An investigation into.......

I sat down to write about the last two days and all of the things that have happened etc...but everytime i try to stick to the facts i continually swerve into something more abstract....so i figure i might as well get it all out.....at least to provide some setting......plus there's a travelling story buried in there.......if you have the time you can bear with me.....

You know that feeling, after reading a great book, when seemingly unrelated events begin to fit into a bigger picture? And you're left with a fleeting image of understanding that lingers on the surface for a while....maybe to be relegated to the subconcious somehow, but most likely to be replaced by another once the intitial novelty has worn off....

For a long time when i read a book this is what would happen.....but now each piece of the puzzle seems to be falling into place....

Most of my reading this summer has revolved around technology in some form or another....investigations into the technological systems that are so pervasive in our society.....banking systems, communication systems etc...... sometimes dealing with the philosophy of science, reason, logic that has spawned it and other times with its esthetic side...its quality....good or bad?......and other times just gathering information......

For a long time I was impressed with technology, with its vast capabilities and its seemingly benevolent promise of progress.....more food....more information....the elusive "free lunch" from 1st year economics classes.....However ive started to see through this naive facade, to a dependance and an ever-increasing level of complexity.....financial systems that are beyond our control and understanding, power grids that fail, water supplies that poison us, ecological systems kicked into completely new equilibriums.....most often the result of seemingly innocuous errors, at the time barely noticed.....

But this understanding i'm talking about goes beyond books, reading only provides the framework to mold experience.....

Upon leaving Van two days ago, i reminded myself that i had to get to a bank machine as my cash situation was dwindling.....normal stuff when you're travelling as cash is your lifeblood out here....however amidst the chaos of finding the right mini-bus out of town and navigating the streets of Dogubayizit to find the right mini-bus to our campsite (i'd met an aussie, steve, along the way) the cash situation slipped my mind.....after all i figured i had at least enough to last until the next oppurtunity.... we spent a quite memorable night camping up in the hills under Isak Pasa palace, enjoyed my first beers in about a week, and returned to Dogubayizit the next morning.... (good pictures mom)

Before leaving on the trip Wallace and I had done the math and figured the best way to avoid bank charges, exchange commisions and interest fees etc... was to put all of the money in our accounts on our credit cards and then just make cash advances on the card anytime we needed cash (this way you avoid the hideously large interac exchange fee......).....quite a complex arrangement if you think about it but it had worked for the duration of the trip...only when i went to the bank in Dogubayizit yesterday i was greeted with the oh-so-friendly "I'm sorry, your financial institusion is unable to grant your request at this time".....thinking it might just be the bank i tried another, same response....luckily there was $40 in one of my accounts, so i took that out, and after another 40 million lira from steve (in exchange for a bottle of crown royal to be mailed to australia at a later date) i caught the bus to the Black Sea city of Trabzon hoping that it was just an intermittant ATM system failure that would right itself by the time i arrived....

Got to Trabzon after 10 hours on the bus at about midnight local time.....i was a little worried that, like the east, nothing would be open at this time of night......but was greeted by an active city with attractive women on the street, beer signs galore, and seedy looking hotels.....after overcoming the momentary shock that comes from such a drastic change to the kurdish cities, i picked the hotel that the travel guide recommended (id also heard that it doubles as a brothel for russian "Natashas" but so far have not seen any) and went to sleep.....

Woke up this morning with some faith that the bank situation would have worked itself out and took a stroll through the bazaar....different compared to the eastern bazaars....the shops had fashionable clothes instead of the fruit, vegetables and staples i was used to....but still interesting.....found a cheap pair of jeans and bargained a good price....pulled out the mastercard to pay......uh oh....

So I spent the whole day going from banks, to internet cafes, to phones trying to figure out what the problem was.....even finding a number for mastercard that worked (the one provided by mastercard canada for problems inside turkey didnt work....or it may have been that the phone didnt allow international calls....or maybe i wasnt dialing the correct contry code.....or maybe...or maybe......) took hours.....i racked my brain to figure out the problem, not an easy task when faced with the prospect of surviving in a large turkish city with no access to money whatsoever....

It turns out that the problem originated two months ago....before i left..... i'd requested a new mastercard because the magnetic strip on the one i had was fading, and even though i told mastercard that it may not arrive by the time i had to leave, i was told it would be no problem.....of course.......Turns out that once they send a replacement card the old one has a two month grace period before its cancelled, so i've been travelling for the past two months with a huge ticking clock on my bank account screaming "TAKE YOUR MONEY OUT BEFORE ITS TOO LATE" only i was blinded (deafened?) by a false sense of technological security.....

Anyway, things have sorted themselves out and my internet banking site proclaims that i know have mounds of cash at my disposal again....

Do you think it's a conicidence that i just finished "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" today?

ryan

The Turkish Bath

After posting last, I made my way down Van's main street to a Hamam (Turkish Bath) outside my hotel....after descending a staircase that could have doubled as a downtown skytrain entrance,  three kurds (the manager and two young dudes) met me at the door and boisterously escorted me into the waiting area...During the early stages of the trip in the west of turkey hamams were designed for tourists and quite expensive (25 million lira= 25 CDN) so i had put them off knowing the east would provide the real experience.......and what an experience.....

I started off in the steam room, much like our saunas except sans cedar (marble instead) and with turkish lemon tea....id have to say i like the cedar better, only for the fragrance....but whos counting?......After the steam comes the wash.....the two young guys (maybe 17 or so) sat me down and made me strike various poses as one of them proceeded to remove roughly 7 layers of my epidermis with a rough cloth.....2 months of the mediterranean sun had left me with quite the.......uhhhh......buildup........the whole time they would chatter at me in broken english....

Next came the razor and after many minutes of charades and broken english/turkish i managed to get across to them that i didnt want my chest shaved....so they settled for a beard trim and the armpits....i had to concede something.... The massage was definitely the most memorable though (if not painful)....they seemed to take some sort of sadistic pleasure in pinching the tenderest muscles or forcing most of the blood in my body to the tips of my fingers....and it went on forever....i got the feeling they were ensuring i got the full treatment due to my foreigner status...

And yes, at the start there is something strange about having two 17 year old boys washing you, but you get over it pretty quickly.....plus its turkish custom and the last thing you want to do is offend the bloody turks.... When i got back to my hotel at 9:30 my body was so relaxed i passed out immediately and slept for 12 hours straight...........12 million lira well spent

More to come.....

ryan

You're where??? how far???

In the words of Wallace.....God definitely turned down the suck....the last three days have more than made up for my prevıous trials...

After waking up three days ago in my 3-star hotel room to runnıng hot water and an all-you-can-eat buffet breakfast, I met a turkish man named Mehmet who runs tours up to the summit of Mt. Nemut, an inactive volcano near Tatvan, and runs a campsite inside the caldera (turned out to be a single large tent/concession stand ın the bowl of the volcano...still cool).....he was a definite character (imagine boisterous with missing teeth and many wives) and Nemrut didnt fail to impress either. The caldera of the volcano contains five crater lakes, numerous hot springs and some spectacular views... on the first day i climbed to the top (3500m) with my new Belgian companıon Wim to snap some photos and on the way down had quite the encounter....

Just near the bottom of the trail we were spotted by four kurds (everybody in this area is kurdish) sitting around a campfire having a picnic. In typical kurdish fashion they invited us to share their feast of roast chicken, goat (yes, i ate it), tomatoes, bread etc...the kurds have to be the kindest, most hospıtable people ive ever met.....its quite amazing.......anyway, after a couple pieces of chicken down they started babbling to us in turkish and drawing pictures....neither Wim nor I speak more than a few words of turish so ıt took quite a while to figure out what the hell was going on, but here goes....

Apparently these guys are kurdish graverobbers who go around searching for Old Byzantine tombs using some sort of camera/magnetic devıce, and are at the volcano to look for 9 tonnes of gold/silver/something valuable buried 6m below ground...and here's the kicker....they wanted us to do the same thing in Canada/Belgium and split the profits with them 50/50..... (well....this part we're less sure on)......i politely finished my goat, snapped a photo, and left....

Spent the night camping ın the caldera....very cool....so quiet and peaceful...the next day kurds from the surrounding area would come by in their cars to have tea (everybody here drinks tea....i think it's what the men of this country do for work)  so there were many "Where are you from?" conversations (everybody in turkey can say "Where are you from?" in english)...though a couple times Wım's sparse arabic allowed us to dıscuss other things (mostly God...i told everybody i was buddist...didnt think discussing existence would be very popular...)......in the afternoon a group of musicians travelling from İstanbul stopped by for some watermelon (everybody also eats vast quantities of watermelon here.....and of course offers it to you.....ive eaten so much watermelon the past couple of days i might.......well......probably eat some more...that shıt's good...)......afterwards they pulled out a guitar, a saz (bulbous, long-necked guitar that makes that distinct meddle-east sound), and a bunch of drums.......and the jam session began.....after watching for a bit they let me play the guitar and we jammed out a couple of kurdish tunes.....once you get the hang of them they're really cool....easy chord changes....we then moved on to some Led Zep (Bron-Yr-Aur stomp), and some Metallica (Nothing Else Matters.....with new and improved kurdish vocals...), neither of which these guys have heard so they were impressed......finished of with some No Lady Blues and a kick-ass saz blues solo by my good frıend Mustafa.......cool shit.......Wim took pictures.....

That afternoon we decided to stay the night in Mehmet's village at the base of Mt Nemrut...too far to walk so we had to wait for the local tractor taxi out of the volcano........of course by the time it arrived it was packed to the gills full of kurdish but we managed to squeeze on (joined by two dutch)....you can imagine that the ride was a zoo......including two tractor break downs along the way....Arrived at the village in time for the sunset and was greeted by the third world in all its glory....smoke and cow-shıt fill the nostrils while hordes of kurdish kids run around you screaming "hello.......where are you from" and completely dısregarding your answer.....dinner was awesome and Mehmet's family very kind.....

Woke up today to the sound of roosters, cows, etc.... all ensuring i sleep-in as little as possıble, and made my way east after saying goodbyes.....Stopped for lunch at Akdamar island ın Lake Van where a thousand year-old armenian church still stands....magnificent....and have now arrived in the main city of Van for the night....and a turkish bath....

So much more has happened i wish i could get it all down ........ the kurds really are great.....everywhere i go in the southeast i meet the kindest, friendliest people...heading north tomorrow to the town of Dogubayizıt near the iranian border......for that matter im about 120km from the Iraqi border right now.....watch for me on the news....

ryan

 

 

Blechhhhh!

Well.....its been quite the experience since i last wrote from the bus station in Cappadocia....

The all-night bus to Malatya (south-central turkey) took about 8 hours with us arriving at 6:00 am....unfortunately i find it quite difficult to sleep on buses (keep this in mind)....and we managed to book a tour to Mt Nemrut for noon which included a night's stay at a pension near the summit for 30 bucks US ....not a bad deal (or so i thought)

After catching a beautiful sunset from 3000 m we returned back to the pension for dinner....as i had not slept much the night before i called it an early night....we had to get up at 4:30 to catch the sunrise and i intended to get a good sleep and then trek down the other side of the mountain (with pack) to continue south instead of returning to Malatya, and praised myself for how responsible i was being getting to bed early....

Well....it turns out the goat i had for dinner fought back with a vengeance....my intention of catching up on sleep turned into 6 hours of chills, feverish delerium and intensive barfing sessions....I was convinced that the owners of the pension had poisoned me in order to steal my ipod......I kept hearing John and Alex (the two brits i'd just left) arguing over how i was going to get down from the mountain (one maintained that i should stop being a pussy and continue south to Sanliurfa, while the other insisted i brave the 4-hour return busride over horrible, bumpy, mountainous roads back to Malatya....neither very appealing)....

When the wakeup call came at 4:30 i managed to drag myself out bed to see the sunrise (id paid for the damn thing after all....dad would be proud), skipped breakfast and then loaded into the bus for the return ride....

It sucked.....horribly

Spent the day in Malatya nursing myself with yogurt and tea at the tourist information booth and booked a bus ticket to tatvan (southeastern turkey) for 9:00 pm as the prospect of staying in Malatya was not appealing...

After another 8 hour busride with intermittant sleep i arrived in tatvan this morning at 6:00 am to find all hotels booked except the 3star which charges 75 CDn a room....after bargaining them down to 35 through pure sympathy i finally found myself a bed and slept until 4:00...woke up to find BBC world on the TV (bonus) and no hot water (unbonus)...

Oh....and the goat has again left me with a wonderful case of the sultans revenge.....days without solid poo = 3

Motherfucking goat bastard!

and i somehow have lost my toiletry kit in all of this....

Anyway, im roughly back to normal now....and intend to take a tour of the second Mt Nemrut tomorrow....(yes...there are two....i have no idea why the turks would give two mountains 1000 km apart the same name) lets hope history does not repeat itself....

Im heading back to bed to watch tv...

ryan

PS: Please send fake sympathy c/o The Hotel Tatvan Kardelen, Room 201 (the one without hot water)....

Even more cunted in Cappadocia

When i was working on Dent Island 2 summers ago there was an American guy staying at the resort who, upon breaking his femur skiing the winter prior, would hide the pain medication he was given under the pillow of his hospital bed because he'd heard that they were wonderous hangover relief....a quick trade for a gram of Northern Lights landed two in my possesion and is the only reason im capable of focusing on the computer screen right now.....

Raki!!!!!

Last night Wallace left us to continue on to Eastern Europe, and two of the brits are leaving for Syria this morning, so numerous Rakis were the name of the game....as well as many cheers "To the Walrus" (best done in a drunken british accent)....i also have perfected my interpretive dance to the Stairway to Heaven solo....closely followed by my "Sweet child of mine" air guitar performance complete with bench jump and knee slide...

Plan now is to head for Mt Nemrut in eastern turkey for a bit of a climb with the remaining brit (a lovely lady named Miss Emma....) and to catch a glorious sunset/sunrise combo.....(nothing romantic should be read into this unfortunately....) After that i think ill check out the Black Sea coast and then to Istanbul....

Oh...and i have been up to much more than drinking....while in Cappadocia weve gone on a couple walks in the valleys.....these have to be seen to be believed....the pictures are fantastic but dont do it justice....valley after valley of eroded rock formations and panorama views without a single mark of civilization in sight....had to navigate by the sun just to get us out of there....thank you cubscouts.....

ryan

Savaged in Olympos and Cunted in Cappadocia

I've discovered a lethal combination.....

1 Ryan
1 Brit named John
~15 $2 pints
various vodkas, rakis and ****s (<- for my mom)
1 bar full of horny turkish girls
4 nights at our disposal
_________________________________

lunacy

Imagine a man with the drinking mentality of Sankaran, the endurance of BJ (in his prime...), and Luke's "je ne sais quoi"....plus add in countless references to himself in the 3rd person and you get John...

Its like i never left home...

Olympos is a fun place...dirt cheap and a pumpin nightlife...its by far the busiest place weve been in Turkey....270 people in the place we stayed....many of them turkish ladies looking to meet "foreign boys".....i had to forcefully remove one girls teeth from my nipple on numerous occasions.....muslim country my ass

After 4 days spent getting absolutley cunted (one of my many new british words...) in Olympos we (wallace and the three brits) have moved on to Cappadocia for much of the same....though now surrounded by desert-like thousand year old caves carved out/eroded from the rock instead of lush forest and beach....these things have to be seen to be believed...here's hoping i manage to get out and take some pictures....unfortunately the budget doesnt allow for a balloon ride ($90 US or $210 US) which is the best way to see the landscape...

Right....missing most of you immensely....and the others moderately....

ryan

Butterfly Valley

hello all...

ı was just ınformed that my last post sounded quıte bıtter....and upon re-readıng ı tend to agree....chalk ıt up to the massıve amount of euros ı had to spend to get out of Greece....

anyway, youll all be happy to know that ı just spent the last week hangıng out at Butterfly Valley, lyıng on the beach and playıng cards.....the place passes ıtself off as a type of commune (though beer prıces are excessıve...of course) and has a pretty chıll vıbe to ıt.......met some realy cool people (ıncludıng three brıts that we're now travellıng wıth to Olympos) so my mood must be much ımproved...rıght?

ı'll try and keep thıngs rosey/peachy from now on.....

not much ınternet for a whıle so you;ll all have to make do wıth ehsan's ramblıngs...

ryan

More from Kastelorizo

another day, another 30 euros....

it's been getting much hotter in Greece the past few days.....at the point now where the heat is a constant reminder that beer causes dehydration...responsible travellers drink water during the day...

a few notes on geography and such...the mediterranean contains a surprisingly small amount of sea life....there is none of the seaweed, barnacles, mussels that are so obvious on a vancouver shore line or dock piling.....though there are roughly the seem amount of small perch and such..... and the tides here are practically non-existent....i haven't seen anything close to a spanish banks tidal flat (though this may be due to the volcanic island geography) and the tide lines on the cliffs seem relatively minor... due to the small amount of water that can flow in and out of the med though gibralter and the black sea?? anybody know??.....and the haze...god it's ugly...it's really obvious when you're out on the open water.....a white haze that dulls the blue brilliance of the open sky down to a milky bluish blah......if you hold your fingers about 15 cm from your eyes and then measure an inch up from the horizon, that is the size of a white ring of haze tht sits on the meds (and europe's surface...recently read that its caused by excessive amount of CO2 in the atmosphere....what's new??) ...anyway, blue skies are a luxury that europe likely hasn't seen in a long time and may never again...i don't even want to get into the brown haze that is so apparent over Istanbul ( and Athens...though i haven't seen it) caused by those nasty sulphur compounds (smog to the uninitiated)...

anyway, we've hired a boat to take us over to Turkey tomorrow for 10 euros so this will be our last night in Greece....i'm looking forward to getting off the euro since it's eating a hole in my bank account...it seems that Greece has become exceedingly expensive the past two years (maybe even prohibitively so now for penny-pinching backpackers) due to the euro, though i'm not sure how much of the price increase is due to the currency (whether food prices have gone up due to the euro etc...), and how much is due to rising demand and higher profit margins for the tourism business....i do know, however, that there has been a large drop in tourists this year (Ios has seen only a third as many, 1500 vs 4500, visitors as last year and everywhere else says business is down, especially the places that cater to the lower end of the pay scale, ie: us...apparently the number of germans here this year is way down)...i get the feeling that a lot of places may have jacked up prices thinking the number of tourists would be about the same, or maybe to try and eke out the same profit as last year after realizing there weren;t gong to be (contrary to oh-so unassailable economic theory, price sould go down goddamit...they lied to me!!!...) but this obviously can't survive in the long-run if greece wants to keep its historically high flow of trvallers....perhaps the idea is to aim for the high-profit, big pocket, tourism market (which is already so obvious in the package tourist crap) and let the cheapos go to turkey/thailand, but that's a dangerous game that could put a lot of people out of business....anyway, the point is that if you're thinking about coming to Greece anytime soon be prepared to pay $15 Cdn a night for a room, $10-12 Cdn for a decent meal, $10-15 Cdn for an inter-city bus ride, and between $15-35 Cdn for a ferry ride of moderate length......ie: Canada prices...compared to two years ago that's a big differene...turkey should be a pleasant change

enough economics...though i seem to have it on the brain right now (when don't I?)...just finished reading the Ingenuity Gap by Thomas Homer-Dixon......if Noam Chomsky wasn't you're style and complete upheaval of the economic-political system makes you stock the cellar with canned goods, then a read of this book might be a more palatable version of roughly the same problem, though in a much more scientific framework that will appeal to you "reason goddamit...i need reason" types......you can't really argue with good science after all...can you?? .....anyway, he has quite the ingenious theory (pardon the pun) on how our society functions and you can't help but believe his story once it sinks in....it actually becomes quite obvious when you think about it....i won't go into the details becuase a blurb won't do it justice....just read the damn book instead of Daniel Steele this summer....and even if you're completely unconcerned about events outside of the latest Survivor and whether the bloody glove belongs to Michael Jackson or OJ, he still tells a good story...

blah...

this is what happens when i get free internet and it's goddamn hot outside.....

now to get another heinekin....

ryan

So after sharing many a beer with Walther over the past couple of nights, i've started to figure out what's going on at the Pension Manuel....apparantly Manuel is a "professeur de mathematiques" in name only, for last week he was a "professeur de geologie", and the week before a "professeur of english"...His days are spent drinking coffee, barraging tourists with horribly broken-english blah-blah, and playing with his 3-year-old daughter, Manuela (keep in mind that this man is 65 and his wife 60.....it gets stranger...), while Maria (the wife) does all the work.... Walther's role in this whole thing is to entertain guests at the pension and give travelling tips (so they stay longer), for which he receives free room, but from what i can tell he just tries to screw over Manuel at every oppurtunity by giving the tourists (ie: us) free meals and beer....why Manuel doesn't figure this out i have no idea, though Walther explains that several generations of inbreeding are most likely the cause... regardless, i enjoyed the whole thing since my beer and most meals were paid for, and Walther's entertainment was well worth it....with a single tear in our eye we said goodbye and have made our way to Kastolorizo, less than a km from the coast of Turkey

The island is quite small, and the population has been forced to emigrate twice (once due to the 1923 Greece/Turkey population exchange and again by order of the british during WWII so they could bomb the shit out of the place...for what reason is entirely unclear...) so there are many abandoned buildings and such...the people seem friendly though...it's quite an out of the way place for all the tourists are old and seem to know each other.....We've rented an awesome room for 30 euros a night (a bit expensive for us, its regularly 90 but construction outside means no self-respecting old folk would rent the place, its the cheapest place we could find...) the boat for turkey leaves friday morning so we'll have a day to kill tomorrow....

anyway, i'll write more tomorrow (internet is free!!!!!)

keep on rockin in the free world

ryan

Hello from Sitia....a small town (around 9000) on the east coast of Crete...we made our way here after hiking the Samaria Gorge (on the south west coast) with the intention of taking the ferry to Rhodes and then Turkey, but we've found a nice place to stay with some hospitable hosts so we might be chilling for a bit....The old guy who owns the place, Manuel, is a self-described "professeur de mathematiques," but i can't figure out if he actually teaches anything...his friend Walther, a 55-year old German dude, writes for a German travel book and and has been staying at the pension for years, but again, it seems that all he does is sit around in the shade reading the newspaper... Manuel is quite the story-teller, though his broken english requires much smiling and nodding (Walther refers to Manuel as the "blah-blah man", also in broken english)

Last night Walther took us out to one of his favorite restaurants to watch the euro cup final...after two more bars and about two bottles of wine, whiskey, campari, heineken and raki later we found ourselves rocking out to the Rolling Stones at 5:00 am still celebrating the Greek victory...who knew old German dudes could be so much fun....plan for tonight is much of the same, though Manuel will be joining us...

The Samaria Gorge was really impressive...we managed to hike it (18km) in 4.5 hours but 30 mins of that was probably spent taking pictures (40 pics and 4 movie clips...).....also saw a lot of goats...

Our plans for entering Turkey have changed a bit...we hear that entering from Rhodes on the passenger ferry is a bit sketchy with the Turkish border guards so we plan on going to a small island called Kastolorizo (or somthing like that) and then hiring a fishing boat to take us across (i know....it sounds ridiculous but apparently this is the best way to go...says Walther)

anyway, my internet time is slowly ticking away (the menu bar is flashing red and yellow as i write....2 minutes left.....now 1 ...) so i guess i should publ

ryan

Sankaran has a girlfriend!!!! No Shit!!!!

Lululemon had a sale!!!!! shit....look what happens when you leave the country...

So we've made our way to Crete, only becuase the cheap ferry sails twice a week and euros are few and far between right now...spending them all on expensive gifts for loved ones of course...

Crete is..... big.......after a while all of the islands kind of look similar....so size is crete's trademark i guess...though the locals claim it has the best climate (doesn't every local claim that...except torontonians maybe....they know their climate sucks)....Crete caters to the package tourism crowd so things are expensive here and the souvenir shops sell leather and jewelry instead of t-shirts that say "1 tequila, 2 tequila, 3 tequila, Floor......Ios!/Santorini!/Mexico!/Thailand!"

Went and saw the Ruins of Knossos yesterday (Minoan civilization from 3000 BC until 1500 BC when Santorini erupted and kicked their ass....remember that giant earthquake/250 metre tsunami??? yeeeaahhh....)...pretty cool stuff....the good word is that the Minoans were an extremely advanced society with females running the civil/economic affairs and males doing the labour/trading/defense.....labour sepcialization at its finest...adam smith would have been proud...apparently the society was very succesful (massive importers of gold, exporters of manufactured goods...the ideal economy...) and much more scientifically/socially advanced than any other in that period or for a long time after (our guide claims this was due to advanced early childhood education, division of labour and no discrimination....how he knows this shit i couldn't tell you since the Minoan script is untranslatable and the whole society was wiped out by the Santorini eruption dating 1500 BC....)...anyway...the palace is pretty cool shit...the cedar-pillars (think shock absorbers) weren't anchored to the foundation (like any non-minoan building built from 1500 BC to mid-1900's AD) ...instead they were free-set on marble bases so that when an earthquake hits the pillars are free to move slightly (like they do in skyscrapers nowadays)...smart dudes....oh...and the woman walked around with their breasts uncovered because they believed that the earth was their spiritual mother or some shit...very smart dudes....

Tomorrow we're off to hike the Samaria Gorge.....18 km of craning your neck and complaining about your feet...apparantly the pictures are worth it...

Greece won their semi-final game last night against the Czech Rep.....we were watching in a street cafe and when greece scored the golden goal the city just erupted...glasses started breaking...one dude put a potted on plant on the big-screen tv...another guy threw his chair into the street......then everyone converged to the central square for a huge party....imagine Robson st after the olympic win except WAY more people, dancing, fireworks and hairy chests.....only regret is that earlier i'd walked out the door thinking "ahh....i won't need my camera tonight...."....it was quite the scene...

keep sending me emails......and kudos to those who had the balls to vote green...thank god there weren't enough of you ensure a conservative victory.....wallace and i were over here thinking canada had gone crazy since we left.....can you imagine steven harper as prime minister....that man looks like he'd suck the blood out of a dying baby....oh...and he would have cost me $3500 in grant money :)

ryan