E is for ...

... Ephesus.

In September of 2010 I took a really monumental trip. It was monumental for a number of reasons, least of which was that I was away, on this trip, for a month.  An entire month of vacation from work, real life, family, friends and doldrum obligations.  Exciting, to be sure, but daunting - how to survive with limited contact?   I'm a contact type of person.  I like to be in the know and in the middle of things - what will everyone do without me?  Will my office fall apart (I hope so!)?  I worried for a bit about my friends, both tried and true and one, specifically, sweet and new.  Will I be forgotten (I hope not!)?   What of my plants (Who cares!)?

The most important thing about this trip, though, was that I was going with my Mom, to Greece.  This was to be her first trip back there since my Dad passed away and it wasn't going to be easy.  There was no way she was going by herself.  Not because she simply wouldn't go by herself (my Mom can do many, many things remarkably well but travelling alone is not one of them), but because she shouldn't have to.  She shouldn't have to venture into this emotional minefield alone.  So, off we went.  The two of us, together, on a trip completely planned with her in mind in a way that wasn't going to make me completely crazy.

We started off at the Grande Bretagne in Athens, up to that point the most luxurious hotel I've ever stayed at.  With breathtaking views of the Acropolis and rooms larger than my condo, we were off to a great start.  We then embarked on a 10 day cruise, taking us to Greek Islands and also to Turkey.  From there, back to Athens for more exploring and then, onwards to the town that thinks it's a city, Sparta.   In our time there, we visited with so many people who I'm sure up until that point had believed - or at least wanted to believe - that my Dad's death was merely a cruel game of broken telephone.  An impossible untruth - the last time we saw him he was so full of life, so strong, so Nikos, they'd tell us. And yes, that was true.  And that's how you should remember him, we said.  Seeing my Mom there without him drove the point home and hard, and being there without him was so, so strange for both of us.  These people, for the most part, were all my Dad's childhood friends.  Friends he had remained incredibly close and connected with since leaving Greece in 1952 at the age of 17, all without the power of the internet, or even letters.  Kind of amazing, really.  These people were and are quite remarkable and they reaffirmed for me the awesome person my Dad was.  That's always pretty special - knowing you somehow haven't endowed someone with characteristics and personalities that live only in your own head.  That other people see what you see too.  They know what you know.

Hotel Views, Athens

Me & Mom, Acropolis Museum, Athens

All of our time in Sparta was actually spent in a village just outside of that town that thinks it's a city, called Petrina.  Our closest family friends have a villa there - there is no other way to describe the majesty of this property - and each morning we would wake to the sounds of roosters, and fall asleep to the sounds of absolutely nothing.  Both these daily bookends took some getting used to.  Fresh figs and walnuts and grapes and oranges were at our fingertips and the beach was merely 20 minutes away.  These, all, soon became expected.  We ate constantly.  Constantly.  I'd go for hours long walks in the afternoons with my iPod and my thoughts when everyone was siesta-ing and gaze through the hilltops into, well, not much.  The village was extremely rural and since everyone else was sleeping, extremely quiet.  Some days I'd have to turn back after a short while because it was just so HOT.  Late September and over 40 degrees of pure non-humid heat.  Sweltering, comforting, warmth.  These were our days.  These were our glorious days.  We ventured out to the tiniest island called Elafonisos one day, and popped into Sparta on a few others but otherwise we ate, I walked and we talked and laughed and ate some more and watched Greek soap operas and read Greek gossip magazines and, yes, ate even more.  As I said, glorious.

Good Morning, Petrina

Elafonisos

Apart from this almost otherworldly daily routine, the trip was filled with, well, Greece.  Say what you will about the country's economical struggles but you can't dispute that no other place in the world melds the mythical, historical  and simply beautiful quite like the Motherland.  You need to believe to get Greece.  In order to fully appreciate the labryinth at the Palace of Knossos in Crete, you need to believe that minotaurs could exist.  In order to fully drop your jaw at the largesse at Cape Sounion or remoteness of Delos, you're totally fine believing that Poseidon, Apollo and Artemis were real people.  And Gods, but mostly real people.  I had some great conversations with my Mom about this stuff, and while we were both of course completely skeptical, in the end, we just shrugged our shoulders and accepted it.  It helped what when this talk (finally) reached it's conclusion we were both gazing at the magical Santorini sunset, which allows for the most absurd to become completely possible.

As happens in the course of history, conquerers become the conquered and now much of what was once 'Greece' now lies in other territories and countries in the surrounding geography.  Ephesus is one of these places - famed for the Temple of Artemis (her, again) and one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World, the city, in the classical Greek Era of the 1st Century BC, was one of the largest in the Mediterranean world.  Ephesus was soon conquered by the Romans, then the Persians and finally the Turks and is now formally located in the Izmir Province of Turkey, mainly as an enormous open air museum / tourist area / blow your mind type of place.

Ephesus

Of all the things my eyes landed upon during this trip, it is Ephesus that stays with me the most.  The sheer size of these buildings - libraries, schools, public baths, running tracks, amphitheatre - was humbling.  The literal strength of these pillars of stone, mind blowing.  They withstood earthquakes and battles and ravages of time for thousands and thousands of years and are still there.  They are still there.  It was simply awesome in the original sense of the word.   To think of what happened there, the lives lived, the trials and tribulations which I'm sure were no different than our own but somehow they seem so.  They seem more grand, more substantial, more interesting.

When it's all over, you do as you do - you return richer in experience, literally poorer in pocketbook but always much, much, fuller in outlook and memory.  We need this.  We need to get out of ourselves to see what was and where we are.  This trip didn't change me, per se, but it enriched my appreciation for many things - my Dad and the country of his birth, my Mom as top notch travel companion yet horrible picture taker and my own ability to (almost) check out and be comfortable doing almost nothing for long stretches of time.  Everything and everyone managed (almost) just fine without me.  Of course and obviously.  I mean, it's not like I'm the God of Making Sure Everything's Okay.  If one existed, of course.  ;)

Cruising (aka Mom can centre a picture if she really tries)

.... E is for Ephesus.