Rattvig Hotel, Northern Sweden, Summer Pole

DREAMING ABOUT SCANDINAVIA

Maybe it is because of this string of hot-hot-hot weather we’ve been having in Arizona, but I’m thinking about northern climes–Scandinavian countries come to mind. I’ve spent quality time in Sweden, and a bit of time in Finland, but still have not made my dream trip to Norway’s fjords or the charms of Denmark.

It is possible that I can win a trip at this fascinating site about Scandinavia. And maybe you can, too. To win an I-pod and other goodies, submit a travel story. To win a trip to Scandinavian on Iceland Air, just comment on one of the stories you’ll find at the site.

Deadline: JULY 13  (HURRY!)

If you need some inspiration for travel to Scandinavia, here are some past articles from A Traveler’s Library.

Finland: The Year of the Hare; A Winter Book; A Summer Book.

Helsinki Outdoor Museum

Uh-oh, nothing from Denmark. (Need recommendations, please)

FLY TO GREECE

Temple of Hephaestus in Athens

This contest somewhat misleadingly says fly to your favorite Greek island and then offers a choice of Athens, Crete or Mykonos for your five-day/four-night stay. But, hey, ANYPLACE in Greece is fine with me, even if Athens is not an island, and my favorite island of Siphnos is not a choice. Besides, the contest is sponsored by Voskos Greek yogurt–always a GOOD thing, and a food I associate strongly with Greek islands. Check out the Facebook Page of Voskos Greek Yogurt.

Deadline: July 31

ANOTHER TRIP GIVEAWAY

Door of our VRBO Paris Apartment

HomeAway is celebrating its 20th anniversary (they also own VRBO, y’know.). Go to their website to learn how to win a $5000 vacation rental and airfare for FOUR–or nineteen other nifty travel prizes–adding up to Twenty–get it?

Deadline: August 12

WANT MORE CHANCES TO WIN A TRIP?

Travel Onion, a consolidator of Travel Blogs, offers a page with travel contests. Good stuff!

Like contests? Do you enter on-line contests? Ever win a trip somewhere? Those that came with “winner must participate in a seminar on time shares” does not count.

And how about Denmark literature–suggestions??

(I received no compensation for promoting these contests, and all the photos are the property of Ken or me. If you wish to reuse a photo please ask first.)

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It’s a meme?? As Barbara Weibel at Hole in the Donut Travels says, Remember playing tag when you were a kid? Slapping someone on the back and yelling, “Tag, you’re it!” Well, I’ve just been been ‘virtually tagged.’

My friend and fellow travel blogger, Donna Hull, My Itchy Travel Feet was ‘tagged’ to participate in the meme known as My Three Best Kept Travel Secrets, and after telling us secrets about Tucson,  she tagged me.

In Barbara’s blog she explained (a meme, which rhymes with cream, is a catchphrase or concept that spreads rapidly from person to person via the Internet). This particular one was started by Katie of Tripbase.com So here goes.

My 3 Best Kept Travel Secrets in Greece

Mani village

The Mani Peninsula. The Peloponnese Peninsula of Greece teems with variety. The ancient sites of Mycenae (where Agammemnon hung out), and Olympia (where you can run on the ancient track–but not in the ancient dress style, that being nude), beach towns, Kalamata olives, mountains and rushing streams–and the strangest bunch of domiciles I have ever seen. In the Mani, you will spot clusters of tower houses–square, one room atop another with no door on the ground level.  It looks like a medieval attempt to protect against another kingdom, but in fact it is 19th century attempts to protect against neighbors.

Keriamakos Cemetery, Athens

The Kerameikos Cemetery in Athens.  Starting in 1980, on-line friends suggested I go there, people who lived in Athens said it was one of their favorite sites, and still I hesitated. Not that I have anything against cemeteries, but there is SO MUCH to see in Athens.  Last year, on my fifth trip, I finally walked the short distance between my Syntagma area hotel, past the Monastraki metro station (you can take the metro from Syntagma to Monastraki if you’re a real wimp). Everything they said was true. For 1000 years Athenians were laid to rest here. The ancient  markers include some gorgeous carving. The small museum’s display about the mass graves during the plague brought me to tears. I could not believe my luck at being able to walk in the path of Plato. Okay, Matt Barrett--I finally went. And now I’m telling others and they are probably saying, “but there is SO MUCH to see in Athens.”

Vai Beach, Crete

Crete’s Eastern Beaches. Quiz question of the day. Where is the only place in Europe you will find palm trees? Oh, yeah, you probably read the heading, didn’t you?  Well, it is true.  A beautiful  beach on the east coast of Crete makes like Miami with palm trees and soft sand.  Now you know I love Greece, but, folks, when you go to the islands for the beaches, you are barking up the wrong country–those beaches are mostly rocks and pebbles. Not at Vai. And when you think about it, the next stop south is Africa–across the Libyan Sea, so of course there are warm waters and palm trees.

So time for me to tag someone:

• Jessie Voigts of Wandering Educators
• Craig Martin of Indie Travel PodCast
• Alexandra Grabbe of ChezSven

YOU’RE IT!

Photo of Mani from a web site that identifies it as taken by cantaloupe99 at Flickr. The photo is no longer in that collection. But click on the photo to see a quote from fav author Leigh Fermor from his book on the Mani. Photo of Athens Cemetery by Vera Marie Badertscher, all rights reserved. Photo of Vai beach from tournet.gr–click on image to see more pictures and get more information on eastern Crete.

And what are the secret travel spots that you have not told us about? Time to come clean.

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Yesterday, I was thrilled to turn on the computer and travel via live streaming video to Athens for the opening of the new Acropolis Museum.  What you see above covers only a bit of that day.

The biggest surprise for me was that the Greeks who have been down-playing their differences with the British Museum, firmly voiced pleas for the return of the Parthenon marbles in speech after speech. The President of the Hellenic Republic said, “It is time to heal the wounds of the monument by returning them where they belong,”  Greece’s Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis said in a speech. The museum can help bring “the reunification of the Parthenon marbles. Because the Parthenon marbles speak in their entirety. This is the way to show the integrity of everything they stand for.”

The museum director, as he led the tour, made no bones about pointing out what was real and what was stolen. “The head of this horse is in Athens and the body is in London.  The body of this horse is in Athens and the head is in London.”Pointing out the plaster copies of pieces of the Parthenon frieze that reside in London, he said, “We are dealing with history in a realistic matter.”
“It has been removed. It should not have happened, but unfortunately, it did happen.”  He expressed his gratitude to the museums like the Heidelburg and the Vatican who had returned pieces from their collections.

Here at A Traveler’s Library, we celebrated all week.

• Monday: The movie “My Life in Ruins”
• Wednesday: Greek Mythology in a book
• Thursday: Greek Mythology on Stage
• Friday: Travel to Athens with Links to articles about the New Acropolis Museum
• Saturday: Lord Byron speaks out about the Theft of the Parthenon Marbles

You can see earlier posts on Greece at the Articles by Country page.

Although we interrupted the schedule on Tuesday to pay tribute to the protesters in Iran with a look at Reading Lolita in Tehran, we spent five (now six) days in the same country. Do you like to see a whole week dedicated to one country, or would you prefer to mix things up? Please let me know so A Traveler’s Library will be what YOU want it to be.

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The Parthenon in Athens, Greece

Destination: Greece

Read: Childe Harold, Canto II, XI-XIII and XV By Lord Byron

If you are lucky, you’ll tune in to the Acropolis web page in time to hear the ceremony of opening today. (They have a video embedded in the web site, but don’t say what time. Presumably quite early U.S. time)

I want to close this week’s emphasis on Greece with part of a poem by the biggest Grecophile of all, George Gordon, Lord Byron, who left England to travel widely. His poem [amazonify]1426412231::text::::Childe Harold[/amazonify] , starts with a preface that quotes Fougeret de Monbron, “The universe is a sort of book, whose first page one has read when one has seen only one’s own country.”  He lived for a time  in Greece and help them in their war of Independence against the Ottoman Turks. You will find a Lord Byron Hotel in the Plaka below the Parthenon, on a street that he probably traveled.  You will find roads and tavernas and everything you can imagine named for Lord Byron in Greece. The Greeks remember their heroes.

The British Museum supporters are horrified at the thought that people will see the return of the Parthenon marbles as some kind of acknowledgement that they are a national symbol.  That is why they pound away on their point that they are now exhibited in a museum that shows bits and pieces of many civilizations so that people can understand the whole. The Greek argument hinges on showing the carvings in situ–or as close to situ as possible, since modern air pollution makes exposure in the air impractical. These two antithetical points of view go beyond politics.

The awesome new museum in Athens, with its skewed top floor paralleling the Parthenon and its glass walls that allow people to look at the marbles and the original site all at once, make a moving argument for return that has nothing to do with nationalism.

Childe Harold by Byron

Canto XI

But who, of all the plunders of yon fane
On high, where Pallas linger’d, loth to flee
The latest relic of her ancient reign;
The last, the worst, dull spoiler, who was he?
Blush, Caledonia! such thy son could be!
England! I joy no child he was of thine:
Thy free-born men should spare what once was free;
Yet they could violate each saddening shrine,
And bear these altars o’er the long-reluctant brine. (Poem continues on next page)

Canto XII

But most the modern Pict’s ignoble boast,
To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared:
Cold as the crags upon his native coast,
His mind as barren and his heart as hard,
Is he whose head conceived, whose hand prepared,
Aught to displace Athena’s poor remains:
Her sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard,
Yet felt some portion of their mother’s pains,
And never knew, till then, the weight of Despot’s chains.

Canto XIII

What! shall it e’er be said by British tongue,
Albion was happy in Athena’s tears?
Though in thy name the slaves her bosom wrung,
Tell not the deed to blushing Europe’s ears;
The ocean queen, the free Britannia, bears
The last poor plunder from a bleeding land:
Yes, she, whose gen’rous aid her name endears,
Tore down those remnants with a harpy’s hand,
Which envious Eld forbore, and tyrants left to stand.

Canto XV

Cold is the heart, fair Greece, that looks on thee,
Nor feels as lovers o’er the dust they loved;
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behov’d
To guard those relics ne’er to be restored.
Curst be the hour when their isle they roved,
And once again thy hapless bosom gored,
And snatch’d thy shrinking Gods to northern climes abhorr’d!

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The Acropolis Museum beneath the Parthenon

Tomorrow, at long last, is the day. After a week of sneak-previews, the Acropolis Museum (having dropped the “new”, I believe) will open to the public–residents, tourists, everybody.  The new web site opened with much fanfare. In typical Greek fashion, it was mostly unfinished as I write this. Whole pages are blank. It reminds me of the houses you see in the countryside in Greece–concrete block walls partly finished with rebar sticking out the top. But eventually it will get done. The most essential page–where you buy tickets–is finished. And this is a big deal, because this is the first museum in Athens to offer tickets on the Internet.

Since I cannot travel to Greece for the opening, I’ve been traveling around the web gathering news. (See links on next page)So much is being written in newspapers, magazines and on web sites about the Acropolis Museum, about Greece, about the British Museum, about the British Museum vs. the Acropolis Museum…… that I decided just to hand you some references and let you go off to read these good sources, instead of risking repetitive redundancy. If you read nothing else, please read the Vanity Fair article by Christopher Hitchens, and then if you like to balance your point of view, read the Guardian article.

• A tour of the permanent collection on display at the New Acropolis (Update July 2011 site removed.)
• Reuters reports that 200 fragments are returned To Greece by various European countries.
• A blog that discusses the ethical concerns of collection of antiquities
• Steven Moss of the Guardian gives the British point of view:
• This site displays some very nice pictures of the new displays in the Museum, as they will be seen to travelers to Greece.
• Vanity Fair’s Christopher Hitchens weighs in. [Note (Added November 2011)For some reason this link is very slow loading, but hang in there. It is worth it.]

Note: Hitchens has written a book called  The Parthenon Marbles, and it is worth quoting a couple of paragraphs from his article in Vanity Fair, particularly since just yesterday we were talking about Euripedes and Sophocles, Medea and Antigone:

“When we think of Athens in the fifth century b.c., we think chiefly of the theater of Euripides and Sophocles and of philosophy and politics—specifically democratic politics, of the sort that saw Pericles repeatedly re-elected in spite of complaints that he was overspending. And it’s true that Antigone was first performed as the Parthenon was rising, and Medea not all that long after the temple was finished. From drama to philosophy: Socrates himself was also a stonemason and sculptor, and it seems quite possible that he too took part in raising the edifice.”

“If the Mona Lisa had been sawed in two during the Napoleonic Wars and the separated halves had been acquired by different museums in, say, St. Petersburg and Lisbon, would there not be a general wish to see what they might look like if re-united? If you think my analogy is overdrawn, consider this: the body of the goddess Iris is at present in London, while her head is in Athens. The front part of the torso of Poseidon is in London, and the rear part is in Athens. And so on. This is grotesque.”

Will you try to get to Athens to see the Acropolis Museum? Do you agree with Christopher Hitchens? Or do you sympathize with the British “Museum of the whole world” point of view?

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Book: Mythology by Edith Hamilton

All this week we are celebrating the opening of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens next Saturday. The heat is on Britain to return the Parthenon marbles so obviously missing in the new museums’ displays.

It helps, when you travel to Greece, to make the acquaintance of gods and goddesses and their cavorting ways if you hope to understand the classical Greek statuary that adorns the Parthenon (or did adorn it before time and thievery took its toll). A little catechism in the religion of the classical age helps. Edith Hamilton’s [amazonify]0316341142 ::text::::Mythology,Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes[/amazonify], can help.

Athena

The basics–Athena was designated the protector of the city named after her, and the Parthenon housed a gigantic statue of Athena, which has long since disappeared.  If you want to get an idea of what that statue was like, travel to  Nashville Tennessee, where they built an exact full-sized replica of the Parthenon for a World’s Fair in 1897.  The building itself is so accurate that the restorers of Athen’s Parthenon flew over to Nashville to check out measurements.

Since Athena’s statue had disappeared so long ago from her Greek temple, the sculptor in Tennessee used written accounts, which might have been a tad bit exaggerated.  Scholar’s have established that the classical Greek statues, far from being the pristine white we are used to, were painted in bright colors and adorned with metal and jewels.  I’m having a hard time coming to terms with that picture, and my impression of Nashville’s Athena, was that she resembled the girl in Walmart that we dismiss as trailer trash. (See her picture on the continuation)

You can’t help being impressed with the effort, though. Acres of gold leaf substitute for the alleged solid gold in the original.

The Parthenon Frieze

At any rate, every year in classical Athens, as the Great Panathenaea procession wound through Athens and up to the Acropolis where a troupe of virgins clothed the statue in hand-woven robes.  That procession was immortalized on friezes around the temple that were made in the workshop of the superstar sculptor of the day, Pheidias.

The frieze, installed around the inner temple, very high up, could not be seen by ordinary mortals.  Today, a portion of what is left after a few earthquakes and the explosion of gunpowder when the Ottoman Turks were using the temple as an armory, resides in Athens (40%), the British Museum (40%) and scattered around the world (20%).

Phidias’ genius exhibits itself in the rhythmic arrangement of lifelike figures and particularly in finding ways to fit the picture into the sloping ends of the pediment. This becomes very clear with the close up view that is rendered if you are a tourist in Athens at the New Acropolis Museum.

The Mythology

You may not immediately recognize the gods and heroes represented, but if you have done your reading, you will at least be able to nod sagely when a guide points out who is whom.  Edith Hamilton wrote the best guidebook to mythology in 1940. You can find it in newer editions, but you will be hard put to find a better, more readable guide. Hamilton’s book illustrates that the ancient Greeks knew how to tell a darned good story.

If you want something simpler and quicker, do not hesitate to visit the children’s book section in your library or book store. Kid’s books can be great guides for complex subjects like mythology.

Sign a petition to join my favorite cause,  asking the British Museum to return the marbles missing from the New Acropolis Museum.

See other articles about Greece from a Traveler’s Library.

Your thoughts? On the Parthenon, on Greek statuary, on the controversy–feel free to express any opinions here.

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Destination: Athens

Books:        Dinner With Persephone by Patricia Storace

Temple of Hephaestus, Athens, Greece

Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens by Sofka Zinovieff

Of course the book titles would refer to characters of Greek myth–but did they both have to refer to beautiful women trapped in Hades? Of course in Persephone’s case it is only part of the year, but still….

Quick refresher course in Greek mythology, for those who haven’t read their Edith Hamilton recently.

Eurydice was the object of adoration of Orpheus. She died (snake bit in one version) and went to the underworld. Orpheus made a deal to get her back, but had to promise that he would walk ahead of her and not look back. You guessed it. He looked back, and she disappeared forever.

Persephone fared somewhat better. The daughter of Demeter, the patron of all things that grow, she was snatched away to live in the underworld with its King, Hades, but her mother worked a deal (those Greek gods were as good at working deals as the mortals) and got her back. Of course there was a catch.  The god of the underworld gave her a pomegranate and if she ate it she had to return to Hades.  She only ate 1/3 of the pomegranate seeds, so only had to live underground 1/3 of the time.  Mama pitched a fit and refused to let anything grow during that 1/3 of the year.  Hence, winter. And hence, the Queen of the Underworld was also the goddess of Spring.

The convolutions of Greek mythology and the complex and contradictory relationships help prepare one for contemporary Greek culture.  Patricia Storace, with a fine eye for detail, observes the every day behaviors of Athenians during a period in the 90′s when she lived there. As she studies the Greek language and makes friends she hears many stories, meets many characters and shares them in Dinner with Persephone (1996).

The second Athens book on my shelf was published in England  and is not widely available in the United States, although Amazon books does have copies. Raised in England, Sofka Zinovieff spent anthropology graduate study years in Greece. Her Greek husband had not lived in his native land since childhood. They decided they wanted to move to Greece and “become Greek,” raising their daughters to know Greece.  She chronicles their discoveries about Greece in Eurydice Street (2004). I enjoyed Zinovieff’s book because of her combination of detached, anthropologist’s view and her passionate love and appreciation of Greek traditions as they are lived in every day life.

The personal histories related in these two books go far toward humanizing Athens and explaining why it is the way it is.

As Patrice Storace was leaving Greece, a friend wished her well. “I wish you a good journey,” he says, “but I warn you of what the novelist Vassilikos says about Greece–that it is the place where when you are here you long to leave, and the minute you leave, you yearn uncontrollably to come back.”

Have you been to Athens? Do you agree with novelist Vassilikos?  Do you have other books that shed light on Athens for the traveler?

See Also Novel Set on a Greek Island

and 3 Civilizations, 4 Museums

Photograph by VMB, all rights reserved.

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