In which our narrator reaches his quasi-arbritary destination and reflects on his voyage.

Almost at Mykines. It's hard getting the road-sign in the picture when you are taking the photo yourself.


It’s fitting that on such a journey, I don’t take the quickest route to Mykines. From Athens’ train station, by train along the coast to the tiny isthmus (now bisected by a canal) that makes the Peloponese a peninsula. I get off at a phantom-like station, in between the ruins of an ancient, wealthy city (Corinth) and a somewhat limping-stray-dog new one (Korinthos). Three bus journeys and some supermarket olives and bread later I am walking a narrow road through fields of orange trees that seem to be singing to me in Ancient Greek. I’m on my way to Mycenae.

The village of Mykines understands why people come here. Almost every shop has windows filled with its hoards of ‘museum replica’ statuettes and urns. Much better than seeing ‘I tried to find Ancient Greece and all I got was this stupid T-shirt’ at any rate.

And then I see it, crowning a foothill, perched majestically, the site of a centre of government and commerce from more than three thousand years ago. The walls so formidable that later greeks named them after the giants they believed to have built them: Cyclopean.

Guarding a pass, with a view over the plain below, the place is powerful. And the surroundings are beautiful. The now-familiar greek terrain, parched, stony and semi-barren, weathered cones, scraggy with limestone lie behind me, and in front, plains planted with olives and oranges stretch in a wide vista towards the haze-disguised hills thirty kilometres away. Sitting in a tiny cube walled by stone, once a guard room at the gates of Mycenae, I reflect on the journey that brought me here.

As exhausting as it has been fufilling, as wondrous as it has been tedious: it has been a time of extremes. The big pull to come, and the reason I am still in Europe, has been my dear, generous, loving and very lovable British family, the hefty clan, from Douglas and Sarah in Newcastle to Tullis now in Barcelona. In fact, through my conversations with Nana and Grandad, I’ve got a sense of my tipuna, my ancestors; a process that led me to stand with cousin Alison at my maternal Great-grandparents grave. Coming to know my kin, young and old, has given me an valuable sense of connection with my past, with the world outside my own skin. I’ve been learning my whakapapa.

In other ways too, I’ve seen what has largely influenced our pakeha culture in New Zealand. Our culture’s genealogy. The marks that this continent, splintered by mountain ranges and great rivers and human squabbling into various language groups and cultures, uniting again under a common bureacracy and currency and through the steadily increasing osmosis and flux of immigration.

I’ve glimpsed some of the peculiarities of anglophone culture, having being asked to view it from Nordic, Central European, Mediterranean and Germanic cultures. Our subtlety (or dissemblance) the flexiblilty (or rootlessness) of our language; our strong grasp on personal liberty (or selfishness). I’ve seen Kiwi culture through another’s eyes too. ‘you’re all so relaxed’ they say. (really?)

I’ve been motivated to learn languages that meant nothing to me when they belonged in textbooks, all linked (except for Hungarian) by that mysterious ancestor ‘Indo-european’
I’ve been surprised by insightful expressions and delighted by exotic sounds. I’ve been stared at by kids in incredulity when I fail to grasp the meaning of their sentences.


It’s been an emotional journey too. Countless shrugs and glares (luckily nothing more hostile) have been directed at this witless foreigner in a dozen countries. On the other hand, even more people have opened their minds, their homes and their hearts to me.

It has been a year and half of this, two trips around Europe, thousands of kilometres by bus, train, bike, hitching, boat and two flights. About 50 nights with 13 different couch-surfing ehosts, 35 in my tent, including 13 wild camping, 15 in hostels and the odd cheap hotel, The bulk of nights staying with friends, family or employers. I’ve been paid to decorate flats, pick grapes, pack hampers, assist in a library, wash dishes and barbeque wurst. and converted money between eleven different currencies. I’ve set foot in 18 different countries and said ‘thank you’ in 14 seperate languages. And I’m getting ready to say goodbye to Europe. It just might take some time.

The first Academy

view from the Aeropagus, where ancient aristocrats ruled from and St Paul preached

Athens lives up to expectations, surpasses them elegantly. It is crowded and chaotic on the streets, but still and meditative on Aeropagus next to the Acropolis, or in the National gardens.

It is a city of 4 million, yet when I ask a teenager for directions he walks half a block with me to show me the exact place, just as if it were a village.

Of course the Acropolis, an imposing rock, an island against potential invaders, rises like a fist in the midst of the city and draws all attention to it. Whenever I catch a glimpse of it, it always lifts my spirits... an effect, I learn, that is quite universal.

On or around it, you can see and touch history... the theatre where the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Aristophanes were performed, the agora where Socrates questioned and Diogenes disgusted the public, the little temple to the god of healing erected when besieged Athens was struck with plague... I could write screeds. Great things happen everywhere, all the time, yet in Athens we have records of them... many records.

Even the underground stations here are museums. Got some free space...? bung up a replica of the Parthenon freize. Better yet, display the ruins we discovered when digging this place out. Sometimes you can't move in Athens for ruins.

I've heard at the Acropolis in September you can't move for tourists - well, just a month later, it is a spacious place except on Sunday (Sundays November-March are free). It's also very warm and comfortable outside, unseasonably so... climate change is definitely noticeable to Greeks. There are down sides to travelling in November though... most sites close their gates by three oclock, meaning I have to plan my days quite carefully in order to see all the old stuff I want to see.

Standing on glass above the ruins that surround the foundations of the new Acropolis museum

No closing hours on the sites of my own personal pilgrimages though: through hints in history books and talking to local shop owners I manage to find the ruins of Plato's Academy, in a park in a district near Larissa train station. Well outside the walls of the ancient city, I rest here for a while, as people walk their dogs and scooters buzz near me. Visiting these old schools is rewarding for me. For the first time I can imagine the students here in three dimensions: some skiving off from a lecture to drink wine, some enthralled, some with a crush on their teacher. Here, the intellectual history of our world is not a sterile thing, it lives and breathes and gets bored and excited just as we do.

"No!" day

"Was it worth leaving Belgrade for this?" Agneta is embarrased to be at the "Oxi (No) Day parade. "Don't tell anyone I am here."

October 28 is the date of Prime minister Metataxas' probably apocryphal one word reply to Mussolini's ultimatum. My guidebook mentioned folk dancing, so I rushed to get to Greece in time. There was a little dancing, but we missed it. What we did see was a little more disturbing. Dozens of squads of school children of all ages, in uniform (only worn for the day) marching straight-armed behind a proudly waved Greek flag.

Two things surprise me about Greece as soon as I arrive. One is the level of english. Quite different from other mediterranean countries I have visited, everyone speaks amazing english. As usual in such countries, most American movies are shown with subtitles. Cause or symptom, of language proficiency? Both I expect.

The other is the level of nationalism. The Oxi Day parade we went to was the small 'academic' one. The main one involved a parade of, among other things tanks. There's prejudice and xenophobia too. Albanians, in particular, are a target. Usually the best student in the school carries the flag for Oxi day. If they are Albanian immigrants, however, they may be barred.



Another example. I'm listening to a greek hip-hop album. "They started out anarchist" says Agneta. Then in their second album they went mad about Ancient Greece." I ask her what she means. "Well, they rap in ancient greek, and they are saying that, because of our past, we are the best country in the world".

At dinner in a Taverna, Dimitrious expands on this theme. "You know the story about the Argo, Jason's ship?" It was meant to go at the speed of thought. Some people, stupid people, actually believe that happened, and they believe Greece is absolutely the best.

Budapest to Belgrade

Ah the wonders of long distance train travel!

For some ridiculously small amount of forints I ride a comfortable train across the Hungarian plain. It is brown and pretty boring landscape, really, but the company is good. Maddy is a student from New York who has been spending several months in the region digging through archives and getting fed up with life in Bucharest and Novi Sad. She studies the growth of nationalism in the Balkans ad Romania evidenced in the 60's student press.

'It's great' she says 'hardly anyone studies this stuff, so there's still a lot of interesting things to say'.*

Jonas is a teenager from Baden Wittenberg, Germany. He plans to get to India, and is taking the train to Istanbul, from where he will take a plane.

And Anna is taking a trip through Eastern Europe on her own before she succumbs to regular work.

As we draw close to the border, the train gradually empties, until it is almost only us four solo travellers in our carriage. Then we pull into the first town in Serbia.

'Get ready, we are about to be invaded by Serbs' says Maddy.

I feel a flush of anxiety. But, as I have learnt time and time again, people over the border are really just like us. Some pretty, some ugly, some drunk, some dreaming, some singing along to pop songs in a different language. She's right in one sense though, the carriage fills up, and suddenly it feels no longer comfortable to chat away in English about the breakup of Yugoslavia. Everything else is fine.

*Her thesis is to do with the way the civil war of the 90's was due more to constructed ideas of nationality, rather than deep-seated ethnic differences.

Edit> Her focus, as far as I can remember it, looks at the alliances and growth of various right and left wing student movements during the sixties.

Which city?

Pretty, paint-peeling, buskers that know they are bad, riverine, statuesque, the most amazing spas, inexpensive hidden hostels.

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To the mountains

I originally planned to 'city-hop' from Prague to Budapest, to Sofia, to Athens or Salonica, but after living for two months in Konigstein, it felt almost painful to rush through language groups, alphabets and especially landscapes like that. I'm also somewhat overwhelmed by the mass of tourists (and tourist prices) in Prague. So I did what any good Golden Bayite would do, and headed for the hills.

First I head to the hills north of Prague...



Then next, to some bigger hills, actually the Western Tatra mountains, a tight cluster of granite peaks around 2000 m high that lie about 12 hours by train and clunky bus away from Prague, on the Slovakia-Poland border. They are gorgeous.




It's the first time I've shared a park with bears. and the excitement is enlivening, especially as it is spiced up with signs in Polish. I understand the picture of the bear. That's all.

I stay in a 'shelter' (more like a hostel) in the Chochowolska valley. The building is made seemingly of boulders and Polish enthusiasm. Like the Norwegians, they seem to love the outdoors On the Friday and Monday, I am practically alone, but during the weekend the hills are peppered with gung-ho Poles racing up peaks.

About to climb into the Western Tatry valleys for a few days.

Finding mountains in a foreign country can be suprisingly hard, considering how large they are! Actually the Tatrys are small in area but high.

 

For the sake of safety, I plan to stay at Polana Chocholowska and do day trips.