From Chania to Knossos

It is raining when we leave Chania. That makes it a bit easier to leave. We drive to Rethymno, a fortress town that goes back to Neolithic times. That means someone has been living here for at least 8,000 years, maybe longer. The dominating feature of the town is the Fortetsa a fortress built by the Venetians in 1371 to defend the town against pirates (Barbarossa sacked it in 1538) and the Turks. (They captured Crete in 1669.) Nancy is anxious to try a route that the guidebooks say is spectacular. It is not along the main route (E-75) that will get us into Irakleio in an hour. Rather, it veers off into the central mountain range of Crete circling the dominant Mount Ida as it writhes through the Amari Valley.

The problem is we can’t find the way in. Signage in Crete appears to have been designed for the blind. On more than one occasion we have been led by an arrow pointing to this place or that, only to come to a T-junction without the slightest indication whether we should now go left or right.

I would have given up long ago. But Nancy was intrepid. I could sense the disappointment in her voice if we failed to find the right path in. After several feints and false starts, we found a sign that pointed toward the valley she was looking for: Amari. Off we went. The road twisted and turned like a belly dancer. The scenery, that much of it we could see through the rain, sometimes torrential and the clouds, sometimes so low they were fog to us, was spectacular. We were transported into an entirely new country. This was no longer an island. It was the Apennines of Europe, the wilderness of Michaelangelo’s Tuscany. In short it was nerve-wracking.

We passed small villages of barely ten houses and as many neatly laid out sheep cotes. Cultivated hillsides gave way to impossibly steep, stone lined mountainsides. When it looked as if we were leaving civilization altogether, we came upon Potomon Dam, a meticulously constructed stone barrier that created a huge artificial lake in the middle of nowhere, or so it seemed. A pickup truck was parked beside the lake and, despite the downpour, a Greek family was outside inspecting the dam.

“How do we get to Fourfouras?” we asked.

A grizzled old man with a moustache as thick as a hedge hog repeated “Fourfouras,” and then gestured straight ahead with his hand.

Sure enough we found a sign to back him up. And then a T-junction to let us down. No indication which way to turn, left or right. We chose left. It was the wrong choice. We were back in Rethymno before we knew it. I was thunderstruck. It seemed as if we had driven countries away and yet we were never more than a hoot and a holler from Rethymno.

We never found the magical route that Nancy had planned out. But it is still there and one of these days, when the sun is shining and we have a GPS system, we’ll come back and try it.

Back in Rethymno there was no help for it but to speed toward Irakleio. It was 2:30pm and with luck we might be able to get to Knossos. That, after all, is the guidebook’s highlight of Crete, the palace of King Minos (maybe) that was excavated by Arthur Evans at the very beginning of the 20th century.

How did anyone know that Knossos was there? Homer mentions it in the Odyssey:

Among their cities is the great city Cnosus, where Minos reigned when nine years old, he that held converse with Zeus.

Book XIX

But so, too, did Hesiod, Thucydides and Herodotus. There were several palaces built on the site five kilometers south-east of Irakleio, beginning around 1900BC. Basically, the agrarian culture of the Neolithic had merged with the technological breakthroughs of the Bronze Age (around 2800BC) so that by 1900BC a new level of civilization emerged, one capable of producing four story high buildings with a thousand rooms and double flights of stairs connecting the stories, running water, flush toilets for the Queen’s privy, frescoes, pottery-wheeled dishwar, jars taller than most men, a complicated mythology involving Zeus in the shape of a bull seducing Europa and carrying her to Crete where she gives birth to Minos who becomes king of Crete thereby establishing his divine right to rule, in other words, the whole nine yards.

A huge carved set of bull’s horns sat atop the palace at Knossos to signify the connection between the palace and its principal occupants and Zeus.

The first palace at Knossos was badly damaged twice, probably by earthquakes, and repaired twice. But in 1700BC a major catastrophe completely destroyed it. The subsequent period of construction produced the buildings that Evans ultimately uncovered twenty two hundred years later.

All of the artifacts from the excavation have been removed to an archeological museum in the center of Irakleiou, including several masterpieces, a carved bull’s head with golden horns and a 17th century BC gold pendant. The impression they give is of a society more given over to love-making than war-making. Maybe. The Minoans (as Evans named the civilization) were masters of the South Aegean. On the other hand, the palace at Knossos was not walled. Indeed, none of the six palace sites in Crete seem to have been walled, suggesting a society that felt itself perfectly safe from intruders and from one another.

That is what makes the mystery of Knossos so piquant. Something happened in 1450BC, something major. Whatever it was, Minoan dominance evaporated, first from the mainland and then from Crete itself. Mycenaeans from the mainland literally moved into the palace at Knossos. It was almost as if they were just waiting for the opportunity to squat.

One of the great cultural finds at Knossos was the famous tablets, Linear A and Linear B. Deciphering the latter had to wait until the fantastic breakthroughs of Ventris and Chadwick in the 1950s. They proved conclusively that Linear B was a form of Mycenaean Greek. The connection with the mainland Mycenaeans was sealed. Linear A, written in the script of the Minoans, still awaits its deliverer.

What happened in 1450BC that put an end to it all? Perhaps it was the cataclysmic explosion that produced Santorini and sent earthquakes and tidal waves the like of which no one had seen in the Mediterrannean before or since. Perhaps it was the Myceaneans themselves, taking advantage of those lack of walls, to hit the Minoans while they were down. Whatever it was, Minoans stepped down and the Mycenaeans stepped up. Since there was definite evidence of Minoan influence on Mycenae well before the cataclysm, it is likely the two cultures were connected, perhaps even by intermarriage. So it wasn’t an accident that the Mycenaeans replaced the Minoans, though it was an accident of nature that let them do it.

This was the first major step in the rise of the Mycenaean Empire. Sometime around 1300BC they went to war with Troy, thanks to Paris stealing Helen from Menelaus. That gave rise 500 years later to Homer and the beginning of the literature of Western civilization.

It had to start somewhere. Knossos seems as good a starting point as any.

The Dead Are a Long Time Dying

Monday, April 7, 2009

All this early morning travel got to us. We slept for 11 straight hours. We spent the day walking through the streets of Chania’s old town. The thing that struck me most was that after close to 500 years of Venetian domination and 200 years of Turkish domination--Crete was ceded to Greece after the second Balkan War in 1913--there is a great deal of evidence of Venetian influence and practically none of Turkish. The narrow streets of the town with their wrought iron balconies and flower pots, the restaurants with names like The Veneto and the imposing restoratiions of the Venetian Fort Firkas protecting the outer harbor, Moro’s dockyards and the Venetian lighthouse at the entrance to the harbor recall Venice with vengeance. As for the Turks there is a derelictr Mosque of the Janissaries in the middle of the harbor that now serves as an information center but looks as if it is about to fall apart. And then there is the Tamam, a restaurant in a restored Turkish hamam. My guess is that the preference for things Venetian runs along religious lines.

There are two maritime museums in Chania, one at each end of the harbor hugging jetty. The one at the east end features a replica of a Minoan vessel built to prove that such boats were seaworthy. In 2004 it made the 210 miles trip from Crete to Pireus on the mainland in 27 days. The oarsmen included several women.

Walking along the jetty in the early afternoon has the feel of an Italian passagiato though with one exception. Hordes of teenage boys and girls gather in packs and strut the jetty mindless that there are other creatures in the world beside themselves. They hive themselves off into small groups clustering around café tables for lunch, or doing a Greek dance in the aisle of a café or surrounding one of their own while she throws up on the jetty (it is, after all, only 3pm). We, by which I mean the adults in the town, are invisible to them except for the occasional moment when someone jostles up against them. Then a rude gesture and a raucous laugh penetrates the barrior between the two species. But the curtain is soon drawn and we each return to our own isolated worlds

Chania is where one of the major battles of World War II took place, the so-called Battle of Crete in 1941. After the Nazis invaded Greece in 1941, they turned to Crete, capturing the airport on the 20th of May. When Nancy and I first arrived at our hotel, we met a couple in the breakfast room. The man was an American ex-pat who married a New Zealander. They live in Christchurch half the year and the other half in Arizona. They told me this was their seventh visit to Crete. When I asked them why, their answer was remarkable. The woman’s father had fought in the Battle of Crete and been wounded. He was imprisoned on the mainland where he managed, with the help of Greek partisans, to escape. Fifty years later he returned for a reunion with the man who shot him. Both, his daughter told me, were filled with remorse. She also told me of an uncanny experience. She and her husband were browsing in a bookstore when she saw a book about the Battle of Crete. She picked it off the shelf and it opened to a picture of prisoners being forced marched by their German captors. In the picture was her father and the man who shot him.

Me and the Night and the Raki

Sunday, April 6, 2009

Our plane takes off promptly at 7:15am and lands just as promptly in Athens 40 minutes later. An hour’s layover and we are aloft again. We land in Chania on the northwest coast of Crete at 9:55am. We reach our hotel at 11am full of plans to hit the streets of Chania running. Instead of hitting the streets, we hit the sheets. It is close to 5pm when we wake up. I suppose there was a time when I could have hit the streets, but if there was, I don’t remember it. All we have to look forward to is dinner.

Our hotel night clerk shows us the restaurant we need to go to. It is, he says, 10 minutes away walking. It takes us half an hour, not because we are slow but because he is optimistic. It is raining when we leave the hotel. We walk along the harbor with wind driven rain hitting us in the face like rice thrown at a shotgun wedding.

To our left is Homer’s wine dark sea. To our right the hulking gray stone dockyard buildings put up by Benedetto Moro in 1599 while Crete was under the Venetian thumb. Venetian dominance lasted from the beginning of the 13th century through to 1669 when the Turks wrested it from the Venetians, dockyards and all. After 465 years and an heroic 22 year siege, Crete passed from the hands of the Serenissima into the hands of the Porte.

Our restaurant shown out of the darkness like a lighthouse in a storm. Inside everything was warmth and conviviality. I ordered a small carafe of raki in what precious little Greek I commanded. The waiter, whose English was fluent, appreciated it. In fact I have found that in my places I've gone, with the possible exception of Paris, the people appreciate a foreigner trying to speak to them in their own language. The waiter brought two tiny shot glasses along with raki. It is a grappa-like liquour though with less taste and much more punch. Nancy tried it. She said that must be what gasoline tastes like. I finished the careffe on my own. The waiter brought me a second one on the house. I insisted he and I share it. And there yards away from Chandia jetty and the heaving Mediterranean just beyond, the waiter and I knocked back shot glasses of raki like there was no tomorrow.

I really like Crete.

Daedalus Comes to Santorini, Almost

Sunday, April 5, 2009

We loll away the morning and bring ourselves to rent a car for the afternoon. We will keep it overnight and drive to the airport tomorrow at 5:30am. That means up by 4:45am. It will be a short night.

We drive to the highest point on the island, Mount Profitis. At the top is a monastery, Profitis Ilias, and a radar site. A huge sign atop the latter tells us that it is producing uncontrollable gobs of canceregenic (sic) material and that we would be well advised to go away. Nearby, a sign on the monastery door tells us that we are welcome but to remember that this is a holy place and we should adjust our attitudes and our clothes accordingly. The sign is posted on a pair of locked iron doors. When I knock, no one comes. We get the idea.

From a nearby lookout you can see both ends of the island, Akrotiri (Greek for cape) to the left of us and Oia to the north. I am a lover of ancient ruins and Akrotiri is the site of one, an Minoan stringer that was buried under ashes for 3,500 years preserving some of the best Minoan frescoes extant. However, those frescoes are on display at the Archeological Museum of Athens. So we decide on Oia, a highly touted little town a few kilometers from our own. Amoudi Bay at the foot of the mountaintop where Oia rests is a picturesque spot. We head there first.

At the height of the season there are fifty boats bobbing in the bay in front of the seawall and its meager array of shops and restaurants. One restaurant announces that from its terraces you will have the very best view of a Santorini sunset. Today the restaurant is closed. A tiny little boat rocks on the water while an old man in an even tinier boat rows out to to it standing up.

Three young ladies are sitting on the seawall bathing. Their toenails are painted a deep purrple. The polish makes their feet look as if they are freezing. I see an open door to one restaurant, Tis Pandora (Pandora’s Box). The room is stuffed with furniture fit for an outdoor café. A young woman about thrity five is puttering about inside.

“Hello,” I call in.

“Yes?” comes the answer. “We’re not open.”

“Can I have a beer?” I ask.

She doesn’t hesitate. She reaches inside a cooler and pulls out a bottle of Kaiser Beer.

“And one for my wife, please.”

She brings out a second chair to go by the single wicker chair already outside and placed to face the sunset. She opens the bottles and hands them to us along with two glasses.

“How much do I owe you?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “We are not open.”

Maybe Nancy and I have been lucky. But that is what it has been like in Santorini. We’ve been ushered into churches that have are closed for the day by sextons who see us straining for an inside view from beyond the iron bars that guard it.

“Come in, please,” one shortish woman gestures to us. “But no photographs.”

In another church, this one in Oia proper, we find one old woman whose face looks like a map of the Ural mountains. She is decorating a large square white cake. Meticulously with a pair of tweezers she places silver dragees on the hard white icing to form an elaborate design. I have no idea what the cake is for but on the way out I see a similar cake beside a photograph of a young man. He has a lower lip that appears to sag out of control, a heavy five o’clock shadow and the look of someone handicapped in life. The old woman sees me looking at the photograph, places her hands together and lays her cheek against them in a gesture that tells me the young man is dead. Perhaps someone else has died. It is as if she wants me to share in the occasion whatever it is, me, a total stranger.

We find a small open square in front of another blue domed orthodox Greek church. It is in the center of Oia. From the square we look back across the island to Fira Stefani, the town where we are staying. The town is draped over the top of the mountain making the mountain look as if, in the haze and distance of evening, it were snowcapped.

The restaurant in the hotel where we are staying, Dana Villas, has a chef, Yanni and a waiter, Franco. The first night we ate there, Franco told us there were only six people for dinner. This is the upside of the off season. No one is around. You literally have the streets of the town, the cliff walk, the highways to yourself The downside is that it is cold as hell. We sit on the open terrace of the restaurant overlooking the caldera. It is a perfect night, stars, a moon, the air crystal clear. Well, almost perfect. The breeze coming in from the caldera makes us shiver. And there is no inside to retreat to. Everything is geared toward sunny days and balmy nights. Franco offers Nancy his jacket. She jumps at it. All I can do is fold my arms across my chest and hunch over the table, waiting for the food to come and the dinner to be over.

Franco is from the north, Thessalonika. He works in Santorini eight months a year and in Thessalonika the other four months. He tells me that on Santorini that are 500 churches and that every house has its own altar. He also thinks that the global recession is a trick. He asks my advice on whether he and his brother should open a hamburger stand in downtown Fira. After every meal he gives us a free desert, baklava, fried bananas and honey, kataifi. He insists. I don’t have the heart to tell him I don’t eat sweets. On our last night I do. We are the only diners all evening long.

Twenty one years ago, almost to the day--it was April 23, 1988--a human powered aircraft left Crete and flew the 74 miles to Santorini landing just seven meters off shore. It set a world’s record for human powered flight. A champion Greek cyclist, Kanellos Kanellopoulos, supplied the power

Even though the plane crashed 21 feet from Santorini soil, it still managed to set a world’s record that holds to this day. Wind gusts damaged the tail and kept the plane from going the whole nine yards. That doesn’t surprise me in the least. After all, it was Icarus, Daedalus’ son, who failed to follow his father’s advice when they escaped from Crete. Icarus flew too close to the sun. The wax that held his wings together melted and he plunged into the sea. The gods surely could not let the 20th century Daedalus arrive in Santorini unscathed.

The Island of Santorini

Dear Reader,

I have decided to blog in real time. What you read now will be at most, two days old, maybe less. This is something new for me. Let’s see what happens.

Yours faithfully,
Samuel Jay Keyser, The Reluctant Traveler

Saturday April 4, 2009

Carlos Santana is blaring over the café speakers, a tight band playing up tempo salsa that puts me in mind of Marlon Brando in Viva Zapata. I’m sitting on the café’s terrace. Breakfast is over. Beyond the terrace railing I am looking out, not at Mexican hills, but at Nea Kameni, a remnant of the three coned volcano that blew up 3,459 years ago, sending a tsunami 74 miles to the west and wiping out one of the ancient world’s greatest civilizations, the Minoan culture on the island of Crete. Santorini itself was settled in the 8th century by Dorians. Its distinctly Italian name is courtesy of the Venetians who conquered the island in the 13th century and named it after St. Irene.

Today the remnant of that ancient cataclysm, the tiny volcanic island of Nea Kameni, hiccups one a week, like a drunk at the hind end of a massive bender. The bulk of Santorini’s 25 five kilometer long crescent is like a mother hen embracing Nea Kameni and Thirasia, a much larger island a bare half mile to the north. It, too, is inhabited, but we haven’t visited. It would take a day and a boat ride that we haven’t time for. We are leaving tomorrow.

From our terrace you can see that the people of Thirasia have chosen to live at the very top of the island. There is a long whitewashed ridge of houses that are architecturally the like of those on Santorini itself. I can tell because I have a very good pair of binoculars. A zig-zagging road negotiates the steep climb between the town and the water’s edge. There I see a series of docks for boats supplying the needs of the people at the top. It is a smaller version of Santorini itself.

Yesterday we walked from our hotel in Fira, the capital of Santorini, to Skala Firon, a small town about a mile away. We walked along the Agiou Mina, a cliff walk that follows the top of the caldera. It is a fabulous avenue lined on the left by the plaster and painted houses of the town and on the right by the caldera itself.

When the island blew up, it literally disgorged itself into the atmosphere. The sea ran into the hole it left behind and the result is the bits and pieces of what everyone thinks is the best candidate for the lost Kingdom of Atlantis. When you look along the hillside you can see striations, lava sandwiches, each one representing one convulsion of the original eruption. By my inexpert account, there are 21 one in all.

There isn’t much to learn in Santorini. And there isn’t much to see either, beside that marvelous caldera and its islands floating like dumplings in a huge bowl of soup. Apparently that is enough for most travelers. Tourists voting with their feet have placed Santorini in the top five most traveled to destinations in the world, year after year. One could see more. The ancient site of Thera. But someone was killed walking through a few years back--a woodedn bridge over the ruins collapsed--and it has been closed ever since. No one seems to know when it will reopen.

I asked a local what it was like living on Santorini. He said it was both peaceful and a bit like living on the edge. I can believe it. In 1956 an earthquake did tremendous damage to the place. It was rebuilt quickly, but there is always that rumbling of Nea Kameni in the middle of the caldera to remind the inhabitants that another catastrophe is just around the corner. Perhaps that is what keeps those who live here here. The threat of catastrophe makes all this tranquility and incredible peace bearable. It is the frisson that comes with knowing the whole damn thing might just blow up again.

Being here in off season is like being on a ship. Everywhere you go you see workman painting the walls, the terraces, the floors, the roofs of the island’s houses, hotels and apartment complexes. I wouldn’t be surprised if the place were refreshed once a year.

There isn’t much to do here. A few towns to see, an archeological museum, an ancient Dorian site. And that’s it. But it isn’t really the kind of place you want to do much in. It is the kind of place that shuns doing much of anything beside lolling. And after a day of lolling, you feel exhausted.

I am told that Santorini is in the top five of most visited tourist destinations in the world, this year after year. If that is so, it gives you a good idea of what it is people want to see when they travel: a beautiful view in a balmy clime where there is nothing to think about but dinner.