The Beginning of the End

We took our last trip at the end of the previous week on Friday and Saturday, this time flying from Athens to Thessaloniki, the second-largest city in Greece. Since I have spent almost a month in Athens, it was eye-opening traveling to another major city in Greece. Athens is not only significantly larger than Thessaloniki, but it is much more cosmopolitan. Athens reminds me of New York: it's really an international megapolis, and though strewn with Classical and Medieval ruins it is on the whole very new. Thessaloniki is industrial and working class, the Baltimore to Athens' New York. Additionally, it is a medieval city. It has a large number of churches, many of which still function, as well its medieval/Ottoman fortifications, which include the city walls as well some very impressive towers.


One other thing you should probably know about Thessaloniki is that it has a much warmer climate than Athens. Although Athens is also a port city, there are no major bodies of fresh water nearby and the winds tend to keep the humidity levels low. Thessaloniki is more humid, and I've been told that its weather is close to that of nearby Istanbul. It was unbearably hot while we were there, with temperatures in the mid-40s C. The humidity was also high, and it felt like we were trudging through New Orleans or Atlanta instead of a city on the Mediterranean Basin.
This trip was also somewhat bittersweet. This was the last trip of the Byzantine Greek Summer School. The program ended last Tuesday, and today (Friday) is the first day I haven't talked or seen someone from the program, as the last stragglers left yesterday. One thing that I didn't take into account when planning my three weeks of freedom is how lonely I am going to be. In addition to the Byzantinists leaving for diverse destinations, the other two summer sessions at the American School are ending and many people in Athens are going on vacation during the month of August. I used to be something of a recluse but over the past several years I've turned into a social butterfly, so this will be an interesting experience. Basically it boils down to either learning Modern Greek or agonizing in secluded misery!
Which leads me to my plans for the next three weeks before I venture off to Turkey...if you can call them plans. First of all I am going to finish a Modern Greek grammar I bought. Secondly I am reading books at the Gennadius that I didn't get around to reading my first year of graduate school. Last but not least, I am also going to learn some words and phrases in Turkish so I'm not completely lost when I try to get to Ankara.
You see, I have to meet the Avkat survey team (which I am a part of), which is performing an archaeological survey in that same place until early September, on 17 August at the British School of Archaeology in Ankara. My "plan" is take a train from Athens to Thessaloniki, then from Thessaloniki to Istanbul, take a ferry to Asiatic shore, then take another train from Istanbul to Ankara. Should take about two days. Should be exciting...and fraught with danger! Well, perhaps not. But not everyone in Turkey speaks English (which seems to be the case in Athens), and I don't have time to learn much of the language. But I ought to get by.
I may also take a short trip in the next few weeks, but I haven't decided where to (whither). Everyone tells me to go to the Greek islands, but I'm not too interested in beaches and sun right now, and they are going to be very crowded with foreign tourists like me at this time of year. I may, just for fun, take a train up to Bulgaria. I've never been and I could use some cooler weather. We'll see.

A Den of Thieved

...we could tell that something strange had happened when we came back to our apartments. The door to my apartment, which I share with two other students, had been kicked in. The lock had been busted as a result. The door to my room was open and all the drawers to my two desks were thrown open. Additionally my light was on. I heard shouting for the apartment next to us, which houses another three program students, and at that point we realized that both apartments had been robbed.
The theives were looking for easy to pawn items, and electronics were therefore their thefts of choice. I lost my wallet and laptop computer, which was almost three years old. Another student lost his brand-new computer. A computer case with charger (which the robbers probably thought contained a computer because of the excessive weight of the charger but in fact did not), an MP3 player, a passport, and a suitcase were also stolen from the other students. Presumeably the theive(s) put these items in the suitcase and left. We contacted the program coordinator soon after, but since it was a Saturday evening there was little we could do. The police dusted for prints Monday morning, and we went to the police department on Wednesday.
Needless, an incident like this can ruin a trip overseas. I think that many of the students will probably leave with a negative impression of Greece, despite the great time we had. For whatever reason, the loss didn't bother me that much. To be sure, I took a major hit financially: including the cost of replacing all of the items in my wallet, I am looking at $1,000 worth of theft. I don't make a lot of money, and in dollar terms I lost about half of everything I own.
Yet the experience was liberating in a strange way. At this point, I really have no distractions to studying for the program. The loss of my computer has led me to consider living without one, because in truth I do waste inordinate amounts of time online, and I do so much work in the library (which has computers) anyway. As things stand, I will probably have to get a new one when I get back, but it has been an enlightening experience nonetheless.

This...is...Sparta!

I apologize for my inability to live in the present (perhaps a good trait for an historian), but it seems as though I am always two weeks behind on this thing. Since these events are becoming more and more distant, I might as well narrate them now, however imperfectly.

After another week of class, our next visit was to Mystra, a small medieval town near Sparta. Mystra was built by the Crusaders after the sack of Constantinople in 1204. It is actually better described as a fortress; it was built on the slopes of a mountain offering a commanding view of the sorrounding countryside. The photos I took really don't do the site justice, but here are some nonetheless. As someone who backpacks frequently up and down mountains like this, it is difficult for me to overstate how troublesome it would have been to attack this fortress. The angle of ascent is such that it is very hard to keep one's footing, and the streets of the fortress, which are stone and very smooth, are easy to slip on--in fact one of the program participants nearly fell on me as we were walking around. Interestingly, it is much more difficult to walk down these streets than up them.

We of course also saw more churches, which I found interesting, but I won't describe them in detail. One curiosity I will share, for those with an interest in theology, is that Mystra is the only Byzantine church I know of with a fresco which depicts the Trinity with God the Father represented as a man--an old man, of course. This is heretical to Orthodoxy, because showing God the Father as an old man suggests two things: 1) that he ages, and is hence subject to corruption and 2) that he is older than the Son, which suggests that he existed prior to the Son, thereby contradicting the Trinity's co-eternity. I took a Byzantine history seminar last year in which someone found an image of God the Father in a Russian monastery, but no one could recall having seen a Byzantine representation of the God the Father as a man. Since we couldn't use flash in this particular church, the pictures of this heterodox fresco did not turn out so well. I will Photoshop when I get back to the States, but here is the best one I took (one can just make out the yellow halos of the members of the Trinity; the figure on the right is the Holy Spirit, represented by a dove):

So for me that was really cool. We spent the night in Sparta after spending half a day at Mystra. For those of you who have seen the movie 300 and expect Sparta to be a thriving metropolis atop glorious ruins, let me be the first to tell you that neither is true: Sparta is tiny and the classical ruins are meagre. The next day we journeyed to the American School's excavations at Corinth and the Acro-Corinth. The Acro-Corinth was unbelievable. It is a hilltop fortress similiar to Mystra but several times as large, and again many of the fortifications were probably built by the Crusaders.

Neat, right? Five of the students (including yours truly) hiked to the top of the Acro-Corinth, and were treated to a spectacular view of the Gulf of Corinth (which we would swim in the following week). This is the view from the top.


We decided to swim near Athens at the conclusion of the trip, and swimming in the Aegean was quite a treat. The water is much saltier than I expected, and swimming is effortless. In addition, the water is very warm, comparable to that of a heated pool. With a feeling of euphoria and elation, I looked forward to a night's rest after two days of travelling (yes Paul, I do keep dragging this out)...

The Acropolis and Byzantine Churches in Athens (with pictures)

Earlier today, after much searching through downtown Athens, I finally found a store that sells a card reader for my camera. Even though it was ridiculously overpriced I bought it, and now I will be able to add pictures to my blog (also ensuring that they survive if my camera is stolen--not a distant possibility, but more on that later). First of all, here is a picture of the Gennadius Library, where we have class for the Byzantine Greek Summer School. The inscription on the top reads: "They who call themselves Greeks are those who share in our education/culture." Here is a link to pictures of some of both my apartment complex as well as the Gennadius and Blegen Libraries.

For the trip at the end of our first week, we visited various sites around Athens. The first site of interest was the Peitraki Monastery, a very large Middle Byzantine construction which today is the administrative headquarters of the Orthodox Church of Greece. The frescos inside are considerably later than the building itself, but they are beautiful nonetheless.

Our next visit was to the Church of the Theotokos Gorgoepikoos. Unfortunately, we were only able to see the outside of the church, but there are nonetheless some extremely interesting features on the outside of the this church. One image I like in particular is the one below. Our understanding of Byzantium is often coloured by our post-Enlightment dichotomoy of the division of Church and State, and what has survived of Byzantine art may lead us to believe that all Byzantine art was religious. The picture below is a good example of how both secular and religious art could occupy the same space--keep in mind that this is the exterior decoration of a church.

A motif that I have seen on the exterior of other Byzantine Churches but I don't entirely understand is that of the lion eating a hind, or oftentimes some other animal. This is a motif common in Classical art--you can see it in the Museum of the Acropolis, for instance--but I don't understand its function on the outside of a church. Of course, this is not to suggest that all images served a theological or ideological purpose--there are many examples where the Byzantines saw an image or design that they liked and incorporated into their own art.

After this church we visited the current chapel of the University of Athens, and also a 19th century cathedral. The cathedral in particular I enjoyed (I'm allowed to appreciate art after 1453, right?). The image of Paul preaching to the Athenians in the Areopagus was particularly moving.

Something that I found baffling and I was unable to figure out in the brief time I was in the cathedral was the panel next to the above image. It is a quotation from Eusebius' life of Constantine and it reads "O Constantine, in this sign, conquer."

I have many more photos from the rest of the day, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention the Acropolis. It was impressive, although there were enormous crowds and much of the Acropolis is currently draped in scaffolding. In any case, it was an enjoyable experience.

Well, I have to get some work done. I now have all of my pictures up at this link. For the next post, I will hopefully detail my trip to Corinth, Mystra, and Sparta (no, it wasn't madness).

This...is...Athens!

Although I was exhausted from my long journey, I did not sleep for very long. I got up Monday morning at 7:00 and unpacked before departing for the Gennadius library and the orientation session for the Byzantine Greek Summer School. My two roommates accompanied me to a nearby coffeeshop called Everest, part of a larger chain in Greece and maybe elsewhere too.
Everest serves pretty good filtered coffee (in Modern Greek it is called kaphes gallikos "French coffee" or kaphes philtrou "filtered coffee"), which is probably the thing I miss most about being the States. At home I drink at least two or three cups of coffee before I do anything in the morning, and I often drink another cup or two in the late afternoon or early evening. If you want to have filtered coffee in your home then you have to make do with instant coffee, which is better than nothing but still a poor substitute nonetheless. Since I've arrived in Greece I enjoy Greek coffee more than anything else. Greek coffee, as far as I can tell, is indistinguishable from Turkish or Arabic coffee; I've been told that the drink is Turkish in origin. Though I do understand why they call it Greek coffee here; as an American I take umbrage at filtered coffee being called "French coffee" (maybe I'll ask for kaphes eleutheros--"'Freedom' coffee"). It is made with very finely ground coffee mixed rather than filtered into the coffee, and is usually served in small teacups with sugar. It is a spectacular drink, and I've always wondered why it hasn't caught on in America; Starbucks has popularized almost every form of coffee, but I don't think I've ever seen Arabic/Greek/Turkish coffee in the States other than at restaurants which serve ethnic cuisine. By the way, there is a Starbucks about two blocks from where I live (and yes, sometimes I do get coffee there--but don't tell any other graduate students that).
So that's coffee in Greece. Now I went to have breakfast with my two floormates before orientation, although they ended up not wanting to eat anything so I ate alone in their company, so to speak. We are an interesting mix. Bob is a tall high school teacher from Kentucky who is my age (23). He is the only non-graduate student in the bunch, and he gets a lot of points in my book for attending a program like this even he has no professional obligation to do so. Tom, my other floormate, is more than ten years our senior, and is beginning work on his dissertation, an analysis of Didymus the Blind's commentary on Genesis. His background and interests are obviously in theology (Tom's, but Didymus' also).
Upon going up to the Gennadius Library, we meet the rest of the students There are a total of ten students (four women, six men) in the program: myself, my two aformentioned floormates, four art historians, a canon lawyer, an epigraphy (inscription) specialist, and a librarian with a background in theology. Over the next several days we have our first classes and get to meet our instructors, Dr. Papaioannou from Brown University, and Dr. Alexakis from Ioannina University (in Greece). We quickly discover that what we have signed on for is in fact not a vacation but rather an extremely intensive course designed to improve our Medieval Greek as much as possible in four and a half weeks. We have class for around four hours a day, along with individual one-hour tutorials twice a week. I spend at least 7 or 8 hours a day on homework. We also take trips to various sites of interest on Fridays and Saturdays, along with occasional visits to various places in Athens during the week. What this means, gentle reader, is that although I am in a city with wonderful cultural events, night life, and resturants, I don't experience very much of any of them, and I usually just walk back and forth several times a day between the library and my apartment (wait a second, this is just a sweatier version of my life in Princeton!).
And oh the heat. Now I am not one to complain about heat, as I like to think that I get along with it pretty well. I did grow up in Nevada, and like Paul Atreides I can say that I am a desert creature. But the heat here has been just awful. My first week in Athens everyday was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in a city with spotty--at best--air conditioning. Let's just say I don't love the library just because of its books. Global warming, my friends, may not yet be a reality in the United States, but it has been here for a long time in countries along the Mediterranean rim. In the three weeks that I have been here, there has not been a single day at or below the historic average high for June and July.
The heat has also given me a new appreciation of the siesta culture of countries slightly warmer than the United States. In Greece, as in Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc., during the summer months there is a traditional nap time between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. in the afternoon. Now dour Protestant that I am I was taught that this is because people in such countries are lazy and have no work ethic. While I always thought this ridiculous I can now say with certainity that nap time is obligatory not because these people lack the Weberian Geist des Kapitalismus but rather because without air conditioning you will collapse of heat stroke and possibly die if you do any strenuous work within this stretch of time during the summer months. Period. Well, I must run, but I will post more this weekend.

The Longest Journey

In order to dispense with introductions, since you who read this probably already know me, allow myself to introduce...myself. I'm Zachary Chitwood, a graduate student in the History Department at Princeton University about to begin my second year of coursework. I am spending this summer in Greece and Turkey. My time in the former is devoted to a summer course in Byzantine Greek which includes many trips to classical and medieval sites, and the latter to the archaeological survey of modern Avkat (classical/medieval Eukaita), a town which has been continuously inhabited since the Hittite period. I am currently about halfway though my summer course in Byzantine Greek, which has been a lot of fun so far (more on that later). As I promised to write friends and family about my experiences in Greece, Turkey, and maybe other places in the Eastern Mediterranean, a blog seemed to be the best medium to keep everyone informed.

Now about the trip over here. I completed my spring coursework in May, although I didn't finish one of my papers until the middle of June. In the meantime I went to my ancestral homeland of Fallon, Nevada. A friend of mine who grew up in Greece described Sparta as "the town that always sleeps," and this phrase fits Fallon perfectly, although I'm rather found of that somniferous spot. Now after spending a month in Nevada hiking and visiting my folks and ol' friends, I left Reno, Nevada, which has an international airport, for Athens, Greece. Now as someone who flies frequently and firmly believes that any travel by air these days is by nature unpleasant and sometimes terrible, I wouldn't normally belabor the details of my long trip from point A to point B, but since this trip was unusually terrible, I think it deserves recounting (if you haven't noticed already, I would probably describe it anyway because I'm verbose and long-winded).

So on Friday, June 22, after a pleasant meal at Great Basin Brewery (the food and beer there are as great as...err, the Great Basin) my younger brother, Cheb (le Boi) dropped me off at Reno/Tahoe International Airport. Upon arriving at the ticket counter, the young lad working there informed me that the tickets I had booked on US Airways.com had not factored in connection times properly, and that my flight from Reno to Las Vegas arrived into Vegas too late to catch my connecting flight from Las Vegas to Newark. So he put me on the flight to Vegas anyway but also booked me on a red-eye which left Vegas at midnight for Newark. Okay, no big deal. The young lad at the counter also puts me in First-class. This is fantastic because this is the first time in my life I've been anywhere besides coach. But for counting purposes please note that this is one red-eye flight. But the moral of the story is that computers make mistakes too and you shouldn't put too much trust in airlines' online booking.

So I get to Newark. First-class is pretty good, although having now experienced it I wouldn't pay a couple of hundred extra dollars for it. Now for reasons of summer funding I had to book a separate flight from Newark to Athens, Greece. I go to check in once again on Saturday morning, June 23. Now in contrast to my last experience everything looks okay; my flight is set from Newark to Charlottesville, North Carolina and then to London (no, I have also have no idea why I had to go to Charlottesville; the inexorable logic of connecting flights, I suppose) on various US Airways flights. Since my flight from London to Athens is on Olympic Airlines, I have to get my baggage in London. So I grab my tickets and go through security.

A word about TSA security. Now I have my suspicions about this phenomenon, but I am always, all kidding aside, "randomly" selected to be searched when I go through security. Part of this may have to do with my shifty looks, but I am more inclined to think that I am always searched because I took an Intensive Arabic Program two summers ago, and as such am probably on several national security lists. As usual, I am randomly selected to be searched, but it's happened to me so many times that I go through it very quickly, and the TSA guards remark that I have obviously done this before.

I sleep in fits and starts and await my flight that Saturday evening. Newark is a nice airport. For the first time in a long time, over the course of several days I read several books for leisure. I buy and read Al Gore's The Assault on Reason, Stephen King's Lisey's Story, Pauolo Coelho's The Devil and Miss Pyrm, and Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. Surprising, all of these books are decent reads, with the possible exception of the Stephen King novel. After reading for hours, I notice that the masses are a stirrin' near the departure gate for the Newark-Charlottesville flight. People look really angry, and I have obviously missed an important announcement. Fifteen minutes prior to departure time there is no plane at our gate. This is doubly strange because it is a beautiful and cloudless day with almost no bad weather in the rest of the nation, no planes sitting on the runway at the usual weak links in the metaphorical chain of flightplans like O'Hare in Chicago. Eventually the announcement is made for people to come up to the ticket agents and rebook their flights. I am one of the first in line, but since my itinerary is so bizarre everyone else finishes rebooking by the time I get through. Now another word to the wise. I booked this particular flight through Travelocity.com, and since my flights were on separate airlines this presented a colossal problem in rebooking. So no matter how great the price, don't book international flights on sites like Orbitz and Travelocity. Then how do you get to international destinations from the States if the airline sites as well the aforementioned are useless? Steerage on a fishing boat, because it's less work and it'll probably take the same amount of time. This agent kept trying to put me on a flight to London, even though I insisted repeatedly that it was now utterly pointless for me to go to London, since my connecting flight from London to Athens would now certainly be missed. Oh well. He booked me on a Continental flight, another red-eye to London directly from Newark. For those of you keeping count, this is now two-red eyes. Before I left I asked why the flight to Charlottesville and been cancelled, and the ticket agent had absolutely no idea; the plane just never showed up. Maybe the pilot got drunk or the crew was on strike, or maybe the pilot and striking crew got drunk, who knows.

All things considered, the flight to London was very pleasant. I sat next to guy who works in Princeton and a young woman about to study in Sussex, and I really enjoyed the flight, although I didn't sleep very much. Now we landed at Gatwick airport in London, and after going through customs I discovered that my checked bag was to be found neither at the Continental nor US Airways carousel. This, needless to say, is not a good thing. I spend several hours talking with various ticket agents and I finally find my bag. That's great, but now I'm stuck in London because I missed my connection to Athens. Since Gatwick doesn't have a ticket counter for Olympic Airlines, I finally am pointed in the direction of a travel agency that for some reason serves as a ticket counter for Olympic Airlines. Luckily, my flight from London to Athens had also somehow been cancelled (this is a pretty amazing string of coincidences, but true nonetheless). So I am rebooked for a red-eye flight from Heathrow-London to Athens. This is to be red-eye number three. Alright. This means I catch a bus from Gatwick to Heathrow. I get to see some of the English countryside, which is breathtakingly beautiful. The airports at least are spotless. I get to Heathrow and check in. Everything looks good. I go through security at Heathrow, which is astonishingly efficient. The British security folks check everything, and they make the TSA look very amateurish by comparison.

So now I'm in Heathrow. I'm pretty tired because it's Sunday afternoon and I haven't slept since Thursday night. The flight to Athens is delayed because of power outages in the city, but I get on a later flight and finally arrive at Athens airport sometime after midnight local time. Unfortunately, I am supposed to take the metro to meet a program coordinator so I can get to apartment, and the metro is now officially closed. This means that I must use my very limited Modern Greek language skills to take a taxi to get to the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

A word about Modern Greek. I don't speak it. But I have studied Classical and Byzantine Greek for about five years, so I am in the peculiar position of being able to read the language fairly well and understand the spoken language to a limited degree. But I can say only a few words and phrases. It's analogous to Chaucer's grasp of modern English if he were to be magically transported from merry olde England and step off a plane today in Los Angeles and try to get a taxi and hotel.

In any case, I call the program coordinator's cell phone at this ungodly hour, and thankfully he responds. After apologizing profusely for calling so late, I speak with him for about five minutes and we agree to meet in front of the Gennadius Library. I find my way outside the airport where military policemen are directing incoming taxis. After waiting for my turn I jump into the next available taxi. After exchanging pleasantries in Greek with the driver he begins speaking very good English, which I would later find to be commonplace in almost all parts of Athens. I try to explain where the American School is, but he isn't familiar with it. He looks it up on his Palm Pilot with some very fancy navigation software by some German company, a marvellous device that I've never seen on taxis in the United States. He finds what he thinks is the Gennadius and thus I spend about half an hour in the taxi until we get there. Very much looking forward to the prospect of sleep in a bed after so many days without it, I tip him even though it's not customary to do so, and meet the program coordinator. He takes me to my apartment and shows me my room, which is thankfully air-conditioned. I am now completely exhausted. Three red-eye flights have taken their toll, and I fall to sleep almost instantly.
It will take a few posts for me to catch up to the present. The next posts are full of the Acropolis, translating Byzantine Greek, carousing with fellow academics in Mystra, Sparta, and Corinth, and run-ins with thieves. Stay tuned!