When we last left our heroines they had collapsed in a tent near Salzburg. We find them again on a train to Munich.
After our week of madcap Italian and Austrian adventure, it was very nice to be met at the train station in Munich by Hilde, Sebastien and his scooter, and ushered to their lovely house in the suburbs of Munich. That weekend we enjoyed sleeping on real beds in a room whose walls didn't move when you pushed them, a tour of a beautiful carrot-smelling monastery, gilded white and full of gorgeous paintings, a scenic boat ride, and lots of swimming and ice cream. Becky left for the states on Monday, but I was lucky enough to say for another couple days, reading Pride and Prejudice on a real sofa (!), playing bike tag with Sebastien, visiting BMW world, and enjoying the lovely company of Hilde and Andrea. On Wednesday I said goodbye to this lovely haven and its occupants and hopped on a train to Stuttgart, and another train to Strasbourg (a TGV! it was nice to be able to understand the language, after all that German), and a night train, and ended up at Avignon at 4:38 in the morning. I had the good luck to have an accidental traveling companion, whom I met on the way to Strasbourg and who just happened to be in the same compartment as me on the night train. He was a nice fellow from New York, a business school grad, who was also on his way to Barcelona, and who also got off at Avignon at 4:38am. He had to wait for a train in the morning, so I asked if I could sit on the same bench as him as we read our respective books, and it sure was a comfort not to be sitting alone on a bench in Avignon at 5am. After he caught his train, I wandered around Avignon under an unbelievably clear morning sky, saw Le Pont and the ancient stone Palais des Papes (Papal Palace), and had an espresso and pain au chocolat in an open air cafe and some "jus de pomplemousse" (grapefruit juice) in the balmy shadow of an old church.
At 10:21am I caught the first of three trains to Barcelona, and at the border of Spain I experienced the first passport check yet in the EU. Lunch was some bread and goat cheese cured in ashes, very creamy and bitter. I arrived at my cosy, quiet hostel at about 9pm, and collapsed in my tiny room soon thereafter. I had two days to "see" Barcelona all by myself, and the first day was jam-packed. I walked through the gardens to the south of the city, with beautiful fountains and statues. My favorite part was the Parc Joan Brossa, which was filled with strange wood and rubber structures that resembled a lifetime course but were actually musical instruments! Next was lunch at the big market, where I got a strawberry-coconut smoothie, some fried fish balls on a stick, one of those flat peaches, a couple little fishes fried in vinegar, and some little strawberry-like things, all for under 6 euro. La Rambla was kind of disappointing to me: there were lots of tourists gawking at street performers with huge costumes and no discernible talent, vendors selling bird whistles and others selling actual birds, and the constant fear of pick-pockets. More exciting was the Chocolate Museum, which gave out little bars of dark chocolate as the tickets! In addition to lots of information about the origin and history of chocolate, there were lots of sculptures made entirely out of chocolate! Delicious. That evening I went to see the Magic Fountain, a light and music spectacle featuring the most virtuosic water I've ever seen. After a delicious dinner out at a restaurant at about 10pm, I collapsed, and woke up next morning determined to see the Sagrada Familia. After walking quite a long ways on feet already tired from the day before, I finally found it, and it was very cool, still under construction of course, with towering spires and dramatic sweeps of architecture. That fulfilled the list of things I had wanted to do in Barcelona, so I and my aching feet wandered the city more or less aimlessly until my flight that evening to Athens.
At about 2am, I found my housemates Frank and Jill and my classmates Txema, Eric and John Michael in the Athens airport, where they were hunkered down for the night after arriving from London at 1am. After some delirious early morning laughter and a couple games of solitare, we hopped on a plane for 35 minutes, watched the sunrise over the sea, and landed in Chania, Crete where we were met by another classmate, Margot. We all drove to Rethymno in our rented cars and were met by the happy couple, the male half of which is our classmate Nikos, who invited us to Crete in the first place to do a play for his wedding. They treated us to Greek coffee (much like Turkish coffee, with a sludge of grounds at the bottom), and instructed us to go swimming immediately. The water was warm enough even for me, the waves just big enough to be thrilling without being threatening, the sand hot and fine. When our hotel rooms were ready we walked across the street from the beach (!) and settled in. After a nap and a wonderful communal dinner of spaghetti, olives, olive oil, and bread, some of us set out to explore the town, a picturesque place filled with touristy shops and thudding disco-bars. We ended up being invited into one of the port-side restaurants, courtesy of Margot, our out-going Greek-speaker, where we were treated to free raki (Cretan hard liquor) and a bazouki concert by the owner off the place. This was just a taste of the hospitality we would enjoy for the next week, a week full of food and drink, music and dance.
Crete is stunningly beautiful. The ocean stretches out to the horizon in its many shades of blue, mirrored by the clear blue sky. The beaches are composed of perfect sand on the north side, tiny pebbles on the south side, where we went only once and where the water is perfectly calm, cold, and clear, as opposed to the warm, turbulent, seaweed choked waters of the north. By the beaches are multitudes of little "tavernas", where German tourists sample the seafood and Cretan men pass the time, flipping their komboloi, which looks like rosaries, incessently against their hands. Further inland, Crete is a maze of winding roads through towering mountains, with goats and groves of olive trees on their steep slopes. There are tiny church-shaped monuments on the side of the road, from the many (too many, one of our new Cretan friends tells us) accidents that happen on the roads. The taverna where we rehearse, and perform, our wedding play is in these mountains, a rustic building with a round concrete stage that stains our feet with its red dusty paint, and a green grape arbor from which we can reach up and pick a snack whenever we like. We rehearse in the mornings on the cool shady grass with the groom Nikos, who is otherwise running around like a headless chicken. After rehearsal we swim in the ocean, go to plays in Greek at Rethymno's pine-studded outdoor amphitheater, or visit the house of a recent LISPA grad, who lives with her parents in a perfect pink villa with a pomegranate tree, overlooking the sea. She and her boyfriend, also a recent grad, taught us to dive off the rocks into the warm turbulent water and fed us cucumbers and stuffed tomatoes fresh from the garden, homemade olive oil and raki, and huge slabs of feta. We were also entertained one evening by the family of Emmanouela, the bride. The party started at about midnight, and we were fed massive quantities of meat and generally smiled at until three in the morning.
The wedding itself was joyous. The ceremony took place in a tiny church high up in the mountains, at just the right time of day so that the bride looked absolutely stunning in the light of the fading sun, and the groom equally stunning as she came to meet him. The couple were married under an outdoor awning, as the crowd looked on and chatted, and pelted them with rice at the appropriate moment. Everyone then trooped over to the taverna, which was set up for 300 people (a small wedding, we were told). We performed the love story of Nikos and Emmanouela to general appreciation, stuffed ourselves with lamb, rice, potatoes, and wine and raki made by the bride's father, and tried our hand at the Cretan dances. Most of us woke up quite hung-over the next morning (not me, of course ;). On our final day, we were informed that it was bad luck the weather was so bad (it was 80 degrees and sunny, but apparently the wind was too strong), and we suffered the bad weather at a beach-side taverna with a palm-thatched roof until it was time to say goodbye to our dear friend Nikos and his lovely new wife, and set out on an overnight ferry to Athens.
In Athens, we stayed at the house of Nikos' mother, who was still in Crete, and were looked after by their friend and upstairs neighbor Dimitrius, who insisted that we call him Jim. We gladly fell into the Mediterranean habit of afternoon napping, and spent many blissful hours asleep or reading in the quiet house, disturbed only by the barking of the neighbor's dogs. We visited the Acropolis and its museum, and though the ruins were stunning, I was quite frankly a little too overwhelmed by that time to take it all in properly. For the last couple days we stocked up on sun and souvlaki, played 7-hand rummy, and went to see the guards at the Parliament building, who did an amazingly stylized clown-type walking routine, wearing shoes with pom-poms and hats with long tassels, and whose sweaty faces were wiped with a hanky by a camo-wearing guard. On this note of absurdism, we prepared to leave, and soon thereafter we touched down at Stansted airport, cursing the overcast, chilly British "summer", but generally glad to be home.
It is good to be home, now that I've adjusted to the weather. My tan is starting to fade already, but the taste of feta is still in my mouth, and I'm truly grateful for the amazing European adventure I was lucky enough to have. Next on deck is a visit from the wonderful Philly relatives, a visit to Roger in Austin, and then my second and last year of LISPA! Onward and upward...
