A Selphi at Delphi

Only Connect, Forster used to say: easier said than done.

It was ’77 that we decided to leave London to come to New York.

Though it’d been a while, we’d both lived here before so it wasn’t like we were coming to someplace unknown. But even six months in New York City is a long period of time, things change and change fast, month by month the city is different, its only real tradition being that nothing stays the same. To move to a different town is hard enough, to a different country is much more difficult. I recently had a talk about it with my German doctor, and we both agreed it meant tearing apart all the connections you’ve made over a lifetime, what you eat, how things taste, the smell of the streets, the sound of it all, stopping at the intersections to look the wrong way for traffic, shoe sizes. It’s easier, of course, if you’re young; our ages varied, Vivian’s and mine, but we were both ready to make the move.

Since he didn’t fly, didn’t ever fly—now’s not the time to get into that—we had to look for a ship. The QE2 was still making the transatlantic run on a cut-back schedule, French and American ships were things of the past. As I remember, Cunard offered a deal on a cabin which wasn’t bad, if Vivian gave a talk on the theater. But we were offered something that looked better, without a talk, which is how we ended up on a Soviet version of a luxury passenger ship, the SS Michael Lermontov. Her sister ship was the Alexander Pushkin. Nice that the Soviets, in their bid to snag what they imagined to be a lucrative transatlantic Americanski passenger trade, got things off to a promising start by naming ships for their writers; after all, what else did they have to brag about? What other names would be recognizable without provoking a shudder? The SS Stalin? The voyage, starting at Tilbury—downriver from London and a cheaper berth than the traditional Southampton—to New York, via Cherbourg, would last ten days; a long time perhaps, but after the stress of packing, saying goodby to friends, getting rid of our car, and getting in a hired car to drive us away from the comfortable flat where we’d been living on Kensington Church Street, we were glad to have that breathing space. Oh, and plus we were bringing two dogs; noisy miniature red wire-haired dachshunds. There was a kennel deck.

Even while boarding the ship it was obvious that the Russians were clueless about how to do the luxury thing, getting everything wrong, often hilariously so. One example from many—the crew fashion shows—fur! makeup!, crew talent shows, demonstrations on how to make borscht—when I asked the woman who was taking care of our cabin for an ice bucket for the champagne we’d been given to toast our goodby, she had trouble grasping what exactly it was we wanted but then with an ah-ha! seemed to understand, went away, and came back carrying a pail with ice in it. Which did the job, but still.

We stopped in Cherbourg for a whole day where Vivian, an old hand at sea travel—now’s not the time to get into that—insisted that we buy a lot of fruit to take with us; small fragrant melons stick in my mind, most likely because such things weren’t available in London; probably peaches, it was summer; and whatever else was ripe and portable. Heading out all seemed peaceful, till it was noticed by passengers that there was no fresh fruit on board—apart from what was sitting in our cabin—and not much in the way of fresh vegetables either. We took the second sitting at lunch and dinner. Taking their time to make it clear that there would be no pandering to capitalists, the dining room staff kept the doors closed and fastened till they were ready to serve. Inside, piled on a table would be a pyramid of oranges, with a pile of tomatoes nearby to add a touch of luxury. After a few days, the passengers of the second sitting would wait nearer the doors at each meal hoping, when they were opened, that if they got off to a good start they could maybe snag an orange or two. This grew from a slight impatience to, as we neared New York, something like a stampede as people dashed in to grab what they could.

This came back to me at Delphi, my second stop on this trip. A cruise ship isn’t a passenger liner; one meanders, the other arrives. There are no ships left to make that regular transatlantic run, every couple of weeks, baking their own bread, putting out an on-board newsheet, where five and six course lunches and dinners were the norm—appetizer (very small, bottled pineapple juice?), soup (a choice; bouillon or thick), fish (on the bone or not, one would of course have appropriate cutlery), poultry (roast chicken), meat (beef, lamb, beef), desert (simple, not fruit, that was a separate course), a cheese board would be offered if requested with al least five or six to choose from, or a savory, at which point you might be presented with a fruit bowl and asked if that would be all.

Cruise ships don’t follow such old-fashioned ways, at least not in my very limited experience, (We had to take one to get to Jamaica because Vivian didn’t fly—now’s not the time to get into that—so the only way we could get to Ocho Rios was by interrupting one cruise, reboarding another two weeks later. With no destination, only ports of call, life on board rapidly loses all reality; the sense that overindulgence at sea might have consequences on land. After all, it’s fun, a break from the norm, plus you don’t have to cook for yourself or clean up after, or look in mirrors if you don’t want to. And didn’t you plan ahead and pack larger sizes?

The View from my balcony!

Delphi has two main streets, each going one way; one the length of town away from the sanctuary and museum; the other toward the sanctuary and museum; some some smaller streets run between. You can limp it easily end to end in under ten minutes. Downslope is the view, a chasm the bottom of which is flooded with, I was told, perhaps a million and a half olive trees, though it could be more, who knows? the count was taken a while ago. Some ancient, thick and gnarled, the whole valley a double Unesco Heritage site, for culture and cultivation. On the other side, facing you, the mountains soar upwards; the village is crammed onto a ledge hacked from the rock millennia ago. In the morning, say at eight or eight-thirty, as the starlings crowd the space beyond the balcony of my room, chattering loudly, wheeling and soaring, the tour buses built by giants to a different scale start to arrive, thundering down streets that seem too narrow. Some continue through town to the museum, others might park at the hotel where I was staying to deliver or collect their cargoes. In the museum, the groups would go through, a guide leading the way, as they’d done at Athens, noisy in the National Archeological Museum, or the Museum of the Acropolis. Everyone milling around, doing their best to see and hear, to make the trip count, not having enough time to register one thing before being hurried on to the next

The Charioteer, saved by a fluke though his four horses and chariot were lost.

.Whenever you’re in a museum you inevitably start looking at the people as much as the exhibits, sometimes thinking Tourists! ignoring the fact that you’re one too. I liked the crowd on the steps of the Acropolis, up into the Propylaea, the gateway into the sanctuary at the top that was once crowded with temples but where now only the incomplete Parthenon and Erechtheion are standing. Probably there’d have been a crowd on the steps then, too, when they were complete and functioning, everyone excited to be there, for different yet related reasons. It’s possible the Athenians were more solemn, more constrained on the high holidays, though having seen the riotous Parthenon frieze I doubt it; but I bet the rest of the time they’d be gossiping and carrying on much as people do now.

I thought the same at Delphi, where tourists have been the heart of the village since its inception, though how it began is much debated with no clear answer despite best efforts. It seems to be a place that people have always come to, since a cave was found, with a spring; was that why? or was it that Apollo asked a boatload of Cretan sailors to give up their lives to to make him a home there? Instead of fishing they’d live off what they earned from the visitors he’d encourage by providing an oracle, a go-between to provide his answers to questions about the future. Know Thyself, was carved over the door—Socrates liked to quote it—and that other motto that gets conveniently forgotten, Nothing in Excess. And come they did, once word got out, coming by boat to the nearby harbor or overland via tracks through the surrounding mountains: Apollo’s is not an easy place to reach. I’m sure those ancient people were happy when they got there, though they couldn't be taking selfies like me. Instead, they might write their name on a lead slug or shard of crockery to leave at one of the temples, another method to show they made it, that they were there.

Whatever pre-sanctuary, pre-oracle Delphians—if there were any—lived off, in its heyday the locals lived off the tourists—places to stay, places to eat, somewhere to park the horse and house the slave—just as they do now. So the crowds milling about the lower slopes, thinning as you climb higher, real thin when you reach the race track up top, aren’t out of place. Though my local hiking guide was shocked by the idea, it’s likely the atmosphere of the village today comes pretty close to what it was then, the wonders of the museum standing in for the temples’ treasures. As at the Parthenon, perhaps the ancient crowds might have had more respect, unless that’s an idea put in our heads by seeing them through the medium of white marble? Perhaps the stillness and gravitas were supplied by the stonecutter, and weren’t necessarily part of their noisy life till it was stilled by death? Contemporary visitors have also traveled a long way, often at considerable expense, to see what remains. The ruins are there, patient as an old dog, forgiving and bewildered, long past their prime, deserving of respect for what they represent, of the life that once filled them, of the beliefs that filled the temples and gave those people an anchor for the wonder they experienced simply for reaching their destination. And some people, tourists or suppliants, are going to behave like idiots no matter what slice of time they’re living in.

The tour bus offers what is essentially a more hands-on cruise ship experience, with buses emptied and passengers checked in at the local hotel in a matter of minutes, ready next morning for the breakfast buffet before loading up and heading off to somewhere new.

When I was first presented with an itinerary by the travel agent, every day was packed with excursions, tastings, workshops, flights here and there (he had me spending a lot of time at Athens airport), with experts in this or that escorting me through museums. He was, of course, doing his job, presenting me with possibilities, window-shopping. To do it all would have killed me. Part of the point of my time here, part of its pleasure, and what the luxury of time is giving me is the opportunity to be bored, to spend a day or two not doing so much, of not liking a place as much as I’d hoped or expected. I’ve got five days on Ithaca where I plan to do nothing. I might visit a beach. I see that as a possibility. I did bring sunscreen.

Unesco olive trees.

The contemporary crowds are as much a part of a place as the broken columns, the boys working out near where Plato’s Academy might have been. We tourists aren’t much different now. It’s a comfort to discover that ancient authors were complaining too—vociferously—about the crowds polluting this place or that—probably Delphi—the tasteless knick-knacks sold as souvenirs (raises hand, my Tacky Apollo statuette is safely packed), the overpriced tourist food and drink. Going on descriptions of it in its heyday it does sound kind of… bigly. A lot of gold. A lot. And gold, even shoddy plastic imitations, has always been used to display power. There were a lot of buildings, too, grandiose, crammed one on top of the other, competing to be the biggest, costliest, holiest; repeatedly torn down and rebuilt, or replaced at colossal expense after earthquakes and rock slides fell on temples and treasure houses.

Leftovers from Apollo’s sanctuary.

Though I took water and a banana with me to Olynthus yesterday, the archeological site is unfortunately closed till mid-July—heads up if you’re planning a trip. So, no ruins that day. But one thing in Greece that can be depended on is the presence of ruins. Wherever yo go there will be the remains of places that log ago fell to bits that have since been dug up and are well worth a couple of hours of your time, if you’ve got it, before you have to get back on the bus, fasten your seat belt, get ready to grab what you can from the pile of oranges, and look forward to what comes next, to the charge we get from being in a new place doing new things, as they did, maybe splurging on that necklace for the wife they got from that guy in the market who swore he’d got it off a sailor just back from Cyprus and anyhow it’s pretty and she deserves it, and she’d wanted to come but there was no money and I had business in town and plus the Parthenon… now it’s finished I’d like to see. See what it’s like. I’ll climb to the top and look around and see what’s going on.

I’ve eaten yoghurt with fruit and walnuts, with honey, to prepare for today’s drive, I’m heading for Preveza on the Ionic Coast, my longest trip though only a matter of four hours or so. With all its mountains, Greece isn’t a physically large country. I like the sheep’s milk variety, the guide at Olympus told me as we were climbing—have we talked about that? it was snowing up top, I couldn’t see a thing, except at one place where the ground fell away to nothing. Having been warned about my propensity for falling down, my guide made sure to ease me back from anywhere near an edge, but he said the sheep’s milk yoghurt was best. Not so easy to get as it’s more expensive, but it’s traditional. It’s what at one time everybody used to eat. The goat’s milk version is good; it’s cheaper to make, that’s why it caught on, but if you want the authentic flavor… if you want to taste Greece, he said… before you get back on the bus, or in the car, or on the comedy boat.. do it quick because time is wasting. There’s a couple of international conventions going on in this super luxury hotel that offers no real comfort that I’m staying in now—I’ve checked out and I’m sitting in the spacious, airy lobby—Uppsala University, and a confab of American Pharma companies, Atlantic City being, apparently, full. Each another bus tour in its way. I realize that I’m here before the season, that I have no experience to speak of, I wonder how I’d react seeing the same places in July or August when the museums are packed, and the season’s at its height?

Where the hell is my passport? And the new sunglasses—third pair so far. I found the stupid hat I thought I’d lost. It was of course exactly where I’d put it. I trimmed my eyebrows—not before time—the beard is one thing but I was beginning to look like a wizard from Tolkien. Okay, we’re done here. Seen all we’re going to see. Let’s get going. Next stop. Dodona. Ithaca’s waiting, but not yet. Not today. Beach later.