In Which We Leave Ioannina to go to Metsovo

So, after our first day in Ioannina, Catharine and I decided to make a trip to Metsovo, a town in the Pindos mountains that is pretty and known for its cheeses and its interesting festivals, which take place during the summer and therefore went unseen by us. I could say that we went because we had heard that it was nice, or because we had fallen in love with the KTEL system and wanted to spend another three hours with it, or because we had grown tired of watching "The Young and the Restless" with Greek subtitles on the tv. (It was for one evening, ok? Such things happen.)

But the real reason, I have to say, was our general lingustic nerdiness. Metsovo is the capital of Vlach culture in Greece. The Vlachs are a linguistic minority (they mostly see themselves as ethnically Greek) who speak a language called Aromanian (also known as Vlach), which is a close relative of Latin. Cool, isn't it? To be fair, Metsovo is also really pretty, and since the Vlach speaking population is quite small, we knew that the chances of us hearing any spoken Vlach were small. It's in the Pindos mountains, which are very nice mountains, and when we were there the leaves were turning colors.

Fog rolling over the Pindos mountains!

The village of Metsovo. It's a lovely place in part because it had some benefactors who donated a lot of money there- specifically George Averoff.

It was Halloween when we were in Metsovo, but they don't do Halloween here at all. They were having some sort of celebration that involved footraces, though Catharine and I couldn't figure out exactly what it was. This was ok, we watched it while eating a pleasant lunch at a nice restaurant that my guidebook reccomended and then later while we were waiting for the bus.

The Map of Where Caroline Has Been in Greece So Far

Purple= where I have gone.

For your viewing pleasure, and so when you go, "wait, where is Thessaloniki?" you can find it on the map.

Adventures With Money

So, I was looking to see if I had any extra pens this morning, and I was ransacking my backpack in case I had left some in there from last semester. (Don't laugh. My lack of office supplies is a chronic problem here.) Anyways, I didn't find any pens. What I did find was my small supply of American money.

And it was so weird! It...looked so strange! It's all green and the same size and the coins are so thin and there aren't any two dollar or one dollar coins. (Or, for that matter, 50 lepta or 20 lepta coins.) And American money feels so different from Euros, which are in fact paper, not some strange other material.

I say it now- when I get back home in December, there will be culture shock.

About All Those Demonstrations That You Might Have Been Hearing About...

Dear All,

I have been contacted by several people who were concerned by some of the coverage of yesterday's events in Athens. I would like, first of all, to say that I am fine, all my friends are fine, everyone I know is fine, my apartment is fine, the city of Athens is generally fine, etc. Let me stress. Everyone is fine.

What you heard about (blown, from what I can understand, way out of proportion) was the typical demonstration that takes place in Greece every November 17th. 35 years ago, many students at the Athens Polytechnic University locked themselves up on their campus, made their own radio station, and were protesting the military junta that was in control of Greece at the time. This did not go over well with the fascist government, and on November 17th, after several days of tension, the army broke down the gates with their tanks. About 50 students died. Many more were injured, arrested, and tortured. It was generally quite bad.

The demonstration that happened yesterday occurs every year in memory of the heroic acts of the students. It started in 1975 as a peaceful demonstration, but over the years has become considerably more violent than it used to be. It starts at the Polytechnic university in Exarhia and goes down Vas. Sophias (yes, that is the street that I cross to get to school) and ends in front of the American embassy. (All protests end in front of the American Embassy. This is a general rule of demonstrations.) It usually starts off pretty well, but by 4 or 5 pm someone usually starts throwing molotov cocktails, blowing up trashcans, etc. The police sometimes break out tear gas. It gets unpleasant.

Because this event involves some anti-American sentiment (the United States, alarmingly, was actually involved in getting the junta in place) we were warned to try to stay away from the protest, or, if we chose to go, go early in the morning and not identify ourselves as Americans. I didn't go- I did see some of it on my way to and from the apartment, but didn't stay and watch- but I have friends who did, and from what I can understand it was actually pretty tame this year. I repeat, no one was hurt. We're all ok. Mostly, it was just another chance to learn about modern Greek history, a subject that most of us know appallingly little about.

So, to repeat, we're all ok. Greeks, while they may not always love America, are lovely people who generally like Americans. Thank you for your concern.

Pictures at last!

Hello all!
As you have probably noticed, there are now some (note: some- I'm not done yet) pictures of my fall break up. The internet is being reasonably fast today, and I'm procrastinating, since I have a big paper due in about a week that I don't really feel like writing, but am still working on because it's 15 pages long and does need to get written some time. Anyways, at some point there should be more pictures (in addition to the rest of the fall break pictures, there should be some of my recent trip to Delphi) and hopefully there will also be captions, though I should warn you that due to work considerations they will probably be slow in coming up.

Ali Pasha: An Interesting Person Who Came to a Bad End

So, one of Ioannina's claims to fame is Ali Pasha, an Albanian ruler (in power from 1787-1822) who had his court in Ioannina. This guy was crazy. He basically was loyal to whoever could help him at the time, and I think his goal was to have some Albanian-Greek empire. Or something. I am going to direct you to the wikipedia page, because it seems to be more or less accurate and I don't feel like typing out the whole story. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Pasha
So, much of the Frourio of Ioannina is taken up with ruins (or non-ruins) from the time of Ali Pasha, though there also are remains from the Byzantine period.
A mosque! This is one of two mosques in the Frourio, and I am sorry to say that I have absolutely forgotten what it is called. Sometime when I have my guidebook or my notes with me I will edit this out.
I believe that these are the ruins of Ali Pasha's harem.
The view out over Lake Pamvotis towards the Pindos mountains. Nice, isn't it?

The tomb of Ali Pasha. Note- I did not actually climb inside the tomb to take this picture. While I have been called on to scale some fences over the course of this semester, I haven't started tomb-robbing. Yet.

Ioannina- A City in Epirus

So, after we were done with Meteora/Kalambaka/Kastraki, we made our way across large swaths of Central Greece to Ioannina, the capital city of Epirus and the eighth largest city in Greece. Ioannina, as far as I can tell, is known for several things. One is its abundance of silver workers, two is its baclava, and three, perhaps the most interesting, is Ali Pasha.

Don't worry, you'll hear plenty more about him.

So, Ioannina is a nice place. But, as Catharine and I realized early on, our energy at this point was rather waning (perhaps from all the sleeping (or not sleeping- it was really cold) in tents) and we had a lot of time in which we didn't really need to do all that much, so we decided we were going to take it easy. Wander around a lot. Eat baclava. Etc.

So, on day one we decided to tackle the Frourio, which is the old part of the city. It's surrounded by walls.
That's the Frourio.
So is this. Note the twisty entrance way. That's so they could fight off invaders better or something.
Flowers!
Anyways, so the Frourio is actually sort of a normal neighborhood, and while it has some interesting things (like a mosque that you're going to see a few posts from now) it really is just like the old part of many Greek towns. The nifty part of the Frourio is the Its Kale, or the inner citadel. It has a lot of interesting ruins from a bunch of different periods and lovely views of Lake Pamvotis and the surrounding Pindos mountains.

Kastraki

We set up camp in Kastraki, which is the village which is next to Kalambaka and also quite near some of the monasteries, specifically Agios Nikolaos, Varlaam and Grand Meteora. It was actually a lovely campsite, and within convenient walking distance to Kalambaka. Sunset over the mountains! Northern Greece is incredibly scenic, much more beautiful than anything down here in Attica. (Not that Attica isn't nice, mind you.)
And here is our tent! We bought it at the Boy Scout store in Athens for 20-ish euros and it served us extremely well. In fact, it makes me vaguely nostalgic to see it.

Monasteries on Rocks

So, this is another one of those posts in which I have nothing insightful to say, but really just wanted to post some pretty pictures. As we were walking back to Kastraki, there was a break in the clouds and some dramatic lighting effects. I took advantage of this.

Varlaam, which is the second biggest of the monasteries.

Meteora, or "The Place With All the Monasteries on Big Rocks"

Sometime in the distant past, when monasteries were under threat from a bunch of people, someone decided that a really brilliant plan was to build a bunch of monasteries on top of really high rocks. And so Meteora was born.

Once upon a time, I think there were about 20 functioning monasteries. Today, there are six. (Well, technically 4 monasteries and 2 convents, but who's actually counting?) They are generally open to visitors (provided that the womenfolk are wearing skirts and not, as a sign charmingly informed us, bloomers or pantaloons) and very "visually arresting". This is on the way in to Grand Meteora, which is the biggest of the six monasteries and the one that most people go to first. There are a lot of stairs. I think that it's easier now to get to the monasteries than it used to be- at one point in time, there were no stairs. It's still worth wearing good shoes.
A view of the rocks! I spent much of our three days in Meteora wondering exactly how these rock formations happened, and the answer that I came up with is "nobody actually knows." This is sad. However, they are still incredibly cool. You should go to Meteora.

...I think that the monastery that you can see in this picture is Agios Nikolaos, but I'm not entirely sure.
Grand Meteora. Next stop- more monasteries!

Thessaloniki/Trikala/Kalambaka

Ao, eventually we made it back to Thessaloniki from Vergina/Veroia/other places to the west, and when we got there we decided that it was, in fact, time to head off into the wild blue yonder, specifically known as the town of Kalambaka. Kalambaka, while it is a lovely place, was not actually our final destination- we were headed for Meteora, which you might know better as "the place with all the monasteries on the big rocks." But first, we had to get on the bus. I believe that it was this bus which left from the same spot as the bus for Albania. Catharine and I were vaguely concerned that we were going to have another KTEL disaster and end up in Albania, and so we made a pact that if we were driving for a suspiciously long time and/or seemed to be going over an international border, we were going to yell "stasi!" and make a run for it.
Conveniently, we did get on the right bus, and ended up driving through a lot of Thessaly, which is a very pretty place, and making a transfer at Trikala, which is a town in Thessaly known mainly for being smaller than its neighbor, Larisa, and for being bisected by the river Letheos.

Yes, you read that right. The river Letheos. Like the one in the underworld. It was pretty cool. Also, I made a lot of Alcestis references. Mostly because The Alcestis takes place in Thessaly. It's sort of like the wierd cult things we did with The Medea in Corinth and The Agamemnon in Mycenae.
Finally we made it to Kalambaka! We had a picnic lunch. Those mysterious rocks behind Catharine? Those are the Meteora rocks. Yay!
On the way up...

In Which We Get Vaguely Lost Near Vergina

So, we went off on an adventure to find the ancient palace of Aigai. Our knowledge of its location was mainly limited to the idea that it was somewhere uphill from the museum and probably not more than an hour or so away. Other than this, we had no clue. So, we walked. Mostly the point of this post is that you can see the pretty pictures. There is no substance to this story. We got a bit lost. Since there is a grand total of one road, there wasn't really any danger.
One road.
And, as it turns out, the whole archaeological site is closed until January, which was vaguely tragic. It was still pretty!

Μεγάλη Τούμπα!

So, we went to Vergina, after the previously mentioned adventures with the Thessaloniki bus system. Vergina is a very exciting place. It's a very small town (about 2,000 inhabitants, I think) near the ancient site of Aigai, the old capital of Macedonia. (Whereby Macedonia I mean the ancient kingdom of Macedonia. Cool?) So, for a long while, the archaeologists had been interested in the area around Vergina. They knew that it was near Ancient Aigai, and they suspected, I believe that some of the mysterious hills dotting the landscape were, in fact, the tumulus (that's the technical word for a burial mound) of the ancient rulers of Macedonia. How right they were.

Catharine is an archaeology major, and I am a classics nerd, so we spent a lot of time sort of dancing around in glee while we were at this site. What was so exciting, you ask?

Answer: Vergina is the location of the tomb believed to be that of the father of Alexander the Great, Philip II, and the son of Alexander the Great, also named Alexander. That's right, kids. We may very well have the bones of both the son and the father of that guy who went and conquered the known world that time.

But first, we had to stop and pet some cats.
Later on, after we went to the museum (which is absolutely fabulous, by the way, you most certainly should go if you are ever able. It's in the tumulus. That's right. It's inside the tumulus. Also, they really know how to make things look cool by the use of dramatic lighting. Though, in fact, gold is pretty cool looking anyways.) we wandered around the tumulus, and for the first time realized that yes, northern Greece actually is as pretty as everyone says it is.
See! It's pretty! And there are mountains and green things! Also, it was chilly- it actually felt like fall here!
This is a Macedonian tomb. This one is not inside the same tumulus as all the other ones, so we could actually take pictures of it. This is what they all look like. Only the ones inside the museum still have a lot of paint preserved on them, so that's nice.

Next- excitement while wandering around the town of Vergina.

Further Adventures in Thessaloniki

The Arch of Galerius, up close. As you can probably tell by the name and the arch itself, this is a Roman item- there aren't a whole lot of pre-Roman things in Thessaloniki proper, to my knowledge. (There is some cool stuff outside of Thessaloniki. More on that later.)
The neat thing about Thessaloniki is the large population of non-Greek people, so there are mosques there. More so than in Athens, at least. This is probably due to the location of the city in Macedonia.

Wait, wait wait, I hear you say. What is this about Macedonia? Isn't that another country? I thought you were staying in Greece?

Yeah. It gets a bit confusing. When I refer to Macedonia, I may be referring to one of three places.
1.Ancient Macedonia, home of Alexander the Great, Philip II, etc. Debatably a part of Greece.
2. The country of Macedonia. Definitely not a part of Greece.
3. Macedonia, the part of Greece.

So, we were in Macedonia. And, we decided, we wanted to go to Vergina. This involved getting up early in the morning and taking a bus to Veroia, and from there catching a bus to Vergina. Which was all well and good. Until we made the critical mistake of decided that Veroia was in the Chalkidiki.

What? you ask. Caroline, how could you make such a mistake?

Well, I don't know. It was early in the morning. Etc.

They have a beautiful grasp of English. Beautiful.
So, we went to the Chalkidiki bus station, which involved:

1. Walking to the train station.

2. Catching a bus to the main KTEL station.

3. Catching a bus to a random point in the middle of Thessaloniki.

4. Catching a bus to the Chalkidiki KTEL station. Which is where, of course, we looked at the map and realized that Veroia is in Macedonia, not in Chalkidiki.

Bus trip #5! Don't worry, we got there eventually...

The Odyssey Begins!

So, the odyssey actually began on Friday, when Catherine and I spent the day searching Athens for a tent.

"A tent?" I hear you saying.

Yes. A tent. We had decided to go camping.

Now, many people decided to take fall break as an oppurtunity to go to Egypt or Paris or Rome or Turkey or other cities in other countries. We did not do this. We decided that, since we were in Greece, we were going to see Greece, damnit. And, since we both had a lot of places that we wanted to go in Northern Greece, we decided that Northern Greece was where we would go.

In a tent.

Anyways, so we took the midnight train from Athens to Thessaloniki and ended up in that city at an early time of the morning, tired, dirty, and totally disoriented. Since nothing was actually open yet, we decided to wander our way down to the waterfront and imbibe some caffeine so that we might feel human again. Evidently, the most exciting landmark of the Thessaloniki waterfront is the White Tower, which is a tower which is not in fact white. They used to use it for executions and keeping prisoners and stuff.
There it is. By this point in time, Catharine and I had managed to be latched on to by a creepy man (a recurring theme on this whole trip) and so we decided to head inside the white tower, where there is a museum. Also, it was cold. And inside the tower, it was warm.
From the top of the tower there are some lovely views of Thessaloniki, which is generally a very ugly place. (We were there in the cold and the rain, so I'm not sure that we were there at the best time. However, the architecture seemed to be composed of the worst elements of Athenian architecture, and Athens has been described to me, multiple times, as the "ugliest capital city in all of Europe." So I'm pretty sure I'm not that far off in describing Thessaloniki as an ugly place.
It also has few landmarks of much note that we were too interested in seeing. It has a fabulous Byzantine museum (which I highly recommend, if you're ever in the area) a mediocre archaeology museum (not so highly recommended, though it's ok) a lot of churches, and the arch of Galerius.
Oh, look. There it is.

Which Contains No Pictures, Unfortunately

Hello all!

Due to continuing computer issues, I have not yet had a chance to upload pictures- with the internet here the way it is, it's a two hour long process of doom that involves a lot of poking wires, screaming at the computer, and possibly the ritual sacrifice of small animals, and I just haven't had the time or sheep to do it in the past few weeks.

Life here continues to be exciting- lots of onsite classes, a rather big presentation by me on the tholos and the monument of the eponymous heroes (they're nifty! You should look them up!) part of a paper on the tyrannicides (also really nifty!) and general wandering around Athens. Essentially, business as usual.

I miss everyone a lot, and I really will try to get up fall break photos soon.

Return of the Blog

Hello all!

As you have probably noticed, I haven't been around recently- I've been on fall break, on a very exciting (and internet free!) odyssey through northern Greece. Pictures of that should be coming soon, when I remember to bring my camera and the necessary cables to the academic center. I'm also working on the Argolid commentary- I didn't get to work on it last week, because I was away, or the week before, because (gasp!) I actually had to do school work.


Also, you may have noticed the little addition to the heading- I have rather exciting news. I GOT INTO THE CENTRO IN ROME!!!!!!! So, I'm actually going to be in Rome next semester instead of back in California. This is a really great honor, and very exciting- they accept about 35 people per semester, and it's very prestigious. Also very cool.

I hope everyone is well!