Greece, continued

I have had a longstanding rule about my blog - I don't talk about politics or relationships.

I'm currently watching the presidential debate, and I don't like either candidate. I think Jim Lehrer is winning so far. Oh and in an totally unrelated note, Nancy Pelosi really really really really really bugs me.

I'm getting married in less than 100 days and words cannot express how I feel about Torrie. I am convinced that she is the best woman that I have ever met and with the most important decision that I will ever make...I am making the correct one.

Some of you (meaning the five of you that read my blog..thanks Dad!) may have noticed a remarked change in my online policy, and I quote: 'I just want to make everyone here a promise. ... When I get engaged (which I don't see happening for awhile...but we must be prepared) I will NOT put it on facebook. Nope. Never. ... If my fiancee` tries to make it official on facebook, I will decline her. If she has a problem with that, then we're not getting married. That's right. I am putting my foot down! BAM.' Logan Schultz, Friday, August 17, 2007" I had no idea at the time how great getting engaged would actually be or how much I wouldn't care if everyone knew that I was getting married. In fact, it's been quite the opposite, I want to share it with everyone! I'm sure some of the people that saw it couldn't care less, and that's fine. I am very grateful that Torrie and I have been able to share a little bit of the happiness we've experienced with our friends, and I have been touched by the many different people that have sent us messages wishing us good luck and showing excitement for us. So thanks.

Okay, onto a story about Greece:

The more I think about it (which actually becomes less, with time, unfortunately. I guess that is the way that time works in this mortal existence) the more I think how cool and unique our backpacking trip to Europe was. We travelled across the continent of Europe for five whole weeks. We saw amazing sights, encountered interesting cultures, and learned a lot about ourselves in the process. Greece was no different.

I already talked about our arrival in Athens. We decided that we had the evening, so let's go explore. We left our hostel and walked down to dafdafsdfad, the market area of the city. We were soon lost in a sea of small little shops filled with greek eyes, leather sandals, and clay pots. It was fun to look around and browse the different shops.

However, we didn't have time to lollygag. Our goal was to get to the Parthenon before it closed, because the light would be better for taking pictures. The sunset was pretty as we wandered through small streets in a residential district just below the Acropolis. The streets were narrow with lots of stairs, and all of the houses were whitewashed. The sidewalks were whitewashed as well, with random royal blue stones every once in awhile. We did finally make it up to the Acropolis, but we didn't make it in front of the Parthenon in time. We tried to see a couple of other things, including the Temple of Olympian Zeus, but it was closed as well. All closed. We were tired, so we took the subway home.

Back at the hostel, we watched the Turkey Germany Euro semifinal soccer game. Germany won, 3 - 2, in a pretty exciting game. The place where we were staying was definitely a youth hostel - lots of backpackers and people getting drunk. One of them decided to pounce on Torrie. "Torrie...you are a piece of work." ha. You should ask her about that sometime.

We made it up to our room and tried to go to sleep after eating our disappointing chocolate pear cookies. It was pretty hot all night, which reminded me, like Greece always did - of my first days is Napoli. Not really understanding the language, crazy chaos everywhere, so hot, so humid. It was fun and invigorating to be in a land that chaotic where I didn't understand what was going on. That made me excited for future trips to places like India, China, Egypt....

After a night of wishing I had a fan, we woke up and metroed down to the Acropolis. We ran ahead of the first big tour group and had the Acropolis pretty much to ourselves. The first building we saw was the Temple of Athena Nike. This was especially cool cause we came up a hill to go through it so it looked much more impressive. It was cool to think that archeologists had taken apart and rebuilt the entire impressive sculpture. Wow.

After our walk through that, we walked under the classic sight of the Parthenon. I had goosebumps as I looked under one of the most famous sights of the world. We walked around it, trying to take in its perfection. The builders had taken human deficiencies and made up for them - for example, they made the middle of the columns bigger and rounded the bottom slightly, things like that. It was awesome to see. I also think its crazy how it has survived - everything around it is basically rubble, you walk on pebbles of marble...yet the temple somehow continues to stand. Pretty cool.

From on top of the Acropolis we could see all of Athens. We could see a few parks and mountains that had Greek temples on them, whjich was cool. The city was mostly white, which is different then any other city I've been to.

We next came down and walked to the Temple of Olympian Zeus. Only a few columns remained, but you could see how huge it once was. Our favorite part of this temple was their drinking fountain. It was chilled...an amazing. We then went to the stadium which held the original modern Olympic Games. That was pretty cool.

On our way back to the market we stopped and had a sesame seed ring and a doughnut. They were pretty good, as most things bought on the street are. The market was fun. I've decided that the Greek pattern of white and blue is fun, and there a lot of possibilties for Greek souvenirs with Greek pottery, statues, etc.

We wanted to make sure that we got back to the train station in time, so we left a little bit earlier than originally planned. Once we arrived in the train station, we found out that the train left earlier than we had expected. Oh good. I managed to jump on the train pretty quickly, which was good because I was able to save Torrie and I seats on a pretty crowded train. We rode in comfort, with me winning a yahtzee championship, and playing a great game of "A guy comes up to you on the street and asks....". What a fun game.

At Kialto the next train was already waiting on the track, so we got on it. About halfway there, all of a sudden the train stopped. We were unfazed - this happens every once in awhile and us veteran travellers didn't even notice such minor details. Big deal. However, after 15 minutes of sitting, we began to get a little worried. The fact that it was SO SO SO hot and the nice cool sea water was tempting us from the windows, we decided to see what's up.

Well, they were building a road just above the hill from us. As they were building this road, some rocks fell down in a little avalanche on the train tracks, pushing an iron rebar fence in our way. Well, out comes a backhoe, and they pull back the fence/dirt enough to let us through> here's a video of us getting through....hear the fence scratching against the train?

Well a few minutes later we stopped again. Another avalance had happened....including a big rock. (Petra! They said. I understood! Thanks Peter...) So they pulled it up with a rope attached to the same backhoe. A few minutes later, we all cheered as the train continued on its way to Patras.

Greece

I really don't know if I can explain our journey through Greece in a single blog entry. We'll see how I feel after awhile.

So our arrival to Greece was by ferry from Bari. We arrived in the city of Patras, on the NW side of the country. We got off with our backpacks, and made our way to the train station, which, unlike Cherbourg, France, was right next to the ferry port. Way to be smarter then the French!

We had a couple hours or so until the train left for Athens, so we decided to look around the city a bit. This was complicated by a couple of factors:

1. It was like 110 degrees...celsius.


2. It was probably 186% humidity.

3. We were wearing like 50 lb backpacks.

4. The city was built on a mountain cliff.

5. I don't understand a single thing in the greek language.

While all of those are slight exaggerations (even #5), it was pretty cool, and we sure as heck weren't going to waste our time in Greece!!!

So we began to explore the city. I saw a big hill with a fort thing on the top of it and a sign that said in Greek "Patras Fortress" (at least I assume that's what it said in Greek), so I said, hey, let's climb up it! It was a tough hill, but our reward at the top was........





an amazingly beautiful view from the top. As you can see. Stunning.

Let me just say a couple things about Greece. First, the beaches are gorgeous. Not that I've seen a large and varied amount of beaches in my lifetime, but still. Absolutely stunning.

Also, everything, at least the official signs, were in Greek and English. I thought that was kinda wierd. I expected maybe Italian...French...but English? I guess it is the international language...you could also tell, especially in Athens, that they had done a lot to get the city ready for the Olympics. It was pretty nice.

Being in Greece seriously reminded me of the first days of my mission. The feeling of sweat as it starts to appear on your neck. Not understanding anything that's being said, nor any street signs. Fast-moving cars that you don't ever really know where they are coming from. Random really old things in the middle of a modern city. A whole new world ready to be explored. A new fantasic point of view.

While exploring the city, we found this big ancient amphitheater. Turns out it was the second largest odeon, or amphitheater, in Ancient Greece. We would see the largest one the next day in Athens. This was really cool though because we found it ourselves. If we had looked it up in a book, and then gone and found it, it probably we have been an okay sight to see. But the fact that we found it while exploring ourselves made it a real treasure to find. There's another big lesson that I learned on this trip:

Activities, Sights, etc. are more meaningful and exciting when you figure them out on your own.

I'm sure that applies to a lot of areas besides vacationing in Europe, too.

After our adventure through Patras, we got on the train to Kialto. This was the first time I felt as part of a group of backpackers. We definitely were the majority on this train. Instead of being able to be quiet and hear the lively conversations of Greek, we instead were treated to a quiet lull of profanity-laced english. Sad. The train was the most rickety one, moving around from side to side a lot, and it was pretty hot, mostly because I was the one in the sun.

At Kialto we hurried to get on the next train, before someone behind us in english said that it wasn't the correct train, and that we needed to wait for the next one. We decided to wait, while probably about two-thirds of the other backpackers got on anyway. In retrospect that train went to the Airport, while our train went to the main train station. Not a big deal, but whatever. It probably saved us a couple euro of subway tickets.

Either way we showed up at Larissa Station in Athens. This was difficult because I do not speak Greek, their letters are different, and their maps are pretty difficult to read.

We had a hard time finding the hostel, but we did, thanks to some patience and an idea by Torrie. She didn't even get mad at me as we basically wondered around for a little bit! What a patient girl.

More Greece to come!

Walter Cronkite and My Journalism Kick

More stories to come out of Europe. But for now....

I've been on a journalism kick lately. As in, appreciating it. It all started with my graduation from BYU and subsequent move to Seattle. I wanted to continue to learn and to grow. The way I saw it, my learning should continue not only through my years of formal education, but forever. As such I made plans to continue to learn, weather it be through classes, (yeah free education paid for by boeing!) reading, whatever. Must continue to learn. This goes along with a verse of scripture I read the other day:
"Teach ye diligently and my grace shall attend you, that you may be instructed more perfectly ...of things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms-That ye may be prepared in all things..."(D&C 88:78-79)

My first book to read was a biography called "A Reporter's Life". It was an autobiography, actually, written by Walter Cronkite. While it started off a little slow (most memoirs usually do), once he began to be a reporter in Europe during WWII and in Post-WWII Moscow, things became very exciting. I would take the book to read at work, stealing a half hour outside my building, enjoying the sun, my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and my endeavours through the eyes of Walter.

I think the most important thing I took from the book is the need for unbiased news. Don't get me wrong, I love opinions. My favorite tv show? Pardon the Interruption.

(Yeah, it's about sports, but whatever. I love it because of Tony and Michael's opinions. And I wanted to have a picture in this blog entry.)

I value the opinion of people who I usually agree with...and I really value the opinion of those who I don't agree with (knowing both sides of an issue and really thinking about it..I've changed my thoughts on a couple of things. Oh and as such, I don't hold it against a politician when he or she changes his/her mind. It happens sometimes, I think. At least it happens to me). However, after watching a little bit of tv news (my grandparents watch it every night) and with the little bit of internet surfing I do to find my news...I found myself wanting more. I felt the need. The need for unbiased journalism, but yet intensive enough to go beneath the surface.

I found the answer to my desire one morning while I was trying to put in my iPod on the way to work. My Guster kept cutting out as I drove down the road. Finally, I gave up, turned Candace off. (candace is the name of my ipod) and all of a sudden, a channel came through, crisp and clear. NPR! National Public Radio. That morning they told me about Seattle and some of the local issues with which the city has been dealing. They gave some insights into the Obama presidency. Best of all...it was refreshingly clear of bias. Just the news. Just the facts.

NPR has become sort of a ritual in my car, now. While I still enjoy a good Justin Timberlake on the way to work, and I usually talk to Torrie or the family on the way home...when those aren't going on, I listen to NPR. Today they had an interview with the President of Estonia, and how he was viewing the Georgia-Russia situation (which I know all about, thanks to NPR). His opinion was insightful, being a head of state of another small country that was once under the Soviet umbrella. I came home knowing more than I did before. Thank you, NPR.