I woke up pretty early again, so headed out to see what I could see in the early AM light.
Turned out the answer was Not Much, although I tried to track down some ruins and drove through lots of local little villages, not taking many pictures, but out having a great AM.
But Where Are the Cows?
I did learn that some archaeological sites marked on the map have a resonance with the old joke about the grade school kid who turns in a blank piece of paper to the art teacher.
The caption at the top of the page reads “Cows Eating Grass”
The teacher asks where the grass is, and is told the cows ate it all.
The teacher asks where the cows are and is told the cows aren’t dumb enough to hang around where there’s no grass.
And at these sites, it’s often where something was rather than where something is, which is a notion that got reinforced this AM when I was searching for something called Vivi, near Pombia, and none of the Pombians (including the cops) had ever heard of it.
Finally a guy they found who spoke some English told me that the cows had eaten all the grass and had left. “Nothing there,” he said; “all gone.”
I’m saving the two big places for early this PM when the light will be ideal, so after about five hours of deliberate aimlessness and criss-crossing the immediate area, I went to the big Ethnographic Museum up the main road a little ways.
A really nice museum— once you found it. There were signs in Greek and English out on the highway, but once you got to town you were on your own. The Rough Guide said it was behind the church, so I walked around the church a little, asked a woman from the neighborhood and there it was.
To GPS or Not to GPS
I found myself thinking about GPS some more. . . .
I mean, it would remove the need to get out and ask about a thousand people per trip where something is--- including me-- which would mean even more solo travel— not having a thousand people try to help you, but it would certainly be more efficient.
And I guess the up-side of being on the road in a place (or two: Turkey and Crete) for three months is that you don’t really have to be terribly efficient, and you can foodle around and get lost and get people to help you and have thousands of little “Where the hell am I?” conversations with people, and that’s a terrific part of the rich experience of travel.
But I’d certainly use it in big cities, getting into and back out of the places--- trying to find museums, for example.
In Cannakale, Turkey, Kim and I did about three different three-kilometer laps looking for the big regional museum before we found it.
We’d head west on the main road into town and the sign would say “Ethno-graphic Museum” and point right, and we’d turn right and there wouldn’t be any more signs but there were divided streets (so no U-turns) and one-way streets, and after running out of town when went north where the sign pointed, then heading back east, we’d come back west, hit the same sign, and turn right again. . . .
And in the first block, across the street, with the sign on the building hidden by all the damn trees, and the grounds blocked by the solid row of cars and trucks, was the museum. . . . .
As a person who thinks in systems, I’d make a couple of little changes to the antiquities signage policy.
First of all, within a kilometer, I’d put the distance on the sign (some few places do that, at least here in Greece), so it would read
“Ethnographic Museum .3”
And then on the fence of the place itself, maybe every 25 meters or so, I’d just have a sign (in the same color scheme as all the antiquities signs all over— white or yellow letters on brown signs) that read
Ethnographic Museum
It may be another aspect of the 95% environment I’ve seen (and commented on) over here a lot.
Ethnographic Museum
The museum here was a really good one, especially for a regional one, and good exhibits and traffic flow and organization and all that, and all the little explanations were in Greek and English and large enough to read (a big plus).
And it had old looms and rugs and farm tools and bee-hives and donkey saddles and costumes and weapons and enough things that you could just about equip a village--- you could round up some people who wanted to live traditionally here on Crete, give them all the gear, and send them out. They’d have all the gear they needed.
Playing the Palace
After a little nap back in the room where I was avoiding the hottest part of the day, I hit Festos, the biggest Minoan site on this part of the island— it was a palace complex---
One soccer-field size Grand Courtyard, wide staircases for ceremonies, actual place buldings, store-houses . . . about what you’d expect for a regional capitol.
And I’d delayed long enough that there was hardly anyone else there and the light was pretty good, too.
Here are the (pretty typical) fields in the plain below the palace complex.
Arrested at the Airport?
Back in the NE corner of the place I was nosing around, and saw a piece of a terra-cotta jar on the ground about two thirds the size of my palm.
It was part of the lip of the jar which would have been a foot or more in diameter, based on the curve, and had some design on the outside in addition to the shallow parallel grooves on the inside from the potter’s fingers.
I washed it off with some of my water and it looked even more interesting to me.
There was a group of American high-school students (one from Portland) being shown around by an English archaeologist, and I asked him if he thought it was authentic, and he did, so I took it to the entrance and showed it to a staff person there who spoke a little English.
I told him exactly where I’d found it (I’d photographed it and marked it on a map of the place) and he said it was authentic (about 3750 years old) but that it had virtually no value as there were lots (and lots) of such items in the drawers in the headquarters of the Italian archaeologists on site, and that he’d probably just put it back out on the site.
I said I brought it up to him to prevent it leaving in some tourist’s pants pocket, and he said that the authorities at airports, etc., look for such items.
He couldn’t give it to me to take home as he had no authority to do that, but that if it were up to him I could just have it.
You Sleep in a Fish?
After getting the business of the pottery shard dealt with, he asked about my trip and where I was from and how old I was all that.
After all that, he asked where I was staying locally.
I told him I had a little domatia in Kalimari, about 5 km. away.
He asked incredulously, “You sleep in a fish?” and then said “Kalimari” again and make eating gestures.
It was then I realized my error, and said “Kamilari” and that seemed to make a little more sense to him. . . .
And here’s the actual place-- €23 a night, so about $60 for two nights. Very new, very clean, and it’s a three-star room (shower pan, shower hose bracket, and a fridge).
Current digs
It’s the corner room at the top of the stairs— there’s a nice balcony and windows on two sides, standard Greek Island colors, and there’s a market and a taverna with wi-fi across the street.
The Hole in the Wall (well, maybe the Narrow Street) Gang
It’s also where the local gang hangs out every night, next door to the market, outside another taverna (no tourists at this place and no damn wi-fi either). You pretty much have to sit next to the outside wall, in a narrow, and traffic (such as there is) goes by very slowly on the narrow little one-lane street.
Here's what the gang hide-out looks like without the gang-- in the AM.
And here’s the neighbor woman in her garden across the street (and behind a garden wall) from the gang.
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