Greece: Stumbling Upon Legacies

Summer 2014

Every year, Becky and I promise ourselves that we won’t travel in Turkey during Bayram (the Muslim holidays), and every year we forget about that promise until we are securely fastened in deadlock traffic on a bus attempting to leave the city. A trip I took to Canakkale a few years ago was 4 hours longer than it should have been, our trip to Lesbos island last year was 5 hours longer, and now here we were, on the only road leaving south out of one of the biggest cities in the world, and everyone in the city had the week off.

Samos Island 

We were headed to the beach city of Kusadasi on an overnight bus from where we would then head to the Greek island of Samos. Samos would be the first of four stops that would eventually end in Santorini in time for our friends Melis and Leedham's wedding. After Samos, we would be heading to Syros and then a short stop in Mykonos before Santorini. A lot of our friends from Istanbul would be there and Becky and I saw this as a great way to see everyone before we left for Beijing.

Our friend Rachel was also heading to the wedding and also had the week before the wedding off,  so we decided to slow boat and island hop our way to Santorini together. Rachel met us in Kusadasi but was on a later ferry than us, so Becky and I took the ferry across and sorted out inter-island ferries, hotel rooms, and car rentals--  a forte of Becky's.

Traipsing about rivers and canyons on Samos

At first glance, Samos seemed no different from Turkey. Restaurants catering to Turkish day-trippers were advertising kebabs, menus were written in Turkish instead of Greek, horrible Turkish music was being blasted from competing speakers up and down the street, and packs of affluent Turkish tourists were moving about the town taking in all of these sights.

Sunset on Samos

Becky and I couldn't rent a car and get out of there fast enough. We had a few hours to kill as Rachel wasn't getting in until that evening, so we traveled over to a neighboring beach with some ruins on it that was pristine and beautiful in its water, sandy beaches, and Turklessness. So overjoyed with this discovery, I proceeded to firmly and tactfully place the rental car in a sandbar where any attempt to dislodge myself resulted in putting the rental car in a bigger and bigger predicament.

Waiting for our ferry

Being on holiday and all, we more or less walked away from this problem and headed to the beach where this problem would be out of sight for the time being. Our hopes were that it would miraculously fix itself. That usually happens right? It didn't, but the next best thing did happen. A tow truck came along and had a winch and by my overly pronounced gesticulations and the fox hole I had dug the car into, he was able to ascertain the root of my distress. Within minutes, we were pulled from the sandbar strangle hold and thanking the nice Greek man with universal signs of gratitude to which he responded with universal sings for being happy to help. We went back to the ferry, picked up Rachel and drove to our hotel clear on the other side of the island.

About an hour's car ride from the ferry port, the west side of the island was more or less deserted.  We had it more or less all to ourselves. The hotel was great, the seaside promenade was full of cafes, and the seafood was fresh. The beaches were not so great right at the hotel so we spent the next day beach hopping our way around our side of the island. The afternoon was getting late and we had aimlessly found ourselves at the very remote tip of the island in a village that doubled as a dead end to the highway we were driving on. We stopped to stretch our legs and grab some water at one of the only cafes there was. We sat down and were about to order some drinks when the nice old woman came saddling over to our table.

“Courgettes?” she asked with a big smile before we even had the chance to say what we wanted. She was a short, stout woman with a flour-caked apron and her hair haphazardly pulled back in a hair net.

“Just 3 waters and 3 cokes please, we're not hungry,” Rachel retorted.

“Yes, yes,” she wrote down our drink order on the old and thin pad of paper she had just dug out of her apron pocket. She feigned as if she was going to go back to the kitchen when she added, “three courgettes?”. With her thumb and pointer finger pinching her notepad, she complemented her question with her other three fingers pointed toward us.

If it hadn't been for her very friendly demeanor, her stout, grandmother-esque amiable personality, and her never-waivering smile, her courgette obstinacy may have been seen as an annoyingly over-stepped boundary. But since the sun was shining, we were on holiday, and we were currently overlooking the ocean  on a porch that offered panoramic views of the sea, we decided to humor her.

Rachel, Becky, and I looked at each other and acquiesced more because we had been worn down rather than being persuaded. “Ok, we'll try one order of courgettes.”

A view from the road to the cafe 

She smiled and quickly put pen to pad while saying, “Maybe one courgette, maybe later 3 courgette,” and scurried off to get our drinks.

She returned with our drinks, three empty plates, and one small platter of courgettes that she put down between us. We thanked her and she motioned for us to eat. The bite-sized courgettes did, admittedly, look appetizing. She continued to stand there with her hands behind her back, rocking from toe to heal, waiting for us to taste the recommendation that she had forced on us. We each grabbed one, roughly the size of a jalapeno popper, turned it over in our hands, and popped them in our mouths. Being very aware of her presence, we all barely had them in our mouths before we turned to her to blanketly express how good they were. It was awkward that she was standing there and we figured faking how much we liked them would get her to go away, but after a few more chews, we were dumbfounded at how amazingly tasty these things were.

In case you are like me, and are very unclear as to what a courgette actually is, it is a zucchini. But  these  were the zucchini flowers, and what made them special was that these bite-sized zucchini flowers had been stuffed with herbs and feta cheese, breaded, deep fried, and topped with olive oil and other local cheeses. It was so incredibly amazing that words here would not do it justice.

Rachel, Becky, and I barely looked at each other before we turned to the woman signaling for two more plates of her specialty. She let out an unguarded burst of laughter and skipped back in the kitchen to make the other two batches.

We stayed there well into the evening, munching on courgettes, resting out of the sun, and talking. We couldn't believe a) how good our appetizer turned full on meal was and b) that we had just merely stumbled upon such an amazing little facet of Samos.

These courgettes, we would find out, were her life's work. She was famous throughout Greece for them. We mentioned and recommended this place to several people after this and found out that this smiling old woman in this tiny village at the end of an old road, in a nearly deserted section of this island, had a very well-established reputation for these courgettes. We even had a friend in Istanbul who had heard about her from a different friend who had sought this lady out years before this.

These courgettes were her legacy. The thing she was known for. The lifeblood of this village that people came to for (making her pushy deliver of them a bit more understandable). It's a bit crazy to think that we were so close to not knowing about this. We chose to drive down this road for no reason really, just to see where it went until we ended up at a dead end and became thirsty.

Post courgette beers at sundown

Most of our time traveling to distant places is spent in search of things, areas, and activities that we had researched and known about. Things we had either learned about before we left for the trip or had found out somehow while we were on the trip. Going to Jordan to see Petra, Egypt to see the pyramids, Amsterdam for the canals, Sri Lanka for the ruins, Greece for the beaches – and I suppose for the courgettes as well. Some of these legacies are known to all, waiting for you to have time to seek them out, but others just have to be stumbled upon, making them all that more incredible.

Ferry from Samos to Syros

The ferries between the Greek islands are less like ferries and more like cruise ships. So when the three of us piled onto the ferry to Syros, we had to choose which floor, by which food court, and on which sun deck we wanted to sit. It was a view that never got old – endless expanses of blue in all directions with the cool wind on your face from the steaming ferry. The ride was less a tiresome transport and more an Aegean sea tour allowing us to see more of the sea was  speckled with islands throughout the ride.

We arrived in Syros late and barely made it to dinner before crashing at our apartment. The next day, Rachel, dead set on reading her book by the pool, did not want to join us on our trip around the island so Becky and I rented a motorbike and circumnavigated it, stopping off at any little secluded bay that might offer us some nice views and clear swimming. We made it all the way to the end of the island where the road stopped above the high cliffs allowing us to peer out into the distance of the horizon.

Hotel on Syros

Motorbike ride around Syros for the day

She drove, I took pictures

Views from the motorbike

City center before we boarded our ferry

Even though these islands were well connected with several different ferry companies that would take you where ever you wanted to go, standing on that cliff side still instilled a feeling of how isolated these islands were. How, throughout time, these different places have cultivated their own sub-culture that is only specific to the social and physical make up of that island, molded over time to both reflect a specific culture and be a reflection of the people who have influenced it. Each island was slightly different in its own special way, people going about their lives in a way that makes most sense to their island. Cultivating crops indigenous to only them, catering to different nationalities that visit, embracing lifestyles from circumstances dictated to them and making a life out of it.

From the wedding Villa

We spent the day on Mykonos before ferrying to our main event: Santorini. We arrived a day later than most of our friends and we found that they were already very entrenched in holiday mode. They had all but taken over our hotel, racked up substantial bar tabs, and donned goofy, pre-wedding attire that drew even more attention to the boisterous giddiness of a large group of friends on holiday.

Our hotel on Santorini

After dinner, girls peeled off and went back to the wedding villa with the bride-to-be and the boys headed into the city with the soon to be ex bachelor. Santorini, beautiful and bustling during the day, transformed into a gorgeous array of lights, sounds, and wind whirling around on the island's cliff edge at night 

(missing 8 hours of trip here – woke up back at hotel fully clothed)

The next day was the big day. Everyone seemed to wake up a bit late and groggily made their way to breakfast. While most of us muttered things about not being ready to face the day, Becky and I headed out to explore a bit of the island. We walked around the cliffs to the nearest beach and quickly realized that Santorini must not be known for their beaches as much as for their views. The beach was small, crowded, and surprisingly dirty. The red volcanic sand had turned the water an ugly brown and the longer we stayed there, the less we enjoyed it, so we opted for a lazy afternoon eating Greek salad and hanging out at the wedding villa with the wedding party.

The view from the wedding villa rated among some of the better ocean views I have ever seen and it was all done from the infinity pool that was on the main deck. We swam in the pool and sat on the deck staring at the caldera and the city on the far side of the island. I went to the bathroom and when I came back, it was as if a switch had been hit. The mood of the villa changed drastically. A huge stress cloud was now shrouding over us and the gravity of the day seemed to be setting in for the most important parties. Girls were running around with curling irons and make up bags, boys were grabbing tuxedos and freshly polished shoes, so Becky and I decided to make our leave until it was time to commence the wedding. We took a bus back to our hotel with the groom, best man, and anyone else who valued their lives and didn’t want to be at the mercy of the crazed bride’s maids.

Hours later, we made our way back to the site of the wedding-- Becky in a dress and me in marginally longer shorts than those which I had been wearing before. With the time of the wedding exponentially getting closer to us, so was the stress to get things done in time. Becky, Ben, Chad, Rachel and I stayed as far away as we could – knowing that any proffered contribution to help would only make things worse.

Trying our best to stay out of the way.

The wedding started a bit later than had been previously planned but it was all for the better. The sun had a chance to set a bit and was not directly in our eyes as it was moving below the horizon. The heat of the day had also subsided a bit to make the suits and dresses people were wearing a bit more tolerable. The ceremony was very special. Melis and Leedham were finally getting married. They had been together for years, long before Becky and I arrived on the scene in Kadikoy and I really got a kick out of how nervous they still were. I don’t know a couple as comfortable with each other as them and I found it incredibly endearing how nervous they were to do something that they had been planning to do for years. 

Becky and I hadn't known them as long as a lot of the people that were currently at the party, but we felt honored to sit among them and watch these awesome people, whom we have grown to love, declare their love for each other in one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. Everything was perfect. Everything was playing out like a storybook. Everything was – wait, where was Pete?

I looked around the crowd and realized that Pete was nowhere to be found. Pete, having stayed up pretty late the night before, seemed to have lost track of time. As soon as the ceremony was over I jumped on the quad that someone had rented and drove down to Pete’s hotel to pick him up. I met him on the road walking up, looking as if he had just woken up. He had.

The rest of the night was a combination of fun, friends, several more courses of food than was completely necessary, and an indulgent amount of mojitos. I made it a point to pull Becky aside at some point just so she took in the grandeur of the night. This was one of the last outings with these people we were going to have. Everything would be changing soon. Regardless of for better or worse, everything would be changing.

Views from around Santorini

My thoughts brought me back to the smiling old woman in the village at the end of a highway we had just visited. There are an infinitesimal set of narratives where Becky, Rachel, and I never stumble upon her courgettes, just how there are an infinitesimal set of narratives where Becky and I never get the opportunity to stumble into the legacy that we were currently among at this party: the legacy of this circle of friends. The relationships that we forged, memories made, and stories we shared over the past 5 years could have very easily have never been. That is a sad thought to me. Everything about life is fragile-- our literal lives and how we navigate them, the relationships we encounter, and the impact of the choices we make. Maybe that is something Melis and Leedham figured out when their nerves were getting the best of them on the altar; the fragility of their lives and how precious that makes it. Precious because it could have just as well have never been, it could have been something else entirely. Not to say that whatever that was wouldn’t also be great, but it would not be great like this. So whether you seek legacies out or stumble upon them, appreciate them for what they are: a gift. A gift that could have just as easily have never been, a gift that could turn into something great, and a gift that should be celebrated.      

Books read: 

I am Pilgrim - Terry Hayes

The She-Wolf of France - Maurice Druon (Accursed King Series #5)

The Lily and the Lion - Maurice Druon (Accursed King Series #6)

The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss (Kingkiller Chronicles Series #1)

  
 

 

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Portugal: An Ambiguity for Happiness

October 12 - October 19 2013

Ever since we had gone to Spain, tackling the other part of the Iberian Peninsula had been something that we wanted to do. Friends would come back, raving about Lisbon and Porto, its food, and of course, the wine. We had booked these flights months in advance and were very excited about the trip. We had 9 days to spend making our way along the length and breadth of the country to see why everyone loved it so much and to imbibe its famous libations.

We had to book separate flights on the way there so I got in 6 hours earlier, checked into our hotel and walked around the beautiful promenade streets and waited for the Beckster to fly in. Parts of Lisbon were very new and chic, ripe with boutiquey outlets and department stores while others, in neighboring areas, were incredibly old; rich with cobblestone streets, small houses and laundry strewn about on every available portion of every balcony we saw.



One of our favorite neighborhoods of the city was called Al Fama. Stretching down the steep slopes of the city, Al Fama is a gorgeous area full of picturesque labyrinthine streets, narrow staircases and small squares which were incredibly lively and vibrant with the people living in this community. You would turn a corner and find some secret bar or cafe tucked away into the side of a building, turn another corner to see some ornately designed fountain, or another corner to get a glimpse of the ocean between two buildings, just barely wide enough to catch a glimmer of the sun reflecting off the water. Al Fama was also famous for its Fado, a Portuguese style of music, being played.  Becky and I walked the area for hours, being totally mesmerized by its colors, sounds and people. Because of its small, compactness perched up on the hillside, it was one of the only neighborhoods of the city that was left more or less untouched in a massive earthquake in the 18th century. The area evoked beautiful images of the city's history and left us never wanting to leave.

The streets of Al Fama

Before heading up north, Becky and I took a day trip from Lisbon to Sintra. Sintra was a town 45 minutes outside of the city up in the mountains known for its beautiful architecture, palaces, gardens and Moorish castles. We spent the better part of an hour climbing this massive hill to reach the Moorish outpost, climbing higher and higher through beautifully turned foliage, old stone staircases and fortified walls and archways. Having finally arrived at the top of this enormous hill, we were asked to pay a ridiculous entry fee to walk the grounds of the castle. We did so, irritatedly, and then once inside, instantly regretted our decision. The Moorish castle, from the look of it, dated back to 2008. Although beautifully perched on top of this massive hilltop, the faux-castle left something to be desired. The best part about the castle was being able to eat the salami sandwiches that we brought for the walk up.


The highlight of Sintra though was the estate of Quinta da Regaleira. Quinta da Regaleira was this beautiful lush green estate with romantic style churches, chapels and a central palace. The expansive area also featured lakes, streams, grottoes, fountains and wells. Above ground, the huge area can be walked with interconnected pathways, zigzagging around the area. Below ground, the wells, grottoes and buildings are all connected by a myriad of tunnels, allowing you to get from one end to the other without ever going above ground. The place was as beautiful as it was enigmatic, with its gargoyle statues, spired-buildings and spiral designed staircases. It was a true pleasure to be able to see this architectural masterpiece.

Exploring the tunnels of Quinta da Regaleira

From there we rented the car and headed north up to Porto. Becky had gotten in contact with a friend of hers a few weeks earlier and he had told her that his mom lives in Portugal and urged us to give her a call and stop by for a visit. The area that she lived in was conveniently in the direction of Porto so we stopped in for the afternoon. We met Becky's friend Gill in the city center of a tiny mountain village and she then took us to her sister's home where she was staying. Gill and her husband were a British couple who had retired and moved to Portugal. They had bought a plot of land in the same village but were staying at a relative's house in the meantime. The house that they were staying at had been an old manor house that was restored. The house still retained its original foundation and on the tour, Becky and I were in awe at how amazing the place looked. Old wooden I-beams, brick walls, and stone archways had been incorporated into the house giving it a very interesting feel. Gill even showed us where the original chapel of the house had been and how it still contains pews and an altar.

Gill was incredibly hospitable, friendly, and side-stichingly funny. She lived there with her husband and uncle. Her uncle Reggie was a very old, frail man who spent his invalid days watching television, being fed, and complaining about aches and pains he thought he had. We didn't speak to him much but Gill spoke of him to us. He had always been an odd duck, complacent with not doing much with his life, shirking any sort of ambition in work, life or love.


"He never even had a shag," Gill said about him in a voice that told us she really didn't understand the guy.


Reggie had never been abroad besides the time he spent at his station in World War II. He seemed to have spent his entire life doing what he was currently doing, waiting around to die. As the night went on, Gill and her husband invited us to stay for an amazing roast dinner, and Becky was invited to drink copious amounts of wine. I, being the driver, stayed with juice. We finished our delicious dinner, thanked our generous hosts, and jumped in the car towards Porto. On the drive up, with Becky being less concerned with conversation and more concerned with drooling on herself in the passenger seat, I found myself thinking of Reggie.

Death will find us all in the end. Hopefully later rather than sooner but it's something that cannot be avoided. Reggie and many others like him are at a time in their lives when all they can do is reflect on the time they have spent walking this earth. The things and people they loved, lost, didn't love or the things that never found a way into their lives but they wish had. I do not know what the cards hold after we make the giant leap from this current precipice of life; I am of the opinion that when I die, I will think about my life in a similar capacity to how I thought about my life before I was born. So on one hand, there is not much to worry about. Whatever regrets one may or may not have will cease to exist as soon as you shut your eyes for a final time, making everything a moot point. But on the other hand, I can imagine nothing scarier, more pitiful, or more wretched than those last final minutes before shutting your eyes where one might reflect on a life unfulfilled to the best of one's abilities. If anything can help alleviate that fear, I want to do it. My own way of managing the shadows I create, I suppose.

Whatever our beliefs may be, we all contain an enormous capacity for happiness and unhappiness alike-- the type of happiness and unhappiness unaffected by the hazards of life and the perceived hindrances that stifle us. It’s about the way we regard ourselves in relation to the world we live in and the people we share our lives with. We are all destined for happiness, just so long as we provide ourselves with enough ambiguity for said happiness and understand that one day, it will all come to an end, never to appear again in the consciousness we currently possess.

Porto at night

A few hours later, the GPS in the car told us that we had reached our destination so we parked, checked into our hotel and spent the night walking around Porto. Becky and I were both just getting over a cold so we didn't spend too much time walking around and turned in early.

The next day we spent walking around the very hilly yet beautiful Porto, sampling Port wine at every chance, and we even had time to take a boat cruise and see the city from the river that serves as an artery through the city. We ate steaks topped with runny eggs (that seems to be a thing in Portugal - whatever the food may be, put an egg on it!), sipped wine overlooking the river and viewed the gorgeous churches and old buildings of the city.

From Porto, we drove north in search of a town called Braga. For whatever reason, the GPS wasn't able to find Braga so I had Becky use my tablet. The GPS on my tablet worked fine so I showed Becky where we were, where we were headed and had her guide me to Braga through the streets of northern Portugal. I was hesitant to task Becky with this orienteering endeavor because she usually can be quite directionally ("I thought north was up!") challenged but she seemed to be quite capable at the task at hand. Whenever I asked her where to go, she gave me a perfect answer and she said we were right on target. She kept telling me what to do, I kept listening to which she would keep saying, "We are on target."

Wondering what she meant by that and under the impression that we should have been in Braga long ago, I pulled over to the side of the road, took the tablet and realized that we had been going in the complete wrong direction from the moment she started opening her mouth and telling me which way to go.

"Becky, we are nowhere near Braga, what are you doing? Why weren't you guiding me?" I asked, annoyed.

"What do you mean? The blue dot was flashing so I followed the blue dot!" Becky shrugged back, inferring that there must be some other reason for our erroneous navigation.

"The blue dot, Becky? And did you notice that whenever we turned, the blue dot turned with us?" I said, no longer annoyed just dumbfounded.

"Yeah, we were on target."

"No, Becky. We were not on target and we were not following the blue dot. We ARE the blue dot."

I watched as this wave of new information washed over her. She acted as if she was forming words with her mouth, thought better of it, then slumped in her seat and fiddled with her hands.

"Maps confuse me," she said, quite unnecessarily.

So we righted the ship, back-tracked our steps, and finally made it to Braga and to what we came to see. The Bom Jesus do Monte. High atop the mountains on the outskirts of Braga is the enormous and beautiful Portuguese sanctuary. An old pilgrimage site with an elaborately decorated staircase mounted with statues of saints and arch bishops that zigzags its way up the hill for nearly 500 feet. On different levels of the zigzagged staircases are different fountains to symbolize different senses of the human body and virtues of the human spirit. The baroque-style churches reached high into the air and allows for beautiful views of the surrounding area down below.

Me at the base of Bom Jesus do Monte

With bad weather closing in on us and our time in Portugal coming to an end, we jumped back onto the highway and made our way back down to Lisbon to catch our flight. The economic situation in Portugal was quite dire we found out. We had inquired to someone along the way as to why we were pretty much all alone on the highways we were driving on.  We were told that it was a simple answer: no one could afford to use them.

Portuguese drivers preferred to take side roads and old highways to avoid tolls that we only realized at that moment we were incurring. Another observation we made went hand in hand with this one: very few people were fiddling with smart phones. People watched where they were walking on the street, talked to each other in restaurants, and took zero selfies. Most people simply couldn't afford it.

We stopped over in Obidas right as the torrential rain set in. We had lunch, waited for it to subside, then wandered the old city walls and watched the remaining drizzle cascading off the coned roofs. The rivers of water also sprayed over the sides of the stone ramparts and fortified towers of the old city. Heightened by the rain, Obidas was a beautiful little village with the rolling green hills of central Portgual in the backdrop.

We jumped back on the road and headed for Lisbon. Hours later, we waited with bated breath to see Lisbon city limit signs. I was very careful not to alter my acceleration too much, opted to coast down declines, and clinch my teeth during inclines. For some reason our bullshit budget rental car's policy is to charge you for the tank of gas when you pick it up but then tell you to just bring it back empty. Indignant, annoyed, and determined to not be ripped off, Becky and I made hasty calculations at the gas station in Obidas to ascertain the minimum amount we could fill up with and still make it to Lisbon. Our petrol was depleting fast and we were on a barren highway in the middle of a rainstorm but our calculations came through in the end. Becky may not know her ass end from a compass heading but she did get us to the airport with a few fumes to spare.

The streets of Obidas

And as our fantastic trip to Portugal came to a close, so commenced the most hellish and enraging airplane travel experience we have ever encountered together. What was meant to be a 6 hour travel day ended up being a very irritating, sleepless, and deliriously long, 28 hour travel experience which I promise is not worth writing about.

Something that is worth mentioning though is Reggie. A few days later, Becky saw a post on Facebook from our host Gill saying that Reggie had in fact just died days after we met him. The news was shocking and sad, but not unexpected given his age, health, and frailty when we last saw him. I can only hope that I am lucky enough to slip away one day, reflecting on my life, the choices I made, the people I knew and the things I have done with a big smile on my face.

When I first started this blog, I looked around for guidance and inspiration and I found myself on a friend's blog reading past stories and looking at pictures, entertained by what he had to say. His blog is called MookFish and the main quote at the top of his blog reads:

"Most of us go to our graves with the music still inside of us."

This beautiful quote encapsulates Reggie's tragedy better than I possibly could so I will leave you with that and that alone.  


Books Read:

Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

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