Euros Ate My Dollars

Typically, I spend mountain drives in a panicked state: clutching my seat, refusing to look out of the window, and desperately trying to prevent any unnecessary gasping/screaming so as not to scare the dickens out of Ben. Despite my instincts, I couldn’t not stare out of the window when driving through the Lefka Ori — the scenery was truly awesome, and something I don’t think can be captured in photos. What most baffled and amazed me were the tiny villages and olive groves clinging to the sides of enormous mountains. I can’t comprehend how people live in such surroundings, where the next door neighbor’s roof is 50 feet below your patio. But the harsh landscape does not seem to phase the villagers. Farmers swerved down unpaved, treacherous mountain roads in their Toyota pick-ups, laden with crates of olives and grapes, speeding around Ben and I as we crept along at 20 kilometers per hour.

One such village was the next detour on our agenda. The village of Milia is so isolated (a 20-minute steep climb up a mountain on a terrifying dirt road), that the original farmers and shepherds abandoned the town nearly a century ago. Descendants have since returned and converted the place into a self-sufficient “eco-tourist” village touted in our guidebook as a place where you can participate in the farming, harvesting, and raki making. Although it wasn’t an “authentic” Cretan experience, it sounded fun enough to make the trek.

We arrived in Milia with high hopes, light headed from the altitude. After wandering around for a bit, not finding anyone to talk to and unnerved by the eerie silence, we stumbled upon a place labeled “reception.” Relieved, we approached a man inside the taverna, hoping to receive the hearty welcome our book had promised us. Instead, we received: “Yays, walk where you want. The farm, the houses, whatayver.” When we asked where these things were located, we got a grunt and a head nod in a vague direction as he continued to go about his work.

Milia gets a thumbs down.

As we aimlessly walked around Milia, the few residents that were sitting outside looked up and stared as we passed. While I was warned that we might receive such stares as tourists in remote Cretan villages, I was not expecting creepy looks from residents of a place that operates as a tourist destination. After wandering around for a long time with the distinct impression that we must be missing something, we came across a place in the middle of the woods with shovels and pick axes strewn around. Between the strange stares and what looked like a makeshift burial ground, I was sufficiently disturbed enough to give up. Back in the car, we tried to figure out what in the world went wrong. I suggested that maybe, having come in the evening, we’d missed the majority of the tourist activities and everyone had turned in for the day.

“Yeah, that, or it’s the village of the damned,” Ben replied.

I’ll give Milia this: the place is extremely picturesque, with quaint stone houses overlooking a green valley. Otherwise, Milia gets a thumbs down.

The detour wasn’t all for naught. In fact, what may have been the highlight of the road trip came as we ascended the mountain: we spotted a kri-kri. That’s right, the rare and elusive wild mountain goat of Crete revealed himself to Ben and me. Despite telling Ben repeatedly that the existence of the kri-kri is fact, not fiction, he had it in his head that the kri-kri is thought by science to be a mythical creature and it was his job to prove its existence. We excitedly pulled over and took lots of pictures, while the kri-kri dumbly stared at us. I’m honestly surprised the kri-kri spotting wasn’t the first item Ben mentioned in his blog as he’s now billed his “discovery” as “100 times more rewarding than finding Nessie.” We also took a video:

Back on the road, we realized that we were, slowly but surely, descending out of the mountains. The only notable event that happened before arriving at Elafonisi was when we stopped at a taverna in the small town of Elos. At the end of the meal, the waitress brought over a small jar of raki and two shot glasses, and we were able to have our first taste of the infamous Cretan drink. Raki is a strong, clear liquor made in Crete from the grape skins leftover from wine making. It is the drink of choice among all Cretans, who pretty much drink it non-stop starting at 11:00 in the morning. Apparently, you do not refuse raki when it is offered to you. It tasted kind of like wine, but mostly like burning.

The next day was spent lazing in the Caribbean-esque paradise of Elafonisi. The waters are turquoise and crystal clear, the beach is long and wide, and, oddly enough, the sand is pink! I am not sure how this happens, but, according to the posted sign, the pink-tinted sand is one of the “specificities which compose the natural miracle” of Elafonisi and taking “the minimum amount of sand in your pockets” is a “disbain of this uniqueness.” Elafonisi gets four enthusiastic thumbs up from Ben and me; be sure to include it on your agenda if you’re ever on Crete. One final and hilarious detail I’d like to point out is that all European men wear speedos.

(PS: We uploaded additional videos of our mountain drive and Elafonisi to our YouTube channel!)

One aspect of Hania that makes it such an attractive destination is its position on the western side of Crete. Attractions on Crete’s western half range from isolated, self-sufficient, villages to mountain caverns to some of the most beautiful beaches in Europe. And Hania makes an ideal base for exploring them all. Wanting to take in as much of Crete as possible, we rented a car for two days last week, bound for the island’s Southwest corner. We set our ultimate destination as Elafonisi Beach, and opted to take the “inland road” to get there. There is an alternative “coastal road” that is billed as more scenic, but the inland road offers some of the best chances to take in the more traditional Cretan way of life. With a picnic lunch and a map written in a language we can’t read, we hit the inload road on Thursday morning.

Our first destination was a village called Vouves, which would never have been on any tourist’s list until recently. Just a few years ago, scientists dated an olive tree in Vouves to be approximately 4,000 years old, and the village was suddenly on the map. I still don’t think I’m able to fully comprehend just hold old this tree really is. Chew on this: If Christ had visited Vouves, he would have been marvelling at a tree already 2,000 years old. That’s an old tree.

In 2004, the Olympics committee visited Vouves, and cut two branches off the olive tree. These were used to fashion wreaths, which were presented to the first and last gold-medal winners in the Games. This ceremony is slated to become a tradition going forward. The proprietor was pleased to show us photographs from the ceremony held at her home, and was also pleased to try to sell us soft drinks and/or novelty ice cream bars. The gnarled tree (which still bears olives!) is surrounded by a ring of bricks, and is the centerpiece of the property’s garden. We had read that before the tree became famous, a nearby neighbor was using it as a kennel for her dogs. This was possible because the tree has a large hollow interior, and it didn’t take Brittany long to climb inside the oldest tree in the universe.

Before getting back on the main road, we stopped to eat our picnic lunch in a nearby olive grove. We were joined by a chorus of tree frogs, but my attempts to capture a specimen continued to be met with failure.

Our next detour found us seeking one of Crete’s oldest churches, Ayios Nikolaos, noted to be somewhere within the mountain village of Mouri. We questioned why our directions would be so vague until we got to the village. I would have no way of accurately telling you how to find this church. The best directions I can think of sound like this: drive around Mouri until you see a sign written in Greek that looks something like “Nikalaos.” Follow the arrows on any such signs until you (hopefully) arrive at a roadside sign that seems to be pointing nowhere. Find a place to park your car on the cliffside, and start walking into the nearby olive grove. You can’t see it from the road, but there is indeed a church back there among the trees. Let me futher clarify: we went in expecting “church” to mean one of those big buildings with a steeple and pews, and maybe some Sunday school rooms. Not quite. Ayios Nikolaos is no bigger than a woodshed, and sort of looks like a woodshed tucked in among the trees. Open the unlocked door, and you’ll find one room with no seats, and standing room for probably fifteen people. What you’ll also find is an amazing collection of frescoes that adorn the walls and ceiling of the room, as well as several framed paintings and a large wooden cross. The frescoes depict different scenes from the Bible, and survive largely in fragments today. Ayios Nikolaos is tiny, hard to find, and definitely worth the detour.

Back on the inland road, we soon found ourselves winding higher and higher into Crete’s Lefka Ori Mountains (”White Mountains”). I typically don’t mind mountain driving (Brittany can’t stand it) but driving through the Lefka Ori Mountains is nothing like the Blue Ridge Mountain drives I’m accustomed to. The road circles you round and round up into the peaks, but you don’t realize how high you really are until you find yourself skirting the edge of a several-hundred foot ravine, on a a two-lane road only wide enough for one car, with no guard rail. Looking out the window is at once an awesome sight, and a terrifying one. In addition to the unsettling fact that the road is often only wide enough for one car, it also tends to takes blind curves around the mountainside. It’s very clear at these times that if another car is coming around the bend in the opposite direction, you will have no way of seeing each other until you’re hitting each other head-on, and subsequently tumbling into the ravine. The only preventive measure I could think of was to approach these blind curves slowly, honking like mad in hopes of announcing my presence to any unseen on-comers. Then it’s time to hold your breath, take the curve, hopefully breathe a sigh of relief upon finding yourself alive, and brace yourself for the next one. Of course, this routine is always accompanied by the question, “why did we take the inland road again?”

The highlight of the cliffside drive for me was a tunnel that cuts into the mountain, and is of course, the exact width of one car. The solution to this problem is a traffic light that lets you know when it’s your side’s turn to pass through the tunnel. I was the only car at the light when it turned green, and I proceeded to take us into the mountain. I hadn’t gone very far into the tunnel when I saw it: a tour bus, coming directly at me. Aside from a crushing death, I had one option: back up out of the tunnel and along the cliffside, until I could reach a point wide enough for both myself and a tour bus. My subconscious is preventing me from reliving much of this experience, but I do wish for the record to show that instead of receiving a friendly wave from the bus driver, I received some sort of Greek death stare.

Our reward for this harrowing journey was our next stop: the cave of Agias Sofias. The cave lies along one of the road’s deepest ravines, and can only be reached by parking your car and climbing a long set of stone steps that ascend the mountainside. Remains found in this cave date back to Neolithic times, but I marvel at whatever super powers evolution decided to deny us that allowed Neolithic people to reach this cave without its modern staircase. It’s easy to imagine a small society making a home of this cave, and it’s easier to imagine them abandoning it after the incessant dripping of water from stalactites drove them to madness. We managed to film a short video at the cave of Agias Sofias, so you can see it for yourself!

This does not conclude the story of our first Cretan road trip, but it does conclude Part 1. More pictures and videos to come in Part 2!

We arrived back in Hania last night from a two day road trip exploring southwest Crete. We took the inland road through the Lefka Ori mountains which allowed us to stop and visit some of Crete’s more traditional villages (besides a handful of cities and resort towns, Crete is largely made up of isolated farming villages). Our ultimate destination was Elafonissi, a beautiful beach on the Libyan Sea, where we spent the bulk of yesterday. Ben is spending today recovering from the harrowing one-lane, sometimes-paved drive through the mountains in a rental car. We’re also working on uploading the pictures and videos we took from our trip. We promise to blog all about it.

Until then, here’s a video we filmed last week before we left:

Pardon my absence on the blog the last few days. I have been laboring under a deadline for work in an effort to try and fund this venture of ours. Someone’s got to be the brains behind this operation. Please reference this picture to understand why the brains = me.

Because one of the few requirements of being a “web editor” is access to the web, I quickly became familiar with Hania’s limited internet-access options. I was flabbergasted when I realized that my laptop could not detect even the faintest signal of a wireless network from our apartment. Driving down any random highway in America I can usually pick up one connection within range. It was not a promising revelation.

I had originally set out to find a cheaper option than paying the hourly rate at the techno-music-loving internet café we discovered on our first morning here, but found translating “wireless hot spot” into Greek to be a bit tricky. Even our English-speaking landlord was no help on this front as he confessed to having never touched a computer in his life.

So after exploring the few internet-access points in Hania, the techno-music-loving café, named “Triple WWW: Surf and Play,” reluctantly became our preferred place to visit, more by process of elimination than anything else: it’s cheapest, closest to home, and stays open 24 hours a day. We not-so-affectionately call this place Three Dub.

Our time at Three Dub has unfortunately exposed us to a seamy demographic of the Cretan populace: the internet-café-dwelling Greek dweebs. I might be embarrassed about how much time I spend at Three Dub, but this crowd never leaves. Ben and I, however, are the only people in the café using the internet for anything other than:

1. gaming
2. porn

An uncharacteristically empty day at Three Dub

Young and old men alike sit for hours, chain-smoking and playing “Warcraft,” which apparently involves shooting at moving objects on the screen and yelling “malaka!” into large headsets.* “Malaka,” our guidebook informs me, translates literally into “wanker.”

Ben, thinking he’d found kindred spirits, has attempted to talk to the Warcraft-gamers on several occasions, but his overtures are met only with grunts and annoyed stares.

Women-gamers also frequent Three Dub. Their games of choice are more along the lines of Mahjong and Snood; however, the fervor with which they play such games matches that of their male counterparts. And they probably smoke more cigarettes.

The second faction of Three-Dub-dwellers is far more disturbing. I hesitate to write about them, but I cannot escape them, and so, dear blog readers, neither can you. They are the porn-watchers.

You must be thinking, “surely, she’s kidding. No one would seriously watch porn on a public computer.” Oh, how I wish that were true. Dull-eyed Greek men unabashedly watch filthy videos, cigarette in one hand, frappe in the other, in full view of the entire café and all passers-by. As you unavoidably walk by their computer station, they’ll turn and look at you, mouths slightly open, expressionless and unapologetic, before shamelessly pivoting back to their computer screens.

In an effort to escape the icky, we’ve recently discovered an upscale seaside restaurant that offers “free” wifi. So, I’ve opted to come here on many occasions, order a drink and sit for hours, enjoying the view. I think it may be an abuse of their intent to sit here for eight hours at a time, and I get strange looks from the staff, but I’m willing to endure such glances for a porn-free environment.

* I did not know that what they were playing was called Warcraft. I may know some computer languages but I’m not that nerdy. Ben told me. He is that nerdy.

Tonight marked another failed supermarket outing. Sometime this afternoon, Brittany and I decided that we had grown weary of one pasta night after another, and that we’d like to have pancakes for dinner. Pancakes would be cheap and simple to make, they’d remind us of home, and we’d make enough to have the leftovers for breakfast tomorrow. Thinking ourselves clever, we looked up the necessary ingredients online, and then I was off to the supermarket, list in hand:

Sugar
Flour
Baking Powder
Milk
Pancake Syrup

I was a little concerned about the baking powder, and whether or not I’d be able to recognize enough Greek letters to know baking powder when I saw it. But in a rare turn of events, I quickly began finding all the items on my shopping list with little trouble. The baking powder turned out to be identified in English on the can, which allowed me to snag the first 4 of my 5 items in about two minutes. Reflecting back on my first attempt at the Greek supermarket, I became quite proud at my own progress.

And just as so many Greek poets have written, hubris was my fatal flaw.

I did not consider that pancake syrup might be a difficult item to find in a Greek supermarket until the moment I scratched milk off my list and looked back up. What would pancake syrup even be shelved next to here? The grape jelly? The grape liquor? The grape vegetable oil? A quick jog up and down each potentially promising aisle revealed nothing resembling pancake syrup. Undeterred, I approached the butcher and inquired,

“Parakalo, mipos milate Anglika?” (”Please, do you speak English?”)

Many Greeks will answer this question with “a leetle,” which statistically has no bearing on whether or not they actually speak any English at all. But in this case, the butcher’s answer was a throaty grunt, followed by him walking away and into a storeroom. My translation guide isn’t entirely clear on this point, but I believe that his answer translates to:

“Good morrow, sir, and thank you for the inquiry. As it were, I do not in fact speak English, and I will now kindly take your leave.”

It was right about then that it struck me: even if I were able to find an English-speaking Greek in this store, what are the odds they will have ever heard of “pancake syrup?” Or pancakes, for that matter? Do maple trees even grow in Greece? Despite all my initial success, I began to doubt the likelihood of returning home as the pancake bearer after all.

It’s times like these when true champions reach into their sleeves and pull out one final Ace. Not two days before, I had ordered an ice cream sundae at a cafe, and I now recalled from the Greek/English menu that it was topped with “sirop chocolate.” Heartened, I approached an employee stocking an endcap, and asked in my broken Greek:

“Parakalo, o sirop?” (”Please, the syrup?”)

This was, of course, accompanied by the requisite exaggerated gesticulations that I seem to have adopted whenever attempting to speak Greek. At first, I saw only confusion in her eyes. Then, a glint of recognition. Success? She led me down the aisle and pointed at exactly what I’d asked for: Hershey’s chocolate syrup.

And now I’m sitting in my kitchen, waiting for Brittany to get home, and trying to formulate a convincing argument that what she really would like for dinner is pancakes with Hershey’s chocolate syrup.

Tourism is Crete’s #1 industry, and this means that restaurants are big business here in Hania. The harborfront is crammed with restaurants, all claiming to serve the most authentic Cretan food, and all charging a significant markup due to their waterfront location. Many restaurants employ aggressive greeters, who are paid to stand outside and convince passing tourists that their restaurant is the only one of the lot that truly serves the Greek fare you came so far to taste.

The application process to be a greeter must consist of a test to judge how accurately the applicant can guess a tourist’s nationality based on appearance. They are remarkably good at sizing you up in a glance, and selecting the appropriate language with which to harass you into patronizing their restaurant. Americans are a favorite mark, probably because we travel with money, and because everyone knows we’re a long way from home. It is therefore in your best interest while travelling to not look American (along with one million other reasons). Your ultimate goal is to confuse the wolves by looking like a European of unidentifiable identity. With that in mind, I present…

The Top 5 Tips for NOT Looking Like an American While Traveling in Europe

1. Don’t Shave
For whatever reason, American and British men tend to be far more clean-shaven than the majority of Europeans. You probably only speak English, so you need to make every effort to disassociate yourself from your brethren in every other way possible. As long as you can keep your mouth shut, a little facial hair can go a long way toward your successful camouflage as a European of questionable origin.

2. Wear Dark-Colored Shoes
White tennis shoes are an instant tip-off that you’re American. Dark-colored shoes are the norm around most of the rest of the world. And if you can pull off the look, outrageous-colored Pumas are worth bonus points.

3. No Undershirt
Many American men (myself among them) are in the habit of wearing a white undershirt beneath their outer shirt. We do so to prevent shirt stainage, odor emanation, chest hair sightings, and pokey man-nipples. Nonetheless, you must come to terms with abandoning the undershirt prior to your arrival. It is apparel non grata among European men, and spotting one here only means that you’ve just spotted an American tourist. And while we’re on this topic, go ahead and unbutton your shirt one more button than whatever you’re used to.

4. No Smiling!
New Yorkers excluded, we Americans are accustomed to acknowledging one another with a smile in passing. Do so in Europe, and you will only be met with steely stares. Cretans are widely considered to be among the most welcoming in the world, and even here you do not find smiles on strangers’ faces. Fortunately, this one isn’t too difficult to perfect. Simply imagine that your beautiful historic hometown is perennially over-stuffed with lost, gawking, photo-snapping tourists in oversized backpacks. And you must push and squeeze your way through their herds just to get to work every day. Actually, this sort of explains New Yorkers as well.

5. The Shorts Factor
Asking a European man what temperature is too hot for pants is like asking him about the sound of one hand clapping. “Too hot for pants???” Be warned: if you plan to travel Europe in the summer, you are up against an ancient anti-shorts prejudice that is at least ten times older than your country. Fortunately for you, recent fashion developments have introduced two possible alternatives to the shorts in your wardrobe, neither of which would be acceptable in the States:

• Capri pants: These are quite popular among European men, and should be found easily in many clothing stores. You may know them as clam-diggers, pedal-pushers, or high-waters. Only for the bold.

• Tiny shorts: aka “short shorts”; “hot pants.” Think pre-1990s NBA. Or John Stockton, circa: his entire career. Only for the very bold.

If you find neither of these options to be palatable, then you should know that it is a punishable offense in many countries to complain about the heat in pants. You’ll see the sign when you land at the airport - it’s a picture of Uncle Sam getting clubbed with a bottle of wine by an unshaven man in pants.

You may choose to ignore these tips. It is, after all, up to you to decide what sort of travel advice to heed. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you when you end up looking like this: