Advertisement
Published: March 26th 2007
Edit Blog Post
a pyramid in Greece?
its just the roof of the next building over, but it certainly does look like a pyramid and evenso when you see the building it sits upon today i thought of so many clever ways to begin this entry as i walked around Methoni.... of course they all now evade me. i am sitting in a funny little loft of a cafe/bar in the corner at one of three computer terminals.... young kids smoke and joke and flirt on the other side..... i am going to try to simultaneously blog the present as well as my past 3 weeks in Greece. (different entries though, so i hope, you can make sense of it)
Methoni is a smallish town on the westernmost peninsula of South Greece. Waking up this morning i first took a walk around to buy some groceries for breakfast. The Greeks dont really do breakfast and as i had slept in today, i knew this was my best bet. the town basically consists of a little clutter of buildings around the beach and three long streets which all lead to the Fortress, or "kastro" as they are called in Greek. I brought my breakfast to the beach and as i sat at a picnic table overlooking the bay, i munched on an orange, sweetbread with cheese and a delicious powdered sugar cookie. at a
nearby Periptero (kiosk or newstand selling much more than news) a little girl played ball with her (i think) Grandmother. After finding a cheaper room (20 Euro!) and moving my bags, I set out to explore the kastro. I only had an hour before it closed for the day so i decided just to explore and return tomorrow to take photos. It is magnificent and huge! i will likely be there hours tomorrow shooting. On the landward side is a moat and on the seaward side a 'Bourtzi' (which is usually a structure in the water away from the fortress, but in this case not). the Bourtzi is usually used as a prison, but can also be used as a lookout tower or an emergency stronghold for the inhabitants (albeit not all of them) of the town..... I had covered about 3/4ths of the kastro before a man on a scooter came through and blew a whistle and waved signalling to me that he was closing up. After crossing the bridge, I followed a dirt road past the last walls of the kastro and behind the town. I passed a woman carrying a bag of "horta" (wild greens) and a
small knife. Surprisingly she was under 40. THe only women i have ever remember seeing picking horta were older ladies. Little goat poops scattered the road and the flies buzzed. I believe they were horseflies so i swung my long sleeved shirt around to keep them away. (It was hot enough to walk around in a tanktop today, a nice change from the chill and rain of late) To my right there was a small hill and to my left, past50 or so yards of rocky, wildflower filled land was the sea. Here is where i began to take photos. It was a long walk that ended by a junkyard of some kind, inside a fence. Further up the road i saw the goats roaming on a hill.
The rest of my day consisted of wandering randomly around the town. I returned to a late lunch at my hotel, where the husband of the woman who rented me the room, sat outside in the sun. he called me over and said "Italia?" i said " ohi, Ameriki" he said something to the effect of "oh" and then, "you speak very good greek." Which is something that people tell me
often. I am certainly glad to hear it, but i still feel like i am stumbling all over the place. Later, the wife, dressed in a teal blue velvet roabe, found me as i was going to put food back in the fridge and asked me to read her the name off a box of medicine that the doctor had prescribed her and then write it in Greek. I was confused and said that i couldnt write it in Greek because i had no idea what it was (the name was in English), i realized that she just meant phonetically, when she started writing it on a napkin herself so we went on that way.... she then went on to tell me how she had got sick (as i could understand, from a booster shot). As she climbed the stairs back to her apartment she if i liked methoni. I said that i did very much that it was very nice and she responded that i was very nice too, a very nice girl.... 😊
Advertisement
Tot: 0.037s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0169s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
sally
non-member comment
Lu lee, It is as if I were there ! How true the photos are to Greece! And how true the experience - the man in the sun and the wif e with the medice bottle to be translated.. And exactly how that would transpire. , so true to my own memories.