Monday, June 27, 2011—Iraklio, Crete, Greece
Sudden change of pace for me. I’m now in Iraklio (also known as Heraklion), the largest City in Crete and the fifth largest city in Greece (I mistakenly called it the third largest in an earlier blog post, I think). Katie and I came here yesterday to use it as a base for seeing Knossos, the remains of the largest and likely most important of the Minoan palaces. She flew back to Rome last night and I stayed here today to see the City’s archaeological and natural history museums, which I’ve already accomplished.
Iraklio has a bad reputation amongst travelers—it’s usually referred to by outsiders as being some combination of ugly, trashy, dirty, noisy, hectic, “unscenic,” [is this even a word?--I found it in a Lonely Planet Guide],and nondescript. I’d say all of these slights have some truth to them. Still, I’m finding the place more interesting than I thought I would, for a number of reasons. It’s a very lively place. It’s also surprisingly Greek, in that, unlike say Hania, the areas frequented by travelers are still dominated by locals. It also seems like a place where people are engaged. Everywhere there is political graffiti—from what I can tell anarchist stuff seems to dominate, with an undercurrent of Marxism. There are also posters everywhere for anti-government demonstrations planned for tomorrow and the next day, which is really adding a visual edge to the city (I almost want to hang out another day to see how these demonstrations go down—they’re likely to get violent, given the “austerity measures” the Greek government and the EU is trying to cram down the peoples' throats, while the bankers and politicians that largely caused the financial mess here, as elsewhere, take none of the hit whatsoever).
That said, it’s kind of a gray, drab city, especially considering it’s in the Mediterranean. The graffiti, though interesting in places, is also starting to bring me down. Also when you are on the outside culturally, being surrounded by such a whirl of activity tends to confuse and wear you out more than anything else. I’m glad I came here, though. It’s given me a perspective on Greece I probably wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, since I’m not going to Athens or any of Greece’s other bigger cities. And again, it does make a great home base from which to explore the island’s Minoan history.
Since I’m on that subject, as I mentioned earlier, Katie and I checked out Knossos yesterday. It was definitely interesting. However, the site is dominated by Sir Arthur Evans’ “reconstructions” of the palace, and his work is often dubious and sometimes just plain fanciful. In the end all his concrete and painting probably damaged the site more than anything else, and in the process cost us precious historical knowledge. By the time we left I was feeling a bit cheated, like the long-dead Evans had pulled a fast one on me, a fast one on all future examiners of the site. But it was still worth seeing; there was still a lot to be learned there. I also feel that my trip would be missing something if I’d chosen to pass the site by.
I like the city’s archaeological museum much better (though it was much smaller than the guide books implied—I couldn’t believe it when the exhibit simply ended and I found myself back on the street). It’s dominated by Minoan artifacts, frescos, etc., and really shines in this area (it also has stuff from other periods, but these parts of the collection are pretty paltry compared to the Minoan items). In fact I wish I would have gone to the museum before heading over to Knossos: seeing the artifacts first would have really enhanced my ability to picture how Knossos was used all those centuries ago …
However, digesting the Minoans, no matter how you go about it, is pretty tough; they just don’t seem much like other ancient civilizations. Traditionally the Minoans have been viewed as these peaceful, female-goddess oriented people. Lately this view had been challenged on a number of grounds. Evidence has arisen that they might have practiced human sacrifice, with children no less. It’s also hard to imagine any society that stratified and that powerful not having a darker, tougher side. Still, the feeling I get from the artifacts and the paintings doesn’t jibe with the uglier aspects of human behavior—it really does give off a peaceful vibe. It also gives off a strange, very foreign vibe. Who were these people? How did they develop the way they did? I mean, they weren’t European in regards to what came after them culturally. But neither were they quite Asian, even though that’s where their roots seem to lie. To me they’re the people of soft dolphin frescos, weirdly placid snake-charming goddesses, and enigmatic shades of red, black, and blue … They are palaces without war, stratification without oppression. I realize that as I write this that it can’t be true, that it isn’t true—but that’s what I feel about their society. A soft-headed, completely unprofessional view, I know that I can’t possibly back up. But that's where I am, for now …
OK, I think I want to backtrack here a bit and account for the days previous to hitting Knossos. Katie met me in Hania on the twenty-third. We didn’t do too much there, just had a great dinner, which featured a killer—and expensive—Cretan cabernet, at a restaurant called Portos, which I discovered on my first swing thru that town. We hung around town the first half of the next day, wandering thru the shops of the city’s twisty old Venetian back alleys. Then we caught the bus down to Paleohora, where we spent a windy day at the beach. The next morning we awoke to a blissfully wind-free day and caught the 8:30 AM boat to Sougia, the little beach town on Crete’s southern coast that I’d been planning to visit for over a week but couldn’t because of the windy conditions.
Sougia was nice, very slow. The kind of place where you can spend an extremely pleasant day or two but would probably start getting bored with if you tried to stretch it much beyond that. Katie wanted to see Lissos, the archaeological site I’d hiked to from Paleohora a while back. It only took us about an hour-and-fifty minutes to make the hot, sometimes challenging hike there from Sougia. The site’s pretty cool. The best thing about it is that some of a floor fresco built in Roman times still exists in situ (usually frescos are carted off to museums pretty quickly). After hiking back out, we had a nice lunch at a beachside café and then headed to the beach, which was a bit of a tough go. It was so hot that the rocks (yes, it was another of those so-called “pebble” beaches). Basically cooked you thru your towel while the sun cooked you from above. Still it was a nice, mellow day; I really had a good time. That evening we caught the boat back to Paleohora and the next morning took two long bus rides to Iraklio, and, well, you know the rest of the story ...
It was really great having Katie here. I’m definitely going to miss her now that she’s gone, because I just really like having her around, but also because I enjoyed having a travel buddy those few days. I’m definitely getting to the point where my loner tendencies are dropping away a bit. Maybe I’m not as complete unto myself as I’ve thought (or have liked to pretend) …
Heading back west and south tomorrow, to Hania and then Paleohora. As anyone who’s traveled with me before knows [Eric W. will definitely understand this, as we developed this attitude together on the road many years ago], I hate backtracking. Most good backpackers do, actually. The Crete part of this trip, though, has featured more of this than probably all my other journey’s put together. The combination of the way this island's road/bus services are set up, the wind, Katie’s visit, and some other issues have meant that I’ve been continually going back and forth. In regards to the first issue, there are simply certain places here you can’t get to from other places; the people here apparently abhor diagonals. The whole thing makes me feel like I’m a castle in some real life game of chess: I can go up and down and sideways, but cutting across the board is simply not possible.
This, however, will be my last trip south. I am not leaving Crete without hiking the fabled Samaria Gorge, the Grand Canyon of Europe (I’d planned on doing this before meeting Katie, but the combination of getting stuck on Gavdos those extra days and the fact that my feet were all blistered and sore from other hard hikes messed me up on that). I also want to check out Frangokastello, an old Venetian castle and cool-sounding beach area on Hania provinces' southeast shore. Once I’ve made these journeys I’ll begin heading out of Crete, via a couple of short stops to places in more inland areas I want to check out. I estimate I’ll be out of here by about the fourth or fifth of July, which means I will have spent slightly more than a month on Crete—and I will only have seen a relatively small portion of the island! (It’s a lot bigger than you might think, just by looking at a map.)
As far as my next destination goes, I’ve all but decided that it will be Rhodes. Though Santorini intrigues me, it looks like it will have to wait for another time. As I’ve mentioned, this trip was planned as a Crete/Dodecanese journey and I just don’t want to go that far off my initial course. I know I’ll come to Greece again at some point and then I’ll hit all the places in other parts of the country I’d like to go. As I also mentioned before, I do reserve the right to change my mind. So nothing as of yet is written in stone.
