Sunny September Random

Since I have an innate gift for the inessential, here it goes: I don't tan well. I try to console myself with the thought of some possible Celtic or Germanic ancestry, but the thing is, I usually go through the cottage cheese turns roast chicken then peels back into cottage cheese cycle. And nothing in between. So I was very positively impressed when the constant yet not violent exposure to a late summer Mediterranean sun actually did turn me into some shade of honeyish brown for once. I checked my limbs with a bewildered smug smile of finally having accomplished what I always thought to be impossible. Like James Bond nailing the most devious and uber smart super criminal of them all. Only my victories are much smaller. 

But still, from the moment of my landing on the airport formerly known as Ferihegy I harboured but one thought: if the powers that be allowed me to tan ever so slightly for once, they might as well send some Indian summer weather so I can show it off. And the powers that be obliged. Bar for a day or so of what the Brits call pleasant temperatures in the high teens, September has been very kind. Maybe too kind, as a matter of fact, and then one day in October autumn will turn all chilly rain, frost and hell freezing over. 

For now though, I can conclude that at the time of our nostalgic 'one month later' visit, Óbuda island still had very festival-ish temperatures, though not much else remained, besides discarded shoes. It's a strange thing, that- it's never items of clothing or small trinkets, but shoes that people choose to leave behind, even some that at first inspection look still wearable. 

To further add to the splendour of the day, we finally managed to inspect some more exotic bits on the route of bus number 9. For the 9 had become something of a travelling circus during the spring renovation works on the Körút: it would pop up at the most unexpected of times in the most unexpected of places- at one point it was engaged in a nerve racking manoeuvre on our very street, which is pretty damn far from where the thing should be according to the BKK map. I had come to suspect that in some fascinating way the 9 had become ubiquitous and a portal to another time space continuum. 

Even in its mundane state the 9 has one of the longest routes in the city, meandering all the way from Kőbánya to Óbuda, and we intercepted it close to its 'source', on Flórián ter. I remember being completely shocked and appalled when I found out that some Istanbulites never see the Bosphorus, but there I was, having so often heard of Flórián tér and never actually having seen it. Of course, you can't compare one of the main stages of world history to, uhm, a square with lots of socialist buildings, but the point is that we often live in cities and never get to know them beyond where our daily grind takes us. 

We did manage to navigate the unknown wilderness of Flórián square to good end, and located the Harapó Mókus (Biting Squirrel) restaurant, which had been on our list of priorities for a while, due to its exciting name. The place is in a charming and rather unexpected corner of the urban jungle, and the food proved to be quite good as well- these people take the meat portions to be served with strapacska very seriously indeed. And they have beer that won’t kill you. So a win-win.

Other than then we kept to our usual inner city coffee dungeons (one of the few things that really consoles you at the end of a holiday is that Budapest has lots of awesome coffee places) and visited two food and beer fests, Főzdefeszt and the street food festival connected to the European car free weekend - of which we have no pictures, because food and beer, obviously. But I did succeed in getting the compulsory autumn with empty streets in the Városliget shot. So, I guess, let’s drink to that. 

The Land of Resin Wine- Greek Holiday Part Three

Before getting into the thick of this post, which will cover the essential topics of what to see and what to consume on Crete, I might as well share my hopeless attempts of making sense of the Greek language, yet another mirror to the always changing Hellenic soul.

The attempt to google a definitive alphabet was the initial failure- well, there’s this version, and that, and some diacritics were used up to a point, but not any longer, then there’s different letters for the same sound, and the difference is historical and makes no logical sense whatsoever if you’re not a scholar of Ancient Greek. The very fact that they often use a year to pinpoint the start of Modern Greek, that of the fall of Constantinople, of course, which has nothing to do with linguistic aspects, is a bad sign already. The need to add the year to a present day Greek’s language resume has always amused me- it would probably be very difficult to provide customer service in Ancient Greek these days, though of course one could ponder the exquisite joys of yelling ’This is Sparta!’ over the phone to a befuddled Athenian who lost the password to her papyrus.

So try as I might, I still could not get beyond the hello and thank you, but I can spend a jolly good time ogling the Greek side of a menu and still not know what the hell I am about to order.

What to Eat and Drink. The drinks part is the easier one: don’t drink bloody continental lagers and ridiculously overpriced cocktails. Fix, Alfa and Mythos are great summer beers, plus there’s the usual array of ouzos and local brandy, going by the name of either raki or tsikoudia. In a slightly confusing touch, raki is indeed the soul brother of Romanian rachiu, so essentially grape brandy, and not of the geographically closer lying Turkish rakı, which is, logically, ouzo. (If you were not confused enough, raki and tsikoudia are known as tsipouro in other parts of Greece.)

Local wines can be a bit pricey in restaurants, but you can always opt for a decent house wine in a carafe or for the nec plus ultra of Greek drinks- retsina, resinated wine, most definitely an acquired taste, but totally addictive once acquired. Legend actually has it that in undiluted form it killed some Viking kings, which is no mean feat, but the only trauma I can vouch for is desperately asking around wine stores for a bottle of the miraculous golden fluid only to be told they have no idea what on earth I’m blabbering about.

The food part is, you’ve guessed correctly, slightly approximative and a tad confusing- but delicious. One has a general idea of what Greek food is, along the lines of tzatziki, Greek salad and moussaka, but the rest of what can be found on the Greek isles comes from the most diverse of sources- quite often old overlords of each particular island, in our case the Venetians (those people did potter around quite a lot in the Mediterranean) and the Turks.

So you can quite often find pasta meals included in the Greek food category without a second thought, and the bean dish which I have always known as Turkish kuru fasülye is also a local staple. Otherwise Crete has all the strengths of the region- wonderful olives, fish and cheeses, and generally all kinds of fresh vegetables and spices. The desserts are of the more Turkish honey sweet variety, like kataifi, but I also encountered small cheese pies which bear a ghastly resemblance to the Hungarian csőröge.

The where to eat part should come as a surprise to no one: try to wander away from the obvious tourist routes and go for tavernas that have at least a couple of locals mingled with the crowd. Because every rule has an exception, one of the best places in Heraklion is located in the very heart of the city, in the Agio Titou square, and happens to be a Turkish fast food- Izmir Kebap. Yes yes, only a hopeless idiot would go for a Turkish kebab place abroad (and not in Turkey), but trust me on this one, it's worth the risk of sounding daft a million times.

What to See. I’ll have to start with a warning: I am most definitely the anti social type of traveler who avoids tourist attractions like the plague. The only such place I ventured to on Crete was the Minoan palace of Knossos, and I paid for it dearly, having to put up with the oafish behaviour of barbaric hordes of tourists. It would probably make the whole visit a lot more comfortable if everyone wishing to enter would be submitted to a quick test of Ancient Greek history and mythology, and only those who passed would be allowed to enter. The rest could eventually be signed up for a short chase by the Minotaur and then sent on their way to never return. This would of course be financially catastrophic for the island of Crete, so there we were, among people who don’t even look at the place, but snap non stop selfies to be immediately uploaded to Instagram: Idiot with Vase, early 21st century.

Idiots put aside, the place is absolutely wonderful to anyone with a genuine interest in Ancient history. It’s not a spectacular place by any means, but I was excited giddy at the thought of Minoans building such a complex structure at a time when my part of the world was inhabited by wild deer and possibly one or two inebriated Thracians.

Heraklion is basically a humbug, but one can spend a pleasant enough evening walking the whole length of the pier in the Venetian port, occasionally spotting plane and boat action and listening to the distant roar of an open air concert performed by what could very well be the Cretan cousin of Avicii. (That man will haunt me to my grave.)

The old cities of Chania and Rethymno are much more exciting though, with lots of nooks and crannies to be explored- a belated thank you to La Serenissima and the Ottoman Empire for making the Mediterranean an exciting place for future generations by their constant meddling, bickering and conquering this and that, thus producing a fabulous mixture of cultures. This was most probably lost on their contemporaries, who saw them as the never ending nuisance that they were, but time has this gift of painting over the ugly parts. Another exciting escape on the northern shore is Agios Nikolaos, which is postcard pretty and claims the fame of featuring in the BBC series Lotus Eaters, and generally being a darling of the European jet set in the 60s and 70s. 

All these places on the north coast are connected by the famous E75 European route, which begins to the east of Agios Nikolaos, in the town of Sitia, and goes all the way to Vardø in Norway involving two ferry crossings in the process (Chania to Athens and Gdynia to Helsinki) and also passing through the fair city of Budapest. 

There's of course so much more to see and do, but one week is definitely not enough for an island the size of Crete (another useful tip here, I'm on a roll), especially if you want to give yourself time to enjoy the beaches as well. And yes, because we shun the mainstream, we did not make it to either Elafonisi (the Barbie pink beach) or Vai (the palm tree beach), but Crete is just too good not to go back- so probably, one day, we'll simply have to give in. 

Cretan Days Have Twenty Five Hours- Greek Holiday Part Two

This is the post in which we’re emulating the (former) Top Gear cast and pretending to give useful and practical advice on a variety of subjects, while still actually pursuing our personal agenda of silliness and what not. So here it goes, touristy review of (the north coast of) Crete, the logistical edition.

How to get there. Sunday’s post had plenty of airport input, so yes, flying is probably option A to be considered. There are two main airports on the island, in Heraklion and Chania, and there are plenty of charter flights to both from pretty much everywhere in Europe. Since we’re Budapest based, Wizz also flies direct from the airport formerly known as Ferihegy to Heraklion in high season, on Sundays. In retrospect, we could say that flying charter to Chania could have been a better option, as Heraklion is frankly a bit of a letdown. I would hazard saying it’s as ugly as its airport, but there are actually one or two arguments in it’s favour, which we’ll touch upon later.

In case you feel particularly adventurous, you can take a Minoan lines ferry from the port of Piraeus to Heraklion- the trip lasts an entire night and can be a tad pricey if you don’t go for roughing it on deck for 50 euros. In case you want to bring along your car, you’ll need 80 more euros for a small one, which might or might not pay off in the long run, depending on how long you stay on the island. If you have time to potter about for a month or so (which is probably the minimum needed to see the significant majority of the island’s attractions) , then it definitely makes sense to ferry in your car if you have one.

How to get around. Two basic things: it’s a darn big island and no matter what you choose, there will be at least a bit of chaos involved. Renting a car is probably the best option if you don’t want to binge on local spirits and feel like going off the beaten track, but as already mentioned,  the general outlook of traffic is a bit on the wild side.  There are car rental points in pretty much every touristy area, and prices are mostly similar, so you shouldn’t run into much trouble in the process.

Long distance buses are also a fairly good option, once you get the hang of certain idiosyncrasies of local travel. If for no good reason you’d like to go from one end of the island to another, the ride would last around four hours, but otherwise most connections from one biggish town to another are between one and two and a half hours and will probably involve at least one stop where something will apparently go catastrophically wrong, there will be much bickering in Greek and some extra people (there are always extra people) will be ushered to another mysterious bus arriving from Zeus knows where.

As per the schedule of Heraklion Bus Station A, taking long distance buses also leads to the expansion of the time space continuum, as there's a bus to Malia at 25:00. Hellenic time travel, because why not. And if this wouldn't be enough, I am still totally tickled pink by the practicality of naming the stations A and B- since most streets and squares have totally unfathomable and unpronounceable names of national heroes and the likes, this one is clearly another kindhearted Greek concession to us weak minded foreign travelers.

Where to stay. Well I’ll just be totally useless at this bit, and go for the whatever rocks your boat solution. There’s really something for everyone on the island, from backpacker’s hostels to five star all inclusive dungeons for those who come to Crete to stay by a hotel pool and overeat souvlaki. Due to laziness, we opted for a travel agency package which planted us in Ammoudara next to Heraklion (quite naturally there’s another Ammoudara next to Agios Nikolaos as well), which is probably great if you want to have a fairly decent (albeit often windy) beach right at your doorstep but can get a tad boring in the long run. In retrospect, I would probably opt for a mid range hotel in Rethymno, which has a brilliant beach right next to the old Venetian harbour and great connections to the Eastern side of the island.

I must confess that the main reason why we chose something close to Heraklion was the airport transfer hassle, which cost us an arm and a leg on Corfu, and involved a hygienically challenged cab driver blasting Orthodox liturgies from the car radio. As it often happens, the situation on Crete is slightly different: bus number 6 goes from the airport straight to both long distance bus stations in Heraklion, from where you can catch a ride to about anywhere on the island within one hour.