While I was away in Greece, I tried to write blog entries about my adventures on my mobile’s Outlook calendar. Writing extensively via predictive text, I discovered, is a non-trivial activity. Sometimes therefore I just wrote a few notes.
Over the last couple of evenings I’ve been working on expanding those entries and making them a bit more legible. What you see now on my blog here are the entries I wrote as I travelled, but tidied up a bit. I’ve added some relevant hyperlinks, photos and maps. The full set of photos should be online soon.
So, here I am back in the UK, reflecting on what has been a brilliant few days in Greece. I think a fitting summary and conclusion to the trip comes in the words of one of the guidebooks I took with me:
“The Greeks are a special people on a unique journey. They are heir to a multilayered heritage in a vital part of the world. They are generous, mercurial, emotional, instinctive, practical, and supreme improvisers. Personal interaction is vital to them. This means that life in Greece operates on many levels. Or rather, it operates on many crisscrossing levels, offering plenty of possibilities and a tremendous variety of lifestyles. The country embraces geographical variations one would associate with a small continent, only easily accessible. Socially, it has everything from the intensely private to the busy and cosmopolitan. The new generation understands its responsibilities, though not necessarily the challenges that lie ahead. Greeks live for the here and now, and this means they are ready to deal with just about anything, as it happens. The engaged visitor will emerge from the Greek experience enriched for life.”
For every moment I’ve been confused or irritated by the little cultural differences over the past few days, there have been many times greater numbers of exhilarating experiences, laughter, beautiful sights, great conversations and a friendly people trying hard to make sure we are mutually understood (”eyes, eyes, take off your eyes!”)
As the quotation says, the Greeks are a special people on a unique journey. It�s a journey I hope to witness further. I’ll be back…
After the excitement of this morning’s subterranean adventures, the mood rather dramatically changed when we got back to the hotel and I switched on the TV. The BBC World feed kept blanking out, but I caught something about a bombing in London.
It took a while for me to realise exactly what was going on, flicking through the numerous foreign language news channels searching for information. Luckily one of them was broadcasting Sky News pictures and I could just about make out their onscreen text behind the other channel’s superimposed graphics. Although I’ve complained about the size of them in the past, I’ll now be forever grateful that their text is big enough to read from behind other onscreen clutter.
After what seemed like an age, BBC World reappeared and I was able to get the full story. I’d been trying to get through to the UK on the phone, but there didn’t seem to be any international phonelines so the BBC output was an immediate comfort. Thank you BBC.
The conference had its final session and closing ceremony in the afternoon, in perhaps a slightly more somber atmosphere than would have otherwise been apparent.
This evening we went for a drive towards the centre of the island to the town of P�rgos. However, with the roads being as steep and twisted as they were, we decided against staying on until after dark. Instead, we came back to Pythag�rio to enjoy some more fantastic Souvlaki at one of the shops on the main street.
Last night we took a taxi across the island to Vath�, also known as Samos, the island’s capital. The “city” is larger than Pythag�rio, but not exactly city-sized. According to the taxi driver, the population totals only 10,000.
We walked around the small backstreets which play host to all sorts of small shops and then had a look inside the town’s cathedral. It was much smaller than any British cathedral, more the size of a parish church. The style was very much Byzantine, with icons and pure gold ornaments everywhere. It was a very beautiful, peaceful place.Nick asked some locals for directions to a good Souvlaki shop, which turned out to be near the shore on the outskirts of the town.
Souvlaki is to Greeks what hamburgers are to Americans or Fish and Chips are to the English. They seem to come in slightly different varieties, but mine were pork kebab-style meat with chips, tomatoes and onions all wrapped in pita bread. Absolutely delicious!After a walk back to the taxi rank, we returned to Doryssa Bay sometime around 11:30pm.This morning was the morning of my
paper presentation (ah yes, I remember: we’re here for a conference
![[;)]](images/smile/smile2.gif)
). It went well, although the audience wasn’t exactly massive. I think most delegates heard the call of the beach. However, for those of us who were there, the whole session proved more interesting than yesterday’s, with some good work presented.
Lunch was nice again: a pizza-type thing with veggies and little breadcrumb coated potato balls. I’m now back in my room, waiting for the heat of the day to pass and watching the build-up to the 2012 Olympic city announcement on BBC World.
This morning proved an interesting start to the conference. It seemed as if the turn out was pretty low. In reality, many delegates were stranded in various places in Greece: The flights to Samos that were due to depart from Athens after ours were cancelled yesterday, a ferry to one of the other small islands did not return last night after a fishing net got stuck in its propeller, and a ferry from Turkey was also cancelled.
After the morning sessions, we had a very nice lunch in one of the hotel restaurants. Plenty to choose at the self-service buffet, I went for lamb (a bit like chops, but nothing like those in the UK!) with vegetables and some wonderful potatoes and onion. I tell you, Greek food is good! Its just a pity the weather is too hot to eat more of it.
After attending one of the afternoon sessions, the lack of sleep really started to catch up with me, so I took a short nap. Now I’ve woken up, I feel a lot brighter.
Later we plan to go to Vath�, which my guidebook claims is actually the island’s capital (also called Samos) by a different name. We’ll see…
As some of you will know, I’m off to Greece on Sunday evening to present a paper at a conference. The basic plan is to attend the conference and spend a couple of extra days on Samos until Saturday, then stay with my supervisor’s parents (he’s coming to the conference too) in Athens before heading back home a week on Tuesday.
Sounds simple? Well…
[rant]
Its been a bit of a struggle to get to this point (and we started the process of arranging the trip in February), with a whole load of obstacles to leap over - weren’t the Olympics last year?
First, the funding. One thing the university seems to love even more than research and education is paperwork. Last year, to attend a conference I had to fill in a few forms and the rest was taken care of. This year, I had to fill in twice as many forms, but also apply for funding. Fair enough, apart from I had to apply for funding from two places, each for 50% of the cost. If one of these was an external source, I could have understood. However, one of these was the Department and one was the School. Both internal university entities. Helpfully, the application forms implied that you could only apply to each source when you had secured 50% funding from somewhere else.
Eventually, with a lot of help (thanks to all who intervened), the funding got sorted out. Making sure the money actually reached the conference organisers was another matter. This led to a bit more drama, since they had to receive it by a certain date to ensure my paper would be accepted. Somehow (miracle?) the fees did actually get paid and my paper made it into the conference.
Next step: hotel accommodation. The conference is taking place at the Doryssa Bay resort on Samos, and the organisers have negotiated special room rates at the hotel. You’ve guessed it, they had to be booked by a certain date. There was more confusion when they wanted a credit card guarantee online. University policy dictates that they do not use credit cards over the internet, so we had to work out alternative means of payment. As far as I’m aware, the university have paid for my hotel room in advance. Let’s just wait until I turn up on Monday to find I’m sleeping on the beach.
More problems came about with Nick’s funding, hotel bookings and conference fees, but much of that was more of the same that I experienced. Finally though, we were sorted on two fronts, with just the travelling to arrange.
Sunday will be my first time flying, so the whole airport/aeroplane/flight booking thing is totally new to me. I’d assumed booking flights wouldn’t be much harder than booking a train ticket in advance. How wrong I was, especially as Nick and I are flying in and out of Athens on different days. Anyway, with a lot of help from Nick, we both found flights.
Next problem: My flight to Athens is on British Airways, but Nick’s was on Hellas Jet. Guess what happened? Yep, Hellas Jet fell over, so Nick had to find new flights.
End of the problems? Nope. A couple of weeks ago, Olympic Airlines cancelled our flight from Athens to Samos and shifted everybody onto the next one. My BA flight gets into Athens at 02:10 on Monday morning and our flight to Samos now leaves at 12:10 Monday lunchtime, resulting in a 10 hour overnight wait in Athens airport. I’m currently waiting to find out whether I’ll be allowed a room at the airport hotel rather than staying awake all night.
I think I’ve got everything sorted now, including changing some money into Euros. Not that that was easy either. I thought I’d get it in advance to save time and hassle, so I went to the bank. That was a mistake. Those wonderful people at Natwest proved once again why their slogan is “Natwest - another way”: Two staff members on the counter on a busy lunchtime, with the queue of customers extending onto the street. When I eventually got to the front, I found out they don’t actually hold money there (sorry, my mistake, I thought you were a bank) and they’d have to “order in” my foreign currency. Oh, but actually, they do have emergency packs of 100 Euros each. I’d wanted €250, but I settled for €300 to save having to go back. After a good ten minutes - in which just about every member of staff disappeared into the back of the bank - my Euros finally arrived. These emergency packs? A nice cardboard wallet containing some Euro notes in a Royal Bank of Scotland plastic bag. It was fairly obvious all those staff had been searching for a plastic bag to stuff my money in. Oh, that and printing a colourful sticky label for the outside. So why couldn’t they just have given me the €250? Ah, I see: Natwest - another way.
Something tells me, if I actually make it to Greece, the hotel hasn’t been burnt down and I’ve got the conference dates right, it’ll be a miracle.
[/rant]
If it wasn’t for the novelty of my first time abroad (apart from a couple of school trips to France and Belgium, but sitting on a coach and being escorted around isn’t exactly what I call going abroad properly) and my first flight, I think I’d be rather annoyed. As it stands - believe it or not - I’m looking forward to a great adventure!