Greece

June 23 — July 3, 2005

I’ve been to Greece once before, but that was donkey’s years ago, round about 1987. Someone nicked my camera after I briefly forgot it in a tavern.

Athens

First things first, I had to go visit the Acropolis, obviously.

The Parthenon has been undergoing renovations for so long now that the construction equipment, scaffolding, and cranes will soon make it onto the UNESCO World heritage list.

You’re not allowed to take photographs with sculptures in the background (nor to stand with your back to them when shooting).

Having said that, you don’t have to go to a museum to see ancient art, there are masterpieces hanging right there in the street.

Beautiful.

Payphone.

Postbox.

Newsstands.

Pedestrian zone.

There’s a solar battery on each building. From above Athens looks like a broken glass dump.

Time to move on. To this end I rented a “Hyundai” car.

Roads

Most of the intercity roads in Greece have two lanes. Their shoulders are very generous, however. And all of the drivers do their best to drive along these shoulders. That’s why you get two express lanes down the middle.

They warn you about hazards well in advance. They stick in so many signs that even the least attentive of drivers cannot but notice them.

You constantly come across mini- chapels with small icons and candles in them on the sides of country roads. They’re very well maintained.

The background on road signs, which is painted white in Russia, is always yellow here (just like it was in the USSR all the way back in the 1960s).

Greek number plate.

Stay in your lane.

Lamia

Nothing to write home about.

Volos

Attempts to find excavations of campsites built by Neolithic man came to nothing. The signs lead you round in circles.

Along the central waterfront — a market with books piled high.

Larissa

In the centre of town: amphitheatre ruins.

Neoi Epivates

It’s a village overlooking Thessaloniki.

It’s a place where you can relax.

Kavala

A town with an aqueduct and a well preserved medieval fortress on the hill.

It’s hard to imagine the walls of the Moscow kremlin standing flush with a property belonging to an ordinary Muscovite. In Greece (and in say, Israel) this sort of thing is fairly common. Someone lives right next to the fortress entrance. He thoroughly enjoys decorating the courtyard and his portion of the wall with compositions comprised of ICQ daisies, Snow Whites, and gnomes (as many as he could get his hands on).

Poles covered with a thick layer of staples from past flyers.

In a word, a lovely town.

Thessaloniki

Compared to Athens, this place is literally New York.

The waterfront leads you to the White Tower, which we couldn’t go up because it was occupied by anarchists. They hung up a fabric banner on top of the tower.

The archaeology museum is very well hidden. Someone actually asked me for directions to it when I was trying to locate it myself. The collection is comprised of an exhibition called “The gold of Macedonian kings”. The museum attendants couldn’t tell me why there isn’t a single sign to help you make your way around the museum. They feigned no knowledge of English. Despite the fact that almost everybody speaks English in Greece. By the way, those wreaths are almost two and half thousand years old.

Antennae and pipes.

The entire city is built out of antennae.

Caution: blind people.

Caution: children at play.

Rubbish bins.

Meteora

My romantic imagination was always warmed by the thought that somewhere in the Greek hills there are monasteries, which monks can only reach by going up forbidding cliffs in baskets attached to ropes. I’ve always wanted to be one of the select few invited to go up to the top, off-limits to private visitors.

The cliffs, with their spectacular nostrils, are surrounded by the town of Kalabaka and the village of Kastraki.

The next day I went to see the monasteries. I was on my guard, having been tipped off by the thick electric cables stretching upwards.

When I drove up close to the largest monastery my expectations were ruthlessly trampled into the dust. The large stone staircase and the crowd of tourists walking down it cut me to the quick. Turns out that staircases were added to all of the monasteries in Meteora all the way back in the 1930s.

The chances of seeing something interesting in this world, something off the beaten tourist path are getting slimmer and slimmer.

And this despite the fact that at the monastery they’re selling a book in Russian, on the cover of which it says: “The Holy Meteora. A sacred place, protected from any alterations, inviolable”. Nothing is sacred.

Ferries

Travelling around the islands by ferry is very convenient because you can take your car. So you can hit the road as soon as you arrive on one of the islands.

The “Hellenic Seaways” ferry was utter shit. On the bright side, “Blue Star Ferries” was phenomenal. Escalators take you up from below deck. Inside, you can surf the web. You sail along, looking out the windows at the islands going past, and catching up on emails.

There’s no point getting your hopes up about finding anything interesting to eat aboard a ferry. Nor anything tasty for that matter.

Santorini

Every photo taken on this island is travel guide cover-ready.

Although if it were up to me I’d publish travel guides with covers that look like this:

Aside from Fira, Santorini’s capital, there isn’t much to see here.

On the bright side, the morning fog left an indelible impression.

Paros

Paros rubbish bin.

There is absolutely nothing to do on the island of Paros.

Lifestyle

Everywhere in Europe you only get one napkin for your entire meal. Also, no matter how hard you try, you can never get freshly squeezed juice in Europe. In Greece it’s the exact opposite. However, when you go to a tavern you should order everything you want right away, because the waiter only takes your order once. What’s more, they immediately bring you the bill, regardless of whether you’re going to have a fifth cup of coffee afterwards.

In contrast to other European countries, in Greece nothing closes at eight p.m. In Paris and in Berlin you always end up feeling so glum come evening that it makes you want to jump on the first plane back to Moscow. Also, unlike in Italy, in Greece you can dine at any time of day, not just between seven and nine p.m.

The Greeks sit out in the street until two or three a.m. Come to think of it, they’re there in the mornings too, as well as in the daytime.