May 2004

May 30, 2004

So it seems that I got to the end of the last post without saying much about where we actually are, and where we were going. It was then a while before I got the chance to write again...but then that is the essence of travelling!

We are presently on the island of Corfu, a small Greek island on the West coast of the country, within only a few miles of Albania's Southern coast. A small storm blew in over the Adriatic, pelting warm rain on the town of Agios Gordios - in which we are staying - and enveloping the tips of the mountains around us in mist and clouds. But as the enthusiastic waiter exclaimed to us at breakfast in his thick, mediterranean accent, "It seems to be raining! But hey, it's good for the potatoes!"

On the same man's suggestion, Laura and I went for a hike up through the mountains through the cyprus trees and olive groves and stopped in a small village for cappuccinos as we looked at the azure waters of the adriatic lapping against the shore below. Tonight, we have a reservation for "Anytime after seven." That speaks volumes.

The town we are in, though undeniably touristy, can't help but retain its Greek-ness. Set in a small inlet and hemmed in by dramatic mountains on all sides, Ag. Gordios remains picturesque and charming despite the influx of tourists. The steep slopes are covered by dense groves of ancient olive trees planted on terraced inclines lined by crumbling walls. Just spectacular. I've never climbed a mountain that goes right into the sea before.

Our journey getting here was quite an eventful one. As I mentioned in my last post, Laura and I only just barely made it to our train in time. When we finally got to Ancona - where we were to catch our ferry - Laura and I settled into a long, three course lunch that made us late in checking in for our ferry tickets. But it got worse from there. The ferry ride was across the Adriatic sea, a trip that lasted almost twenty hours. On arriving at Ingoumenitsa in Greece (our destination) a series of incomprehensible announcements came over the P.A. telling people what to do. The only parts I understood (though they were in English) were that drivers should go to their cars right away, and that the ferry would be leaving for the next port immediately.

Laura and I waited on the back deck, watching the cars disembark, and waited for them to lower the pedestrian gangway...which they never did. I started to woder what was happening when I looked around and saw that the people around us were buying food and drinks and settling in. The gangway still hadn't gone down, and more announcements in garbled English came over the P.A. Hmmm. When do we get off?

Just after the next announcement, the first I could understand, announced a breakfast service, I decided we should see if we could go and try and get off with the cars by walking through the car deck. After all, time was ticking. We went down to the car deck, I peaked through the door and - to my dismay - noticed that they had raised the ramp. The expletives that raced through my brain at that moment are not worth mentioning here as I considered what a surprise return trip to Italy was going to do for our plans.

I grabbed Laura and raced across between eighteen wheel trucks until I saw a young woman in uniform. "Um, how do we get off the boat?" I asked, trying to sound casual. I lack the ability to describe her expression when I asked her that, but had she been eating or drinking at the time, she would have surely spit it all over me in surprise. She immediately started shouting something into her radio, and that's when I noticed that the second and final ramp was being raised behind her and the boat was pulling away from the dock.

The woman hurriedly pulled us over to the ramp where 'the man in charge' was. Here was my first introduction to the Greek temper.

"You IDIOT! Ten times, TWENTY TIMES we make announcement!! You not get off boat! IMPOSSIBLE!!" he screamed in my face, the whole time looking as if he would hit me.

Much chaos ensued, and it looked as if we weren't going to be able to get off the boat until, sensing that extreme measures were called for, Laura turned on the waterworks in an impressive theatrical display that even had me fooled. Indeed, she looked so piteous that he began apologising to her while at the same time cursing me and my stupidity.

"You're sorry, you're sorry! Twenty times we announce!"

He radiod the bridge, the boat shuddered as its massive engines were thrown into reverse and the ramp started to lower. Screaming at us to run, the man ushered us onto the partially lowered ramp and we ran and, with no word of exaggeration, jumped from the still moving boat onto the dock.

Needless to say, we didn't look back. I didn't feel like seeing the hundred or so people on deck who would have been standing on deck laughing at us.

And that is how we came to Greece.

May 28, 2004

Things, I must say, have gone a tad downhill since we left the company of my mother and father.We are now far from the luxury of travelling with my parents, and we are rapidly realizing how much a) we appreciated the creature comforts that were lavished on us, and b) we really need to plan things out a little better! After a week of everything going smoothly as far as travel was concerned (easy for me to say, as my Dad did all the driving!), we've found that already things have gone off the tracks a little...literally.

The last time that I ran for a train was in somewhere in central Japan. Our connection had run late due to a suicide on the tracks, and time was tight for us to catch our bullet train for the rest of the journey. The stationmasters held us up as we ran, checking our tickets minutely, and I will never forget running onto the platform to see the doors hiss shut. There was no hint of mercy in the platform workers eyes, and Laura and looked in silent rage as the doors remained shut, and the train glided out of the station without us. That was Japan.

This is Italy. After standing at platform number six for forty minutes in the station at Bologna, waiting for our next train to the coast, an old clunker of a train - that could not have possibly been ours - wheezed up in front of us. It was at that time (roughly fifty seconds before our train was scheduled to leave) that I had a terrible thought; what if there was more than one track number six? I had checked the schedule and the board numerous times, but there was no way that the rusty hulk in front of us was meant to go beyond city limits.

It's at these moments that you become aware of the little things, like the fact that all the trains around you are arriving, and none of them actually seem to be going anywhere (except for maybe the scrap yard). Panic sets in. You consult your watch, which tells you things are bad. You remember all of the indecipherable announcements that were probably saying "To all of our Italian speaking customers, please be reminded that there are two 'Track number sixes', and don't stand at the first one you see or you will grow old, wither and die before a train comes to take you anywhere you want to go. Grazie, Arrivaderci"

So you start to run. Where? Doesn't matter; you're in the wrong place now, your train is currently leaving...what does it matter where you run?

We ducked down some stairs, I almost decapitated a child with my bag as I sprinted down the hall, and I most certainly immasculated a man coming down the stairs leading from the other track number six.

The top of the stairs presented me with the one sight that will give a chill to anyone who has travelled in Japan; my train, with its doors closed.

But as I said, this is Italy. So instead of quietly accepting my fate and affecting a casual look so as not to lose face by showing emotion, I started pounding on the side of the train car and yelling. Down the platform, a station master saw me and, interpreting my actions as the natural thing to do for someone who wants to get on a train, gestured for us to come down to where he still had a door open.

And that was that. We made the train a little later, no doubt, but it was probably going to be late anyway. Reading back in my journal yesterday, I saw an entry where my train (a charter going over a hundred kilometres into another prefecture) pulled into the station a mere twenty seconds before the departure time, in which period everyone hurriedly boarded and it pulled out at exactly the appointed hour. Going from that to a place where all you have to do when late is to punch the vehicle you would like to board is quite a transition!

So it would seem that my long break from putting up posts has made me a tad verbose, but I will try to distill things somewhat to give an idea of where we are...

Yesterday was Laura and my last day in Florence. Despite a pair of vicious hangovers that resulted from a picnic gone out of control, Laura and I peeled ourselves out of our cots (we were staying in a camp site) and rushed off, as best we could, to the Uffizi museum; home to one of the world's pre-emminent collections of art. The museum is so busy that it is necessary to go and book tickets several days in advance, or risk it and spend the better part of a day waiting in line to enter without a reservation. With your reserved ticket, you must book a time, which gives you a fifteen minute window within which you will be permitted entry.

As Laura and I crawled hurriedly to the museum, looking at our watches the whole way, Laura mused that if nothing else, it was good that in Japan we had learned to be punctual.

But, I say it again; this is Italy.

The museum opens every day at eight, and we had made our reservation for nine, which gave us between nine and nine-fifteen to arrive. We got there for eight fifty eight, only to find that today they had decided to open the museum at ten. By the time they did finally open, there were hundreds of people bunched by the entrances, which they then began to let in in random order. Viva Italia.

Jokes aside, the museum (if you can get inside) is absolutely spectacular, and showcases a mindbending collection of incomparable works by some of history's best artists. Despite our continuing and ever worsening hangovers, Laura and I spent four and a half hours basking in the art that is literally brimming out of the rooms and halls of the Uffizi. I was amazed to find out that Laura - after all this time - is a closet art lover. She seemed to like the Botticelli exhibit we saw earlier in the week, but as we went into the Uffizi she was telling me that I should pick what I wanted to see most so that we wouldn't be there too long. By the time we got to Botticelli's Primavera, Laura had her own list of works she wanted to see, and actually started to go back to review some of her favourites.

So where, one might ask, did this horrible hangover come from? I blame two people; James Desjardins, and the Italian waiter we met in Toronto just before coming. James said the cheapest way to eat in Europe was to get stuff for a picnic, and the waiter said the most romantic thing you could to in Florence was to watch the sun set over the Arno river, with all of its beautiful bridges. So we combined the two.

But nobody said how difficult it is to shop for a picnic here. After picking up some meats and cheeses and a five dollar magnum of wine, Laura and I popped into a little deli to get some bread and some artichoke hearts. But then I saw the pasta. Then Laura saw the sun dried tomatoes. And while she was doing that, I saw the roast potatos. And then Laura saw the pasta in a pesto cream sauce. And then I saw that we needed a few more artichoke hearts. And while that was going on, Laura noticed the mixed grilled vegetables. And when we bought the bread, we somehow ended up with a kilogram of it. And this was after getting five kinds of cheese and two kinds of salami from the first place!

So our cheap, yet romantic picnic somehow became more than double what we paid in a restaurant the night before, and we had more food than an army could eat. The lady behind the counter, who had been surly and aloof when we had come in, was laughing as we left. "And you came in here for three artichoke hearts!"

The sunset, however, was stunning. We made a dent in the cheeses, drained the wine, and headed back to our campsite, where for a variety of reasons we ended up having another bottle of wine in our tent, followed by another in the laudry room while listening to music through the tinny little speaker on the bottom of our laptop.

May 23, 2004

A long radio silence, to say the least, but little else can be expected when one is stranded far in the hills of Tuscany. Laura and I are currently sitting on an old stone patio, beside an even older converted stone farmhouse, looking out over the rolling hills of olive trees and vinyards that lie between us and the nearest town; an ancient castle village which sits on the top of an incline somewhere between Florence and Siena.

To anyone to whose emails I may not have responded to; my apologies. We've had no internet access for a week, and even as I write this I have no idea when we'll have it again. It may be days before I can even upload this update!

Our flight over here was fairly uneventful, except for our brief stop in London Heathrow, which appears to be one of the truly awful airports in the world. Though few of the affairs of an efficient airport seem to have been mastered there, the English have triumphed in creating a unique form of urinal which possess an uncanny geometry capable of deflecting anything and everything back at the user. A truly amazing innovation.

From the moment that Laura and I set foot in Italy, I was in love. We found a small, overpriced pensione in Rome, then ate at a lovely pizzaria right on the street in front. Far from the ordered, demarcated and licenced patios in Canada, we had cars passing mere inches from our table on this narrow backstreet, and the waiter would drag more tables out on to the cobblestone as more customers arrived.

But that was Rome, and this is Tuscany. I must say that I was a bit off-put by all of the hype in Canada that surrounds Tuscany at the moment, as it felt as if we were coming to the destination that everyone's talking about. But sometimes, sometimes, hype is justified.

I have never set foot in a place so consistently - so casually - beautiful. At every mountain turn you expect to see the seedy, ugly, industrial underside that the travel pages don't show you. You almost want to know that although there are - yes - some beautiful views, but this must be a place flawed like any other.

On this count, Tuscany is a great disappointment.

Each time there is a break in the trees on the side of the road, your eyes are filled with storybook views of sun dappled slopes packed with olive groves and neatly groomed lines of vines growing in the rocky mountain soil. Instead of high-rises and luxury monstrosities, the countryside is peppered with stone farmhouses roofed with sun-worn terracotta tiles.

It doesn't seem to matter where we go in this place, be it stopping for lunch along the road or going to one of the ancient towns in the district, everything is beautiful. If anything, compared to the beauty of this place, I'd say the hype about it is understated.

What really makes us lucky is that far from slogging this countryside on foot, or trying to find a way to these villages on foot, as we normally would be, we are instead whizzing through the countryside in a little Renault. Far from roughing it backpacker style, we are going first class courtesy of my parents.

Not only is this good because we are staying in a place we couldn't afford, in a region we couldn't access by public transport, but we can take advantage of my mother's planning, as somehow (after biking around lake Biwa, packing all our stuff, coming back to Canada, planning a wedding, getting married, buying our stuff for the trip...) we neglected to do much of any research for our travels! We're still not sure what we'll do when we have to part ways with my parents, as we'll have to actually start roughing it (sleeping on park benches, etc.) and we have no idea what to do next.

That being said, in a couple of days we'll be heading out of Chianti - maybe to Florence - so if anyone has any suggestions, they'd be appreciated!

May 15, 2004

Three manic weeks at home has come to an end, and somewhere in that time the 'hello' and wedding parties became 'goodbye' parties yet again. My bag is mostly packed (though it seems thoroughly overweight) and tonight Laura and I set off for Italy.

My pack, so far, seems to have more camera gear than it does clothing, which is a little vexing. It defies the rule of pack once, then take everything out and only pack half of what you originally put in. If I did that I would have either no camera or nothing to wear!

As far as the webpage, I will be doing updates from Europe, so have no fear. We will be bringing a small laptop (adding to my woes) and we can upload pictures from Laura's digital, though any shots from my 'old school' camera will have to wait until we get back. I was tempted to bring both digitals, but then that's why my pack weighs about 600kg.

I've updated the contact information on the contact page, which now has a mailing address for Laura's grandparent's place and my parent's place; we will eventually receive mail sent to either address. We will still - of course - have access to email in Europe, but I imagine it will be pretty sporadic. We're going to be relying on pirating people's wireless internet, and to that end we have a pretty cool network sniffer that I'm pretty pleased about. If European cities are even a fraction as wired as Toronto is, we should have no problem getting free internet the whole time we're there. That being said, my hopes are not high for internet access in the small village in Chianti where we're starting off!

So we will be in touch, and hope that everyone will do the same. A big 'thank you' to everyone for their well wishes on our wedding, for their generosity and hospitality while we've been back, and just generally for being people well worth coming across the world for. Grazie!

May 8, 2004

May 7, 2004

So here it is, the day of the wedding has come at last, and we've arisen to a beautiful, sunny day. Laura and I are both looking forward to the festivities tonight, as well as the prospect of life returning to normal as of tommorrow! Thank you to Sarina, Masayuki and Yuka for sending your regards for our wedding day...we'll be thinking of you at the wedding!

Last night Laura and I sat by the lake and watched an approaching thunderstorm coming across the water. It was a spectacular show, with the sky lighting up in pink as massive bolts of lightning arced between the clouds. I somehow restrained myself from running to get the camera, and so we just sat and enjoyed the moment; a perfect way to end a busy week.

May 5, 2004

Two more days before the wedding, and it seems like pretty much everything is falling into place. Laura and I have been trying to simultaneously get our stuff together for the Europe trip as well, which has actually been pretty fun. The trouble is, we still have no idea where we're going once we get there; we have a ticket there and a ticket back...that's all.

May 3, 2004

Just over a week has passed since coming back to Canada, and already the amnesia that accompanies the unreality of switching continents has made it hard to believe that just ten days ago I was in Kyoto. When Laura said the other day that she wanted to go home, I asked her "Where's that?" Neither of us knew.

So we're homeless, somewhere between cultures but no longer entirely belonging to either one, and getting ready to compound the rootlessness with another long stint of travel. Wow. It actually makes for a pretty interesting experience overall, and has afforded both Laura and myself with some unique chances to look at both Canadian and Japanese culture from a perspective that is wavering somewhere between the two.

There are now only a few days remaining before the wedding...and we have yet to get any wedding rings. No pressure. Everything has gone pretty smoothly for the most part, and by all rights it looks as if it's going to be a pretty fun party on Friday.

Last Friday was our Jack and Jill...and the bounds of how good a party could actually be were pushed outwards by quite a large degree. Not only did we bar-hop, but we did it with a chartered Toronto streetcar as our mode of transport...it was pretty surreal. The whole affair really made Laura and I realize how awesome our friends are, and I can't even begin to express my gratitude for being shown such an amazing time. Thanks!