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Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

Every morning we wake to the sound of roosters crowing and the distant tinkle of goat bells, which Colin has dubbed the Thassos Orchestra. We work till midafternoon then go for a hike once the day starts to cool off. Almost from our door we can start on a dirt road that meanders up into the hills, where we might come across the afore-mentioned local musicians, grazing and wandering through the fields of flowers and scree, their bells jangling as they shyly trot under the pines to avoid us. They blend in well with the forest. Sometimes it sounds like the goats are so close, but you can’t see them.

As it is with the bees. There must be 100 different kinds of flowers blooming in the hills. Honey is one of the local industries so there are bee boxes lining the roads, and at the height of the day you can hear the constant low drone of bees from our balcony. Last week while we were hiking, we were sure we heard a rushing river just ahead. The sound seemed to get quieter as we approached and the hum of bees got louder, until we reached a clearing filled with ferns and practically vibrating with the sound of bees… although eerily we still couldn’t see them. There are chapels all over the hillsides here so we dubbed that spot “Our Lady of the Buzzing Bees”. I’m pretty sure the bees imitated the river noise to lure us there, but I’m not sure why…

Yesterday we headed up the network of seemingly unused but well maintained dirt roads to what we call “Spider Mountain”. Incredipede artist Thomas Shahan has a real love of jumping spiders, and apparently it’s contagious because Colin couldn’t take ten steps without bending down to wrangle another scurrying creature while I took photographs for identification.

Thanks to this site we learned that the curious holes we found were burrows of the large wolf spider (also known as a ‘true’ tarantula) Geolycosa vultuosa. We poked a stick down one and were shocked when the hole’s owner grabbed the end and tugged it hard. We couldn’t lure him far enough out to get a decent look but dimly saw some large yellow mandibles and gleaning eyes, and I now have a very good reason to never put my finger down any hole in the ground, ever.

We were also disturbed by the antlions which are horrible alien creatures like the sand worm from Return of the Jedi, a mouth with huge pincers waiting at the bottom of a sand funnel for ants to fall in. I fed them some of the fat buzzing flies that kept following us for I don’t know what reason. Sometimes nature is like a horror movie if you look close enough.

And sometimes it’s cute.

We finally made it to the beach last Friday when the weather hit 30 degrees. There’s a bus that goes three times a day so we had to time our trip carefully. First, we scrambled around the point and swam off the rocks, then lunch at a lovely restaurant (“Gatos”, the Greekest-looking one beside the water with ivy growing on the underside of the palapa roof), followed by an hours walk to the other end of the beach, swimming again in the shallows (much warmer than off the rocks), and exploring the towns of Skala Panagia and Skala Potamia. “Skala” (ladder) is a synonym for a harbor controlled by a town further up the mountain. Except that today those two towns aren’t exactly ports. We did see a collection of tiny two-man fishing boats, but mostly Golden Beach is all about the tourist trade.

There must be enough hotel rooms to fit 2,000 tourists down there, but the place was a ghost town and we saw less than 20 other people. That didn’t stop restaurants and bars from setting up all their tables, and the beach was marred with hundreds of empty lawn chairs and umbrellas that I assume somebody had to set up every morning. I think this has as much to do with the time of year as the economy, since we saw the same thing when we were in Turkey a couple years ago. Back then we’d argued with one hotel manager that it was mid-June and 32 degrees, so why was the advertised swimming pool still empty? The manager insisted, “it’s the off season, nobody wants to swim until July” (but eventually did fill it for us).

Colin and I are happy to visit places during the off season, even if we get the odd rainstorm or typhoon.

Kitchen Window
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

We’ve been cloistered in our new home on the island of Thassos, Greece, for a couple weeks now. It’s so different from Athens we might as well be on the other side of the world. We’re living in the little mountain town of Panagia (pronounced Panayhia – it means Virgin/Madonna), which has a population of maybe 400 right now. There are probably more goats and chickens than people.

The streets are so windy and narrow that cars can’t make it up to our part of the village, making it very peaceful. A series of canals run beside the roads bringing clear water down from a natural spring. Gardens spill into the streets, and all include grape vines that are starting to show signs of bearing fruit. I wonder if everyone will make their own homebrew wine, or if they combine the grapes from every house together. Wine is one of the exports here along with honey, olive oil, and a shiny white marble they pull out of the big quarry peaking over a nearby hill.

Instead of the iconic Greek red tile roofs, the little white houses in our little Panagia stand out by having slate roofs. Whitewashed stucco covers the traditional stone walls beneath, which looks to me like heaps of rocks and the occasional haphazard wooden board. A surprising number of houses that have been abandoned to the passage of time, including the ruined walls of a neighboring house which we overlook from our ample balcony.

As usual we spend our days on the balcony, reclining with our laptops on two single beds at either end. There’s a table between us (the only one in the house), where we eat meals consisting of Greek salad, fresh bread with olive oil & vinegar, and whatever Greek recipe I’ve tried to implement that day.

There’s a bakery and grocery just a few steps down the hill, and trucks come by every morning with loudspeakers announcing fresh vegetables and fish. Further down in the center of town are four restaurant/bars facing eachother, where the men of the town spend their evenings drinking retsina and gossiping. The women sweep homes and putter in their gardens, and have shouted conversations between balconies. The older ladies all wear black blouses and long black skirts. I hear the period of mourning for the death of any family member is 2-5 years, but widows and the especially mournful will wear black for the rest of their lives. It’s so common here it almost seems like a fashion statement. Everyone is friendly, although few of them speak English.

They all say “hello” to which we answer “yia sas”.

Blinded!
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

We were warned about staying near Omonia station in the “bad” part of town. Colin was nervous about arriving at midnight and walking through there with all our worldly posessions, so he meticulously planned our route from Syntagma square to the hotel. It took us along two wide roads lined with upscale shops… sort of. Every third or fourth storefront was abandoned, smashed up and/or burnt out. Graffiti covered every available surface. The word that came to my mind was “wounded”, like this part of the city had been beaten up, whether by riots or the economy in general.

Omonia didn’t look much better in the light of day, and the damage stretched all the way to the old town around the Acropolis. It was hard to tell where the modern ruins ended and the ancient ones began. The grafitti was even further spread, mostly short phrases written with fat black markers on the ubiquitous white marble. We’d desciphered the Greek alphabet earlier using an in-flight magazine, but none of the words were familiar.

We strolled over to Lykavittos hill and took the furnicular to the top (not a thrilling ride, but it was a hot day). From the top we could see Athens stretching out in all directions, uniformly beige 4-8 story buildings packed in tightly by the surrounding hills. No skyscrapers or obvious downtown, but there are several big parks and at least a dozen 2500-year old archeological wonders just plopped around the city.

On our second day we met with a couple of local independent game developers from Flipped Horizons to get their perspective of the city and Greece’s local games industry (namely, that there isn’t much of one). Their 20-some person studio produces more games every month than we have made in our entire professional careers. It’s like they’re in a permanent state of game jamming, and it seems to have fostered a strong feeling of camaraderie (not unlike soldiers at war).

We had a late tour of the Parthenon and watched the sun set over a much nicer view of the city bordered by olive groves. We had dinner at an outdoor tapas place (what do they call tapas here?) and ouzo at a very cool little bar called Loop down in Thiseio. One thing we loved about Athens was the amount of outdoor seating. And the Athenians seem like a pretty hip and happy bunch all things considered.

Our flight was delayed until the next evening, but I suspected the posters pasted all over the city with a picture of a fist clenching a wrench and the words “something something MAH 1” were going to put a damper in any plans we tried to make. Sure enough, Athens celebrated May Day with a general strike, closing all the museums, archeological sites and trains to the airport. So instead we wandered towards Syntagma square to see what we could see.

We were immediately caught up in an enormous parade of chanting ralliers which pulled us along for ten or twenty blocks. The side streets were blocked off with hundreds and hundreds of police in riot gear. We’d noticed a huge police presence over the weekend in just about every corner of the city. We saw them in the squares, in the parks, even outside our hotel just hanging out in big groups. I’m not sure if this was normal, or if they came from out of town for this one event.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) we did have to head for the airport but are keeping track of the Mayday protests through Twitter. I hope the 30 degree weather will keep tempers down and Athens won’t aquire any more bruises or broken bones tonight.