Connecting with the ancient world

05:00am 08 Oct 2010 0 comments

BY ANGELA AND STEVE FITCHETT

Olympos, Knossos Palace, the Acropolis

"New Zealand has no history!" I made this particularly witless remark to Athens Walking Tours guide Angelos Kokkaliaris well into the three and a half hour stroll that comprised AWT’s ‘City and Acropolis’ tour (highly recommended). "Of course you have," he replied, "any country with evidence of human habitation has!" He was emphatic, and of course, he was right.

In Athens, surrounded by left over bits of temples, theatres, shrines, agorae, walls and wells, statues and sarcophagi, some of it more that 4000 years old, I was overwhelmed by the extent of visible human history.

Compared to Europe’s weighty, multi-authored historical epic, New Zealand’s story is a small pamphlet with a draft title and a discussion about who gets the author’s credit scheduled sometime next century.

During six weeks in Turkey, Greece and Rome we’ve seen a lot of ruins. At first, we stopped the car and got out the camera every time we spotted a pile of tumbled stone. Everything was fascinating – collapsing hilltop towers, terraced hillsides, coastal fortifications, crumbling cottages, their gaping doorways and windows black with questions: how did these people live? What did they do? What became of them?

Three Greek Islands

05:00am 24 Sep 2010 0 comments

BY ANGELA AND STEVE FITCHETT

Three beaches on Santorini

Santorini is the Queenstown of the Cyclades Islands. Spectacular is an understatement, it is truly ‘remarkable’. Red scoria cliffs rise steeply up from the deep navy blue waters to create  the famous Santorini caldera.

Formerly occupied by the rest of Santorini, the caldera was formed when 1613 BC’s huge volcanic eruption blasted half the island 36 km into the sky, incidentally causing a tsunami that wiped out significant features of Knossos Palace in Crete, the hub of Minoan culture.

Entering the caldera in a fast Hellenic Seaways catamaran, the four or five towns that perch on the rim of the caldera look at first like badly applied white frosting or guano from some enormous sea bird; up closer they resolve into the white plaster and blue domed houses beloved of Greek Islands’ tourist brochures.

Tourists don’t visit Santorini to go to the beach. Judging by the hordes of tourists we physically rubbed shoulders with in the narrow alleyways of Thira and Oia towns, people visit to go shopping, eat and drink, people-watch and view the setting sun. We did some of this too – well, we are tourists!

Three meals on Syros

05:00am 16 Sep 2010 1 comment

BY ANGELA FITCHETT

We reach Syros at 9.30am on the fast ferry from Athens' port Piraeus, a trip of about two hours. The ferry pulls into the tiny harbour and we drive off straight into Syros' main town, pretty Hermoupolis.

Shady Market Street yields up plump fresh peaches, aubergines, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, potatoes, salad greens and a leg of lamb as well as thick sausages, an octopus and several kinds of freshly baked bread.

Cousin Janet's stone house and cottage are sited above a pebbly beach in a curving bay six kilometres from Hermoupolis. Across the bay, under a curve of hills, sits a loose patchwork of pale cubes and rectangles, the soft pastels of the houses and the brown hills making a pleasing arrangement of contrasting shape and colour.

Saturday: We are invited to dine with Janet's Greek friends, lawyer Christos, and his wife English language teacher Vasso. Resident in Athens, Christos and Vasso have an elegantly furnished and spacious house in Posidonia where the wealthy 18th and 19th Century Hermoupolean ship builders had their summer residences. Their welcome is friendly and gracious and their English is excellent.

Vasso has used the head and tail of a large, very fresh fish to make a light and flavoursome soup and baked its body with tomatoes and herbs. The fish is accompanied by a salad of tomato and feta, baby courgettes, onions and carrots cooked in the soup stock and a dish of spinach-like greens dressed with lemon juice.

Farewell Turkey

05:00am 13 Sep 2010 0 comments

ANGELA AND STEPHEN FITCHETT

Today is the first of four days of holiday for the Turks marking the end of Ramadan. This is an important public holiday, roads are empty and many businesses closed. A cheerful hotel desk clerk was offering chocolate to guests when we left for sight seeing this morning. The streets and parks are full of Instanbullus in a holiday mood, visiting their own sights along alongside the regular tourists. Ice cream jugglers, corn cob steamers, popcorn poppers, water and water melon sellers, and pashmina, spinning top, postcard and guidebook merchants are in full cry on the approach to Topkapi Palace Museum.

We're also in full holiday mode with the Tall Blacks out of the tournament. Mike is winding down from the intense, adrenalin fuelled atmosphere of the event with a slow and easy segue into the Kiwi OE role. It's been a good tournament for him, his time on court was positive and he felt and looked confident. He arrived at breakfast the morning after wearing a tee shirt with "I'm OK" written large on the front, possibly to forestall anxious parental enquiries. No need, we knew he was OK.

The second round of the tournament was fast and brutal. Like Survivor tribal council eliminations, teams needed to arrive at the stadium for their games with their bags packed. The Angolans lost to USA at 8pm and were on the bus to the airport at 3am the next morning. It was only a little gentler for the Tall Blacks after their Monday night loss. Everyone except Pero Cameron and Mike had left Istanbul by Tuesday lunchtime. Life goes on. Tuesday evening we joined Pero, his wife Jonelle and Nenad and Jasmina Vucinic for a meal. Nenad had already been to morning training with his Istanbul team.

Of course, the tournament continues with the first games of the quarter final last night (Serbia beat Spain, Turkey beat Slovenia) and the final is to come on Sunday. Our pick for the final is USA vs Turkey with USA to win. But the Turkish crowd will be a huge asset to their team. Mike and younger brother Andy went to the Turkey vs Slovenia game and were amazed at the Turkish fans. They whistled, sang, stood for the whole game and hung off the edges of the stands.

Defeated but not vanquished: Tall Blacks fight to the end

05:00am 08 Sep 2010 2 comments

BY ANGELA AND STEVE FITCHETT

12.30 am Istanbul time: supporters’ debrief at The Meat House, Sultanahmet quarter. Over consolatory beers, French fries and cheese pides we unanimously agreed that the Tall Blacks had given everything they had in their top sixteen game against the huge (averaging over 8cms taller) and athletic Russians. The final score of 78 -56 didn’t reflect how close the Tall Blacks were to matching the Russians during the game, only giving away the double decade points difference in the 4th quarter.

Russian coach David Blatt (coach of CSK Moscow) has a big reputation as one of the better coaches in the Euro League. He is a passionate and tactical coach who used his timeout allocation with deadly precision to puncture any points run begun by the Tall Blacks.

Tall Black supporters were there in force: travellers had arrived from all over Turkey and any Istanbul resident with a Kiwi connection fronted up. Numbers were bolstered by Turkish, Greek, French and Lithuanians (with two of their drums) who joined in the chants of “Tall Blacks! Tall Blacks” and “Kiwi! Kiwi!” with great gusto. Obviously other nations recognise winners even when they don’t win.

The FIBA One World Dancing Girls from Lithuania surprised us with a routine at three quarter time accompanied by New Zealand standard Poi E. Their costumes hilariously missed the mark, brown lace mini skirts and bikini tops combined with glittery gold cheerleader style pompoms caused quite a few amused splutters amongst Kiwi fans. But full marks for trying girls, and the cart wheels were terrific.

Youngest son wasn’t at all impressed but he was distracted by the actual live presence of reality star Chloe Kardashian, partner of USA player Lemar Odom who featured in the earlier USA vs Angola game.