Advertisement
Published: July 21st 2009
2009 Bulgaria and Greece Trip Journal
Tuesday 5/5/2009
This morning had the typical final preparation jitters before a major trip. Did I forget to do anything? (of course) Is there something I forgot to plan? (of course) Have I packed the wrong things? (of course) Bulgaria is once again pushing our travel experience envelope and the trip difficulty which is still unsolved is how we are going to travel from Bulgaria south to Greece. The motivation for this trip is as illogical as the one when we went to Croatia. Dave wants to “dip his toe” in the Black Sea, which is right up there with my loving a lyric in a Lisa Minnelli song. The two countries are as different as they can be, with Bulgaria indulging our desire for experiences which are not as readily found in a Borders travel book section, and Greece for its visual beauty and our love of the “island mentality”.
Gretchen ran her marathon Sunday and finished even though she hurt her leg. Soon after starting she felt a “pop” in her calf and she went against advice given by the medical stations along the way and kept running. She called earlier after seeing a sports doctor and thankfully she won’t need surgery. It would have been hard to leave the country if she had needed surgery and aftercare.
We flew to Denver this afternoon, and I asked for a late checkout to kill some time before our international connection tomorrow.
Wednesday 5/6
The Denver airport is well planned. We are staying in an area of hotels and restaurants 10 minutes from the airport. The mile high city is the start of the prairie to the east where we lived in Nebraska, but the mountains to the west are still snow covered, as Denver had a storm that accumulated 6-10” of snow less than a month ago.
There was the typical airport routine filled with both tedium and irritation … we wish our bags well as they start their dark journey, deal with surly TSA employees who love their jobs, refill our water bottles with the “safe” water past security, and buy ridiculously expensive food for our cross country trip to Dulles. We had forgotten to imbibe in a Margarita last night to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, so after getting settled in at the airport we toasted our journey and designated it Seis de Mayo.
I was apprehensive about the 45 minute window we had to change planes in Dulles and as it turned out rightfully so. Our flight from Denver landed 15 minutes early, but by the time we walked to our next gate (at the other end of the concourse of course) our flight to Frankfort was already boarding. We were hoping it was a Lufthansa carrier as we had booked through Star Alliance, but sadly it was a United plane, so the long flight will even be longer without amenities. After taxiing from the gate there was a weather delay and they turn off the engines for a 50 minute wait.
A loooooooooong flight. They get longer as I get older. The Frankfort terminal where we exit is in an older part of the airport and it takes a while to find where we get our next flight’s boarding passes, as we could not get them at the Denver airport. An abrupt security guard tells us we are too early to get to our gate, so we wander aimlessly for awhile. We are deep into the not having any fun part of the trip.
The last leg of our trip to Sofia took us over snow covered Alps and small villages could be seen deep inside the convoluted valleys. On the approach to Sofia we could see the golden domes of the Aleksander Nevski Church in the center of the capital. From the ground after we landed, our first impression was of an old broken down “Bulgarian Air” plane parked by the runway. Someone really should move it. Amazingly both of our bags made it through two plane changes. I wasn’t concerned about the Frankfort Germany change, but the work ethic at Dulles in DC had me a bit worried. Customs was typically humorless yet painless.
I opted for a bit of luxury (for us anyway), and arranged to have a car take us to our hotel. Never knowing how effective emails back and forth are when a common language is not shared, I was pleasantly pleased to see a man standing with a placard that had our name on it at the gate … isn’t the internet amazing? It was a wise decision on my part for traffic was horrendous and we were way too exhausted to deal with an airport transport. Another passenger was in the car … an American from Austin Texas who works in Sofia three weeks out of four on a project with Bulgarian Air. I was polite and didn’t ask if he was part of the decision not to remove the eyesore we saw when we landed. Our fellow American hadn’t really traveled outside the city, but he told us that we would have no problems with communicating as most people knew some English. I had no reason to not believe him, but as I type this after we returned home I realize that his Bulgarian travel experience was severely limited and since we dropped him off at the newest hotel that mostly caters to westerners, he probably interacted with a small minority at the hotel and at work who had a basic command of the English language, for traveling across the country Dave and I found the language barrier to be huge.
Leaving the airport we could see the snow capped Mount Vitosha in front of us … Sofia is the highest capital in Europe. When we were dropped off the driver told us that he had already been paid by the hotel. Since the hotel had already charged my credit card, I wasn’t sure how this would play out, but at this point of a trip you tend to be agreeable. The price for the airport transit online was 10 Euros, but when I emailed to make a reservation it became 15 Euro. When I questioned this in a confirmation email I was told that the 10 Euro was “last years prices” … ka chink! I had read that Bulgaria routinely charges foreigners more for services. My hotel rate was 46 E per day which includes breakfast, which was a good rate for the capital. It’s an adapted older home with an indoor/outdoor restaurant. Our room is on the second floor gotten to via a scary circular staircase. The furnishings are old, but the bathroom is new with a real shower. Since it is evening, our body clocks are almost attuned to local time, and even though exhausted, we decide to take a walk. We are located on a pedestrian street and across from a park, and it remains daylight until 8:30. We crashed around 9, and slept until 7:30am.
First impressions of Sofia:
Visually it is a combination of Budapest Hungary with all of the old Communist era high rise cement apartment complexes and Zagreb Croatia with small storefronts and leafy tree lined streets.
This is their New York City and we see mostly young people dressed fashionably. A woman on the plane with us was wearing very expensive clothes and carrying a Gucci bag whose label she made sure we all saw. She was a tall blond in a country of brunettes. I saw gladiator shoes and bags fashionable in the states in the store windows and it seemed all the young women on the streets were wearing very high heels. It’s their early spring and they are still wearing winter clothing, which we don’t even own since we live in the desert.
It’s a bit shabby and unkempt looking. The park across the street from our hotel is the National Palace of Culture … a very rundown place. The marble fountains are falling apart and we made sure we left before dusk. We could see groups of policemen gathering. The most interesting thing we saw was on the way back to our room. In a wooded area next to the park some people had strung a rope a few feet off the ground. A young boy was practicing tightrope walking.
Friday 5/8
Well we officially have lost a day.
Breakfast was very strong coffee, cappy orange juice (we have had this before), a feta like cheese, lunchmeat, toast and an omelet (actually a soft boiled egg mashed up a bit). There was also cereal and cucumber slices. We were served by a really nice lady who knew no English at all, but that didn’t stop her from talking to us nonstop for 10 minutes. At breakfast we met a couple from Montreal who validated my decision to hire a car to get to our hotel when they said how much trouble they had finding the place even though their rental car was equipped with a GPS.
We need to buy our train tickets from Bulgaria to Greece. We found schedules online, but couldn’t purchase the tickets. I had read that the Rila Agency would have someone with some knowledge of English, so with city map in hand we head off. We find it and a very nice lady who knows a tiny bit of English, but she says she can’t help us and that we need to buy a bus ticket instead and sends us to another Rila Agency located in the park complex near where we are staying. We walk back and find the agency, but the lady who sells bus tickets says she can’t help us and sends us over to a very unfriendly lady who sells the train tickets. This fine example of customer relations in Eastern Europe doesn’t even want to help us … we had more information than she did about the schedules. She tells us we have to go to the Sofia bus/train station.
We knew this was to be our big challenge of the trip but it is becoming more frustrating than we imagined. Its noon and we have done enough walking in circles so we decide to master the public transportation system. We know to buy tickets at a Kiosk and that they will be a timed ticket if we don’t buy one for all day from previous trips, but the language barrier once again makes it difficult. The first kiosk we find only sells tickets on Saturday (I have no idea why). The second one doesn’t want to deal with us and sends us to a third. We are not having a good time.
We arrive at the scary train station. I say scary for that’s what they are in Eastern Europe. Huge dark hulking places usually filled with people you wouldn’t invite for dinner. None of the arrival and departure boards have English or course, but the Cyrillic alphabet is even more intimidating. Knowing that it would be impossible for us to not have the “totally confused tourist face” I was not surprised when we were approached by one of the “professional guides for hire” one finds in such places. He does lead us back a side corridor that I would have had hesitations on even entering to the train Rila Agency. I decide to approach this in another way this time and pull out the schedule we had found online and ask to buy two 1st class reserved seats for the route … the lady did some paperwork and gave me some directions that I couldn’t understand and all for the amazingly inexpensive price of 30 leva or approximately $20 each. We later found out that our “transit to Greece” tickets wouldn’t get us the entire way to our destination … but I digress.
Back to our guide who was hovering close … I asked Dave if he had offered him money and he told me yes, so I couldn’t understand why he was still hovering and I asked Dave again if he had paid him. It turns out that Dave offered him 2 Euros and he said no. He then offered him 2 leva and he shook his head no … so Dave gave him 10 leva! I didn’t see the transaction as I was busy trying to understand what the train lady was telling me, and I knew that the gentleman in question expected to be paid …but $6! I know this is a poor country and has one of the lowest per capita incomes in the EU, but still … I hate to be gouged like that.
So after spending three hours transversing Sofia and probably covering 3-4 miles in the process, now we can start the walking tour of the city that I had planned!
The highpoints of the city are all relatively close and centrally located. Each street has many small shops instead of larger stores. I don’t understand how they all stay in business for I never saw anyone in them. The churches and public buildings are magnificent in their representation of another time and way of life, but are not being protected or preserved. Mosaics and murals are exposed to the elements and consequently dark with centuries of pollutants. In the churches, the candle carbons from the innumerable prayer candles that have been lit by the faithful soil the frescos and Iconography found there.
I enjoy the massive and monumental in size sculptures from the Communist Era that are found in the parks. There are still enough Communist Party members plus the expense of removing them to keep the statuary safe even though to many Bulgarians it exemplifies Bulgarian subjugation. Evidence of the many stray dogs and cats plus the overgrown gardens and sprayed graffiti everywhere make the parks inhospitable.
We did pretty good navigating the streets, if not by recognizable signs then by comparing landmarks and an innate sense of direction and congratulated ourselves by stopping for a pivo. We ate dinner at a restaurant I had read served “authentic” Bulgarian food. Dave ordered a dish that was pork filled with cheese and pickled cucumbers which was one of his favorite meals on the trip. There were some buttery potatoes that were excellent, as only a dish that combines potatoes and butter can be, and I ordered a mixed grill that was supposed to be baked but it was very greasy and not very good. It reminded us of the meat dishes in Croatia that we fondly named “Bosnian Turds”.
We tram back to our Sofia home on Vitosha, checked to see if Rila Agency #2 was open (it was not), and spent the rest of the evening people watching in the park near our hotel. In the movie “The Devil Wears Prada” the women wearing heels were referred to as “clackers” because of the noise their shoes made, so I decided to name the young women in very tight jeans and very high heels “Bulgarian Clackers”. I have no idea how they walked in them over cobblestones and badly broken concrete sidewalks.
We quickly learned that it is completely foolhardy to try and jaywalk here, as even crossing at an intersection is dangerous. Red lights are optional and it’s a game of chicken played between the cars and pedestrians. If they sense the slightest hesitation when you cross they will not stop. We grew rather proud of ourselves in that we mastered the Sofia art of intimidating the oncoming cars with an “I dare you” look.
Back in our room by 8, Dave crashed and I did a bit of hand laundry and journaled.
And took aspirin.
Saturday 5/9
Still dealing with jetlag, I was awake for several hours through the night, and wondered once again how parents of young children here deal with the not so soft pornography on the television late at night. We had a late start and didn’t get down to breakfast until 9, and met a young couple from the UK who were in BG on a hiking vacation. The young woman was still shaken from the fact that they could have encountered a bear, and she said that there are no bears left in the UK.
We start the day with another effort to purchase a complete train ticket at Rila Agency #2. The woman seemed very confused with the whole concept of us wanting a train ticket to our final destination instead of part way, so we decided to give up. It’s simply not worth the aggravation. We will wait and attempt to purchase another ticket when we reach Rodopoli, Greece, which is very near the Bulgarian border.
The plan for the day was to take a bus to Mt Vitosha and visit Dragalevtsi Monastery, Boyana Church, ride a chairlift and hike a bit. I even had the bus number to take plus information on a minibus that would take us there. We asked someone at the hotel for directions to the correct bus stop and they proved to be wrong. We attempted to ask several other people but also received no help. Sofians tend to be abrupt in manner and do not want to deal with communicating when we are struggling with their language. In frustration I made an administrative decision and decided to cab there. The bus would have been 7 leva each and the driver said 20 … sold! We held onto each other as we careened through the city and up the mountain curves.
Dragalevtsi Monastery was built in the 14th century and was one of the many places where the renowned anti-Turkish rebel Vasil Levski hid. Actually quite a few of the churches or monasteries we visited claimed to be a hideout for Turkish rebels, so I think it’s rather like “Washington Slept Here” in the US. In its small chapel, we lit candles for those in our memories.
My guide book said there would be a “clearly marked” trail to the chairlift, where we planned on riding to the top of the mountain and then hiking across to a gondola to descend. At this point it came as no surprise to us that we saw no trail, but some ladies were walking up the mountain and pointed down behind them when I asked where the chairlift was. After walking for about 15-20 minutes we passed a group of girls and I asked once again. “It’s not working” was the reply. So now we are on a mountain with no idea of how we are getting back to Sofia, and we decide to simply keep walking down, for I knew we weren’t going to walk back up …we never even saw the chairlift. Eventually we found the village of Dragalevtsi and decide to try and find a bus that will take us directly to Boyana Church. Asking in a small store which way to go Dave ran into a woman who was using the confusing body language communication difference in Bulgaria … they bob their heads side to side for yes and a downward nod for no. When the bus arrives, we hold our leva and ask the driver how much and he snarls and dismisses us with a wave of his hand. In any language that’s just rude.
We are not having a good time.
When traveling, finding the right bus is only half the stress, for next you have to try and decide when to get off. I asked several girls who appeared to be teens where Boyana Church was and they said they didn’t know. I found that hard to believe, so we decide to get off when it seems the bus is heading down the mountain again and we sooth our wounded attitudes with 2 Wymencko beers. We ask directions again and are directed back where we came from. There is a lot of construction on the mountain I assume by wealthier Sofians who are trying to get away from the city. But the road is abysmal and the new builders with their two car garages will have neighbors we saw while walking down the mountain gathering small twigs for their fireplace. We walk for about a mile along the road seeing Sofia in the distant valley until we finally find it by seeing some buses and cars parked up the mountain.
Boyana Church is an UNESCO Site. A revered Bulgarian historical site, the medieval murals, which date from 1259, were truly impressive. Their state of completeness and condition was made special by seeing them in their natural environment. I was glad to see the artwork was climatized and the entrances were timed. We of course understood nothing of what the guide was telling us, but it really didn’t detract.
Anyone who knows Dave knows he dearly loves his PITT hats, and I have given up debating the wisdom of his wearing one when we travel, but without exception he runs into someone who comments on it, which is why I have lost the hat battle anyway. And Boyana Church in the middle of no where in Bulgaria now can be added to his list of places he has found PITT fans. A young man came up to him inside the church and told him he was from Pittsburgh. He had met a young woman in the states, followed her home and eventually married her. They are now waiting for approval for her to emigrate, and he visits when he can. It probably would be faster if he divorced her and they remarried in the US.
The bus stop for the return to Sofia was easily found. It’s nice to see all the spring flowers we miss since we live in the desert. The bus is standing room only and Sofians returning from a day on the mountain are carrying bouquets of lilacs which are blooming. A crowded bus with an odor combination of sweet lilacs and the telltale evidence of too few showers made for an uncomfortable ride.
The bus stops and an older gentleman made a gesture at us to get off. It doesn’t take long to realize that everyone is getting off and it’s the end of the line. Not having a clue where we are we follow the group, which walks through what appears to be an old bus station to a waiting tram. Once in the city we recognize our surroundings and head for the hotel. Two days of walking and we are beat.
We have seen people in the park eating pizza and decide to get a slice for dinner as I am too tired to eat. We track it down … yuck! It was totally tasteless with whole kernel corn on top and the locals were putting mayo, yellow mustard and ketchup on top … yuck! A Pizza Hut franchise would be hugely successful here. We have only seen two American chains here, KFC and McDonalds, of course.
We amuse ourselves again with people watching in the park and I settle my bill and arrange for a cab in the morning to take us back to the airport to rent a car. It would be impossible for us to get our bags onto an airport bus and being laden with luggage and mass transportation is not a good combination anyway. I am ready to leave this diskaboobalated urban area. Everything here is falling into disrepair and I think it is due in large part because during the Communist Era those things were taken care of for the people by the government … now there is no money for infrastructure. Not to mention that trying to navigate has been beyond frustrating.
Sunday 5/10
There is a lot of industrial construction that can be seen on the way to the new Sofia Airport. The EU spends proportionately more money on countries such as this. We find Europcar easily but there is no one at the desk and we really have no other option other than to wait. When a representative finally arrived we were told that they were expecting us at the other terminal. We apologized, for we didn’t even know there were two terminals. Our luggage barely fits in the trunk and I wasn’t pleased that there was a label on the car designating it as a rental, but we head south in the only orange car in the country.
When leaving the airport we asked directions and they started with “you go through the gypsy camp”. He then amended his instructions by saying we might not want to do that, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. It was appalling. I had read that gypsies or Roma are a nonrepresented minority here and are found in ostracized ghettos on city fringes, but I was still shocked at the blatant prejudices towards them.
Impressions along Bulgarian Roads:
It seems that it is perfectly acceptable for men to relieve themselves along the road with little regard to privacy.
Twenty yards off the road seems to be the allowable distance and tall grass all that’s needed for said men to
empty their bowels.
Many of the rural residents here live much as they have for the last 100 years.
Yesterday not far from Sofia there was a man herding his 8 goats and cow down the mountain.
Horse and Donkey pulled carts are seen everywhere.
People can be seen gathering small twigs, which to me means there is probably no electricity in their homes.
They are working in the fields in large groups, a Communist Era collective work mentality.
So many older women here are bent over with osteoporosis … a hereditary factor and probably aggravated by
being bent over in their fields and gardens for hours on end.
It’s the women we see in the fields … the men can be found sitting in the grass keeping watch over their cow.
We drove deeper and deeper and higher and higher into the Rodope Mountains and right below the snow line we found Rila Monastery, Bulgaria’s largest and most holy place in the country. It was founded in AD 927 by a colony of hermits and moved to its current location in 1335. It helped to keep Bulgarian culture alive during centuries of rule by the Turks, who destroyed it several times. As it sits, it was rebuilt after a fire in 1833. Various rooms make up the fortress like walls surrounding the Nativity Church in the middle of the courtyard, with its exterior covered with frescos for those that could neither read nor write. It was an amazing place, both timeless and out of time in a way. The interior of the church was dark with candles burning everywhere and ornate iconography, gilded frescos and golden candlesticks six feet tall. There were paintings with three dimensional hands and halos added that I had never seen before.
Bulgarian Orthodox Monks moved silently in the church, bearded and wearing long black robes. People purchased and lit candles to place in the many holders and a teeny tiny woman dressed in black continuously threw the spent ones into a box of sand. She also was in charge of determining whether a woman was dressed appropriately and handed out a cotton wrap if she wasn’t. No cameras or other electronic devices were allowed inside and when I heard a cell phone ring, it was a monk who answered it. Our favorite monk had to have been close to seven feet tall and a bit intimidating looking so we named him Rasputin. When the faithful entered the church they would move to the various holy icons and kiss them.
We were so enthralled with the monastery that we decided to change our plans. Originally we were going to drive further south to Bansko, but decide to spend the night at Rila. We wait for Rasputin’s brother to make the arrangements. We had to sign a paper authorizing we are married to share a room and asked permission of the Bishop to stay for the purpose of praying … and pay 60 leva. We should be allowed to write that expense off as a religious contribution for saying the room was Spartan is a bit of an understatement.
We wander inside and outside where there are a few restaurants and shops. We ate dinner outside on a platform over a stream roaring with winter snow melt. Back inside, we found a bench and people watched as the crowds grew thinner as the day grew long. One of the monks walked around the church praying and banging rhythmically on a wooden plank at each corner of the building. Another climbed the bell tower, which predates the church, and manually rang the bells for evening prayers. We entered the church with the monks … there were eight of them; 4 chanting in a corner and 2 performing the service. Rasputin sat in front of us swaying and chanting and repetitively touching his hat to the chant. I recognized a lot of Catholic elements in the service, but with incense. Dave’s mother was raised Greek Catholic and I still remember the incense at his grandfather’s funeral. There is a small door behind the front wall that served as the altar. The head monk moved in and out, having to bow his head when entering. He walked to a glass case near us and bent to kiss it … it contained the bones of Ivan Rilski, the leader of the original monastic colony. It was very special to watch something that has gone unchanged for centuries.
After the service the monks and 2 nuns all left for their apartments and it grew quite chilly. We saw another group of three and a single man who also were going to spend the night. They lock the door at 10 pm. It was a bit spooky … only a handful of people, 8 monks, the nuns, the teeny tiny lady, 3 dogs, 1 ugly yoda looking cat, Dave and me locked in a monastery in the mountains of Bulgaria. Cool
Monday 5/11
Dave will be the first to admit that he is high maintenance when it comes to his sleeping condition. Last night he was not content … his bed was too short … his mattress was lumpy … his blankets were too heavy … the outside stream sounded like a jet engine. But other than my usual jetlag middle of the night wakefulness, I slept like a Bulgarian log. I just didn’t let myself think about how many others had used that old blanket! The room was too cold to shower in the morning and I also do not understand those showers that are attached to the wall and the whole room gets wet in the process. It had finally dried out from its last usage.
We stop for coffee down the mountain at the village of Rila and encounter another unpleasant woman. Good grief … what is it with these people? I know their past makes them a defensive suspicious sort, but a smile once in a while wouldn’t hurt.
The drive today will be longer than planned since we stayed at the monastery last night instead of continuing on to Bansko and we headed northeast through a rural mountainous area. Everyone was out working in their fields, and we saw no farm equipment … once we even passed a man steering his horse drawn plow and his wife was managing the horse. The women were dressed in long skirts and kerchiefs, some more covered than others, which told us they were probably Muslim, a small minority in Bulgaria. We never saw a woman driving one of the animal pulled carts, and we assumed it was the more prosperous farmer who had horses instead of donkeys. Once again we noticed that women were more likely to be doing the field work with the men standing guard over their few grazing animals. The fact that over and over again we saw farmers watching over their flocks must mean that it is all open pasture with no fencing allowed or there might be a bit of cow snatching going on. These people physically live a hard life which has not changed since Communist rule with priorities being food and winter heat. We however are secure in the knowledge that we will be fed and warm (or cool in our case), but we struggle with concerns over terrorism, health care, inflation, wars and crime. I wonder if they equate.
To say that the mountain roads were in bad shape does not truly give an accurate description. I was driving and I relied on my Pennsylvania skills to traverse the mountain curves, the rough pavement, the drop offs, and the humongous potholes. Locals pass on blind curves and donkey carts will suddenly appear in front of you. The fact that it was a rental and not our own vehicle that we were abusing made it doable. There was also the road that had no route number whatsoever, and we used the position of the sun to navigate.
We found Koprivshtitsa, a preserved mountain village from the Bulgarian National Revival Period in the late afternoon. It survives largely unchanged since the independence from the Turks in 1878. The houses are wooden and it is amazing that the entire town has not burned. We drove round and round looking for the place I had chosen to stay and never found it … but the young woman who ran the small hotel we finally found actually spoke some English. It was just as hard to find a place to eat as it was to find a place to sleep, perhaps because a lot of the restaurants are seasonal. We were told that a lot of the small homes are summer places to escape the cities. To be honest, I understood the historical importance of the town, but if something exists since 1878 it probably needs a bit of repair or upkeep. Most of the buildings I saw were in very bad shape.
Tuesday 5/12
I need a mental adjustment concerning my American sensibility of what is being warm at night. The small electrical heaters we have encountered so far simply “take the chill off”. The highpoint of being in Koprivshtitsa for me is that we learned to pronounce it, which was quite the accomplishment. Phonetically it is … cope ra sheetz ka, accent on the third syllable … but that doesn’t really do it … with the accented syllable of sheetz you do a sort of a hissing sound. I still say it now and again so I won’t forget how. Our other favorite word in Bulgaria is Stotinka (sto teen ka), which is the smallest coinage and 1/100 of a leva, therefore not really of any value and only used if necessary to make change. The plural is stotinki (sto teen kee), which we have decided to add to our vernacular to mean a stingy person or the act of being cheap.
Our next stop today is at Shipka Monastery, with its five golden onion shaped domes visible for miles. The Nativity Church was built to honor those who died at Shipka Pass and is very Russian looking. We couldn’t find a sign pointing to the monastery, so we just keep taking roads that went up the hill. From the church the view is of the Valley of the Roses, which is one of the biggest producers of rose oil in the world. A priest almost ran me over with his car as I stood at the edge of the hill.
It’s always my turn to drive when we hit the worst roads, so I take the wheel as we drive up an even worse road than yesterday to Shipka Pass. There you will find the huge Freedom Monument to honor the 7000 Russian troops plus Bulgarian volunteers who died while successfully repelling 27,000 Turkish soldiers. We got there just as a bus full of high schoolers arrived. I quickly snapped a picture of the Monument before the 900 steps would be swarming with teens.
Onto the Dryanovo Monastery, which was dark and smelled of mildew inside. I think after Rila Monastery, all others will pale in comparison. This place is also accredited with giving sanctuary to Vasil Levski, the famous revolutionary leader who fought the Turks. I can certainly understand why the Turks are not a well liked race here, but also do not understand why the Turks just didn’t search the monasteries to find Levski, for that’s where he seemed to be all the time. The highpoint of our visit was crossing over a river and finding a restaurant with outdoor tables. It was a wonderful location and Dave enjoyed his Shepherd Salad which is akin to a Chef Salad, but once again I wasn’t too pleased with my selection. I had had a good bean soup the other night so I ordered a bean and sausage dish baked in a ceramic crock. When it arrived it was so visually unappealing with its perfectly coiled sausage I couldn’t enjoy it. But the beer was great!
Our final destination today is Veliko Tarnovo, the ancient capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185-1396) and reportedly the new “cool” place to be in Eastern Europe. Of course this wouldn’t surprise anyone who knows Dave and me, as we can usually be found on the cutting edge of trendsetters. The setting of the city is wonderful with the Yantra River winding a horseshoe bend between four hills. On Trapezitsa Hill remains an overgrown fortress where the Bulgarian Kings once lived and the old town is called Varosha. Houses are built down the gorge which reminded me of Pittsburgh PA. We could not find our hotel even with maps and I knew it would be fruitless to stop and try to ask for directions and we were about to do the “hire a taxi and follow it” routine when suddenly I recognized a photo from the online booking site. No wonder I couldn’t find it … unlike on its webpage, the hotel’s name was printed in Cyrillic. The location couldn’t be better, with it being situated on the gorge and across from the old town and within walking distance of the fortress. It was the nicest room we have had so far with a balcony that overlooked the gorge and only 26 Euros per night. We walk down a flight of steps to our room carrying our two bags, which originally started at 30 and 35 pounds, but get progressively heavier the more they are carried.
You can get a city’s vibe from walking it a bit and Veliko Tarnovo is definitely cool. We strolled through the narrow cobblestone streets of the old town and walked down some precarious steps to lower levels on the gorge. We ended the evening by watching an electrical storm on the horizon which lit up the city and the gorge.
Wednesday 5/13
We started the day by wandering once again through Varosha. Here and there you can see some of the ancient homes being redone, probably by westerners. In fact, obviously hearing Dave and me talking, a Brit leaned out his second floor window to ask us if we were lost (duh!). We found the oldest church in the city but the inside was so dark and dusty it was hard to see anything. The frescos were probably beyond repair and the crystal chandeliers were grimy. One of what I call the “church ladies” tried to communicate with me. She asked if I spoke Russian or German and I kept replying “only English”. Finally Dave said … Americanski … and she knowingly stopped asking. Europeans simply do not understand why we only speak one language. She offered me a candle and I declined politely, but then she gave me a dour look and tapped on the donations box. I was afraid not to contribute (for what I have no idea) … she was intimidating! I have learned from travel experience that tiny older Italian women are not to be taken lightly, but they can’t hold a candle to the larger older babushka wearing Bulgarian ladies.
Gretchen has requested that I take photos of cats and I found prides of them. There is a very nice outdoor restaurant across the street from our hotel in the old town. Dave ordered an omelet with bacon and olives and I ordered one with cheese. Dave’s eggs came back fine … mine arrived as a cheese crepe, which was cold. I had no luck with food in Bulgaria. I had packed a skirt to wear when in a city to look a bit more presentable, but the day quickly turned chilly with rain, so it was back to the hotel for jackets and umbrellas before we set out for the Fortress. Walking to the Fortress Dave said that he saw a woman with his mother’s eyes. Margaret’s family was from what is now eastern Slovakia and would have had the same Slavic origins.
It was seriously raining as we trudged up the hill to the Fortress which has been over centuries Thracian, Roman, and Byzantine … rebuilt by the Slavs and later the Bulgars … Byzantine and Bulgarian again … and of course taken by the Turks. We had the whole hill to ourselves as we hiked at least two miles around the battlements and ruined buildings. The view was expansive from the top; or rather it would have been if details hadn’t been softened due to the entire gorge being enshrouded in the rainy mist. We go back to our room to dry out and wait for the weather to lift.
Below us in the gorge was a monstrously huge Soviet era sculpture in a park and we can see there is a footbridge to it. After many wrong turns and once ending up in a location that I don’t think was very safe we found it. On the way back to our hotel I find the city information center and I stop to ask about the evening light show from the Fortress … they didn’t know. I ask about the Balkan Folk Festival which is supposed to be happening … they didn’t know. Good Grief
Bulgarian men like name brand jogging suits. Even the young boys wear them all the time.
From the first night we stayed here we could hear an odd noise drifting up from the river in the gorge below us. We assumed it was some roosting birds, but it sounded like the creatures from the movie “Tremors” 2, 3, 4 and I believe there was even a 5. Down closer to the water we try to see the birds in the trees but then realize that they are really frogs! But I still prefer the explanation that they are creatures from “Tremors” living in the abandoned Bulgarian Hotel Veliko Tarnovo.
What I miss on this trip is communicating with the denizens of the country we are visiting. I think it’s how you get a truer sense of the culture. Bulgarians obviously do not like tourists or I suspect any outsiders. We stopped for a beer this evening and were blatantly ignored.
Thursday 5/14
The shower nozzle on the bathroom wall without any curtain to contain the water makes absolutely no sense to me. The entire room gets wet and it’s dangerous, as the flooring is usually tile. Thank goodness Dave brought a pair of flip flops that we wear. We had gotten cash yesterday to pay for our room, for although a hotel will take a credit card online to reserve a room, they want payment in cash. This is still mostly a cash society.
It’s off to the Black Sea! As we drove across the country we started noticing young women standing near the road dressed … shall we say, inappropriately? It didn’t take long to realize that they carried their wares.
A Bentley left us in the dust close to Varna. I would bet that its driver purchased that luxury car through nefarious means … a cash society makes for healthy crime organizations. English is seen on billboards, on restaurant signs and on clothing labels. Why when very few know the language? And every time I travel I wonder why all stop signs are in English.
There was to be an interim stop in Shuman to visit another hilltop fortress and Soviet sculpture plus what was professed to be the mosque with the most beautiful interior in Bulgaria, but we were thwarted once again by the inability to find anything with no signage, not even in Cyrillic. We even tried stopping once to ask, which can be classified as a Bulgarian effort in futility. I was driving, and my tolerance for getting lost and ending up at the end of a dead end street and having to backup maneuvering around double parked cars while driving a standard transmission is growing low.
Bulgaria is not ready for tourism at the level they profess they have and for the service prices they charge. If they want people to visit their country and spend money, they have to make it possible for the tourists to find the attractions that they promise will entice. We couldn’t even find Nessebar! A whole city! We backtracked several times trying to find the right road but never did and were finally successful following our sense of direction once again. Even finding our room was exasperating. I stopped at a real estate office and they pointed out what turned out to be the wrong building. I stopped at a small grocery at the corner of the building but was ignored. We asked again and were directed to the right building, which was a huge condo complex still under construction, but saw no signage or numbers. We stopped at another office in the complex and she gave us a phone number and pointed down the hill … no help at all. The next stop was a large hotel next door and when the woman handed me a phone and told me to call … how she expected me to call someone who more than likely would not know any English was beyond me …. I was rather aggravated and told her to do it. She begrudgingly did and I could tell she was complaining to the person on the other end of the line, and when she hung up she told me there had been a “mistake” and we should wait for 20 minutes and someone would come to show us the room. We were not having a good time.
Sure enough, in 20 minutes a young man showed up in the lobby. His command of English was good and he explained what had happened. I had booked this place online and in communicating back and forth I had been asked what time I would arrive, asked if I needed a rental car and told me to call before I arrived. Twice I had received this email and twice I had responded by telling what time I would arrive, I did not need a rental car and I didn’t have a phone to call them. No one in the office obviously read my replies for he was honestly surprised when we explained that we couldn’t call to arrange to meet for we didn’t have a cell phone. “Where are you from?” he asked and said that he had never dealt with an American staying there before, so he assumed we were Europeans and had a cell phone … again no one really looked at my reservation. He had some knowledge of the US, for he knew of Arizona and Phoenix. When asked where we live we usually say Southwest US … Arizona …Grand Canyon, and he also mentioned Death Valley.
But when he finally showed us our room, which was a small efficiency condo, it was brand new and clean. And it had a washing machine! We were the first to use the room, as workmen were still busy making dirt in the hallways. Dave had to figure out how to turn on the electricity and I gleefully threw clothing into the washing machine … washing clothes out in the sink doesn’t really get them clean. Since it’s a beach place it had a rather large drying rack on its small patio that I used.
There are beaches the whole way up and down the Black Sea Coast, but we chose to stop in Nessebar because of its location on a small rocky island connected to the mainland by a narrow artificial isthmus. First settled by Thracians, then the Greeks in 512 BC who built fortresses and temples which are now submerged since the water level of the Black Sea rose 2000 years ago. Of course with any area here through its history it also has been ruled by the Romans, the Byzantines, the Bulgars, the Turks, and the Ottomans. Today its trading days are over and it exists on tourism. The fact that it is off season means we can walk through the old town without crowds. But because of the fewer number of tourists, the restaurants along the water were aggressively trying for our patronage. We decided to try Italian and I had a very good lissania (lasagna) … it was a welcome change from greasy meat dishes.
Friday 5/15
Since we have a toaster and hot pot, we bought some bread and butter to go with the tea bags we already have for breakfast. Last night in a small grocery I was in the dairy section and asked if one of the products was butter. After some pantomimed spreading butter on bread I was told yes, but it is unsalted and not what we were anticipating. Sigh its simple things like toast that I start to crave at this point in a trip. We planned on this being a bit of a lazy day to rest a bit. The fog takes a long time to lift ad we start off the day with jackets as we walk the circumference of the island. We felt that Nessebar could do more to live up to its UNESCO designation. The interior of the island is one tacky souvenir shop after another and I saw a tour group posing for their group picture inside the walls of an ancient Byzantine Church.
However, there was an Information kiosk on the island and when we asked where there was an internet café we were given a small map and good directions to one that appears to be a few blocks from where we are staying. That’s a first. Dave bought himself a toy for this trip … a small netbook, so we can log onto the internet without being concerned about keystroke security on foreign machines. Usually we have been able to find somewhere that has WiFi so we can check our accounts and communicate with our children every couple days. A few times I have been able to chat real time with Gretchen via google chat … isn’t technology amazing?
Saturday 5/16
We decided to drive back across Bulgaria to drop off the rental car in Sofia instead of paying the outrageous fee of 120 Euros to drop it off in Burgas, which is just south of Nessebar. The other reason for the driving decision is that transportation to one of the only two ports of entry into Greece from Bulgaria was ridiculously complicated and involved taking a train half way back across the country anyway. Bulgaria has only one four lane limited access road and it’s approximately 60% completed between Sofia and Burgas. The route dips south, but the extra distance is worth being able to drive 110 kph (68 mph) and not having to deal with donkey carts and crazy drivers passing on a blind curve coming towards you. The trip took 5 ½ hours and we had to trade off driving more often as our right legs weren’t used to driving a long stretch without cruise control. Gasoline was about $4.50-$5.00 US per gallon. Returning the rental at the Sofia Airport, the rental dude was busy and he haphazardly took the paperwork and said “OK … that’s it”. I sent Dave back out to get a return signature for the last time I returned a car in Europe I ended up with a bogus charge and it came down to my word in Arizona against the Europcar guy’s word in Croatia … and I couldn’t dispute it.
We cabbed to our Sofia hotel … it’s less than pristine, but it’s also less than a 10 minute walk to the train station. After spending over a week on the road the question is not if the mattress is hard, but rather how hard the mattress is. It always amazes me how familiar one feels in a place after only a short duration. When we first arrived in Sofia it was a total culture shock, but this time we know how to use the trams, we knew a restaurant to go to, we knew what to order on the menu, and of course we knew the nightly ritual of strolling along Vitosha Avenue. When we left Sofia eight days ago the evenings were still cool and required a jacket … now it’s much warmer. The snow that can be seen on Mount Vitosha is almost gone.
Tomorrow we catch a train at 7am; have a two hour layover in Rodopolis where we buy another train ticket to Drama; catch a bus from Drama to Kavala; catch a ferry to Thassos and then find our hotel in Limenas. We know there are too many variables for everything to go as planned and it will be the hardest day of our trip.
Sunday 5/17
We are up and on our way to the train station early dragging our 35 and 40 pound suitcases behind us (see, they are getting heavier already). The station is scary but also a great place to people watch, and prime examples were the ancient dude with the army jacket covered with medals and the Gestapo looking policemen who seem to be protecting themselves by hiding in a corner. Dave goes to find some coffee and I see one of the greedy station “helpers” notice me sitting with our luggage; but he stops short when I make eye contact with him and convey a “don’t mess with me I have been in Bulgaria for over a week now” look, and he moves on. I chuckled to myself at how good that felt. We had done our homework and knew what track our train would be leaving from, and when we boarded the two passenger car train we were in a very nice six person compartment that was clean and new. We naively took it as an omen that the day would go well.
Only one other woman was on our car and the second class car in front of us was about half full. We leave Sofia via the typically shabbier parts of a city that train stations everywhere travel and go past garbage strewn embankments and shanty towns that more than likely were Roma enclaves.
We headed south into the Rila Mountains, with the highest peaks still snowcapped. Passing small rural communities, we see the same house construction method as in Croatia. The homes are not wood framed but rather constructed with cement blocks. Later on if finances permit stucco and exterior paint is applied, but that stage seems to be seldom reached. What seemed to be cultivated fields of red poppies and swollen spring runoff fed streams gave a green lushness to the landscape.
We reached the border early and handed over our passports, but then sat for two hours with a guard at the rear exit of the train. All sorts of scenarios fueled by too many spy movies went through our minds and we actually discussed what steps one of us would take if the other was taken off the train. Finally an armed guard goes past our car with a middle aged woman and young man … we were relieved when our passports were returned, but now knew that our layover window to purchase the next train ticket was now closed. We traveled for less than a mile and stopped for the Greek border guards to check our passports, and continued on after they changed engines.
For once luck was on our side when we reached the small town of Rodopolis. The train we were to board was 15 minutes late …thank goodness, for otherwise we would have had to wait until 2 am for the next one and the waiting room was rather inhospitable with swallows flying in and out of their nest they had built in the corner. There was no first class on the next train and it was rather full, so it was a bit of an effort to manhandle our 40 and 45 pound suitcases down the narrow aisle already cluttered with other baggage. But we are still traveling!
We knew immediately when we had crossed the border between Bulgaria and Greece even though it was a rural area. The homes were larger and better built; the cultivated fields were larger; there were tractors working the fields; and not a single donkey cart was seen. After crossing the border we actually were traveling west to Rodopolis, and then our second train retraced the railroad line east between two huge mountain ridges. Before the end of WWI this area which extends to the Aegean Sea belonged to Bulgaria. But Bulgaria chose badly when deciding which side to be allied with during the war and both their land and their access to the sea were part of their reparations and given Greece. Greece is a more prosperous nation and Bulgaria is dealing financially with the double whammy of their skyrocketing costs of living since being admitted to the EU and the collapse of their socialistic system which guaranteed their medical and pension coverage.
Arriving in Drama I looked for the bus station which my research had told me was right across the street from the train station. Nope … I am becoming less and less enamored of the commercial guide books that are useful for general information and maps, but too often wrong with facts and generally biased on opinions and ratings. Dave goes to talk with a lady in a kiosk and after a lot of talking from both and a lot of pointing from her, he returns to say we could either do a 10 minute walk or a one euro bus ride to the station. We wisely chose the bus, for we would have been dragging our 45 and 50 pound suitcases at least 30 minutes and we wouldn’t have found it anyway. The bus station was fairly busy and we bought our tickets to Kavala.
Looking for the WC, I see a lady sitting at a table in front of the door with a pile of the awful brown toilet paper sheets and a dish with coins on it. I asked how much, didn’t understand the answer and went back to Dave to get his accumulated coinage. I had no idea what coins were on her plate for two reasons … Dave does that job when we travel but mostly because I didn’t have my glasses on. I put down a .2 Euro and she shook her head no … I added two .1 euros to the pile and made an “I really gotta go” face and she rolled her eyes and handed me one sheet of the brown stuff. And to make a perfect end to this little story, when I got inside it was the toilet dreaded by all females … the pit toilet!
The arriving bus was very nice with an extremely OCD driver who had neatly folded newspapers on the steps and before he pulled out he walked up and down the aisle making sure there was no trash. Someone had actually left a piece of paper in the netting on the seat in front of me and he gave me a nasty look when he removed it. Buses have a collector who takes tickets and makes change after you are on your way.
Our entrance to Kavala was amazing. There is a mountain ridge that runs right along the coast and the road twists and turns down a steep grade to the seaside city. It’s a very Italian port looking city and since the Greeks paint most things white it is clean and glistening in the sun. There is an old fortress with its ramparts built down to the water and we drive under an ancient aqueduct. It is a very lovely city and looks like it could have warranted more of our time. The bus drops us off at the harbor, where our plan is to find a Flying Dolphin to take us to Limenas on the island of Thassos. The ferries at Kavala go to Skala Prinos on Thassos, but I had made arrangements to stay at a hotel in Limenas, which could be reached by ferry from Keramoti, which is down the coast from Kavala or via the Flying Dolphin Catamaran from where we are in Kavala. I felt an obligation to go to Limenas because in emailing back and forth with the hotel they originally wanted me to wire them a deposit, but they nicely agreed to forgo that request when I explained how much it would cost to wire money and were reserving the room for us anyway. We were told to go to the other side of the harbor to find the Dolphin and upon reaching that side we were told that the Dolphin was on the side where we originally started … we finally found the catamaran, but it wasn’t operating anyway. Dave found a taxi and asked what the fare was to Keramoti, but I thought 30 Euros, or $42 US was excessive and in my exhausted delirium caused by the 50 and 55 pound bags I said no.
Back to the bus station we go and a bus was loading to leave for Keramoti right away, but we learn that we have to change buses at Christopolis … my decision to say no to the taxi is becoming more and more of a bad one. As I wait my turn to purchase our tickets, the ticket master was arguing with an old gypsy woman, and she tried again with the bus driver only this time she was joined by two men. We think she had found some bus ticket stubs and was trying to use them for another ride. We weren’t too stressed about where to get off the bus (which is generally the next disaster waiting to happen after you find the right bus to get on), for they all seem to end their route at a station. Arriving in Christopolis there was a 30 minute delay and seeing a café next door, the obvious conclusion was that it was time for a well earned beer. The beer had its desired calming effect since we had had nothing to eat except some awful cookies since 6:15 am. A Gypsy mother, daughter and son-in-law were on this leg of our bus trip and their wardrobe could be described as “eclectic”.
Arriving in Keramoti we go to the side of the bus to retrieve our belongings and see the bus driver verbally harassing the Gypsies as they grabbed several large bedding rolls, a duffel bag full of kitchen utensils and a satellite dish that looked more the worse for wear. We have seen these people treated badly several times already today … what are the reasons? Are there behaviors that warrant suspicion of them or are they just culturally ingrained prejudices?
We see the ferry loading and hurry as fast as our tired little legs can walk while pulling our 55 and 60 pound load. I love car ferries and enjoy the 30 minute ride watching the coast of Greece recede and the island of Thassos grow larger. My Hotel Vicky email said that it was a ten minute walk from the ferry, but after asking someone and they had no idea where it was we decided to taxi there. The cabbie wants to know how much I am paying for my stay and regales us on how expensive everything has gotten and then charges me 5 Euros for a 10 minute ride! It was good we took a taxi however, for we would never have found the hotel on our own.
As we approach our hotel a rather forlorn woman sits outside. There is no one at reception and no one appears after ringing the bell several times. The forlorn lady comes in and apologizes for her demeanor saying she does not feel well and goes outside to knock on another door, but still no proprietor. We have been traveling for 13 hours and have to wait 45 minutes until finally an older man comes in and goes to get who I immediately christen Mama Cass. It turns out that I have been communicating with her daughter and Mama Cass knows no English. She calls her daughter on the phone and hands the phone to me, and her daughter actually gives me attitude and tells me that her mother had been waiting all day for us … I nicely told her that it takes quite a while to get here from Sofia Bulgaria since it involved 2 trains, 4 buses, a boat and a taxi.
The room is nice enough and becomes nicer when we realize it has AC, for its hot and humid here. The wall shower here has a trough to try and keep the water from going everywhere. Even Dave is too exhausted to eat and we walk to a small grocery where he buys some olives from a friendly clerk who wanted to know how we had found Thassos, which is off the large scale tourism radar, and exactly why I chose to visit it.
As I said before, we knew today was going to be difficult, but it surpassed all expectations. Making connections are always more complicated than you expect and in hindsight we probably should have stopped and spent the night in Kavala. A travel day like today makes one doubt the sanity of independent traveling, but we are also proud of the fact that we persevered … and lived to laugh about it later.
Monday 5/18
Getting a late start in the morning, we find our way back to the ferry docks and have an espresso … ordering it with milk means it’s more than one gulp. I don’t understand how people can sit at cafes for hours with an espresso in front of them that at most is ¼ cup, and there are no free refills. We did some homework by finding an internet café for when we need one and we inquired about a one day car rental for tomorrow. The island is volcanic in origin and has a road that travels its entire circumference, but we want to visit a few of the inland mountain villages and do not want to spend half our day waiting for a bus. Becoming familiar with the town we explore on the way back to our hotel and one street over from where we are staying there are chickens, turkeys and a flock of sheep grazing under the ever present olive trees, and we are staying in the capital of the island. There are also fig and cherry trees and the islanders love roses, for they are in bloom everywhere.
I intended on it being a lazy recuperative day and we stopped for some bread and cheese for lunch and asked the clerk to pick out a nice wine for us. Returning to the hotel we saw Mama Cass and I retrieved Dave’s passport and tried to pay my bill … she wrote the number 10 on a piece of paper and I assumed that was what time her daughter would be there … or it could be the number of husbands she has had for all I know. We found the old harbor in town and spent several hours sitting under the trees just watching the island of Thassos slowly go by. Dinner was near the old harbor at Takis Tavern. My meal was a beet salad and some wonderful moussaka and Dave had some sausages that were more like meatballs. The owner came over to talk with us for he had lived in the US once, and he brought some complimentary liquor that is made on the island called tsipouro.
Now that’s hospitality!
We stopped so Dave could learn more about Greek olives from his new friend the grocery clerk and ended the evening sitting on our tiny Greek balcony with some Greek olives and Greek wine. Nice
Tuesday 5/19
The plan for today is to rent a car and drive around the island which is 97 Km or about 60 miles and visit a few of the mountain villages. We arrive at the car rental at 9:20am and of course it is closed … either island mentality or bad business practices. I am not sure what the speed limits are here, but driving rules seem to be lax. While waiting at the rental agency we watched a guy stop his car in traffic, run into a store to buy his breakfast and return to his car … and the other cars didn’t seem to mind. We wait 15 minutes and then go to Europcar. Yesterday we were told the lowest possible price was 35 Euro, but today the impossible must have happened and its 31 Euro!
Leaving Limenas we passed a huge marble quarry. It wasn’t the only one we saw on the island and monstrously large blocks of the marble could be seen loading onto the ferries on flatbeds. The first town we encounter is Panagia, a 300 year old mountain village roofs made of overlapping stones. We stopped at a corner café which had some wonderful smelling meat grilling on a spit and had 2 Greek coffees, which definitely were not our cup of tea. There is a large fountain in the center of the village that legend has if a woman drinks from it she will become pregnant within a year. Stay tuned.
Thassos is the most northern of the Aegean Island group and not arid like other Greek islands due to its location near the coast. It is often called the Emerald Isle because of its abundance of green growth. We next stopped at Monastery Archagelou, which is really a nunnery. There was a strict dress code of no short pants so before entering both Dave and I had to put on roomy elasticized pants and skirt that are kept at the gate. The grounds were immaculate with blooming flowers and since the monastery was perched on a hillside the view looking out over the water was expansive. The nuns wore a black scarf headpiece wrapped and tied in a very complicated manner and of course long skirts. Someone must have died and left a lot of money to the order for new hand laid stone walls and a large church were being built.
Theologos was a village where we planned on eating lunch, but the narrow cobblestone streets were a maze and we couldn’t find anywhere to park so we lunched in Potos. The meal was unexceptional but the entertainment was a group of cats aggressively waiting for a handout and whose leader was undoubtedly the ugliest feline I have ever seen. We drove up a rather precarious road to Sotiros, which is basically a ghost town. A few hardy and intrepid souls are rebuilding and the view over the water to the mainland was definitely a reason to do so, but it would be a spooky place to live. The only other people we saw were an older woman in a wheelchair and a middle aged couple with her arriving in a taxi. We assumed that she no longer lives in the house, but was returning for a visit to the home that held memories for her.
After returning the rental car we decided to eat our leftover cheese and bread and some baklava that we bought for dinner in our room. Dave wanted to arrange for a taxi in the morning to get us back to the ferry and we asked someone at the car rental office to call for us but there was no answer. We then asked her to write a note for Mama Cass in Greek explaining what we wanted, but Mama still seemed to be confused about calling after reading the note. I was enjoying watching this effort from our room since the stress of not getting somewhere on time belongs entirely to Dave, and I saw him next go over to a man tilling his garden to see if he could help. Dave came upstairs convinced that Mama Cass kept saying 7 am instead of 7:45 am as the time for pickup.
The entertainment for the evening was watching a weather girl on the television do provocative poses while she predicted rain over the continent.
Wednesday 5/20
We were ready at 6:45 for what we anticipated as to be the 7am pickup. We waited until 7:15 and then had to start walking the ½ mile to the port in order to be there in time for our ferry. At this point we knew the shortest way, so off we went dragging our 60 and 65 pound luggage. That it was early was in our favor for few cars were on the streets … sidewalks are pretty much nonexistent.
It’s always enjoyable to watch the ferries disembark, with delivery trucks and construction vehicles rushing out of the bowels of the ship like kids on the last day of school. As we made our way up the gangway of the ship Dave thought he saw and heard a taxi driver yelling at us … was it the cab that Mama Cass had ordered? We’ll never know and I decided it had to be considered a small casualty of the language barrier and a possible end result of Dave’s “I don’t want to be late to the airport” anticipatory stress. As we sat in the lounge area a whole busload of Brits came onboard. They looked so relaxed and I realized it was because they hadn’t been stressed out waiting for a taxi; they didn’t have to drag their luggage a half mile to the ferry; they didn’t have to make sure they were buying the right ticket at the kiosk; or have to wrestle a 65 and 70 pound bag up two flights of narrow steep steps. It would be nice to have someone else do all for us, but then they wouldn’t have the right to feel rather smug.
Back on the mainland we check at the bus station and there is no bus to the “Alexander the Great International Airport”. So we have to cab. We have a long wait and this airport still asks for your ID when you get your boarding pass, checks it again when you pass through security and on the slight chance that you have morphed into another person, asks once more when you hand them your boarding pass 20 feet away. It’s a full flight and we fly over the island where we have spent the past 3 days on the way to Athens. No wonder the Greeks are the best sailors in the world … the country is all islands and coastline with rugged inland mountains.
The one thing Americans do better than Europeans is deplane. It must be the extensive standing in line training that is received in kindergarten. All flights within Greece go through Athens, and to fly from Kavala to Santorini we have a 3 hour layover. Making our approach into Athens the city below us was a gigantic uninterrupted sprawl. The airport restaurants are just as pricey as their American counterparts plus we have a hankering for some American style grease so we grab a hamburger and do the airport people watching thing to kill time. We know this is where the trip will get expensive … eating in Bulgaria was cheap. . We hear a lot of English being spoken now, plus French and German
Multiple security checks done by people who are intent on making sure that my sweater is not a threat to world peace never brings out the best in me. But I digress … I am sure I have already expounded on the pure silliness of the falsely perceived safety net of the security checks now enforced if not in person than in previous diatribes. It’s grandiose, self serving and completely liability based.
The flight from Athens to Santorini is 45 minutes and we were handed our beverage at the same time we were told to stow our seat tables to prepare for landing. I think it’s mentally always a bit dicey to land in a confined space, but I’m happy to report that we managed to touch down without falling off the edge of the island. There was mass confusion at the airport exit as taxi drivers vied for fares and we doubled up with another couple for a hair raising ride to our hotel.
Our first impressions of Santorini were disappointing as we passed one touristy tacky souvenir store after another and the traffic was horrendous (but no donkey carts). The entrance to the hotel was in the rear and we walked through the building to our room, and as we opened our balcony doors and saw the caldera in front of us we knew immediately why this island is one of the most famous in the world. The sun was low in the sky and the other islands in the caldera could be seen in the evening mist.
Santorini, or Thira as the Greeks call it is one of the Cyclades, the rugged islands of the Aegean Sea whose cliffs have the white sugar cube houses terraced down them. Thira is crescent shaped, and along with its sister island of Thirassia across the caldera, is all that’s left of a violent volcanic explosion around 1450 BC, and is thought to be the origin of the myth of the lost continent of Atlantis. Within the caldera of the ancient volcano are two islets … Palea Kameni which appeared in 157 AD and Nea Kameni which rose from the sea in the early 18th century. The last minor eruption was 60 years ago on Nea Kameni, so the volcano is still considered active and the island is still growing. Anyone who has ever seen a Greece travel brochure has seen a photograph of this island … probably the village of Ia with a blue domed church in the foreground.
We are located in Firostefani, which is beside Fira, the capital of the island. We settle in and walk along Nomikou Street which is the walkway in front of our hotel and the also the path along the edge of the caldera. Steep stairways lead to buildings below us on the cliffs; some having infinity edged swimming pools cantilevered over emptiness. The flat roofs are pristine and considered a part of a building’s design for they are visible to those looking from above.
Although it was much warmer than usual on Thassos, the evening air here is chilly with the wind blowing across the water. We do a random stop for dinner and it turned out to be a good choice, for we had the best meal so far on the trip. Run by a family who lives off season in New York City, the owner could not have been more hospitable or engaging. I ordered tzatziki, a yogurt cucumber dip and keftedes, meatballs in a tomato sauce with a lot of paprika. Dave had dolmades, or stuffed grape leaves and a lamb dish. Everything was delicious and we were brought two of all the starters we ordered. At the end of our meal a honey yogurt dessert was brought with the check. Did I forget to mention that we ate looking out across the waters of the Aegean Sea as the sun set?
Completely dark when we returned to our room, we fell asleep to the sound of the wind whistling through our not completely airtight balcony doors.
Thursday 5/21
This morning when we awaken we can see the white homes on the island of Thirassia and a cruise ship has docked below us through the night and its tenders are moving the day trippers to the island. Our nightly rate here includes a breakfast which is served on the patio and when we return to our room there are two more cruise ships in the caldera. I do some laundry for there is a drying rack on the balcony and with the updrafts from the water there will not be a problem with the clothing drying.
Today we explore Fira which until dinnertime is way overcrowded with day trippers from the cruise ships … I can’t imagine what it is like here in peak season. We wind along the main street past tourist trinkets and also shops with very high end items and take side alleys which many times end up as a dead end or an entrance to another hotel. We find the main bus station and an office where we buy our tickets for the return to the mainland on the Blue Star Ferry Line. We also purchased tickets for a day trip to Thirassia and the two volcanic cones.
We had decided that since meals were going to be rather expensive here on Santorini that we would upscale a bit and have some nice dinners. The restaurant where we dined was called Salsa and its décor was as delicious as its food …our meal included local wines, white eggplants, and cherry tomatoes. Eating at 7 pm, which is quite early for Greek dining, we sat alone outside with our view being the panorama of the opposite side of the island. I was suitably impressed when the young waiter asked “would you like the chef to prepare your entrée now?” after we had finished our salads.
Walking from our hotel to the restaurant, we followed an old lava path and found ourselves in a conclave of old walls and cave dwellings which are dug into the lava rock. Santorini pretty much consists of hotels and restaurants, but what fascinated me about the island was that right beside or behind the mass modern consumerism there would be these ancient structures. Walking back from the restaurant I saw a church and as I usually will try a church door to see if it opens, it did and I went in and sat down. It was a convent and I sat there alone listening to the nuns chanting their evening prayer service. Nice
Our evening entertainment was watching the cruise ships which were lit up like Christmas trees in the harbor. There were six of them and as we sat with a cup of tea they quietly slipped out of the caldera, one after the other. I could definitely get used to this.
Friday 5/22
The plan today is to walk the six miles to Ia, which is at the end of the crescent shaped Thira. The walk was hard for it included trekking up two good size hills, walking on uneven lava stone paths and carefully treading over broken lava which makes it difficult to find a firm footing … and did I mention it was really hot? We have been doing a lot of walking to train for a future hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. We know that we cannot hike down and back up in the same day, so it requires a reservation to stay at Phantom Ranch along the Colorado at the bottom, and hopefully I will be able to get a reservation for a year from this October (they are hard to come by and only available 13 months in advance). This coming October we plan on a trial run by hiking down to Indian Springs, which is only down to the first plateau.
It took a bit of recovery time once we got to Ia, so we aided the healing with some Mythos and olives. I am not an olive eater, but olives here are a different animal. After exploring the byways of Ia we were too tired to wait around for sunset so we bused back to Firostanfani.
Our gustatory pleasure for dinner was at a restaurant called Vanilla and it included a spicy feta and manouri cheese dip, a balsamic reduction chicken with tomatoes and onions and a lamb obasco. We sat and watched the sun dip below a distant island and licked our lips at the same time.
Saturday 5/23
We walked down the steps to the Fira’s port for smaller boats today, for our tour of the caldera. The larger ships and ferries dock at a different location. The walkway is used by the donkeys that carry people up the steps. Needless to say, the walkway was both odorific and slippery with fresh and accumulated past donkey droppings. A gust of wind off the water would pick up pieces of straw … and we both knew where the straw was before it was packed between the old lava rocks. All in all, the 15 minute hike down the terraced steps was not at all a pleasant experience. There is also a cable car in Fira, and it subsidizes the old way of traveling on donkeys with a portion of its profits.
Our first stop after boarding the small boat is the islet of Nea Kameni, which is only 500 years old. After finding it hard to make a foothold while walking on crushed lava yesterday when we hiked to Ia, I wasn’t keen on a repeat performance. Also the lava cinder cone paled in comparison with our volcano experience on the big island of Hawaii, so I found a bit of shade to people watch. The older islet, Palea Kameni, which appeared in AD 157, was the next stop and as our little boat jockeyed for position with all the others laden with tourists, about half of those onboard jumped off to swim to the hot thermals. The mud found there was supposed to be therapeutic and many rubbed it over their faces, but they found when they tried to wash it off that it had stained their skin.
The rest of the afternoon was spent at the port of Thirassia. We would have liked to have walked the steps to the top, but still a bit sore after yesterday’s hike and still remembering that the steps from Fira were rather stinky, we spent our time near the water with lunch and wandering. After a stop at Ia on our return to Fira we now had to get to the top of the cliff. Walking was out and I considered the donkeys, but I had read online that their fleas like to travel north, so we did the cable car.
We decided to wing it for dinner and picked up dinner at a grocery and the evening ended with another gorgeous sunset.
Sunday 5/24
We had seen four wheelers all over the place and considered renting one, but decided that our mortality was more important than a bit of fun, so we planned on using the local buses, which charge 1.4 Euro per segment, no matter how long that segment is. While at the bus stop in Firostafani a woman starts to talk to me in Greek and I hear her say Kavala and Thassos, and she seemed pleased when I told her that we had been there, or at least that’s what her facial expression implied. The trip is approximately one mile to the main bus station in Fira and we planned on then getting another bus to Pirgos, an inland village. But when we looked at the bus schedule it’s much more complicated than we would like as there is no direct route so we do a change of plans and decide to go directly to Akrotiri. The bus to Akrotiri is standing room only and it’s an hour until the next one arrives, so we share a cab with another young couple from Boston, who planned on spending their day at the beach.
The cab drops us in the middle of the small village and we ask what direction to walk to the ruins of what is called “Minoan Pompeii”. No human remains have been found, so it is assumed that the people living there had enough warning to avoid the cataclysmic 1450 BC explosion of the volcano. It is also believed that this explosion destroyed the Minoan culture on Crete. We were told that the citizens of Thira are not concerned about being surprised by volcanic activity for they can foretell in advance by the color of the water in the caldera, for the escaping underground sulfur gas makes the water coloration a deep blue green.
The walk was ¾ mile, but downhill and I had brought an umbrella for sun cover. We weren’t too shocked to find the site closed due to “technical problems” … typical snafu. The closed sign did look like it had been there for quite a while, however.
We continue walking down the hill to the beach, which wasn’t much of a beach to speak of, but in a nice quiet cove. There was a small café with umbrella covered tables atop a jetty into the water and we sat listening to lapping waves and enjoying a gentle breeze with a Mythos … aaaah! It was a place that felt very real … not a single dancing donkey hawked at tourist stands could be seen. There were small grape vines everywhere, but they were not tied up, rather kept low to the ground and protected from the wind by dried vines that are wrapped in a circular fashion around them.
Yesterday morning at breakfast we had been told how wonderful Black Beach was and that the umbrellas and lounges were free to use and owned by a local restaurant. We asked how to get to the closer Red Beach and literally trekked up a cliff and down the other side and when we got there found the water to be cold, the sand gritty, and no lounges or umbrellas. The motivation to go to a beach was mostly to use the bathing suits we had packed, for we are not “bask in the sun” people. Thirty minutes later we head back to the bus stop to return first to Fira, and then bus to our hotel in Firostefani.
We returned to the very good Flame for dinner. The island turns away from a westerly view in Fira, and I left the restaurant before Dave and walked towards our hotel to be able to catch our last island sunset. We spent our last Santorini night enjoying the caldera light show.
Monday 5/25
At this point of a trip I am counting down the number of times I have to repack.
There are many levels of packing involved with an extended trip:
Daily excursion packing … what are you going to need before you get back to your room?
Rental Car packing ……… a semi pack since you can put loose items in the trunk
Travel Day Packing ………condensed and limited access to your belongings / items are needed that
entertain during delays
Airplane Packing …………security measures must be considered and dangerous items like cuticle scissors
must be in luggage to be checked
Selective Packing …………used during the last leg of the trip that included only what will be used
Final Packing ……………..A combination of airplane packing plus the added factor that nothing is clean
enough to wear anyway / everything is rolled or jammed into the luggage
I don’t think I have mentioned my disillusionment with the music we have heard on this trip. Most of the recorded music that we heard was American … one night I know I was the only person that knew the words to Gene Pitney’s “A Town Without Pity”. What we have heard in both countries is what we considered to be Turkish in tone and not melodic to our western ears. The music videos we saw on television in Bulgaria were very sensual and erotic and seemed out of place in a country where we found many women to be dressed conservatively. In Greece we were expecting to hear strings playing while Anthony Quinn danced as in “Zorba the Greek” … but only heard it being played in tourist bazaars selling CDs.
At breakfast our final morning we finally met a couple that was enjoyable to talk with. Australians, they had just arrived on the island and we answered their questions about Thira from our stay experience. If we had met them previously I would have asked them to go to dinner or on an excursion. There was an American couple yesterday from Wyoming, but they were too busy trying to impress another couple to even say hello. We have missed being able to talk with people.
Our ferry leaves in the afternoon so we stash our bags behind the hotel desk and bus to Ia to wander a bit more and have lunch. We have enjoyed the Greek food and I prefer the starters over the meat entrees. Overlooking the water we shared a plate of olives and I had pastitsio again … and of course some Mythos. We bus back and our hotel has a van to transfer us to the main port (I learned too late that they would have picked us up from the airport also).
The road snaked down the cliff to the water and when we arrived we found organized confusion, with buses, vans, cars and people everywhere, so we joined them dragging our 70 and 75 pound bags. We found our way to our Blue Star Ferry mostly by luck, and although I thought we had purchased “airplane” seats, we were pointed towards 1st class seating. It was a very comfortable and large lounge that was mostly empty. I could barely feel any movement, but I took a Dramamine just in case, for we were going to be on this ferry for eight hours. We felt a little out of place in our sparsely filled lounge while the rest of the ferry was teeming with thousands of people, but since we had to show our ticket every time we left and returned we were able to wander around the boat and not worry about our backpacks that we left at our seats. We passed several islands on the way and it was pure entertainment to watch the boarding and unloading of both people and goods when we stopped at Naxos and Paros. All in all it was an enjoyable trip with the notable exception of an extremely grumpy steward who obviously loved his job that we had to deal with.
We talked for a while to a man who currently lives in Oregon and runs a fitness center. He had just spent time visiting an old friend on Paros and was excited about his decision to completely alter his life and move there. It was textbook midlife crisis.
Upon boarding the ferry there were open shelving where you could place your luggage. We did so and both of us thought about that decision the entire trip as we saw hundreds of people pour out of the boat at the two stops, so we were delighted to find them both still sitting where we placed them. I wouldn’t do that again.
It was almost midnight and the unloading dock was in a not so friendly looking part of town so we took the first cab that said he would take us to our hotel for 20 Euros. An outrageous toll, but I had read to expect to pay 20-25 Euros. We are staying at an Intercontinental Hotel, the only time we have gone upscale on our trip but I had snagged this 4.5 star hotel for $79 US per night on Hotwire. It was needless to say very nice and when we were offered a “nicer” room for an additional $40 per night, we weren’t interested. After some of the places we have stayed over the past three weeks that actually cost more, our room was perfectly fine to us even though it was only on the 2nd floor and although it didn’t offer transport to the airport and was surrounded by rather run down apartment buildings, it had a real mattress which we had been fantasizing about for days. Another drawback was that we were told at reception that breakfast was 32 Euros for one and there was no place to eat within walking distance.
Tuesday 5/26
Of course our main objective this morning was to explore the acropolis. I asked the doorman how to get to the subway and was told that it was about the same distance to walk to the Acropolis as to walk to the subway. He said it was easy and we couldn’t miss it … I knew from experience that phrase gave us finding it the kiss of death. We ended up very lost and uneasy for a bit. We were told to walk up a hill and knowing the Parthenon was above the city we started up the first hill we found. The trail was rough and no other people were near except for a man walking his dog who seemed to be keeping too close for a while and another who was living in a makeshift shelter. We finally got to a vantage point where we could see the Parthenon on the NEXT hill. Who knew there were two hills?
We knew we were in the right location when we saw buses and hordes of people. I had read that it is unavoidable to visit the Parthenon without crowds. It’s always fascinating to me to physically visit a place that one has seen enough photos of that it is ingrained in one’s memory. We were charged 12 Euros for the privilege of walking around the building … I asked for pamphlet material but was told there was none.
There is no disputing that the Acropolis is impressive. What one does not perceive unless on site is that it is located on a huge rock outcropping with sheer walls which of course made the settlements that have been there since 5000 BC defensible. There was also fresh well water at one time. In classical times, when the population had swelled to 250,000 people, the populace moved down from the Acropolis to what is now the Agora or Forum, and the top of the hill became their religious center. No structures are impenetrable of course and the Persians did damage in 480 BC, but most of the ravished temple we see today was caused by the Venetians in 1687. They were trying to capture the Acropolis from the Turks and the entire roof and much of the interior was blown up when a shell exploded the gunpowder and munitions that the Turks were storing there. The building is of course being restored, and I seriously doubt if it will ever be finished. There is a school of thought that instead of having the interminable restoration projects, why not just rebuild it. There are pieces of marble sitting around everywhere and I assume there is an organized system of identification for these pieces of antiquity, but I am doubtful. There was no signage, but I had anticipated that and had printed off my own information as a guide. The museum next to the Parthenon was closed due to all of its contents had been moved to the new Acropolis Museum … http://www.newacropolismuseum.gr/. I had been reading about this museum for quite a while but of course Murphy’s Law came into play and its opening was being delayed until a month after we left Greece. We could see the museum below us and its architecture was impressive and although controversial, that is generally true with cutting edge contemporary buildings that become art themselves.
Below the Acropolis we walked through the Forum or ancient Agora, and we had the same reaction as we did when we explored the Forum in Rome … hard to visualize. We laughed about some of our experience with “guides” who give misinformation at best. We overheard a guide telling her small group that the walls had “never been breached”, and one of her obviously logically minded group replied, “Well how did they get inside then?” But now ground where once Plato and Socrates once walked had been walked upon by Dave and Judy.
The Plaka is the old town of Athens. Archeologists would love to dig it up for the treasured antiquities that are buried beneath, but that could be said of most of Athens. We walked through some of the pedestrian only narrow streets and found tourist trap after tourist trap. There are undoubtedly wonderful traditional shops and restaurants located within the Plaka, but we were not interested in walking hours to find them. The dinner we had was average at best … they even switched the beer we ordered on us … we know our Mythos by now!
We used the new metro system to get back to our hotel but still had to walk a good distance through a not nice area. Originally we planned on taking the metro to the airport, but there is a detour now that involves a bus, and we now also know that it would be next to impossible to take our 75 and 80 pound suitcases along the route to the subway that we just walked. A second option was to take a cab downtown and then get on a bus … that would involve backtracking and extra time. We inquired of the concierge about using a taxi and were told that the best way to get to the airport was via a taxi and the cost would be approximately 35 Euro, which was at the time about $45 US! I asked her what the second best way would be, but Europeans never seem to enjoy American sarcasm as much as I do.
Our hotel is a pricey place and we have continuously felt out of place during our comings and goings since the lobby area and the adjacent sitting area is always filled with both well heeled and dressed people. When we returned this afternoon there were news cameras stationed outside, and a few hours later when we walked out they were still there and a huge limo with curtained windows was parked outside the entrance. We never found out who the important dude was inside.
At nightfall we went to the roof to have a drink on the outside terrace. The bill for two drinks was 35 Euro. I have never had a drink in my life that cost that much, but the service was impeccable and the gin and tonic outstanding! And did I mention that the view to our left was the Parthenon magically bathed in light? It took a bit of resolve to decide not to have the second drink (and I DO mean resolve for the drink was mixed very strong). When we had left Santorini we were a bit sad to be leaving Greece soon. Our wistful attitude was cured by the frenetic and frantic Athens … but Athens redeemed itself tonight with that romantic view.
Wednesday 5/2
On the way to Syntagma Square this morning we stopped and asked the doorman to order us a cab to the airport for tomorrow. Every major Greek event that has been either mourned or celebrated has happened in this square and it is the location of the changing of the guard in front of the Parliament Building. I am always impressed by the solemnity and respect of these ceremonies held in front of Unknown Soldier Memorials. The young soldier’s uniforms were so unique I researched them upon my return and found that they are the Evzones, light infantry and mountain units of the Greek Army; but today the name refers to the ceremonial unit. Their uniform has evolved from the clothes worn by the klephts who fought the Ottoman or Turkish occupation of Greece. Klephts, as it turns out, were Greek mountain people who resisted the Turks by fleeing taxes or debts and reprisals from Ottoman officials. The Turks quite predictably weren’t crazy about that behavior and called them Klephts, which meant “thieves”. These klephtic bands participated in some form in the Greek War of Independence, 1821-1829. I delved a bit more and found that the word kleptomania is derived from the same Greek root word. The internet is truly fascinating at times!
Next on the agenda since the new Acopolis Museum was not yet opened was the National Archaelogy Museum. It only took asking four times and backtracking once to find it, but it was worth the hassle. It had an impressive collection and I saw some sculptures that I remember studying in college. There were English descriptives which was wonderful, but it was too much to absorb in one visit, for a museum visit in any country somehow exhausts just by being on ones feet for several hours.
We planned on taking the metro back to the Plaka, wander a bit and then have a nice meal for our last night in Athens plus our last night of this trip. But plans changed when we ran into an Athens pickpocket. The location of the crime was typical … a crowded metro. I had my bag in front of me with both arms around it and had just told Dave to be careful … when we got separated in the crush; and when he was focused on staying near me he felt a hand coming out of his pocket. He lost his drivers license, his credit cards and $100 US. We both knew the items were gone for good but wanted to report it to the police anyway. First I tried to report it at the metro, and they were of no help at all. Then we tried to find a policeman, and when we finally did he told us to go to the police station, and gave directions which were useless. Finally finding it in an alley we were told to go to the 4th floor where we sat down in front of a dude who could have cared less. He said we were at the wrong police station and gave us more useless directions. We metroed back and walked way too long to find the second police station and were told to go to the 3rd floor this time … where we joined the happy group already assembled to report their lost belongings. To pass the time while being ignored we shared our tales of woe … a woman from Florida had had her purse opened … a German woman who had her purse slit open with a knife … a man with a velcro fastened pocket on the leg of his pants had his billfold in it opened and just the paper money removed withour his knowing (those thieves are talented). We eventually filled out forms which they copied and I asked how they could notify us if our belongings were found if they didn’t ask for our home addresses … “I know” was the reply. There was not even a pretense that an effort would be made.
Wandering the Plaka and eating a good meal was out of the question now and we metroed back to our hotel to report the stolen cards, stopping at a grocery on the way to buy some cheese and crackers for dinner. I also threw a chocolate bar in the bag for medicinal purposes. When I had called the credit card companies to report that we would be out of the country two of them said they had toll free numbers to use, but they didn’t work. Calling the companies was not only a hassle but very very expensive … $75 US ! We were not having fun. Not wanting any further difficulties I went downstairs to examine my bill and saw seven phone call charges on our bill instead of four … when I explained that the calls did not all go through the first time I was told that they “would take my word for it” and would remove four Euros … I didn’t lose my temper but explained that we have a phrase in our country to describe their actions … insult to injury. When I next asked the manager to finalize my bill for payment, her response was “tomorrow morning”. “Fine” I said innocently, “but the credit card you have on file right now has been cancelled” … and she chnaged her mind.
I was frustrated at the difficulty in contacting credit card companies and the hotel for their callowness, but mostly I was angry at being violated and being made to feel vulnerable. It’s time to go home.
Thursday 5/28
I had read that cabs do not like to take trips to the airport because they can possibly have a long wait for a return fare. That is why I asked the doorman yesterday to have one ordered for us, but he had not done so and we were getting a bit nervous about the time as we waited. When one finally arrived the driver was very nice and pointed out some locations along the way and when asked talked about the pros and cons of having the 2004 Olympics in Athens.
Thank goodness we didn’t lose our passports yesterday or we wouldn’t be flying home today. Our plane is almost empty so we have room to spread out … it makes a 10 ½ hour flight somewhat better. It took at least an hour to get through customs and security in Philadelphia and we were able to call our children and have a PennsylvanianYing Ling while we waited for our second flight to Phoenix. The second leg was on a brand new plane that had a bit more leg room but no screen to show a movie … and we didn’t even get peanuts flying across the country. The airport shuttle got us and our 80 and 85 pound suitcases home about 10 pm so it made it easy to attempt to get back onto our normal schedule.
Time has passed between when we returned from our trip and the typing of this journal account of our experiences. As with all things, time heals. Looking back on our latest experiment in being able to navigate independently through unfamiliar lands, as usual the best becomes better and the worst becomes palatable and even enhanced when given a humerous slant. Bulgaria was a hard country to visit in many ways, but then the country and its peoples have had a hard time throughout history. Greece was visually stunning and a culinary delight, but I still harbor some antagonism towards Athens. My hindsight on this trip that is troubling for me is that although we fully understand and expect to pay for services and add to a country’s tourism economy, the pay / services ratio seems to have crossed a line and we felt that we were being taken advantage of many times.
That said, we still have a passion for visiting places that exist beyond restaurant franchises and trendy stores, and are already discussing where we will go next.
If interested, photos of my trip can be viewed at www.webshots.com/user/dj9971
Advertisement
Tot: 0.088s; Tpl: 0.027s; cc: 5; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0471s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
