Typically, when we go out, I drive and Lauren navigates. If we're going to, say, Tanglewood, the navigation requirements are "Get on I-90 and go west." However, here in Greece the situation differs slightly. Here, the roles of pilot/navigator mimic those on a nuclear submarine. I'll highlight some of the more interesting bits.
For the driver: Greek roads can be quite modern, comparable to any US interstate or German Autobahn. Tragically, there are very, very few of these. Stepping down from these are the 'E' roads, such as E-65, which are comparable to two-lane county roads in the US but function as highways here. Then there are the city-connector roads, which are named based on the two cities they connect and can vary in quality. Generally, they look like US back roads -- no dividing line, just barely two lanes wide, and can be narrower at times. Finally, we get to the dread "chromatodromos," the roads whose quality varies from what an American would call a 'dirt road' to more akin to something seen at an off-road bike race or perhaps a hiking path.
The next major issue for the driver is that Greece is a mountainous country. While there are a few tunnels, for the most part driving through the mountains means going through a huge number of switchbacks. We've started rating these on a 1, 2, or 3 rating -- a level 3 is more-or-less a switchback that would pass muster in the US, although it would be considered scary. A level 1, well, it might well involve a 180 degree turn combined with a 45 degree slope going through a 20 foot radius. Making this even more fun is that whether or not the road has any railing depends on where you are. If it's a prosperous area, it'll likely have a rail. If not, it might simply have a sheer drop 2 feet from the road. And remember, these are blind curves -- and there is every possibility that there could be an oncoming car.
Keeping all this in mind, I still think the driver's job is slightly easier, although perhaps more filled with moments of sheer near-terror. Full terror would require driving through the mountains at night, which I'm not going to do.
For the navigator: The navigator's duties include telling the driver where to go, informing him of all upcoming sharp turns, and any other miscellany such as toll money or opening water bottles. You might think that a GPS handles the 'where to go' problem nicely. If you're just going from major city to major city, you'd be correct. However, we're trying to see ancient sites all over the country. GPS systems don't store ancient city names, so we have to navigate by nearby cities. This is where the problems start.
As we all know, the Greek language is in, well, Greek. The Greeks are well-aware of this issue, and so most of the signs have double names, once in Greek and once Romanized. However, they don't really seem to care too much about the Roman versions -- we've seen them misspelled (Apollo, Appolo), or using Greek letters (a Pi for P, or a Lambda for L) even in the Roman version. Further complicating the situation, there is no one-to-one mapping between Greek and Roman letters. So you might see (for example), Messene or Messini, both of which may refer to the same place. Then we get to the fact that the Greeks think nothing of re-using city names even for places within 50 miles of each other. We know this and so have been combining our main book guide (The Mythological Atlas of Greece, a must-have for any Greek Wanderings) with the Greek Tom-Tom GPS (we have copies on two iPads and both iPhones), and Google Maps. Google Maps is the best source for finding the actual sites thanks to the satellite photos, but it only works well in the hotel rooms where we have fast internet connections.
The Quest for Ancient Messene
This represented a perfect storm of all of these problems. The Atlas showed the ancient city, which we could see on Google Maps as well. Many places on the internet noted it was west of Mavromati, and we easily found Mavromati (or Mavrommati) on the GPS in generally the right area -- although we later discovered that was off by ~10 km. After that was a bust (although seeing and hearing the wild boar(s) was a huge bonus), we zipped off for Mavromati #2, which was about 40 km away based on the Fodor Guide reference. Again, nothing except a really annoying small Greek village where most of the main streets are in fact back alleys. What really threw us off, but we finally figured out, was that on the GPS you get a choice of about six different Mavrom(m)ati, and have to arbitrarily figure out which one is yours based on some Greek coding in parentheses. When we found one that was, as noted, near the area that we wanted, it was difficult to cross check the roads from the Atlas because of an inconvenient page break in the book of maps. Further complicating matters, is the fact that Ancient Messene and Mavrom(m)ati are one and the same -- modern Mavromati takes up about 30% of the original site.
But wait! I said this was a perfect storm. We did find the site and looked around the main city for a bit. The highlight is the temple to Asclepius, which functioned as an early hospital, including what we believe was a lecture hall for training/sermons:
Lecture hall at the Temple of Asclepius
But to see the other temples, we still had to experience the Chromatodromos up the mountain:
At the first "major" switchback you can see there is something -- which turns out to be a temple to Artemis:
Temple to Artemis. (My suggestion at the time was that the temple was supposed to be on the top of the mountain but the workmen decided that here was good enough, and suggested that any priestesses who felt otherwise should keep taking enough steps backward until the view was fully considered.)
There is then a walking path up to the second temple in the area, which was to a sanctuary of Eilytheria. However, we knew there was also a temple to Zeus on the mountain, so we continued up. At this point, you should feel free to revisit the above Google Maps picture, and remember that it's a dirt road, which is going up a mountain. I'll also note, although this should be obvious at this point, that there are no railings. So although it was actually a pretty good dirt road throughout (and there was another car up there when we got there), it was still rather exciting. To top it off, the temple to Zeus was more or less just a few blocks that had no obvious structure. Lauren got a few pictures, but it's hard to make anything out, except that we're way up there:
Temple of Zeus at Messene (?)
After that, we decided it was time to head for Nafplio, where found a great hotel, excellent food, and a kitten for Lauren to pet, which at least put a good end to a long day.
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