a regular basis), prices for many things rise about 25% every week in April.

Now, on to transportation: Buses, cars, ferries, metro.  The bus system in Greece is KTEL/ΚΤΕΛ (no that V has not tumped over, it's an L). Each prefecture and state has its own website.  Thus ~ ktelioannina, http://ktelattikis.gr/, ktelprevezas.gr/... etc.  Each website is designed differently, so you'll have to poke around a bit, but there's an English option on most.  Every site has a schedule of local destinations and an itinerary for buses to Athens and Thessaloniki, the two 'largest' (cough) cities in the country.   They almost never publish prices, but I can tell you to expect 8-15€ for local, 35-50€ to Athens or Thessa.

When traveling across Greece, you may realize that a roundtrip bus ticket is more than the price of a car for a couple of days, and reconsider public transport.   In the cities you'll need a particular kind of sensibility to deal with Greek drivers (I have it in spades), but the countryside is less obstreperous. If you are not in a hurry (try not to be) the state highways run alongside the expensive toll road system (Etnikas); otherwise budget another 20-25€ to get to your destination.

Roadwool

I reserved a car through Sixt before starting this journey, but found upon arrival that the major rental companies are charging a 900-1400€ deposit.   The lowest deposit was Europcar at 500€.   It took a while, but I found a mainland company --carNmotion-- that rented with NO deposit.   While the daily rate was not the 8€/per diem broadcast by Hotwire, Expedia, etc. it was quite reasonable (<20€ a day), and served my purposes perfectly.  But you should know that carNmotion subleases from Enterprise, so you have to go to Enterprise offices, which are usually in town, not at the airport.  And they do NOT provide cars at any of the 'local' depots shown in their list until April.   Call or write and ask where the nearest pickup might be.   And add the bus rides to and from those offices into your budget.

The islands are another story.  Just walk in, hand over your dab of money, and drive away.  Don't bother to reserve anything, there are dozens of little rental agencies.  Yes, you can also rent scooters and bicycles in the same way.  Cash works.

The Metro system in Athens is very good, as are the bus systems in Athens, Thessaloniki, Ioannina.
A week's pass on the Metro system --which goes out to Piraeus and the airport-- is 9€, an excellent deal.  Otherwise the day pass is about 2€.  City buses are between 1-1.50€.

You're gonna wanna keep this map.  

The cheapest ferry to the islands is the Blue Star out of Piraeus port.   And they have terrible terrible food on board, so bring your own.    Routes are 25-50€ each way.   Their wifi is an additional 5€ charge for 24 hours, and if you don't pony up, expect your dataplan to burn like fatwood otherwise.   There is free parking right by the ticket offices, or you can pay another 20€ and bring your car, but most rental companies prohibit ferry transport of their automobiles.

Lodging is abundant & cheap.  I haven't used couchsurfing yet, but will as soon as I have a place to trade into that network.   There is, of course, the hostel system.  Air BnB continues to delight and amaze.  I have also had really good luck with Booking.com over the last couple of years, not sure how they do it, but their prices are consistently 25-30% lower than otherwise published.

Food is something of a splitscreen.  In the South (Attika, Pelepponese, Boeitia, islands) food is more expensive across the board. 1/2 kilo cheese ~ around 8€; in the North, same cheese, 5.   By 'North' I mean anything north of Preveza or Volos - Thessaly, Epirus, Macedonia.  I was able to put together a kitchen list with coffee and table wine for about 35€ a week in the North; closer to 50 in the South. There are grocery chains owned by Germans (LIDL for example), and others owned by Greeks (My Market or AB). Try to stick with the Greekgrocers.   Oh, and most food would qualify as 'organic' if it was being sold here in the States.

Now that you have an idea about how to move around, where to stay and how to eat - what to do. There is a robust music and drama scene throughout Greece, antiquities under each step, a lively and quite mantic geography, a kebab & café scene that will leave the inside of your mouth wondering what took you so long; not to mention Crete, Turkey, Egypt less than a half-day's travel away.   In 2015 I was invited to Cyprus to write;  went back in 2016 to mourn; and this year to resuscitate my creative life, so I wasn't in the 'entertainment' stream very often.   But it is out there, especially in Athens and Ioannina.  Oh, and Dodona... 

Next post: Language and Data/phone plans. 

May Day in Greece!

I am traveling on May Day, and in honor of She What Brung Us, trying to stay off of highways.   Other Greek drivers drop  a clue when I see their windshield wipers festooned with roses (real roses), which won't stay attached if you drive over 50 kms per hour.  

What this also means is that all archeological sites are *closed*... because in Greece May Day is really not for tourists, it has been called into the Orthodox calendar as one of the Μαρια holy days.  

But the wander is marvelous ~ and I glimpse a few things worth sharing: 

Corinthian coastline

Kato (beneath) Olympus

How we roll on May Day

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Gymna Trochoús Sti Gi

(Naked Wheels on the Earth) 

Sun in the Sunless City!

I took a walk through Ioannina today; maybe my last meander here for a while.  We've had TWO continguous days of sunshine, unusual for this silvery place.

A few impressions. . .

Wild Lavender, pretty much everywhere... 

Blooming Horse Chestnut tree (thanks, Sarah!) 

'Cava Cafe' the first coffee cave I visited in 2014. 

Bee Disco ("Live")

OK, the real 'Bee Disco'...

Visiting Scholars

Need anything amputated?  

...or disinterred?

Moi, bathroom selfie (serious) 

Macedonia, thataway... 

Yia Dodoni

Philopygic Parking 

Wednesday is the New Monday

...this week, at least.

On Monday I was rambling around the country, and as I have written elsewhen, traditional Greek road-space requires a certain happy attentiveness.  But I discovered the Greek government has committed to a new set of 'Etnikas' -- interstate feeways -- that are as soulless as anything we have in the States, and much, much more expensive.   My GPS kept rerouting to these gargantuæ - much to my irritated surprise. And as the tolls mounted (one pays about 4€ every 30 kilometers in Attica), I finally stopped and fiddled with the settings until SIRI dumped the tollroad defaults. Whew!

The last (unexasperated) stretch was a tiny road that twists between the Sanctuary just west of here and Ioannina, which finally gave me  a view I have been chasing down for the last three years:

This is two of three villages perched on the side of Mt. Tomaris which forms the western flank of Dodonopoulos, home of some of the most amazing feta and yogurt in the Cosmos... among other things.   

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But what I really wanted to discuss today are eggs.   And not just because we are coming up on Easter Sunday, but because this little apartment came with some charmingly perverse decor. 

Behold,  the giant, nine-inch ceramic egg on the credenza... 


When we discovered this a few days ago, we opened  it up to find, what? 

Oh, right ... eggs within the egg. 

Well, okay,  if the egg is too big to fit into a nest, it might make sense to put the nest inside the egg.  I could go along with that up to a point, but then a closer look revealed. . . 

Yes, that is a feathered egg {shudder}
inside a nest
inside an egg.

Has the entire world gone tweeting mad? Or is this perhaps some kind of sly allusion to President Featherhead twittering away in his Oval Office.   And yes, the Oval is supposed to suggest the Orphic Egg and its divine potentials, now utterly wasted on this superannuated golden Goose.  A goose who indeed migrates weekly to his Florida habitat, but instead of the noble cacophony of his breed, prefers to Twitter like a drunken sparrow.

Maybe we should start a campaign to get the Donald to honk rather than tweet.  What did my old bumpersticker say?  "Ankh if you love Isis"?  

And speaking of Osiris... There is an Easter on the horizon,  common this year to both Orthodox and Catholic calendars, so perhaps all that Rising will have a salutary effect.

Zoes Theá, y'all...

1800 kilometers...

What is that in Olympian inches?   One million?   Something like that. Anyway, I have every single one of them lodged somewhere in my (still lovely) derriére.   So please forgive the delay, EE-seekers, as I roll a few hundred thousand of these off of me.
A dip in the tiny tub and a nap (maybe simultaneously) should do it.

See you on the other side. . .

Tiny Tubs and Sausage Situations

Last week's Mondaypost went missing as the Goddessdaughter and I were frantically preparing to head for Athens.   The four days we spent in Attika was something of a wash for me; I may report on the grossness later, or I may leave it to sleep with the fishies.   But Hannah seemed to be having a good time and made lots of new friends.   As usual.  

Returning to Epirus was divine, as always, but I was too busy watergazing from the bus window to take any photos. I do wish you could have seen the sun slipping down behind the mountains to echo light across the bay of Corinth.   The sea was perfectly stippled with the most gorgeous pink/blue/silver meld, a color I've only seen fleetingly on rainbow trout as they flashed away from the nets.

Once I figure out how to write in it,
this may turn out to be my office.  

We are now back in Northern Greece, and settling in for a sweet visit.

The apartment here is small, but super-cute; we went to this area's IKEA last week, and upon arriving to the studio, realized it is basically an Ikea showroom, complete with Klimt prints and what would have been a Lisa-approved salmon-colored accent wall. But the best of our über-tiny studio is the bathroom's doll-tub. I couldn't find anything to show the scale, but trust me when I say it is rather womblike.  Or maybe a birth canal, being narrow AND deep.

Last night we wandered out to eat, found ourselves at a restaurant fairly removed from the tourist path.   I do my best *not* to be an Asshole American (though my native Texanity does pose an extra challenge), but the menu of this place earned some laughter at Greek expense.

First, the dinner page which leads with "Frying Chicken."  Foghorn Leghorn flashes before my mind's eye, hunched over the fryer with a basketful of human fingers.

Then another look reveals the Frying Chicken is served with what?  estragon.  But in the interest of gender balance, further down the page we have 'Sausage Situation' -- though confusingly, it is not served with 'rise.'







By this time, I have given up any mask of decorum. Hannah is shooshing me, I am snorting shamelessly behind the menu,  but then we turn the page...














. . .  to the housewares section?   No wait, that 'LAMP' is LAMB... Lamb LEAVERS & TONGUES.  Or livers. And tongues.  Talk about* your Silence of the Lambs.

(*go ahead, I'll wait here...)




Finally,  someone must have spent a day or two at le Cordon Bleu because now we move on to Coq au Vin, but translated for Yankee Brits  as ::

And yes, that unfortunate entrée above it is Stuffed Bunny (or Stiffed, if you please).

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Today we had a small wave of Weather, temperatures dropping into the Threes.   I took a walk in the late afternoon, as the sky was clearing.  Here are a few images:

First greengold light through a silvery afternoon...

 "Main" street, with mountain guardians. 

Personal Protection.  

Greekffiti (note the "no parking" OVER the tag).  

Last / First Day

... of the Zodiacal year, anyway. I took the photos that follow on March 19 (the last day of Winter and Pisces) to publish this slideshow on March 20 (the first day of Aries) when Persephone  rises again to Her Mother's realm.

Welcome home, Kore!

It's Spring Day, my honeys.   'Hope yours is twice-lively...
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Last / First Day (rePublished)

Published directly from Youtube, so a better copy. . . I think.

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Rivetectures

i.
As you can see from the blogstyle chosen, I love bodies of water - everything from wee koi ponds to whale-coddling seas.  Salt or sweet, green to marine-blue, black-blue, and all the whites between, by Ladylord, I love 'em!   But from childhood, rivers have shaped my soul.   It isn't just the constant inconstancy that gets to me - "moving and staying like whitewater" (though Wilbur is actually talking about laundry).  My source of existential relief is the fact that a river both is and isn't.  

When we see that glossy haul between two banks, our mind insists on the Thing Itself, a flowing plenum, all isness.   But in English the word river, rive'r suggests a cleavage, one side straying from the other, like watching a train window as the next car begins to glide -- a movement that seems to pull your face from the rack of its cheekbones.   It is that falling away that sweeps my heart, as I feel for the invisible undermine of it.

In a hydroform riverbed, the sheets are always tangling, kicked up and around the flux beneath the flow, a kind of emancipated undertow.  Last week, while taking the curves of the Arta-Ioannina road, I watched the Louros blanche blue and thunder-blue, its Ναιαδες the color of new wheat.  Maybe you can see them?

ii.
The legendary Acheron (pronounced Ah-care-rón, my Greek soundmistress tells me) is more laconic in its personality.  If not as wide as the American Mississippi, it bears a similar gravitas.   By happy accident I landed an apartment just a few kilometers from this marvel, so have been to visit several times - hoping to catch a glimpse (hey! only a glimpse!) of the Ferryman.

Acheron flowing to the Ionian Sea

Though I have not yet made it to Acheron Springs (which are not its headwaters) I did go to the 'footwaters' at Ammoudia, a nearby fishing village.  There is a long jetty built out between the Bay and the river's mouth, and a fair amount of its water is diverted to the Glika Limni, a lagoon nestled against the cliffs that shelter the village.   Even diverted and channeled, the Acheron still wields an impressive presence.   It is about 80 feet (≈27 meters) wide and curves along the south boundary of the village to a flare of cliffs on the left.  To its right is the chalice of the bay, adorned by a small grove of White Poplars -- related to aspen trees and very sacred to this river.

Walking the jetty between the two waters, I reached down to my left and tasted the river a few times to find the place where salt and sweet ran together.   Then realized I wasn't just 'tasting'; there was a zone --mere inches, really-- where the scents of landwater and sea folded round one another.  There I took a seat and removed my shoes, singswearing :: "Gymná pódia sti potámi..." Barefoot on this River, the wet version of my oath :: Gymná pódia sti Gi / Barefoot on this Earth. 

After a minute or two I started to laugh.  Oh Heraclitus! you can't step into this river twice, now can you?   I watched as the river pulsed around my feet, the waterway's heart beating beneath me.  We bipeds are always a-kilter, unsteady on our pins, but here I was shown that the worlds will roll up if we let them, a(rriving, riving, rivering) in wave-weighted steps.

ποταμοις τοις αυτοις εμβαινομεν τε και ουκ εμβοινομεν, ειμεν τε και ουκ ειμεν.

"We both step and do not step in the same river.  We are and we are not."

Heraclitus

Greek Infraspace

I discovered again yesterday that driving in rural Greece is a special experience, not at all comparable to any other roadastry.   Having learned to drive in the endlessness of Texas, then honing my intuition on the glorietas of Mexico City, I thought there wasn't much that could surprise me - until I started driving here in 2014.

(Don't worry, car rental agent, I did NOT drive this road.)

It isn't the improvisational flare of my fellow roadsters or the single-bed width of the village streets or the innocent twitching of the traffic lights that gets me.  It is the fact that distances between cities and villages are wildly miscalculated - based on a Western European technocrat's idea of how far things should be from one another.   Well, suck it, boys - I am here to depone: that satellite tells you one thing, experience another.

The nearest magnet town (can't be called a city really, with less than 200K people) is, by the map, about 100 kms from the coast.   60 miles. But go ahead, try to get there in an hour, I dare you.   And that is on the national highway.  When it comes to state roads --often 2-lane, shoulderless and switchbacky like your mother-in-law's monologues-- double your estimates.

Estuary of the Acheron River (Limni Gliki) 

Yesterday I drove toward the source of the Acheron River, which according to every map, was no more than 25 kms from here.  About 15 miles.  Leaving at noon, it was 1 p.m. before I even got to the prefecture, and still a good 10 kms away from the springs themselves.  Now, I did stop twice and take pictures, but that accounts for all of 10 minutes That's nine miles in 45 minutes (for you Amerikees), on a road with no traffic.  None.  

As I wrote last year, I have a theory that you have to measure Greek kilometers with some kind of toroidal, circular ruler. Yesterday, as I was gazing over the mountain gate to the Limni Gliki, it hit me, for every meter one expects to go forward, add another up or down. Or maybe up and down.

No, blasting tunnels through the Pindus Mountains doesn't seem to help.   Although they are lots of fun to race.