Wednesday 8 June 2016

Crete and being on the cusp


Hersonissos square

The texture of our journey has changed.  We are in a proper city again with ordinary shops and supermarkets and traffic jams.  It is a bit of a relief to be just people instead of tourists.  Tourism is a subordinate part of the Cretan economy which includes winemaking and olives and textiles and who knows what more.  Crete is a huge island and we can’t hope to explore it all.

 Cretans may or may not be liars but everyone we have met so far has been exceptionally kind and humorous and I’d love to have more time here.  It is a place where one could live for a while, all colours of brown and cream and grey and pleasantly untidy. Also much greener than the other islands.  It must get decent rain.

We got off the ferry and discovered our Golden Valentin hotel was way out of town in a place called Hernonissos.  It turned out there were subsections of Hernonissos, one of which was a village with very narrow streets.  Our GPS flag said we had arrived but we hadn't. But there was no hotel in sight and we had no idea where to go except going anywhere was almost impossible in our yellow rental car which squeals when in low gear.  The lanes were very small and we felt outrageous making such a noise in the little place..  A man we subsequently learned was called Adonis came out of his bar and looked at us, expressionless.  I got out and flung up my hands “We are lost! Do you speak English?”  He said nothing so I resorted to the pantomime one uses in such situations.  Frantic hands, exaggerated gestures, submissive attitude.  “It’s impossible to find it” he said in perfect English. “I’ll go and get my motorbike and you can follow me”.  I was so grateful I didn’t care about feeling an idiot.

The place was nice when we got here.  It had been so cheap we were expecting anything, but it is a little studio with a hotplate, kettle and fridge and has cats and a kitten that visits us and is so young its tail trembles.  It is plump and turns up its nose at our saucer of milk.  It only wants to be cuddled.  There is even a swimming pool here which wonder of wonders Grant says he might get into.
A  local comes to call
We went to the ruins of Knossos yesterday and learnt lots of stuff about virility and fertility.  Our feminist guide made a point of the fact that girls jumped bulls too and labyrinth actually means double headed axe despite what we think. (Just checked that and labyrinth has got nothing to do with double headed axes.  Maybe I’d just met my first Cretan liar!)  I then got an appalling stomach cramp and had to inch my way back to the toilets at the entrance and so the rest of her wisdom was lavished on Grant and the two others in the group.  It is a magnificent site though and I look forward to going to the museum to see what was once in it.
Views of the Palace at Knossis
We went back to the village to thank our saviour of the night before and he seemed a bit embarrassed.  Grant gave him a little koala which he put on his finger, quite bemused.  But he told us a lot about his sojourn in Indochina, which he said he loved.  I asked why he came back to Crete and he said cryptically “Life does not always turn out the way you want it to” .
On the way to the museum today I stopped by at a pharmacy (all of them are indicated by big flashing green crosses) to get some Citravescent.  If you don’t know what that’s for you don’t need to know.  It doesn’t exist in Greece but I was shocked to be offered over the counter antibiotics for what ailed me.  Sledgehammers and cracking nuts crossed my mind but I got some anyway just in case.

The museum was amazing and modern and had extraordinary glass that seemed not to be there, (a hazard if you are a bit myopic like me).  But it was so beautifully organized that you went hungrily from one case of pots to another and never felt you’d had enough.  A little coffin for being buried in the foetal position had its lid casually shifted slightly to one side so the looker could peer in at a heap of bones from 300BC. 

Near the end of one room were votive figurines all with their arms up or as though holding an invisible something.  A large group of Chinese people in front of the exhibit were all posing with arms up or holding an invisible something , smiling and copying the statues.  The guard came over “Photo OK, no posing” she said. I wondered why not.

Jugs were my favourite thing, so quirky in design and generously spouted in dozens of different ways.  The wall paintings however puzzled me.  Small scraps of the original were placed by the conservators who then imagined the rest of the dolphin or whatever.  How could they possibly know that was how the pictures were?

I have been less light hearted today than usual.  Maybe it is because now is the cusp of our trip and we go now from the land of the strange to where we must be real people who can speak the languages and know, more or less how, to behave.  There is a childishness in being a tourist.  The shops near our beach residence reflect this in the toys they offer us. Silly ugly things to be bought and gifted, snow domes with plastic Minoan statues in them, wooden penis key rings, beach towels with maps and donkeys. Tomorrow we must grow up and move on into the proper world.

 But I know in truth it will be good to be real again, to see people we love and find out what’s been going on.  Perhaps all that’s wrong is that I’m a bit travel weary.
The lovers just like Grant and Julia

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