Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Postcard from the Aegean Sea - postmarked 02 October 2024

With most ambitious objectives, we rarely come out the other side the same person as we were going in. Indeed, with a little self-reflection we will likely realize how we have grown immeasurably. With this belief in mind, I accepted my brother, Stan's, invitation to join him and our cousin, Steve, on their annual week of sailing. This year, it was to be in the Dodecanese area of the Aegean Sea, beginning and ending on the Greek island of Kos, only a few kms across the bay from the Turkish port city of Bodrum.
As many of my regular readers know, I have sailed several times with friends, on my buddy, Kosta's 37-foot catamaran, always in and around the Argolic Gulf, the body of water that opens up south of the Greek Peloponnese town of Nafplio. I must come clean: after these few sailing adventures with Kosta, I failed to acquire more than 25% of the skills required to sail a boat. Perhaps now it is clear to you why I say that this sailing objective is ambitious, first being an inexperienced sailor and second spending a week in close quarters with two family members for the first time in decades. Between my brother and our cousin, together they have about 95% of the necessary skills. These are: navigational; technical; radio communications; choosing an awesome protected cove for lunch and swimming; good habits to minimize all risks of personal injury and of falling overboard; maintaining sufficient fresh water and gas; and the discharge of waste when permitted. Did you know that boats do flush their toilet's holding tanks straight into the sea, untreated, once they are at least 3 nautical miles away from land? It's best to choosing swimming spots close to the shore!
Now that I have sufficiently communicated these niggly details to you, let's get back to my adventure. The main town on the island of Kos, is predictably named, Kos. Nearly all references to Kos, when written in Greek capital letters, drop the last letter, leaving kappa omicron (ΚΩ vs ΚΩΣ). No Greek individual could explain this anomaly to me so I turned to AI: "Some Greek signs and casual writings abbreviate place names, especially short ones, for simplicity or stylistic reasons. This is especially common with tourist locations, where it’s understood that "Κο" still refers to "Kos." This is a feature of the Greek language’s flexibility with nouns, particularly proper nouns like place names."
The town is very touristy, dominated by its wide harbour and many, many large (tourist) pirate ships that each promises to take its passengers for a day sail to three nearby islands and the opportunity to swim at each stop, serve a lunch, and all the suntanning a 20-something could hope for. The street parallel to the harbour is lined with many restaurants, a few bars and more than a few tourist shops, all of which spill over onto the wide sidewalk. Several narrow streets and laneways in back contain many more shops, kebab stands, markets, and ruins, too. Similar to the rest of Greece, Kos has remnants of civilisations long gone: stone archways still standing, leftover columns with missing capitals, and pieces of ancient buildings strewn about. Hippocrates supposedly lectured his students here, they say under a large tree, still standing 2,400 years later, labeled the Hippocrates tree, one of Kos's must-see highlights. The main harbour, just referred to, is for commercial boats only. Our marina is a 15-minute walk away, very modern, with space for 400 sailboats, enclosed by a seawall which keeps out waves, currents and swells. Most of the boats here are from 35 to 55 feet in length, both monohulls and catamarans (which have two hulls). Our boat, The Hobbit, or Χομπιτ, is 35 feet long with three cabins and one head, or bathroom. Of course, we have a kitchen, dining area below deck, and living area on deck.
Ideally, we would have had light winds early in the week, which would get stronger as the week advanced along with our sailing skills. The gods had different plans for us! Our first day of sailing had winds of 25 knots gusting to 35 with swells of two to three metres. I believe that the Universe gives us not we want, but what we need. And evidently, we needed to sharpen our sailing skills with no time to lose as these strong winds can blow a boat over, or onto the rocks had we steered off course. The winds were blowing from the northwest today and guess what? Our first day's destination was to the northwest as well, to the island of Leros. Sailing into the wind is uncomplicated under normal conditions however when the winds are strong the forces acting on the boat can be challenging to manage, doubly so when the whitecaps are crashing against the bow as we pitch forward on the backside of each swell. If you are prone to seasickness, my advice to you will be predictable. An interesting phenomenon to note: even though our speed across the water is barely 9 knots (16 km/hr), it feels like 30 or 40. It is an illusion that nobody can explain. In any case, it is exciting to manage the sailboat's course, tacking occasionally, as we steer slightly left of straight upwind, then slightly right, to keep to our northwest bearing overall. One of our daily pleasures, which I alluded to earlier, is searching for and choosing a small cove or inlet for our lunch stop. If we can find one that is protected from the winds we will be sure that our anchor will hold so that we can enjoy our meal in calm waters. Did you know that the weight of the 40 metre chain, when letting out the anchor, is as much a reason as the anchor itself for keeping the boat from drifting?
It is always a thrill for me to dive into very deep water. There is no chance of touching ground (even if you tried to), so the swim has another degree of freedom. An entire world may exist below, perhaps schools of fish passing by in search of lunch, but at the surface it is just me and 360 degrees of choices of which direction to swim. The water is so very blue, I think its colour is enhanced by reflection off of the sandy bottom. Thankfully it is warm enough that I avoid getting the chills as so often happens at home in my lake after only fifteen minutes in the water. When I was an avid runner, I used to joke that all runners end up in the pool. Once your body starts complaining about the pounding it takes from too-frequent running, we turn to cycling as it is easier on the joints. Until the shoulders start hurting from continually leaning forward on the handle bars. In the pool, or in the sea, there is no tension at all. The water supports every swimmer's weight just perfectly. Even more so in the sea as salt water is more buoyant than sweet water, which makes it even easier to stay afloat and swim greater distances. A bonus: Salt water is nature's purifier of skin and nails, killing, over time, most superficial skin infections, pimples, toenail fungus, etc. I always swim wearing a long sleeve swim shirt, however, to protect my back and arms from the sun's rays. After a few minutes of using the same stroke, I confess that I start to daydream. It's a wonderful feeling, I highly recommend the experience, until thoughts turn to what may be lurking below! I sometimes wonder whether it is me that is on some deep-sea predator's fish of the day lunch order!
I imagine it must be quite a unique lifestyle to actually live full-time on a sailboat. All your worldly possessions have to fit in the boat as you have sold your home or given up your apartment. No fixed address. Pick a coastline anywhere in the world and spend the next year or two sailing from port to port, deciding on a whim to stay put at this town or another for a few days or a week, and then sail on. I suppose you could do this in an RV camper, too. But, it simply seems so much more practical to have the sea as your highway, with no traffic lights, speed limits, traffic jams, or roads under construction to contend with. I understand some people make a compromise effort and go on an around-the-world cruise for a year, if they can afford this. I have a friend who contracts himself out as a first mate and sails for weeks at a time, helping the captain on a daily basis. He is neither paid, nor does he have any expenses while aboard, and, he gets to see the world one port at a time. How would you choose to see the world?

Tuesday, July 16, 2024

Postcard from Czech Republic (postmarked 07 July 2024)

Here is a fun fact about the Czech Republic: The Czechs drink more beer per capita than any other nation on Earth, about 138 liters per capita per year. This metric includes babies, children, women and seniors. I suppose if you account for all these non-beer drinkers, the count is probably closer to 500 liters per year per beer drinker.


One of the best ways to visit a country is by touring it by bicycle, which is exactly what we did for a whole week. Everything zips by too fast by car, not to mention that you’re unlikely to be taking side roads where life is lived, in the front and back yards of people’s homes and in the ciry parks. Walking is a good alternative, too, however one would need a lot of time to cover the distances. Cycling is a perfect blend, where one can see so much at cycling speeds, and stop on a whim anywhere to taste what suddenly smells good, or visit a 1,000-year old castle that seemingly appears out of nowhere around the next bend in the road.


At one such stop at the only bar in a village we were traversing, we went inside and asked for a small beer. In the Czech Republic, a small beer is usually 300 ml, a normal beer is 500 ml, and a large beer is one liter. It is prudent to stick to the small beer if you plan to continue cycling, more or less sober. The beer in this country is not fermented as it is most everywhere else, it is thus full of healthy probiotics, so were told more than once. A mid-day, cold beer is not only more refreshing than water it is arguably healthier! At this refreshment stop, the barkeep scolded us, I might say he shamed us into ordering a normal sized beer. In broken English, he tsk’ed, “you can’t order a small beer” three times and that ended the negotiation. The pilsners here are arguably the best in the world and the Czechs are proud of their beer drinking prowess. I have concluded that the small beers are for children as even the women drink the larger sized beers.


Interestingly, they have something called a “schnit” which is a beer served in a glass where the top half is all foam, and the bottom half is all liquid. Supposedly, it is the warmup beer to get you started on a night of drinking with friends. The bars and pubs that have the most clients tend to have the best tasting beer as the suppliers deliver fresh beer every two days, in tanks, in order to restock the joint before they run out. It seems that the connoisseurs can taste when a beer was delivered more than a couple of days ago.

Still on the subject of beer, I had the most delicious cherry-infused beer while in Prague. I think I have figured out how the Czechs get its youth and its women to become so enamored with beer. It is offered in many flavours and while I thoroughly enjoyed the cherry, another person may get hooked on the pineapple!


We had chosen to cycle the smaller villages of the Czech Republic by reserving a cabin on a bike-and-boat cruise along various rivers, namely the Vltava, and the Elbe. There are so many advantages to this style of cycling. The biggest one, I believe, is that I only had to unpack my carry-on once for the entire week, unlike when cycling from village to village and hotel to hotel. The riverboat had about 45 cabins and we snagged the last one seven months before sailing, so it seems that this style of touring is very popular. 


The rivers are always very calm as their flow is controlled by a series of dozens of locks – getting seasick is impossible, even if you are prone to it. There is no word, “riversick,” and to be sure I never once felt the boat rock. Sometimes we would head out in the morning for our daily ride and the boat would depart soon afterwards. We would meet up with it at the end of our ride. On a couple of days, we would cycle a loop, return to the boat in mid-afternoon, and then sail for a few hours along the mostly quiet river with everyone aboard, while having drinks and snacks on the sundeck.

I have never traveled to a city that has more clock towers or more museums than Prague. The stones that the clock towers were constructed from have all turned black with time. At first, they adirtyed dirty to me, almost ugly. But with time, they grew on me, and now have a kind of charm being blackened. The most famous of all is the Prague astronomical clock, or Prague orloj. Built in 1410, it is the oldest astronomical clock that is still running, in the entire world. It has two clock faces and between them we can read the local time, the day of the week, the month of the year, in which zodiac the sun is passing through, the time of both sunrise and sunset, and the phase of the moon. 


There are two figurines on each side of the two clocks. Every hour on the hour, the two pairs of them adjacent to the clock on top do a little show, which has been taking place for over 600 years! The four figures flanking the clock are set in motion on the hour, and represent four things that were despised at the time of the clock's making. From left to right, the first is Vanity, represented by a figure admiring himself in a mirror. Next, the miser holding a bag of gold represents greed or usury. Across the clock stands Death, a skeleton that strikes the time upon the hour. Finally, there is a Turkish figure representing lust and earthly pleasures. On the hour, the skeleton rings the bell and immediately all other figures shake their heads side to side, signifying their unreadiness "to go."


Unfailingly, most in the crowd of the 200-250 tourists who gather every hour for the display begin clapping and even shouting when the "show" ends. I remain uncertain what prompts so many people to applause a clock, albeit a very special one.

As for the museums, I can only guess that when there are so many tourists flocking to your town, why not open yet another museum. Most are dedicated to the arts, but I counted three beer museums, a sex museum, and of course a museum of illusions, which we selected and had a fabulous time Inside. It was too hard to choose between the over 100 art and Czech history museums, so the one illusions museum won out. The only hour of rain that fell during our Czech visit, fell during our museum visit. Or maybe that was just an illusion!?


Here's hoping that illusions surround you, too, from time to time.

Barry