What Do I Know?

Friday Cow Blogging

We came across two Belted Galloway cows on our walk the other day. Around here they're known as Oreo cows. Like their Scottish cousins, they're huge and shaggy. These were quite friendly, too, as you can see in the next photo, taken by my friend.

When the one in the background of the first photo saw the other cow getting all the attention, he too came up to the fence to greet the American hikers. He especially wanted to sniff my gloves, where I'd tucked my handwarmers. Warm breath came from his wide nostrils, which probably help keep this breed warm in the cold north country.

They're really nice looking cows. Sort of wish I had a package of Oreos and a glass of soymilk.

The Limes of Ancient Rome

I started a new class last week, Latter Days of Roman Britain. The instructor helpfully handed out a sheet with names, places, and other unfamiliar terms listed in two columns. As he lectured, I noticed he was going in order: Ceasar, Atrebates, Icini, Boudica, etc. With about twenty words in each column, he'd finish the list just as class was over. 

The very last word was "limes". I was excited to hear about the Romans' use of limes. Did they eat them to prevent scurvy? Did they suck them with their ale? Did they prefer the taste of lime to lemon? 

I waited impatiently as the final words on the list went by: Stracathro, Dacia, Decebalus, Parthia. (The Romans were having trouble in Germany.) It was time to leave, but the instructor kept going, thankfully. I didn't want to miss the limes part. 

Finally, fifteen minutes after class was officially over, he got to "limes". Turns out it wasn't a tangy fruit at all. It was "lim-es", the Latin word for "wall". The Romans were fond of building walls around their territory. 

Once again, I left class feeling foolish, I daresay even green.

The Dogs of Athens

The stray dogs of Athens, like all dogs, gravitate toward people

I went to Athens to forget about my dog. Of course, I know that's impossible, but I didn't expect so many four-legged reminders of my recent and painful loss. 

I had read that Athens had a problem with stray dogs, but it wasn't until we headed up from the hotel to the Acropolis that I encountered so many friendly, and seemingly homeless, strays. I say seemingly, because they actually seem to have made the Acropolis and the surrounding area their home. 

It turns out the dogs are rounded up periodically by the City of Athens and given veterinary care, sterilized, and microchipped. They're also given a collar saying as such, which explains why so many dogs had collars. They also, without exception, looked well fed. Some, including the old white dog who slept on the rug outside our hotel entrance, were even overweight. 

Still, my heart went out to every dog I met, especially the lovely dog at Hadrian's Library, who seemed to be something of a mascot to the preservationists working on the site. They don't pay entrance fees to any of the sites, and despite signs warning that dogs aren't allowed, they enter without being stopped, curling up on marble paths warmed by the sun.

Near the Temple of the Olympian Zeus, we saw a gang of dogs suddenly rush out into the street to bark at a moped. They surrounded the rider, barking, ignoring the other traffic. When the traffic started moving, our hearts lurched as they made their way between cars and buses back to the park. This was the only nuisance behavior I noticed. 

Later, I watched a dog wait patiently at a crosswalk, only to cross the street with the humans who crossed when the light turned green. They've obviously learned coping skills, living on the streets. 

But still, living on the streets is no life for a dog. They deserve a home, with humans to call their own. 

I couldn't decide on one or two photos, so I posted most of the photos, below, that we took of the street dogs of Athens. If you see one you want, contact the City of Athens. Or your local shelter probably has one just like him.

Athens: The Past Looms Large

Slender columns of the Erechtheion 

For a long time now, I've been awarding top spot on my imaginary list of "Places I Want To Visit" to Athens. Ever since I visited Rome, I've been hankering to see what Athens has to offer in the way of ancient columns, temples, and, of course, tavernas. 

With snow blanketing England, making local travel difficult, it seemed the perfect time for an escape to the sub-tropical climate of Greece. Even better, as I discovered, January is low season for tourists, meaning many of the sites were virtually deserted. Also absent was the oppressive heat I'd heard about. Our cab driver bragged that temperatures in Athens can reach the 40s in August. That's hot. Very hot. I can't imagine walking around the shadeless Acropolis in weather like that. 

Especially after having experienced the balmy temperatures of a Grecian January. I won't lie; we did have rain, and one day (the day we spent out of Athens, exploring Cape Sounio) the rain was accompanied by cold wind. But overall, the weather was pleasant. Sort of like Scotland in summer.

Athens is dominated by the Acropolis, the giant rock upon which stands the Parthenon and other ancient monuments. Although it's not visible from many of the narrow lanes of Athens, it has a habit of making itself known at the least expected moments. Turn a corner, look down a street, and there it is, high above the traffic and din of the city. 

The Acropolis was inhabited since the Neolithic era, though it was the construction during Athens' Golden Age that made it what it is today. Pericles began an ambitious building project which included the Parthenon, the mathematically perfect Doric temple that dominates the skyline of Athens. Less well known, but more visually interesting, is the Erechtheion, the temple where Athena and Poseidon battled for control of Athens. As you might guess, Athena won, when she produced a fig tree, thus trumping Poseidon's offering of sea water. 

The Porch of the Caryatids, or Porch of the Maidens, is the most striking feature of the Erechtheion. The graceful female figures, cleverly disguised columns, support the roof.

The crumbling edifice of the Parthenon, arising from the Acropolis  

Be prepared for scaffolding. According to the Rough Guide, there's been ongoing preservation work on the Acropolis for the last 30 years, and there's no end in sight. But at least two sides of the Parthenon were free of scaffolding. And the views of the city from the Acropolis and its rocky sidekick the Aeropagus were simply amazing. It was from there we got our first glimpse of the Aegean Sea. And it was also from the Aeropagus where Paul once preached about a guy named Jesus.

But not all the ancient sites in Athens are atop the Acropolis. There's also the Agora, with its perfectly preserved Temple of Hephaistos (God of Metalworkers), and Hadrian's Library, a somewhat confusing site that was much more than a repository for ancient scrolls. There's Hadrian's Arch, also, a reminder that the Roman Emperor Hadrian didn't just build a wall in Britain.

A tourism commercial for Greece boasts of its 5000 years of history. It's impossible to see it all in three days, but much of it is concentrated in the heart of Athens. I learned to focus on the little things, like the graceful column, the lifelike cracks in a marble wall. Yet the past looms large in Athens: From atop the Acropolis it's impossible to gaze in any direction without spying an ancient ruin.

Due, perhaps, to the unbearable heat in summer, the ancient sites close at 3 p.m., though they open at 8:30 in the morning. The museums are open until 8 p.m., which means you can view the Acropolis in the morning and then cross over to the new Museum of the Acropolis, where you'll find many of the sculptures removed from the Acropolis, but not, unfortunately, the Elgin Marbles, looted by Lord Elgin in the early nineteenth century. Lord Elgin later sold them to the British Museum, which is where you'll have to go to view them, at least until the British Museum is shamed into returning them. Lord Byron, who visited Athens in time to see the last of the sculptures loaded onto Elgin's ships, did his bit to pile on in the poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:

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.

Of course, Byron has his own transgression to answer for. While visiting the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounio, he was so moved he scrawled his name in the first column he came to, thus beginning two centuries of graffiti. 

Cape Sounio is a couple of hours by bus from Athens—don't let your hotel concierge deter you or convince you to take a taxi (for around 180 euros). It's not worth the cost of the taxi, especially when the bus ride is only 5.70 each way. There's not much to see there either, especially on a cold rainy day. A serviceable restaurant and an overpriced souvenir shop are all that's there other than the Temple of Poseidon. Or at least that's all we saw—that and the plump birds that boldly strode around the Temple. And of course the magnificent view of the Aegean. 

Nor is the Greek countryside as picturesque as I'd imagined, at least not the 70 kilometres between Athens and Cape Sounio. Greece seems to be in a state of economic decline, judging from the many half-finished and abandoned construction sites we saw outside the city. The building where Parliament meets, the Vouli, was near our hotel, and they seemed to be experiencing a bit of unpleasantness while we were there, the news dominated by reports that the country was basically insolvent. The Golden Age of Greece is over, but then you already knew that. 

It's still a great place to visit. The view from the Acropolis alone was worth the price of the ticket, and our hotel room—paid for partially with points—was fit for a Greek shipping magnate. The food, too, was fit for a couple of vegans and their accompanying omnivore—any place where the national dish is greens and beans is a winner in my book—err, rather, on my blog. 

I'll let Byron express my displeasure at leaving: 

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 abhorred.

Sigh. 

For more photos, go here. And for tickets, call BA, which has several flights a day, leaving this abhorred northern clime from Terminal 5.

The View From My Window

This was taken a couple days ago. The snow is finally starting to melt, just a bit as temperatures hover around 1C. (Don't tell that to the kids who, right now, are using the drive as a sledging hill.)

But I'm leaving for Athens, where there is rain and temperatures in the teens. That's in the fifties, for you Yanks.

Snow Day

We woke up to snow this morning, one of the worst snowstorms in recent history. When we looked out our front door, we saw these tracks:

The creature walked up our front sidewalk, turned around at the front door and headed away. I can't tell, but is that a cat's footprint? It could also be a fox, but I can't imagine a fox using the front entrance—they usually come round the back. The service entrance, as it's known here. Foxes don't put on airs like cats do.

On the other hand, I can't imagine anyone letting a cat out in this weather, but our neighbors have three fluffy white cats they let roam (and sometimes they go missing). So perhaps fluffy white cats are drawn to fluffy white snow.

This is the end of our cul-de-sac, covered in snow:

And the back garden:  

 
On days like this I really miss my dog. She'd have been outside first thing, running around in big circles, kicking up snow, gobbling snowballs. Dogs are so much more fun on snowy days than cats. 

Although, who knows? Maybe Snowball was having a dandy time in the snow.