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hawkwing_lbBy all the little gods and giant fishes, that was hard.
I have hideous anxiety associated with travelling by myself to New, Far Places - and by far, I mean farther from where I'm sleeping than I could conceivably walk in a few hours.
The ferryport of Skala Oropou lies at a distance of 48km from Athens. The ancient Amphiareion - the sanctuary of Amphiareus, a healing hero-deity with chthonic associations - lay adjacent to the town of ancient Oropos, and according to the internet and my Free Guide to Attica, it's a walkable distance (3km) from the bus-stop, along a bus-route from Athens which has an hourly timetable and takes perhaps two and a half hours, round-trip.
One problem. They don't say which bus-stop. It turns out that it's not near the bus-stops in Skala Oropou, but near a bus-stop beside a cemetary 10km from Skala Oropou, the graveyard of a village and olive-grown hinterland called Markopoulo. At 0915 this morning, I learned this the hard way, at the seafront beside the Oropan ferry dock, the mountains of Euboea rising across the water and the breeze blowing in my face, hearing "Oxi, Oxi, einai konda sto Kalamo," (No, no, it's close to Kalamos) from the helpful blue-shirted man at the bus booth.
The kindness of strangers, however, is a wonderful thing. Helpful Man called a taxi for me. I spent a worried quarter hour by the bus-booth, watching the ferry cross to Euboea and asking myself why I'd ever thought this was a good idea.
But Taxi Man arrived soon, and my Greek got a workout.* We managed to understand each other eventually, and Kyrie Taxi Man - who made sure to point out the right bus-stop and the place to get the bus back to Athens after I announced my intention to walk back from the Amphiareion - drove me up the winding main road into the hills, grown with coniferous trees where they aren't grown with olives - around the Amphiareion, for the very reasonably fee of twenty quid.
We reached the Amphiareion just after ten. It lies across a gulley between two peaks, tree-shaded, with a dry streambed in the dip between. It was empty of people, save for the Official Employee minding the gate, and a bloke working a weed-cutter down the end by the ruins of the bathhouse. See plan: the entrance is up the rise map southwest of the building marked "Small Temple," directly above the "Temple of Amphiareus." Across the ravine, map northeast of the klepsydra, and map east of it as well, is an area of tumbled walls. A plan at the site refers to this area as "agora".
The cava of the theatre is in fairly shitty shape, but the scenae is preserved quite marvellously, up to a height of over two metres. A stoa runs in front of the theatre as far as the baths; staring out from the theatre the hill across the way - coniferously wooded - is visible, and to one's right is the location of the dedicatory bases for important votives; beyond them, the "small temple"; further down and forward, the Temple with the altar before it; directly across, behind the overgrown ravine, the ruins referred to as "agora".
Poking about an empty archaeological site on one's own, Dear Reader, a site without interesting plaques with lots of information on them, is, alas, a pasttime that rapidly loses its charm. Thirty minutes or less, and I was ready to leave the drumming of cicadas and the twitter of birds. After a break to eat my long-saved bakery tyropita (because hungry), I used the toilet and asked Official Employee Man if I could fill up my litre canteen from his tap. (His little hut had a fan, a chair, and a campbed. I guess it's quiet up there...)
As an aside: It seems nearly all Greek men, and many Greek women, code me as masculine. I keep getting directed to the men's toilets and having my grammar corrected when I use a feminine noun to refer to myself. I suppose most people see short hair, broad shoulders, shorts and a high-collared shirt, and think, boy. Which is probably just as well, considering how culturally chauvinistic Greek society can be.
I hiked back the three kilometres - most of them uphill - to the main road and its bus-stop, careful to go easy on my water. (That was the hardest thing, actually, making myself remember that I had no idea how long I'd have to wait for the bus, and that I might have to hike down into Oropos, and not glugging it.) It's a pretty road. I can recommend the view, and sweet cedary scent of fennel and tarragon growing by the wayside, but apart from the Holy Monastery of Eisiodon Theotokou, two-thirds of the way back up to the main road, set back behind a hill, there's not a lot there. A few houses with orchard gardens. Flowering rhododendra blossoming over a wall. Olive trees. Conifers. A pear tree. Distantly, across yellow-umber countryside shot through with green, the sea.
It took me about fifty minutes to walk. Just around the next hill was my mantra for half a dozen hilly bends, until finally the cemetary hove into view. The bus stop - which is less a bus stop that a three-sided wooden shelter on a corner with no other indication that Buses Stop Here, and if I hadn't written down left at bus-stop: buses! in my notebook as a record in the taxi on the way up, I'd not have recognised it for a bus-stop at all - was five paces further. The village of Markopoulo lay out of sight down the road.
What comes next none of you, ever, are to let my mother know.
I knew the buses were supposed to pass hourly. But I wasn't too clear on whether this was the direct Skala Oropou road, or the road for the bus route to Aghioi Apostoloi, which only passes three times a day. So I decided that rather than wait and see, I'd flag down a car and ask. And hitch as far as Skala Oropou, where I knew the buses went from, if I could.**
My mother would have kittens if she knew.
So not five minutes pass before an old Greek gentleman in a white car passes by. I flag him down and he pulls up; I say "Sygnomi, pao sto Skala Oropou -" and he nods at me to get in.
Kyrie Greek Gentleman speaks perfect English. We mention the economy and the weather, and he drops me off at the shore by Nea Palatia, about two kilometres from the ferryport.
Reader, I was never so glad to see waves.
The shore is a stony patch beside the road, possessed at this point of a small beach cafe and a plenitude of blue-umbrella'd tables. Across the water are the mountains of Euboea: the ferry is visible two klicks off to the west plying the strait. Finally, I can have the Mediterranean dip I've been dying for since I stepped off the plane, in murky sandy-green water warm as the air back home.
I didn't spend more than fifteen minutes there, all told: just long enough to wash away the disgusting sweatiness. I've never been able to stay by the water alone without something to do, and I didn't particularly like my chances for getting sunburn if I stayed all the while in the sea. So I pulled my shorts on damp (and thank you, Portwest, for providing me with cheap en-pocketed surf shorts), hung my shirt over my shoulder, picked up a bottle of water, and set off again for the bus-stop.
I've noticed that the only way to curb my travel anxiety is by making forward progress. I nearly cried at the cemetary bus-stop for anxiety and the bottomless feeling of being lost in the middle of nowhere, but walking, bussing, etc: these things feel like I'm achieving something, and make the anxiety go away. You can go a long way on foot, if you have patience enough. Although Greece is not particularly, I have noticed, pedestrian-friendly. Paths are sadly lacking.
Many things seem possible with a strong breeze on one's starboard quarter, the sea in sight, and the sound of waves with a throat full of stones in one's ears. Despite this, by the time I reached the Skala Oropou bus-stop, I was flagging due to heat and weariness. But, thankfully, the bus was just ready to depart.
I fell asleep somewhere between Markopoulo and Athens, an uncomfortable doze, and woke when we were coming into the city centre. Came back to the Institute, changed, touched base with the A.D. about site visits, and went immediately out to get food. I ate all the tasty things again - keftedakia and fried courgette, heavily salted - and came back and ate a whole packet of biscuits, and drank all the fluids ever.
I'm almost human again now. But god, that was hard. Taking it easy for tomorrow.
*Note for those following along at home: this adventure would not have been remotely successful without my modicum of Greek, enough to understand the gist of what Kyrie Taxi Man was asking me, and to reply. To go to the Amphiareion without needing to speak Greek, rent a car.
**Also where there is water for swimming. And by god, I needed a dip.
I have hideous anxiety associated with travelling by myself to New, Far Places - and by far, I mean farther from where I'm sleeping than I could conceivably walk in a few hours.
The ferryport of Skala Oropou lies at a distance of 48km from Athens. The ancient Amphiareion - the sanctuary of Amphiareus, a healing hero-deity with chthonic associations - lay adjacent to the town of ancient Oropos, and according to the internet and my Free Guide to Attica, it's a walkable distance (3km) from the bus-stop, along a bus-route from Athens which has an hourly timetable and takes perhaps two and a half hours, round-trip.
One problem. They don't say which bus-stop. It turns out that it's not near the bus-stops in Skala Oropou, but near a bus-stop beside a cemetary 10km from Skala Oropou, the graveyard of a village and olive-grown hinterland called Markopoulo. At 0915 this morning, I learned this the hard way, at the seafront beside the Oropan ferry dock, the mountains of Euboea rising across the water and the breeze blowing in my face, hearing "Oxi, Oxi, einai konda sto Kalamo," (No, no, it's close to Kalamos) from the helpful blue-shirted man at the bus booth.
The kindness of strangers, however, is a wonderful thing. Helpful Man called a taxi for me. I spent a worried quarter hour by the bus-booth, watching the ferry cross to Euboea and asking myself why I'd ever thought this was a good idea.
But Taxi Man arrived soon, and my Greek got a workout.* We managed to understand each other eventually, and Kyrie Taxi Man - who made sure to point out the right bus-stop and the place to get the bus back to Athens after I announced my intention to walk back from the Amphiareion - drove me up the winding main road into the hills, grown with coniferous trees where they aren't grown with olives - around the Amphiareion, for the very reasonably fee of twenty quid.
We reached the Amphiareion just after ten. It lies across a gulley between two peaks, tree-shaded, with a dry streambed in the dip between. It was empty of people, save for the Official Employee minding the gate, and a bloke working a weed-cutter down the end by the ruins of the bathhouse. See plan: the entrance is up the rise map southwest of the building marked "Small Temple," directly above the "Temple of Amphiareus." Across the ravine, map northeast of the klepsydra, and map east of it as well, is an area of tumbled walls. A plan at the site refers to this area as "agora".
The cava of the theatre is in fairly shitty shape, but the scenae is preserved quite marvellously, up to a height of over two metres. A stoa runs in front of the theatre as far as the baths; staring out from the theatre the hill across the way - coniferously wooded - is visible, and to one's right is the location of the dedicatory bases for important votives; beyond them, the "small temple"; further down and forward, the Temple with the altar before it; directly across, behind the overgrown ravine, the ruins referred to as "agora".
Poking about an empty archaeological site on one's own, Dear Reader, a site without interesting plaques with lots of information on them, is, alas, a pasttime that rapidly loses its charm. Thirty minutes or less, and I was ready to leave the drumming of cicadas and the twitter of birds. After a break to eat my long-saved bakery tyropita (because hungry), I used the toilet and asked Official Employee Man if I could fill up my litre canteen from his tap. (His little hut had a fan, a chair, and a campbed. I guess it's quiet up there...)
As an aside: It seems nearly all Greek men, and many Greek women, code me as masculine. I keep getting directed to the men's toilets and having my grammar corrected when I use a feminine noun to refer to myself. I suppose most people see short hair, broad shoulders, shorts and a high-collared shirt, and think, boy. Which is probably just as well, considering how culturally chauvinistic Greek society can be.
I hiked back the three kilometres - most of them uphill - to the main road and its bus-stop, careful to go easy on my water. (That was the hardest thing, actually, making myself remember that I had no idea how long I'd have to wait for the bus, and that I might have to hike down into Oropos, and not glugging it.) It's a pretty road. I can recommend the view, and sweet cedary scent of fennel and tarragon growing by the wayside, but apart from the Holy Monastery of Eisiodon Theotokou, two-thirds of the way back up to the main road, set back behind a hill, there's not a lot there. A few houses with orchard gardens. Flowering rhododendra blossoming over a wall. Olive trees. Conifers. A pear tree. Distantly, across yellow-umber countryside shot through with green, the sea.
It took me about fifty minutes to walk. Just around the next hill was my mantra for half a dozen hilly bends, until finally the cemetary hove into view. The bus stop - which is less a bus stop that a three-sided wooden shelter on a corner with no other indication that Buses Stop Here, and if I hadn't written down left at bus-stop: buses! in my notebook as a record in the taxi on the way up, I'd not have recognised it for a bus-stop at all - was five paces further. The village of Markopoulo lay out of sight down the road.
What comes next none of you, ever, are to let my mother know.
I knew the buses were supposed to pass hourly. But I wasn't too clear on whether this was the direct Skala Oropou road, or the road for the bus route to Aghioi Apostoloi, which only passes three times a day. So I decided that rather than wait and see, I'd flag down a car and ask. And hitch as far as Skala Oropou, where I knew the buses went from, if I could.**
My mother would have kittens if she knew.
So not five minutes pass before an old Greek gentleman in a white car passes by. I flag him down and he pulls up; I say "Sygnomi, pao sto Skala Oropou -" and he nods at me to get in.
Kyrie Greek Gentleman speaks perfect English. We mention the economy and the weather, and he drops me off at the shore by Nea Palatia, about two kilometres from the ferryport.
Reader, I was never so glad to see waves.
The shore is a stony patch beside the road, possessed at this point of a small beach cafe and a plenitude of blue-umbrella'd tables. Across the water are the mountains of Euboea: the ferry is visible two klicks off to the west plying the strait. Finally, I can have the Mediterranean dip I've been dying for since I stepped off the plane, in murky sandy-green water warm as the air back home.
I didn't spend more than fifteen minutes there, all told: just long enough to wash away the disgusting sweatiness. I've never been able to stay by the water alone without something to do, and I didn't particularly like my chances for getting sunburn if I stayed all the while in the sea. So I pulled my shorts on damp (and thank you, Portwest, for providing me with cheap en-pocketed surf shorts), hung my shirt over my shoulder, picked up a bottle of water, and set off again for the bus-stop.
I've noticed that the only way to curb my travel anxiety is by making forward progress. I nearly cried at the cemetary bus-stop for anxiety and the bottomless feeling of being lost in the middle of nowhere, but walking, bussing, etc: these things feel like I'm achieving something, and make the anxiety go away. You can go a long way on foot, if you have patience enough. Although Greece is not particularly, I have noticed, pedestrian-friendly. Paths are sadly lacking.
Many things seem possible with a strong breeze on one's starboard quarter, the sea in sight, and the sound of waves with a throat full of stones in one's ears. Despite this, by the time I reached the Skala Oropou bus-stop, I was flagging due to heat and weariness. But, thankfully, the bus was just ready to depart.
I fell asleep somewhere between Markopoulo and Athens, an uncomfortable doze, and woke when we were coming into the city centre. Came back to the Institute, changed, touched base with the A.D. about site visits, and went immediately out to get food. I ate all the tasty things again - keftedakia and fried courgette, heavily salted - and came back and ate a whole packet of biscuits, and drank all the fluids ever.
I'm almost human again now. But god, that was hard. Taking it easy for tomorrow.
*Note for those following along at home: this adventure would not have been remotely successful without my modicum of Greek, enough to understand the gist of what Kyrie Taxi Man was asking me, and to reply. To go to the Amphiareion without needing to speak Greek, rent a car.
**Also where there is water for swimming. And by god, I needed a dip.
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no subject
Date: 2011-08-17 08:58 pm (UTC)And oh yeah, the whole "I am running out of water" makes everything ten times worse, yes?
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Date: 2011-08-18 01:23 pm (UTC)...which was down to half a litre by the time I reached the road, even under as much water discipline as I could manage.