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Greece
“A Strange Island Called Samothraki”
10 January 2007
Northern/Central Greece
We're on our way back to Athens, now, after having spent the last nine days in Thessaloniki, Alexandropoulos and Samothraki. In truth, the Greek experience hasn't turned out to be what we expected. We thought less tourists would make the few tourists around more welcome, while in reality we have experienced something of a cold shoulder. Most of the people we've met aren't interested in sharing their culture, and couldn't care less if we're interested in it or not. Fair enough, but the constant indifference was a bit taxing on us. It seems like most Greeks had an attitude toward foreigners, at least at this time of the year, something like: “Spend your money and go on. Don't mind us. You stay out of our way and we'll stay out of your way.”
At any rate, Samothraki turned out to be a very interesting place. We arrived there Friday afternoon and had some difficulty locating a room. We stopped in a small grocery store and asked for help, but no one could speak English. This turned out to be a recurring problem! We finally found someone who could speak English, and found a very nice room for a very reasonable price. The room was also in the port town, which is fortunate, because the other towns on the island had no open restaurants — or anything else, for that matter. In order to get out of that town, however, we found ourselves in the position of having to rent a car. The most famous sight on the island is a place called The Sanctuary of the Great Gods, which are ruins of temples built to pre-Olympian gods. Once, Samothraki was a very important religious center, apparently having been the place where Alexander the Great was conceived. Alexander himself later paid homage to the Sanctuary. This sight is located about 8 km from the port, which isn't so far, but with no buses running, a car became necessary. The Sanctuary itself is an amazing place, though its most famous artifact, a statue called The Winged Victory of Nike, was moved long ago to the Louvre — Liza can verify this, as she has seen the original in its Parisian resting place. Still, with or without the original artifact, the ruins are incredible. To make it better, we only had to share the sight with a few curious goats! The same day we visited the Sanctuary, we visited the small town of Therma, which is known for its hot springs. The bath house, however, was closed for the season. There was a rather decrepit structure with a free hot spring bath, but it was full of plant life and not so inviting. We had a picnic near the spring, then went up the Phonias River valley, where we hiked along the river in the hope of finding waterfalls. We got close enough to hear a waterfall, and saw plenty of rapids and other scenery. But, when the path ended and we couldn't go further, we decided to call it quits. After all, we'd heard that the locals called this river, and the waterfalls above the path's end, The Murderer!
We spent the rest of our time driving around the island, stopping at strange pebble beaches and other very strange places that clearly don't sound so strange in this description. But they were. You'll have to take our word for it. We stopped in the village of Profitis Ilias, on the south of the island, where we had lunch in a tavern with a curious man who had been to Chicago. He turned out to be quite the racist.
Our Samothraki adventure is now done, and we both think that any more time there would have been too much. In just a few hours we'll be back in Athens, getting ready for India!