Chania, Crete

We arrived in Chania, by air from Athens. The airport is located on the peninsula which encloses Souda Bay. It was the site of the German airborn landing in May, 1941. In fact there is a Commonwealth War Cemetery close to the airport. Apparently there are about 1500 graves of Australian, New Zealand and British soldiers there. But although the Germans won the Battle of Crete in only a few days, it was very costly for them – there are over 4,000 graves in the German War Cemetery. Apparently many of those killed were of crack airborn divisions.

We stayed in a large luxury hotel overlooking the sea, a few miles west of Chania. It was nice to have a bit of space and comfort after the cramped conditions in Bordeaux. Although I had to spend time at the conference, I was still able to find time for sketching. One day we spent a morning doing watercolours of a monastery on a slope overlooking a bay. Also I did a water-coloured drawing of the Venetian Harbour in Chania.

Chania was a Venetian city until being conquered by the Turks in the 1600s. It remained under Turkish rule until 1913, when Crete was united with Greece, under the leadership of Eleutherias Venizelos, a native of Chania. He went on to become prime minister of Greece and he is widely respected throughout the country. In 1925 or so he signed an protocol with Kemal Ataturk which arranged for the transfer of populations following the catastrophe (for the Greeks) of 1922 – Greeks from Asia Minor and Turks from the islands. Many Greeks from Smyrna and other cities along the Anatolian coast ended up in Crete. One of our conference hosts was telling us that her father’s family had been part of that exodus. She was quite dark and attractive and had perhaps a trace of Turkish in her appearance. The taxi driver who drove us from the airport looked even more Turkish, with narrow hooded eyes.

We had an afternoon excursion with the conference which took us through the mountains to the south coast. We ended up at a beautiful beach called Elefansios after visiting a cave with a shrine (Haghia Sofia) some way up the side of a gorge. There are many caves on Crete, it being primarily of limestone. I couldn’t help wondering if this cave had been used by partisans during the war. After their defeat at Souda Bay the remains of the Commonwealth force attempted to make its way across the island to the south coast. This was no easy task given the severity of the terrain – the White Mountains are to the south of Chania, and there are few roads across to the south coast. But a surprising number made it, where they were picked up by Royal Navy destroyers, and later submarines. They were helped by the Cretans, often at great risk to themselves. On a previous visit to Crete, we had come across the Aghios Prevelli Monastery on the south coast, where the monks had provided shelter to troops waiting to be picked up by the Royal Navy. It was a prosperous place, in part due to the donations that Australians and Kiwis had made post war. In particular there was one Aussie who had arranged for the name of his town to be changed to Prevelly, Western Australia. He had also made very large donations to the Monastery. There was an exhibition there with information and artifacts from that time.

Later in the war the allies landed officers to coordinate with the local partisans – one of them was Patrick Leigh Fermor. He was involved in the derring-do adventure of the capture of the German general who was commander of the whole island. They managed to capture him near the Villa Ariadne, Sir Arthur Evans’ former house near Knossos. From there they force marched him across the island to the south coast where they were eventually taken off by submarine to Egypt. The Germans took heavy retaliation on any Cretans they suspected of complicity in the plot, and not surprisingly, to this day the English are much more popular than the Germans. I remember eight years ago climbing the stairs to a pension in Rethymnon to ask if there were any rooms available. The man who emerged from somewhere was white-haired and only had one arm. He was not very gracious when he said that they had a room available. “German?”, he asked. “No, Canadian” I responded and produced a British and a Canadian passport. His manner changed completely, and he became quite welcoming. The men touting In front of the shops would also ask “German?”, but when we responded “No, British” (we learned fast) they would say “British, Souda Bay, very good” and then offer “special price”. With all of the lager louts and chavs and the bad reputation of British soccer fans, it’s nice to know that there is at least one place where Brits are still welcomed. How long it will last I don’t know. Things do seemed to have changed in Greece, since we were last here. In some ways it has become more part of Europe and the larger world. It used to be that one heard almost nothing but Greek music from the moment one stepped off the plane to the day one left. But that has changed. We heard almost no Greek music in Athens, and when one did it was in very touristy places and the music would be old standards like “Never on a Sunday” and “Zorba’s Dance”.

It has been similar in Crete, although at the conference banquet there was a very good trio of musicians performing Greek music, and a group of young people doing Greek dance.

But back to our conference tour. The guide was a Cretan called Dimitros. He wore hiking boots and a safari vest with badges for Kilimanjaro and other places. When he introduced himself he told us he was a mountain guide and also a research chemist. He had a very well-developed Hemingway complex, although being a twenty-first century guide he deplored hunting, hunters being despicable people who killed animals for pleasure and not for food. Other things he deplored were wine in bottles (“you just buy marketing”” – it was the French who started the decadent habit putting wine in bottles); pirates (“the most despicable of human beings who waited until the men went off to work the fields, and then killed, raped and plundered the womens and children”); plastic food (which you get in all restaurants, except those in Cretan villages and in the market in Chania); nine-to-five jobs (life in three boxes – home, car, office); and “perfumes and makeups”, which involved torture of animals. He didn’t seem to like tourism very much either, although he was making his living from it. He looked like a Cretan from a postcard – good looking with a moustache and a slightly hooked nose. One could cast him as a partisan in WWII or as a villager in Zorba the Greek. His machismo provided some entertainment and he seemed to know quite a bit. Judy and I were speculating whether he changed into a silk peignor when home alone – we couldn’t imagine any woman living with him.

Maybe he just exhibited normal Cretan machismo – Patrick Leigh Fermor who spent a lot of time with Greek partisans during the war, while admiring their courage and their hospitality, bemoaned the lack of interesting conversation. It never went beyond weapons and boots he said. Also Judy heard from a woman married to a Greek, that men are taught that smiling is a sign of weakness – this made life very difficult for the wife, since she never knew whether her husband was angry, happy or bored. However I think Dimitrios was something of an outlier, somebody trying to live by a code, which maybe was suitable for the time when Crete was occupied by the Turks, but seems like an anachronistic pathology today.

Another example of Greek men attempting to live by a code (again a machismo one), which we have observed, is among those who have spent some time in USA or Canada. We have observed taxi drivers and others who try to be macho Americans with all of the “sonofabitches” , “motherfucking” etc. in their English. In fact back in 1974 we once entered a bar where men were speaking in English, and it was a delightful comedy as they played their parts as macho Americans. It was a bit like a Genet play in which the men’s roles are played by women and the women’s roles played by men.

Yesterday we visited Knossos. Our guide there, Manolis, was very different. He was very capable and knowledgeable and liked talking. He also welcomed questions and did his best to answer questions. His only fault was a tendency to bossiness – he didn’t like people wandering off or talking while he was talking, but given the crowds that flock to Knossos, this is understandable. There was one awful Polish-American (Jewish?) woman who needed to be treated with a firm hand. She was eager to complain about anything. Her Polish husband who I think was an academic at the conference seemed perhaps a couple of cards short of a full deck, and their son was definitely not carrying a full sea bag – possibly mongoloid or perhaps autistic. Manolis was very patient though and answered his questions with respect, even when he repeated a question which somebody else had just asked and which Man olis had answered at length. The other people in the group were mostly Russian, including a Chinese-looking statistician from Novosibirsk. There were also a couple of Spanish-speaking chicas (from Uraguay I believe), a young English female grad student with very bad posture, and a Serbo-Irishman and his daughter. He was a Serbian academic with a position in National University in Galway. He was tall and looked quite good, but he revealed a loathing for the ICC in the Hague, when the guide Manolis mentioned that a replica of the throne of Minos was used as the seat of the leading judge – although little is known of the Minoans, there seems to be the belief that they were a very just people. Certainly they don’t seemed to have been very warlike. There was no city wall around Knossos, and no depictions of warriors or battle have been found. It seems though that they had a strong navy – strong enough to have exacted tribute from the Greek mainland. Indeed the story of the Minotaur with Athens having to send maidens annually probably referred to tribute. Manolis suggested that the Minotaur idea could have arisen from the Minoan king assuming a bull’s head for ceremonial events. The Greek word labyrinth is related to the word lavra which is for a double-headed axe which was a Minoan symbol. So it seems that Theseus’ labrynth may have referred to the palace of Knossos. Perhaps Theseus’ slaying of the Minotaur represented the killing of the Minoan king, and Greek conquest.

It seems Knossos was destroyed firstly by the tsunami and earthquake when Santorini was blown apart (c. 1400 BC). It was later partially rebuilt but destroyed by fire about 50 years later. This was the time of the Dorian invasions, when Greek speaking peoples took over the island.

Bordeaux

Bordeaux is located on the banks of the Garonne where it flows north towards the Bay of Biscay. The main part of the city is on the west bank. Although the city dates back to antiquity, there having been a Roman town on the site, it’s importance in more recent times is based on the wine trade, especially with England, which has had a long affection for claret, i.e for red Bordeaux wines. Some of the world’s most renowned and expensive wines hail from the Bordeaux region – Chateau Lafite Rosthchild, Chateau Haut- Brion, Chateau Latour etc.
In fact Bordeaux was an English city for much of the Middle Ages, first under the Plantagenet monarchs and then through the One Hundred Years War. It was finally lost to the English crown in 1453. Much of the elegant part of the modern city was built in the eighteenth century before the Revolution. The main building material is a sandy coloured limestone, presumably originating in the Dordogne or Auvergne. It is similar to the Cotswold stone of Oxford. Many of the buildings have been recently cleaned and the city, especially along the quay and in the centre, has a bright lively feeling. There are many pedestrian-only streets and the city possesses an efficient, modern tram system.

The conference I attended was in the old Natural Sciences building of The University of Bordeaux. I would guess it was built in the mid to late nineteenth century. The steps up to the main portal were flanked by two female statues - a naked Nature on the left and a respectably clothed Science on the right. Perhaps a contemporary architect would put them the other way round?

There were two lecture theatres, "amphi" in French, where some sessions were held, which were most interesting. They were like old operating theatres that one sees in films etc. where operations and dissections are carried out in front of an audience of medical students. The space at the front for the surgeon or speaker was small and from there rows of benches rose precipitously each row fronted by a four to five foot balustrade of polished wood. One could imagine Arthur Conan Doyle as a medical student in Edinburgh sitting in one of these while his mentor Dr. Bell dissected a body brought in fresh by Burke and Hare.

Of course the great specialty of Bordeaux is wine. I tasted some respectable examples, by the glass in restaurants and at a reception put on by the conference. Another specialty of the region is oysters from the Arachon Basin. We did a tour there which involved a stop at an oyster nursery. However getting there was a trial. The bus driver finally found it on his third attempt after two excursions down narrow lanes lined with wooden huts and stacks of lime-covered roof tiles and other accoutrements of the oyster farming business. This ame driver had trouble on the return trip too. He took us by what seemed an unusual route into Bordeaux and we found ourselves in narrow streets with bollards and railings demarcating sidewalks. At one intersection we found ourselves stuck. The driver tried backing out, turning, driving forward, but all to no avail. At some point some of the passengers started to get up to go outside for a smoke, but the driver insisted emphatically that they stay on the bus. However after 20 minutes or so he was forced to give up and we found ourselves with a walk of a kilometre or so to get back to the Place Victoire and the University.

"In my country is big problem. And that problem is transport." Borat was referring to a fictional Kazakstan, but it could just as well refer to France. In fact the transport system is pretty good, but it always seems to run into problems caused by strikes or the Bolshie attitude or incompetence of the operators.

But back to oysters. I learned a few interesting facts about these bivalves. perhaps the most strange is that they are capable of changing sex from year to year! Sounds like fun. Also, just as the great vineyards of Europe were destroyed by the Phyloxera virus a hundred years or so ago, so the oyster beds of the Atlantic coast were decimated by an unknown pathogen a few years back. There is some speculation that it was a form of the herpes virus which did the damage. Anyway the farms switched to a different species of oyster. This time it was Canada to the rescue, although the species used was one of Japanese origin which had been introduced to Canadian oyster farms some decades back.

The oyster larvae fix onto tiles treated with lime. After some months, when they are only a centimeter or so in size, they are removed and put onto folded plastic mesh nets. They grow there for three years or more when they are harvested. But many are exported as nursery stock at the first stage (when only a centimeter or so). Apparently 90% of French oysters, Atlantic and Mediterranean, begin life in the Arachon. We got to taste the oysters with a respectable dry white wine from the Medoc. They were not bad, but were much smaller than the ones we get in BC. Apparently they are never cooked in France.

For the first day and half of our time in Bordeaux the weather was damp and cool but on the second day the sun came out and it stayed bright until we left after four days. This allowed us to do quite a bit of 'plein air' art. All of my work was in pen and ink - several buildings, including the Theatre (pre-Revolution), the Hotel de Ville and the Hotel Bordeaux. I also did a sketch of the great dune of Pyla - an enormous sand dune near Arachon, which grows continually burying everything in its path, and others of the monument to the Girondins - a column built in extravagant nineteenth century style, commemorating those killed in the Revolution and in subsequent wars and upheavals - and the usual cafe art.

One curious event which occurred while we in Bordeaux is worth recounting. We were sitting at a restaurant along the river in an area known as Les Hangars, enjoying a Basque meal. Between a row of restaurants and cafes and the river ran a promenade where the beautiful people of Bordeaux and other flaneurs strolled along with various roller skaters, skate boarders, unicyclists etc. As we watched the parade a bizarrely dressed African man carrying a stout staff and accompanied by a medium sized dog, came along. Directly in front of us the dog stopped and defecated, producing several damp, good-sized turds. ""Oh, Oh" we thought -there goes the outdoor dining experience. But teh African man bent down and with his bare hands picked up a handful of shit. He tossed it over the railing into the river and then proceeded to do the same with the remaining turds. And then without even wiping his hands he whistled for his dog and continued on his riverside promenade!

P.S. add some pictures later, but at present am in an Internet Cafe where loud youths are playing video games, shouting and smoking foul cigarettes!.



















On our second day in Bordeaux the sun came out and it stayed bright until we left after four days. This enabled