Sunday 31 July 2011

The Acropolis in 6 Shots

Cold is the heart, fair Greece! that looks on thee,
Nor feels as lovers o'er the dust they loved;
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behoved
To guard those relics ne'er to be restored.
Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,
And once again thy hapless bosom gored,
And snatch'd thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorr'd!
In Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Lord Byron, never a man to mince his words, dedicates a couple of fuming stanzas to one of the greatest cultural controversies ever: the removal of half of the surviving sculptural decoration of the Parthenon and its subsequent shipping to England. Responsible for this act of cultural vandalism (according to the Greeks) or cultural preservation (according to the English) was another lord, Lord Elgin, who happily chiseled off the finest pieces, broke them up for easy transport and eventually sold them off to a reluctant British government. With half of the decoration in the British Museum in London and the other half in the Acropolis Museum in Athens, the Parthenon has lost much of its splendour. Today, the semipermanent scaffolding, like braces on an octogenarian, turns the entire thing into a rather sorry affair. A quick look at what remains of the Parthenon and the adjacent temples on the Acropolis.

The Propylaea: the entrance to the Acropolis

The Parthenon: the temple of Athena

Detail of the Parthenon Frieze

Parthenon floor plan

The Erechtheum

Marble base

Saturday 16 July 2011

Circumstances

Downtown Tirana: work in progress
Albania. Hardly the first country that comes to mind if you're on the lookout for an attractive holiday destination. And that's a shame, because no one should miss out on its spectacular scenery, especially Lake Ohrid in the east, home to the endangered Ohrid trout, and the isolated Bjeshkët e Namuna (Accursed Mountains) in the north, where people still indulge in the occasional vendetta and clan members sometimes lock themselves in for years on end to keep from getting their throat slit. Having said that, I did miss out on these places. As always, circumstances got in the way.

In this case, the circumstances materialised in the form of infrastructure. Or, rather, the lack of it. Oh yes, maps of Albania will show you an abundance of roads in all the familiar colours: red-and-yellow for motorways, red for main roads, yellow for secondary roads and white for local roads. But that doesn't tell you a thing about the state they're in. What looks like a convenient thoroughfare on a map might be a pothole-ridden, spoke-cracking dirt track in reality.

An empty bottle and some playing cards turn any bicycle into a motorcycle
It's not that the Albanian roads have fallen into disrepair. Well, some of them obviously have, but the worst stretches I encountered on my north-south itinerary had been artfully pummeled into something that only vaguely resembled a road. It's the Albanian way of road maintenance: first smash the existing road into smithereens, let's say the 35-kilometer stretch between the Montenegrin-Albanian border and the northern town of Shkodër, then switch off the heavy machinery, sit back, wait for a couple of extra funds to come through, and then slowly and painstakingly start resurfacing a kilometer here, five hundred meters there, all the time making sure there is enough dust flying around to turn each passerby into a grey semblance of himself.

The Hoxha doctrine: make up for in bunkers what you lack in friends
Now, it's hard to do this when you're slaloming potholes the size of kitchen sinks, but one mustn't forget that Albania has come a long way. Forty years of communist rule under Enver Hoxha left the country in a pretty bad shape, both economically and politically. At the time of his death in 1985, there wasn't enough food to go around and there was no one the country could turn to, having left the Warsaw Pact in 1968 after a nasty fallout with the Russians. Those years of isolation are splendidly symbolised by the thousands of miniature bunkers that still dot the countryside. Almost impossible to remove, these concrete igloos serve as a permanent reminder of the grim Hoxha era. Of course, things didn't improve overnight with the advent of democracy. In the nineties Albania became a major hub for people trafficking, and, judging by the sheer number of spanking new luxury cars with foreign license plates, the market for stolen cars continues to thrive. In fact, most of Albania's economy appears to be of the 'unofficial' kind. Anywhere you go, you see men hanging around in the streets, waiting for a chance to get their hands on some quick cash. One of the most popular activities is lavazh, also spelled lavazho, which comes down to a concrete platform at the roadside and a bloke with a hose waiting to clean your car. I never really got the point of this, because the moment you pull out your car is covered in the same old cloak of grey dust.

Berat: Ottoman houses and Mercedes vans
Still, crossing Albania was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Perhaps it's the people, who seem genuinely happy to see you. They wave, shout hello, sound their horn (which tends to get on your nerves once the honk rate tops one in three cars) and jump at every chance to practice their English, German, French or Italian. Some of the towns are not too bad, either. The old town of Berat was a real treat: whitewashed Ottoman houses with large rectangular windows, an overgrown but lively citadel, a full meal for two euros and a bit, and only a handful of tourists around. And camping on the bank of the Vjosë river was simply unforgettable, taking a swim in its warm shallow water while the sun set behind the mountains. So yes, even if the circumstances aren't always favourable, Albania does make for an attractive holiday destination. But one piece of advice: don't skimp on the rental car. Just go for the big four-wheel drive.

Friday 8 July 2011

Up

The town of Kotor disappearing into the depths
Nothing beats dragging yourself up a particularly nasty mountain every now and then. It's bad news for your daily averageyou might only cover a third of the usual distancebut it's the shortest road to a profound sense of accomplishment.

First you are down there, no more than a lazy bugger among other lazy buggers. You pore over the map and carefully consider the serpentine road snaking its way up to a mountain pass. You know what you are in for. Then you are off. Initially, the road goes up gently. No mountain wants to scare off intrepid cyclists in the first few metres. Everything is going smoothly. You feel how your muscles tighten and relax, tighten and relax. Your breathing is deep and stable. Your legs are like the pistons of an engine. Body and bike are one.

But just when you start feeling smug, thinking that this mountain would never rate as a four-star col in the Tour de France, let alone hors catégorie, the mountain cranks it up a notch. You try to take that first punch like a man, losing speed but gaining determination. However, you know things are getting serious when your eyebrows get saturated and the sweat runs straight into your eyes. When you want to shift to a lighter gear and realise there is no lighter gear. When even a three-legged dog would have no difficulty keeping up with you.

Nice place for a mausoleum
Somehow you always make it to the top. There might be a neat little sign giving you the altitude and the name of the beast you have just slain. You prop your bike up against the sign and take a snapshot for the grandchildren. Often, there is nothing at all to mark your achievement. You realise you have made it when the road stops going up and starts going down.

My most recent conquest is Mount Lovćen, the monte negro that gives Montenegro its name. At least, I thought I was working my way up to the top of Mount Lovćen, but the road mysteriously ended just below the summit of Jezerski Vrh (1657 m), the second-highest peak of Lovćen National Park. Still, I got plenty of exercise, which was exactly what I needed after two days of idleness in the obscenely picturesque walled town of Dubrovnik.

Petrović Njegoš dozing off
Moreover, there was a nice reward waiting for me at the top of Jezerski Vrh. Not just a silly sign but an entire mausoleum, dedicated to a nineteenth-century Montenegrin hero I had never heard of before. This Petar II Petrović Njegoš must have been an important chap in his days, for someone had taken the trouble to carve a 28-ton likeness from a single block of black granite, not to mention the 461 steps leading up to this monstrosity. Cradled in the wings of an eagle, about to doze off, this Petrović Njegoš struck me as someone who had just cycled all the way up to the top of a particularly nasty mountain. Looked a bit done in, in my opinion, as if in dire need of a banana. In fact, there was something indescribably yawny about the place. I went out and attempted to admire the stupendous panoramic views of the national park, but I was actually chilled to the bone. It wasn't exactly cold out there, but with the soaking wet cycling gear still clinging to my body, it felt positively arctic.

After a five-minute descent, the first downhill metres of the day, I arrived at the mountain hut I had spotted on the way up. 'Free sleeping for hikers and bikers,' a sign said. Too good to be true, but there it was. I stripped the wet gear from my body and did a perfunctory job of washing myself with some cold water I took from a big bottle. At nine, I crawled into my sleeping bag and tried to keep myself warm with my breath. Slowly, the wooden hut turned into a marble mausoleum, the sleeping bag into the wings of an eagle, and I dreamt of reaching dizzying heights, never to come down again.