Government of Profiteers and Wahhabists

Any more, GOP really stands for Government of Profiteers. Admittedly, politicians who are bought and paid for are a bane that curses Democrats, Republicans and political parties of all colors since time immemorial. But having elected Trump, American Exceptionalism acquires a new meaning.

Today's GOP and Trump are in power because the profiteers have allied themselves with an evangelical religion that we may as well label GOP Wahhabism because it has nothing to do with traditional Christianity. And we are accomplices.

I am not really qualified by education, study, debate and reflection to offer an elegant, scholarly analysis of the problem (which is human nature), but I am not stupid, either. And I need to rant.

The Saudis, a family of bandit Bedouin chiefs from a wretchedly backward region of the Arabian Peninsula, were promoted into power by profiteers. After WW1, the British promoted a Saudi to become King of Arabia in order to protect British oil interests. To maintain their power on the peninsula, the Saudi family partnered with a fundamentalist brand of Sunni religion (Wahhabism) that originated in their native Saudi area.

You know the Wahhabists? These are the folks that veil women and prohibit them from driving or going in public without a male relative. They despise music and Western culture, rigidly control the media, and force their practices on any foreigner visiting their country.

The Trump era and the appeasing Republican leadership brings us the all too historically familiar collusion between profiteers and authoritarian religious leaders, just like the Saudis. Throw in fear-mongering nationalism (xenophobia) and we have apt comparisons with Nazi Germany and Putin's Russia. Both are examples of dictators coddling conservative, organized religions and successfully enlisting their support. Leave aside Nazis and Putin. I prefer the comparison to the Saudis because the Trumps practice nepotism and glorify obscenely gaudy displays of wealth, and the "religion" that supports Trump is so extreme, so judgmental, so authoritarian, and so hypocritical that, like Wahhabism, it really is not a religion at all.

The profiteer part is the entrenched wealthy with an insatiable greed for more wealth and power and an immoral indifference to the suffering of others. Such people we always have and such people always use their money and power to influence government to their own ends. But when they have such extreme control over society as in the Trump era, history books devote separate chapters to the phenomenon.

We have propaganda, the indispensable tool for all political exploitation. GOP Wahhabism, wrapped in the American flag like all demagogue scoundrels, is fanned by Fox Noise. How else to explain the relentless hypocrisy and the crazy, paranoid, fear-based dogmas of a patriotism that vilifies imagined opposition, that sanctifies a gun culture, that harps on a make-believe "war" on Christmas (as if today's retail orgy has anything to do with Jesus) and a make-believe "persecution" of Christians and whites? It is relentless propaganda: fear-mongering, angry, divisive, rabble-rousing, fact-adverse, conspiracy theory driven propaganda.

You know the GOP Wahhabists? These are the folks that despise uppity women, prohibit them from practicing birth control, and blame them when they get raped. They despise Western culture (West Coast hippies and East Coast liberals, Spiro Agnew's "nattering nabobs of negativism"), advocate stripping the "fake news" media of its licenses, and force their religious practices (e.g., Christmas and "Biblical" values) on fellow citizens from other traditions.

Mohammed and Jesus inspired people to open their hearts and minds and respect and serve one another, particularly the needy. The organized religions founded after them are political. Even so, more than enough inspiration remained to nurture mystics, saints, beliefs, practices and communities that have enriched the lives of the devout and the not-so-devout, even non-believers, for centuries.

The fundamentalist ilk that breed within these religions and usurp their names have nothing to do with promoting the material or spiritual development of anyone. These religious demagogues use the labels "Christianity" and "Islam" to obscure their real intent: their own ego, anger and lust for power. The scary part is that most of these self-professed religious leaders have egos that match their charisma. They actually believe themselves.

In the U.S., the politically powerful adopt Ayn Rand as their patron saint. (You know Ayn Rand? She's the one who went on the dole when she couldn't pay her bills.) Permitting the unfettered pursuit of profit is the solution for all social problems. Education, prisons and health care are for-profit businesses. The premise that public utilities — water, sewage, electricity, and communications — require regulation is criticized as inefficient and unnecessary. Anger against the government is fanned by the NRA, home builders associations, real estate developers, manufacturers, and CEO's who despise regulations that protect safety in work places, homes, medicines, and even the water we drink and the air we breathe.

GOP Wahhabists actually believe it is morally wrong for society (when a society organizes, we call it "government") to help the poor and the sick. The destitute have no one to blame but themselves.

We reward executives in private and public sectors, whether publicly traded corporations, financial market brokers, hospital administrators, or university deans and coaches, with compensation ridiculously disproportionate to the average worker who actually produces something useful.

Watch. The GOP will privatize National Parks and make them profit centers, including slapping corporate trade names on them like bowl games and sports stadiums. (My favorite is the Arizona Cardinals' "University of Phoenix Stadium." The University of Phoenix, a for-profit university, of course, has no sports program whatsoever.) Or, as Trump is now doing, the GOP will simply sell off ("privatize" is the euphamism) public property.

Science and our own self-interest take a back seat to GOP Wahhabism. We teach little science in schools in favor of promoting "Intelligent Design". We deny the human contribution to climate change, or even to environmental degradation. We believe in "alternative" facts for the purpose of protecting the vested profits of tobacco, oil, and coal.

The entire GOP notion that government is bad is demented. Instead of using business tools to make government efficient, we make government so weak it becomes a business tool.

How can this happen? It is the human ego, the profiteers and corrupt Pharisees of our times, the same hypocritical bane that Mohammed and Jesus railed against. "Ego" reads a little antiseptic. Think "greed," "fear," "anger," "hatred," and "narcissism." Ego is every selfish, ignorant, self-destructing human weakness and ignorance that all we share in varying degrees.

What drives Rupert Murdoch to shamelessly pursue profit from fake news? 32% of the electorate is enough of a tail to wag the election dog. That is the percentage of the electorate that still thinks Trump is doing a good job. That minority is enough to determine and intimidate the outcome of Republican primary elections. In the long run (hopefully), it should not be enough to sustain control over the nation's government. The pundits say even now the percentage is shrinking. But what does Murdoch care? A 32% market share is more than enough to ensure top ratings and mega-profits for Fox Noise. Murdoch, described by those who know him as willing to sell his own mother for profit, has his roots in the tabloid business. If people get news and form opinions based upon Fox Noise, it is the equivalent of reading the National Enquirer or the Daily Mirror. As one columnist recently wrote, how can a 15-minute sermon once a week compete with hours and hours of glossy Fox Noise television distortions and lies.

I have not touched upon racism. This is the argument that Trump is a backlash to eight years of a black man in the White House, and the idiotic notion that African Americans have it easy.

We enable all this. We are accomplices. That is the tragedy.

We vote carelessly and ignorantly. That is what fundamentalists and the GOP promote: ignorance. Mohammed and Jesus taught people to think for themselves. Religious leaders and GOP Wahhabists teach people to not think for fear of divine punishment. Wahhabist leaders do your thinking for you. With enough propaganda, people do not think they react. It is called mob psychology.

In this country, we promote ignorance. We have underpaid school teachers who use their own money to buy supplies for their students. We have broken teachers unions because — well, educated people tend to vote Democrat. We have people who believe a two thousand plus year old book is authoritative on matters of science. Heck, not even the Catholic church teaches that. We believe that a president is patriotic even though he fawns upon the dictator who meddled in our elections. We have not learned from religion, history or even from the experiences of other countries. The political troubles that confront us are no different from what other societies have struggled with for millennia: human nature. The modern world faces the same challenges, only compounded by technology and social isolation.

News and information today are a for-profit business that is primarily entertainment and advertising. What few professional news organizations remain are labeled as "fake news" by Fox Noise, the tabloid that is the epitome of fake news propaganda. "Jail Hillary", but the Russian-Trump investigation is a witch hunt. We have an internet with algorithms that give us information from Google, Facebook and their ilk that is paid advertising: a feedback loop that reflects back our own greed and prejudices.

A vote is so valuable that the GOP is legislating obstacles to prevent or dilute voting by those who are indisposed towards them. The GOP promotes paranoia over voting fraud when there is no evidence of it — other than by Putin. In a concerted effort over decades, the GOP has successfully gerrymandered legislative districts to ensure that a minority of voters elect a majority of our Representatives. Now the GOP is changing the rules so that religions (read, the already mobilized GOP Wahhabists) may use tax-exempt money to actively participate in politics. That is how important votes are.

Much, much worse than ignorance is indifference. We do not bother to vote, or we throw them away on the Ralph Naders and the Jill Steins of the world. People complain about how bad things are and that there is no real difference between the two parties. Guess what. People who do not vote are the problem. You are enabling the very system that turns you off.

Such a small thing, to vote, yet so powerful.

It Takes a Village . . .

. . . of Hardware and Software to make a home movie.

Scenes from a movie about Thomas Edison (Edison, the Man, 1940) come to mind. Spencer Tracy, playing the role, keeps trying different materials to serve as the filament for his electric light bulb. After numerous failed attempts, he hits upon carbon and the commercially viable electric light bulb is patented.

Home video editing is like that, only without the commercial viability or the patent.

Depending upon the medium — a computer file resident on a hard drive, a Blu-ray disk, or a regular or high definition DVD disk  — it takes experimenting with different combinations of hardware, software, and techniques to produce a viable product.

I think video editing is a wonderful expression of creativity. But then, it is my hobby. I would not want to discourage anyone from the hobby. Editing home videos is a form of storing and sharing memories and, hey, who isn't into a bit of self-indulgence? But in my experience, it is also a frustrating process of trial and error. I suppose that also is a form of creativity. Like Edison and his filaments, I was forced to think up different trials of computers, programs, and settings to hit upon a satisfactory result.

I began editing video in the late 20th Century using multiple video-tape recorders and a switch box. It's a process called linear editing and it is not only frustrating, it's not very rewarding because with each copy, the picture quality gets worse. With the advent of affordable, consumer non-linear editing, I took the plunge. I am on my fourth system and, as it turns out, in order to share videos taken in Europe this September, I need each of the previous three.

A Simple Video File that Plays on Television

For our own use, I store video files on an external hard drive that hooks up to a new Roku box via a USB cable. My tiny four terabyte drive is only half full and replaces some fifty DVD boxes. But I did have to buy the new Roku box, and it took several tries with different file formats on my iMac before I discovered the one that the Roku could read. It's got to be in H264. The lesson here is that if you are using a Mac, you live in a small world.

Then the problem was jerky playback. What looked perfectly fine on the Mac was intolerably jerky on anything else. I won't go through the details, in large part because there were so many frustrations that I have shoved the memories into oblivion. All I remember is what worked.

First, edit the raw clips in Final Cut X in their native format. In my case, I am using a high definition, 1920x1080 pixel video camera that shoots 60 frames per second. I am rounding up. Owing to accidents of cathode ray televisions, it's actually 59.94 fps, which is double the standard NTSC 29.97 fps. Web search "frames per second" and your head will spin looking for rhyme or reason. There are more settings than you can imagine in a nightmare. At any rate, FC-X and its extra-price "Compressor" software which is supposedly "professional" and gives the user even more control over output (it doesn't) is incapable of producing a movie file that does not jerk on my television.

Second, copy the edited file into MyDVD (a hybrid Roxio-Apple program) and have it rendered into a high definition DVD. Why MyDVD? Because Toast Titanium, the much touted standard for playing, copying and authoring CD, DVD and now Blu-rays on Macs, particularly important because Steve Jobs and Apple refused to support Blu-ray (it had to do with patent royalties), does not work. Another lesson: do not use Toast Titanium for anything other than copying.

Third, strip the actual movie file from the DVD image (an "ISO" folder), now in television-legible 29.97 fps, and import it back into FC-X.

Fourth, render the imported DVD file from the ISO folder because without the DVD envelope, no Roku box or pretty much anything else will read it. By stroke of good fortune, FC-X does. It takes several agonizing minutes to import, then more time to export (the term used now is "share") the .mov file (in H264, naturally).

Oh, I forgot something. While Toast would not work at all, MyDVD has the curious habit of shifting the sound track almost two seconds ahead of the video. Like, you hear the words from my mouth one second, then my mouth moves the next. Unacceptable. The fix? Start each edit with two seconds of test frames and loud noise, then two seconds of blank video and audio. When the file is imported back into FC-X for the final rendering, detach the audio and, using the test frames, noise, and blank, shift the audio track into place.

The end product is high definition video on my television. It's quite satisfying to watch.

A High Definition Silver Platter

Shari wants to send copies to her Mum. Of course, I am flattered with any audience. Shari's Mum doesn't have a new Roku box with a USB port, but she does have a Blu-ray player. I am scared because I know the frustrations of authoring and burning silver platters are even greater than just producing a viable video file. Plus, it takes several hours for the computer to render and burn a disk, so the frustration of each trial and error is magnified.

Apple, courtesy of Steve Jobs, does not support Blu-ray. Which is why I have MyDVD and Toast. Both have facilities for authoring Blu-ray and high definition DVD (called "AVCHD" DVD) discs. Like a gullible fool, I fiddled around setting up menus and chapter markers for scenes on each program. The time was wasted. Toast would hum along for several hours then, when its little ticker-tape reader stated it was 99% done, it froze and delivered the always assuring dialogue box that reads something like "unknown error 3640137. Toast must shut down." MyDVD would hum along for several hours and produce a wonderful disc — with the audio track almost two seconds off-kilter. Unacceptable.

I thought of using my Windows laptop. There are two "big" video editing programs for consumers: Final Cut on Macs and Premiere on Windows. I also have Premiere. I had purchased it before my iMac and FC-X, only to be frustrated trying to use Premiere. So I switched back to Macs. Now came the time for Premiere and Windows glory. I copied the end product files from my iMac onto a thumb drive and loaded them onto my laptop and into Premiere. I even figured out menus and chapter markers for scenes. First I produced high definition DVD's, the AVCHD variety. Lo and behold, success!

Blank DVD's are much cheaper than blank Blu-rays. Trouble is, a DVD is good for 4.7 gigabytes compared to 23 gigabytes for a Blu-ray. My product took six DVD's, about twenty-five minutes of video each. I progressed to Blu-ray. I burned two separate Blu-rays and got perfect results, except for the photo of Shari I used for one of the menus. No worries. I had finally figured out how to produce a Blu-ray.

A Regular Definition Silver Platter

Shari wants to send copies to her Aunt. Of course, I am flattered with any audience. Shari's Aunt has only a regular television and a regular DVD player. That adds another complexity: reducing wide screen, high definition, 16:9 aspect video to the old standard resolution, 4:3 aspect video.

I tried the iMac. FC-X hummed along for several hours and produced a disk with chopped off menus and images. It's what low resolution TV broadcasters do to wide screen movies: mutilate them. MyDVD hummed along for several hours and produced a good looking disk with the audio track almost two seconds off kilter. Unacceptable. Toast hummed along for several hours and choked. It delivered an assuring dialogue box stating that the last instruction failed because it had to open too many files. Say what? It had successfully processed, interpreted, de-shrunk, sampled, re-shrunk and multiplexed some three hours of video, that's over 22 billion pixels plus audio, and it got hung up opening thirty files? Premiere hummed along for several hours then choked. It just froze. After aborting a couple of times, I thought to myself, "Maybe it needs a lot of time."  I left it on overnight. It was at 23% when I went to bed. It was at 23% when I woke up.

Shari suggested taking my files to a commercial place to have it authored and burned onto DVD. My ego took that as a personal affront. She intended only to help, but I would not give in.

After some hours, I thought to myself, "What about the old Mac?" I bought the Mac G-5 in 2006 because the custom built PC that I had bought specifically for video editing a couple of years earlier was incapable of burning a DVD without skips. Its connection between computer and burner was too slow. The G-5, like its Windows-based predecessor, is a desktop. Does anyone remember desktop computers? They are the ones so big and so heavy that you had to put them on the floor. They came with cathode ray monitors.

The G-5 version of Final Cut had never failed me editing. Its version of MyDVD worked seamlessly because, back a decade ago, Apple actually supported and integrated the then current video technology.

I experimented. I converted one of my end-product files to the DV format. Thank goodness, Final Cut on the G-5 read the files. I loaded all the files on the G-5 and Final Cut. The old ways came back, like riding a bicycle. I quickly loaded a timeline with about half the files, inserted chapter markers, rendered it, imported it into MyDVD, then designed menus. The G-5 hummed along for three hours and produced a DVD that worked perfectly.

Thomas Edison would be proud.

Walking on Castle Hill

Map of Buda Castle Hill area, a "you are here" map
for tourists posted in various places.

Hungary is a little funny for me. That's funny as in strange, not "ha ha."

I grew up speaking Hungarian fluently in a pretty large Hungarian family and community that preserved Hungarian traditions. We ate Hungarian food, listened to Hungarian music, learned Hungarian csárdás and folk dancing, and attended Hungarian mass on Sundays — all within an Australian environment. But I have never lived in Hungary. It's a foreign country in addition to being deeply familiar.

The ambivalence first hit me in 1970 at age seventeen as I bicycled from Vienna and was crossing the Iron Curtain border into Hungary. The Hungarian border guard dressed in Soviet-style uniform with red communist stars spoke my family's language. As I bicycled in Hungary, everyone, all strangers, was speaking my family's language.

I again was in Hungary for a couple of weeks in 1979, so it had been thirty-eight years when Shari and I visited in September. Over those four decades, my Hungarian has slipped into the background of English speaking life in the U.S.A. I speak English with my siblings and use Hungarian, like the Spanish I learned at age thirteen, only in colorful snippets talking to myself or chatting with Nazar, our wonder-dog.

I was a little apprehensive going back to Hungary after such a long time. It turned out that my language, though a bit awkwardly simple and rough, worked just fine. I could even understand proper Hungarian quite well. See, I have never been educated in the Magyar language. Its syntax, vocabulary, and writing are beyond what I learned in my mother's kitchen and at Hungarian summer camps.

Almost every building on Castle Hill has a plaque with
its history. Oddly enough, the plaques were installed by
the Budapest city soviet and are dated,
of all years, 1956. This plaque states that the building
dates from the 15th Century and was remodeled
in its current form around 1800.

A degree of pride at being able to converse in Hungarian was accompanied by a familiarity with being at home in a place where I had never lived. As I wandered through the baroque streets of Buda's Castle Hill district and looked at young people, I would flatter myself that in some ways, my roots were deeper than theirs. Those roots are the stories and experiences of my ancestors, and they get deeply personal with my mother during the siege of Budapest.

In December of 1944, my mother knew the advancing Soviet troops would overwhelm the German (and tragic Hungarian accomplices) defenses and all her Hungarian paper currency would be worthless — whether replaced by Soviet currency or a dearth of anything to buy. So she spent whatever she could buying food, toys, Christmas decorations, and Christmas cookies. Dad was gone, having been ordered to the front lines somewhere in southern Hungary. Mum had to take care of two-year-old son Paul and eight-month-old daughter Irene. My mother, being the wife of an officer, got permission to take refuge in a make-shift bomb shelter in the Castle Hill district of Buda. It was the cellar of the house at no. 3 Dísz tér. That was where she, my two oldest siblings, my uncle Zoltán, and a small crowd sheltered for two months from Soviet artillery during the day and American bombing at night.

No. 3 Dísz tér

The Danube River, all of its bridges blown up by the Germans, and the hills of Buda were fiercely defended by the Germans for over three months. Their headquarters were in the Buda Palace on Castle Hill, about a thousand feet from Dísz tér. Little Irene contracted tuberculosis. Little Paul suffered from a dangerously high fever caused by tonsillitis and bronchitis. The others in that cellar thought the children were delirious when they asked their mother for Christmas cookies. Mum had them hidden and fed them when no one was watching. That food kept her kids and brother-in-law alive; as did fate. One American bomb crashed through roof and floors, lodging itself in an arch several feet above the cellar. The bomb was a dud. Had it exploded, many of those hiding in the cellar of no. 3 Dísz tér would have perished.

Some eight hundred thousand civilian residents hid for over three months as armies inflicted over four hundred thousand casualties on each other. There are many photographs of what Budapest looked like after the siege. It was devastated. Russians described the city as looking worse than Stalingrad after that four-month battle. The city suffered again during the 1956 uprising. On my previous visits in the 1970's, buildings everywhere were pock-marked with bullet-holes.

The ornate-roofed National Archives building by the old Vienna Gate.

It is all very intense stuff.

Strolling along the streets of today's Budapest, that wretched history seems remote, like the Tatar devastation in 1241 and the two and a half centuries of Ottoman-Habsburg warfare in Hungary. As if by magic, the bridges have been rebuilt, and the baroque-on-medieval buildings and neighborhoods of Castle Hill have been reconstructed, including no. 3 Dísz tér. The fashionable shopping street of Váci utca that my mother knew is thriving, as is the city generally.

I can imagine my grandfather in 1902 stationed in the Castle Hill Palace with the 32nd "Csibész" (Rascal) Regiment, avoiding imprisonment for sedition against the Austrian Habsburgs by feigning insanity. I can see the Magyar pride in Mathias Church and other buildings and monuments embellished or built for the 1896 commemoration of the one thousand anniversary of the founding of the Hungarian nation.

All these feelings and ghosts, national and family, haunted me as I walked and wandered the familiar yet foreign streets of Castle Hill.

Buda in the Morning

It was dreary rain when I woke up early in the morning and looked out our window onto Szentháromság tér (Holy Trinity Square). I took video of a woman, then a young man, crossing the large open square, huddled from the cold wet.

Shari was still asleep, then slowly getting up as I showered and dressed in the clothes we had packed for Iceland. I was eager to get outside and explore. She would wait until the breakfast buffet at seven.

Back in the Middle Ages, someone got the idea that devotion towards the Trinity would ward off the plague. Cities would erect columns honoring God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Buda suffered the plague in 1691-1709, erected such a column, but the plague returned. The city replaced the column with a larger one and never suffered the plague thereafter. That column still stands in the large, elegantly paved open area bounded by our Burg Hotel, the building that housed the Technical University whose students began the 1956 uprising, Mátyás Templom (Mathias Church), and Halászbástya (Fisherman's Bastion).

The neo-Gothic (i.e., 19th Century) Bastion, named after the guild charged with manning this section of the medieval walls, has a gorgeous view over the Danube River to Pest. The church and its colored tiled roof, the bastion, the equestrian statue of Hungary's first king, Saint Stephen, and the views of the bridges over the Danube and the neo-Gothic Parliament building on the Pest side of the river bank are the familiar, often photographed images of the city many regard as among the most beautiful.

That area was where I scurried around with my video camera taking every possible shot of scenes familiar to me since childhood. Every household in the large Hungarian community of Sydney had coffee table books with these images.

The drizzle was grey but light. I shared the open space with occasional pedestrians and commuters and one other couple of tourists taking still photos with an SLR camera of the Bastion area in front of the Hilton.

The only previous time I had been on Castle Hill was in 1979. My father and Uncle Zoltán took me there long enough to show me the Bastion and the house on No. 3 Dísz tér where my mother, two oldest siblings, and Zoltán took refuge in the cellar for two months during the Soviet siege of Budapest in winter of 1944-5.

I remember Uncle Zoltán angrily complaining about the existence of the Hilton Hotel adjacent to the Bastion, a modern structure built over the remaining ruins of the medieval walls of Buda. The then communist government gave Hilton permission to build. The city got some minor accommodation in design to incorporate some of the old wall. Hilton got the iconic views of Budapest.

I doubt if the city would ever again grant permission for such a commercial structure over its history. Taking my video and photos, I made a point to keep the Hilton out of the shots.

I noticed that the church and the upper level of the bastion were closed until nine o'clock. By the Jesuit Stairs that lead down from Castle Hill, there was row of modern windows that opened at nine to sell tickets. I made a note of the ticket prices and decided to return with Shari after our breakfast.

I won't go into the details of the breakfast buffet. It was quite hearty, my favorite being the thin slices of hard Hungarian (of course) sausage. Spiced with lots of sweet paprika (of course), it's not unlike a Spanish chorizo (don't even think of the Mexican).

I'll go straight to Shari and me going outside our Burg Hotel onto Szentháromság tér a little after nine. The weather hadn't changed. It was still light grey, cold, and a hint of drizzle. But my oh my . . . The large square was flooded with bus loads full of tourists equipped with umbrellas, raincoats and selfie-sticks, their tour guides lined up at the windows buying group tickets. It seems that Budapest is a popular tourist destination, even in the cold drizzle somewhat off-season.

I was glad we had chosen the Burg Hotel as the base for our three nights. We had mornings and evenings pretty much to ourselves, free to walk and explore the narrow baroque streets of the Castle Hill district.

Back in Budapest

The last time I was in Hungary was in 1979. My father and
uncle took me to Halászbástya (Fisherman's Bastion)
where this photo was taken. That maybe half an hour
was my first time on Castle Hill.

As I sit here enjoying an autumn sunrise in the Sonoran Desert, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, the windows open and a mild breeze, I think about the shock of flying into cold, central European rain.

In Greece, I wore shorts every day and forgot about the jeans that I had packed and worn for our one day in Reykjavik. In Hungary, I ended up wearing those jeans every day, plus long sleeved shirts and my one wool sweater. I forgot about the shorts.

It did not help that our flight from Athens arrived three and a half hours late at the Budapest airport. It was another hour waiting for the young girl, the U-Save employee, to find and shuttle us to the car rental office. Shari used the time to email the Burg Hotel to advise them we would be checking in late.

The car rental counter was my first occasion for testing my Hungarian language skills. The man spoke English well but I switched to Hungarian and he obliged. I understood pretty much everything he said, including about the Citroën car and diesel fuel, the purpose for the credit card deposit, directions to the city, and how the vignette toll road system worked.

I liked being addressed as ur ("lord"). The Hungarian language has its formalities and despite four decades of communism, I was pleased to observe its ornate politeness had not changed since my parents' days in the royal Hungary of the interwar years.

I eased into using a language I had not really used since childhood. We spoke Hungarian growing up at home and in the large Hungarian community in Sydney, Australia. By high school in Seattle, we had abandoned Sydney, brothers and sisters spoke in English, and conversations with parents became more infrequent. Mum never did learn English well and although Dad did, he would always switch to Hungarian when he philosophized, and at that level of speech, I understood less than half of what he was saying, and even that I often got wrong.

View from our window at the Burg Hotel on
Szentháromságtér (Holy Trinity Square).
Mátyás Templom (Mathias Church), named
after the Hungarian king who was
coronated there. Two sharp spires of
Halászbástya (Fisherman's Bastion) are
visible behind on the right.

For decades I spoke Hungarian only to myself and to the dog, and the dog didn't understand. Freshly arrived in Hungary, I became surprisingly comfortable speaking my odd language in a foreign country where everybody spoke it fluently.

It was long since dark. Shari and I had to navigate from the airport on the east side of sprawling Pest to the heart of the city, across one of its iconic bridges over the Danube to Buda, then find our way up narrow, steep streets to the old baroque-on-medieval Castle Hill. I was given the fob to operate the fancy Citroën sedan and I fumbled in the dark exploring its multiple LED screens and dashboard buttons ("start"), acting calm but actually stressed, trying to figure out how to turn on the headlights and the windshield wipers.

Shari successfully navigated in a completely foreign environment with unpronounceably difficult words. We only took one bad turn, and I blame that on city planners. The main road from airport to city center splits. The left lanes turned into an extended flyover; a viaduct. I kept to the right lanes, as is my habit, and managed to stay on that arterial until we got shunted off to some industrial side street. The raised lanes continued straight towards downtown Pest.

We crossed the Erzsébet Híd (bridge) over the Danube River and I found the windy narrow steep street that is one of the few ways of getting up and into the old town that is Buda. I remembered the street from my previous visit to Castle Hill, in 1979. We found our hotel on Castle Hill. Look up Burg Hotel on Google Maps. It is across Szentháromságtér from Mátyás Templom and Halászbástya, wonderfully located in the heart of Várhegy (Castle Hill).

I practiced more Hungarian with the desk clerk to learn where I could park and where we could get some dinner nearby. By the time we dragged our luggage up the stairs into our room and parked the car, it was a quarter to eleven.

We walked around the corner to the almost empty Jamie's Italian Budapest. Shari recognized the chef's name (Jamie Oliver) as famous. I had never heard of him. What I recognized was my disappointment at having to eat in an Italian restaurant with "Budapest" in its name. Fortunately, the server spoke Hungarian and I was once again addressed as "lord."

Most fortunately, we were allowed to order our meals even though the kitchen was shutting down for the night. I admit, that Italian food was excellent, although the portions were much too generous.

Well sated and washed down with a couple of draft pints, we walked the few doors back to our hotel on Szentháromságtér. I would have been eager to walk around and soak in the familiarity of Castle Hill, but we were tired and it was late, cold, dark and drizzling. Instead, I made Shari use her telephone to take a photo of me with Mátyás Templom in the background.

I was back in Budapest.

Travel Time

Travel takes time. That is, getting from point A to point B takes time. In days of yore, travel time was measured by how far one could walk or paddle a boat in a day. In those days, the journey itself was a story. Now, instead of weeks or months, it takes hours by airplane. We spend our time positioning ourselves to get to airports early, then waiting. The journey itself has fewer stories.

The beach at Glyfada

Of twenty-nine days dedicated to our European odyssey, seven were devoted to getting to airports and waiting. I will not count the day in Reykjavik. That was by choice. But there was the night in Seattle beforehand. The flight to Paris still left a half a day to cruise the Seine. The flight to Athens pretty much took up that day. I am not sure why. All I  know is we left early and arrived in time only for dinner. I could blame it on losing an hour to a time zone. Twenty minute flights to and from Naxos do not count, but still, one has to arrive at the airport early. From Nafplio to Budapest was two days: one to position ourselves in Glyfada for the night; the next to fly to Budapest. Leaving Hungary we again positioned ourselves by the airport the night before, but that day was well spent with family so I can't write that it was all devoted to travel. But the next day was devoted to positioning ourselves by De Gaulle airport the night before we caught our return Icelandair flight to Seattle. Then we spent another night in SeaTac to position ourselves for the morning flight to Tucson, but again, that day was well spent with family so it doesn't fully count.

Our view from Bomo Club Palace

Glyfada is a nice suburb spread out on the beach east of Athens. It is also relatively near the airport, which is why we spent our last night in Greece there. Unfortunately, we were unable to enjoy the beach or a last swim in the Aegean because the beach was closed. A few days before our arrival, a rust bucket ship sank off of Athens and its oil slick reached as far as Glyfada.

The beach wasn't as bad as we feared. "The oil smell depends on the wind," said the desk clerk at our Bomo Club Palace Hotel situated between the beach and the highway, next to an ugly vacant lot with views of a rather industrial looking marina.

Bomo Club was on the city end of upscale Glyfada. Shari dubbed it the Russian hotel on account of the Russian language brochures and magazines in the lobby.

The Mycenean Arkadiko Bridge

To get to Glyfada, we had time for a leisurely drive along the north coast of the Argolid Peninsula. On the main road from Nafplio to Epidavros there is a brown road sign (brown is the color to demarcate something of touristic interest) announcing the existence of "Mycenae Bridge". We turned onto the side road and about a kilometer later saw the stone, corbel arch bridge. Once part of a military highway for chariots, the Arkadiko Bridge had survived 3,300 years of history. Further along our route, we drove the rugged coastline and occasional beaches of the Saronic Gulf, good for a couple of frappe coffees and watching the local sunbathers. Then we proceeded to the toll road in Corinth and circled around the north of Athens to get to Glyfada.

Temple of Poseidon, Sounia

The next day we had time for a leisurely drive the coast to Sounia, on the eastern point of Attica, where we saw a temple on a promontory. The small site had a nice restaurant, good for a couple of frappe coffees and watching the local tourists. Turns out it was the Temple of Poseidon, the god of the sea and sailors. In addition to worship, I reckon it must have served as a signpost for ancient mariners on their way south from the Black and Aegean Seas. "Head south until you get to the Temple of Poseidon, then make a right turn to get to Athens. You can't miss it."

View from the Novotel towards Roissy-en-France

We spent a final night in Paris because our Icelandair flight back towards Seattle left early in the morning. We stayed at the Novotel, one of a score or so large hotels clustered around a jumble of restricted access ramps surrounding Charles De Gaulle Airport. We arrived at the hotel early enough for lunch in the lobby cafe. We spent a sobering €60 for a burger, a club sandwich, and two beers.

The Novotel is a short walk from picturesque Roissy-en-France, a medieval village with a park and a stone church built in the 16th Century. The walk is short, once one navigates the jumble of hotel fences and limited access ramps. But the village is pleasant and the prices at its convenience store quite reasonable. That night we dined in our room on apples, baguette, Camembert, ham, and wine.

It is good to plan a little extra for travel time just in case something goes wrong. It did in Athens. We dutifully arrived at the airport early for our flight to Budapest, but our scheduled airplane arrived an hour late at Gate B-9. We boarded and waited. Technical difficulties. Some twenty minutes later, all passengers were told to disembark and take their carry-on baggage with them. We did. We waited by Gate B-9 for about an hour. I could see mechanics fussing around one of the wheels under the right wing.

We boarded again. The airplane taxied on the tarmac ready to turn for the take-off when it started making a horrible grinding sound. The pilot taxied off to the side where all passengers were told to disembark and take their carry-on baggage with them. Busses took us back to Gate B-9 in the terminal building. Amazing to us, Aegean Airlines had an extra jet available. It pulled into the gate, loaded our baggage from the first plane, and we boarded a third time.

As the attendant scanned our frayed boarding pass for the third time, Shari joked that it might have worn out. The attendant smiled. As our neighbor in the aisle seat sat down (we typically surged in early; he was more deliberate) we joked, "Nice to see you again."

Shari is a master at working the self-serve check-in machines.
Arriving early at Athens for our flight to Budapest.

We flew to Budapest some three and a half hours late.

It was on the plane that we checked the paperwork for the rental car that Shari had reserved at the Budapest Airport. The plan was to drive the car in the afternoon across town to our hotel on Castle Hill. We noticed that on Mondays, the U-Save office closes early, at 8 PM. It was Monday. We got really nervous. The flight pulled into the gate at 7:50 PM. Shari and I executed our a plan. She stayed by the baggage and I ran outside to the arrival hall to find the car rental desk.

Now the curious reader might wonder, why didn't we just make a phone call? We still had one smart phone in operation. (See Gamers Warehouse.) It was not just because the call would have cost $10. We tried, only to discover that we did not know how to dial the number, country code and all that.

In a previous post I have already mentioned my skepticism regarding out-of-local-context business names designed to attract tourists. They were the Nemo's and Flamingo named restaurants in Naxos. I could add Orange Car Rental at Keflavik Airport, Iceland. I am adding the name U-Save which certainly is not a Hungarian name.

Like Orange, U-Save does not have an office by the arrival hall. One has to connect with a person carrying a placard bearing your name or that of U-Save. That person gives you a ride to the car rental office hidden somewhere in the airport environs, but not near enough to walk and drag baggage. The arrival hall was crowded with placard-bearing Hungarians and tired and mournful looking tourists hoping to find their connections.

There was an information counter. I had my first opportunity to try out my Hungarian. The young man at the counter was a bit surely. Poor fellow had to deal with throngs of impatient and concerned foreigners trying to figure out how to connect with their car rental, or how to get transportation to the city, or how to find a toilet. Turns out, the young man spoke English and disliked struggling with his basic knowledge of Hungarian. When I slipped in some English words, he complained about the difficulty of Hungarian (actually, he used a strong word to describe his frustration with the language) and suggested we stick to English. "Call them" he suggested. I said we were unable to phone. "Okay, since you made the effort to speak Hungarian." He made the call, spoke with someone at U-Save, then announced the girl would meet me there shortly. "Don't worry. They should be happy getting paid overtime."

I figured I had time to return to Shari. I ran back inside the airport, down long corridors, and in through the "no entry" exit to the baggage claim area. Fortunately, there was no guard to prevent me. I found Shari and we rushed back to the information counter and waited.

A regular queue of distraught travelers attended the information counter. They struck me like penitents waiting for their confessions to be heard. I could see the same young man at the counter, his name was Zoltán (there must have been a story there, but I didn't ask), rolling his eyes in disgust at some query he regarded as silly.

The crowd thinned as an hour passed. I asked Zoltán to telephone again. By this time, he had long forgotten who I was. Reminded, he made the call. Turned out that the young girl had been there a long time before but could not find me.

The good news was we ended up driving through the center of Budapest at night when traffic was less. We had been concerned about finding our way. I worry about driving in any unfamiliar big city, much less in the dark. Shari worried because Hungarian is completely foreign to her. We only made one wrong turn and arrived at our hotel at about twenty minutes before ten.

But I am ahead of myself because this post is about travel time. Budapest is a different subject.

Naxos

If the criterion is simply vacating then our favorite place was Naxos.

Naxos is a twenty minute flight from Athens to an airport the size of a small bus station. It is a Greek island in the Aegean known more for growing its own food than rowdy nightlife. It has long, sandy beaches and a long waterfront, both lined with outdoor restaurants, cafes and taverns. It has sunny warm weather and bright blue warm seas. Naxos has artisan shops in narrow, winding and steep footpaths in old Greek and Venetian sections of town, and in the mountain villages of its countryside.

We stayed four nights in the four-star Nissaki Beach Hotel where we joined our good friends who had inspired our European odyssey in the first place: Ron and Jane. Both are old hands in Greece. Ron's mother is Greek and he speaks the language fluently, from what I could observe. So we have a great place, a great hotel, great companions, and very friendly and sympathetic local guides.

I could easily show some photos and write "nuf said" and end this post. You would get the idea. But it's too much fun to reminisce, savor, and rub it in.

The island town (the hora) is its harbor, a marina crowded with pleasure boats and fishing boats. Large island-hopping ferries take turns pulling to the end of its large pier to deliver and pick-up vehicles and baggage-toting tourists. At the far end of the waterfront is a rocky promontory with the ancient ruin of a temple that was dedicated to Apollo. Two columns and a cross piece have been stood up to serve as a sort of romantic symbol for the town.

Over the harbor and its old Greek town looms a steep hill. On its slopes is the old Venetian town. On the top is what is left of the Venetian fortress and, somewhat of a rarity in Orthodox Greece, a still functioning Catholic church. Both old towns are labyrinths of streets too narrow and too steep for anything but pedestrians and, in times of yore, probably donkeys.

I saw one man, in his late thirties or early forties, huffing, puffing and perspiring as he walked uphill carrying a shopping bag. "Tourist," I thought to myself, "not used to the climb." The man made a sharp turn, up a few narrow steps, and into his home.

No map, Google with GPS or otherwise, can help a person navigate streets with steps and houses built over them. It is a matter of taking paths that go up to get to the fortress, or down to get to the waterfront.

I love walking, so Naxos Hora is ideal.

The routine was simple. We woke up early and enjoyed a cup of strong java from the "individual coffee maker" in our room — the kind that injects small plastic tubs of coffee with a lever that could serve as a fire alarm pull. We would take a quick sunrise dip in the calm Aegean.

We loaded up plates from the generous buffet that included all manner of Greek main courses and desserts in addition to a broad array of more traditional breakfast items. We carried our plates to the outdoor, beach-side tables where the hostess would bring us glasses of freshly squeezed sweet orange juice. I waked the beach south, and Ron and I walked north by the marina to the causeway leading to temple of Apollo. We admired the older locals who had left their towels and clothes on the rocks and were bathing in the sea wearing white hats and gossiping.

Late morning was sunbathing time by the hotel swimming pool, taking occasional dips in the pool to cool off. There was time to read a guidebook or catch up on the internet or order a drink. Lunch was light — if we hadn't saved a dessert from the breakfast buffet and taken it to our room, the maid did.

Ron checks out the Catholic Community Center

Daily we made plans for an excursion, then executed the plan.

Our first night we dined on the beach, literally. Stretches of outdoor restaurants extend north (the hora waterfront) and south (the beach) from our hotel. On the beach, restaurants, cafes and taverns have tables and chairs set out on the sand. Whether eating at a small beach place or at the considerably more upscale restaurant in our hotel, it's all good, and not just because of the preparatory ouzo.

Ron and I walked up to the old Venetian town to locate the place where we planned to see an outdoor screening of Zorba the Greek. Turns out it was at the Catholic church on top of the hill. Meanwhile, Shari and Jane went shopping. As one indication of how much Shari eased into Greek island life, she bought not one but two bikinis.

The Venetian church has a large hall, the Cultural Center, which has an equally large deck with commanding views of the harbor and nearby islands. The Cultural Center has periodic screenings of movies (Zorba, Casablanca, and Mama Mia) and hosts classical and folk concerts. For the admission fee you get your choices of complimentary wine, ouzo, juice and soft drinks. The screenings take place in the large courtyard in front of the hall. A wall hides the spacious courtyard, hall and deck from the narrow walkways that serve as streets. Stepping from the tight spaces through a narrow wooden door, the hidden generous spaces come as a surprise.

Nemo's and its picturesque "fisherman" restauranteur

Obviously, the Venetians who ruled Naxos and much of coastal Greece for three centuries did not have automobiles or their streets would have been wide and blessed with parking lots.

For our Zorba evening we dined at Nemo's, one of the many restaurant-tavernas that line the waterfront. Ordinarily, I would not chose a local place with an imported name obviously chosen to attract foreigners, but our food was typical Greek, meaning fresh and excellent.  The movie Zorba was even better than we remembered, but I always have a very hard time when the Cretan villagers murder the Irene Pappas character.

Apeiranthos village on Naxos

Ron drove us to a mountain village where we admired the ceramics, snacked on "toasties" (grilled sandwiches), then admired the sunset as we headed back down to Naxos Hora.


Our last night we had dinner at a bouzouki restaurant. Situated in a shaded courtyard a little up the hill from the waterfront, just below a local Orthodox church, it features a duo of bouzouki and guitar players and what struck us as a resident Greek folk dancer. Despite its name, Flamingo, which violates my rule against tourist-named local venues, the restaurant served excellent Greek food. The duo played and sang local songs.

The dancer, a middle aged, balding, lanky framed man, and very charming, was adept at numerous dramatic movements timed to the exotic beats of Greek music. It was this planted dancer who coaxed several women into getting up and line dancing with him. Actually, two women needed little coaxing. I think they were regulars. Others also joined in the circles, Shari and Jane included.

Dinner on the beach

The best part for us, and I suspect others, was when the duo slipped into playing a well known, old and very traditional Turkish song, Mustafa. Shari, joined by a small crowd, got up for the familiar rhythm. Shari slipped into some belly dancing moves that the dance leader admired, and even I got up and shook my booties.

The next morning, we bid farewell to Ron and Jane. Our turboprop puddle jumper returned us to Athens where we picked up our rental Beemer and navigated our way over toll roads to Nafplio. We enjoyed the Peloponnese, its history, old Venetian towns, sunny weather, gentle Aegean, shopping, and food. But in terms of sheer vacating, it's tough to beat Naxos with friends.

Gamers Warehouse

I have new found respect for gamers.

My smart phone died a month ago on Naxos. It just crashed. Attempts to reboot it were hopeless. Only wearing out the battery stopped it from a hopeless and continuous reboot cycle. I used Shari's iPad to research the web. The technical term for my problem was "brick". That is, my smart phone was as useful as a brick; or a paperweight.

Occasionally it did boot up so I managed to do a factory reset. That's when you wipe out all your data and the Android operating system is re-installed. It seemed to work, but then it crashed again and the reboot never again worked. I figured it was a hardware problem that had to be fixed back home.

We made it back to Tucson and I looked up smart phone repairs. I decided to use a local outfit called "Quick Fix". Almost two weeks later and me having to call Trevor almost every day, he gave up. First they blamed the battery. A new battery did nothing. Then they blamed software and Trevor was their software man, a very busy software man. Hence the need to call him regularly. I had to remind him that I already did a "factory reset" with no beneficial effect. I asked him to swap out hardware parts to see if that was the problem. He insisted upon re-installing the operating system anyway, then admitted he had no access to the Verizon version of Google Android so he gave up. Neither Quick nor Fix.

This morning I took my "brick" to Verizon, not a Verizon franchise, but the Verizon-owned store itself where we bought my top-of-the-line Motorola Droid 2 for $624 less than two years ago. They are very helpful in that store. Andrew fiddled with my phone and concluded it was a software problem. We explored options of replacing my "brick" with an upgrade. Andrew spent a good fifteen minutes on the Verizon website looking for good deals. Have you ever tried to price smart phone service off a website? It's about as user-friendly as interpreting a phone company invoice. His conclusion was that I was looking at $500-$800 for a comparable phone after every discount that Verizon corporate permitted him.

What about just getting my "brick" fixed? Andrew didn't recommend sending it back to the factory, and I didn't ask why. His discouragement was enough. "Got any recommendations locally to get it fixed?" Andrew gave me three: All Mobile Matters (a local place inside Tucson Mall) and the national chains Best Buy Geeks and Batteries Plus Bulbs. Each one, Andrew assured me, was certified to reformat my phone and reinstall the Verizon version of Google Android.

Among the last photos my Droid 2
took on Naxos before its
motherboard failed. It now serves
as my wallpaper.

The young man at All Mobile Matters scoffed at the idea of doing any software work. They only replace broken displays. Ditto for the Geeks at Best Buy. Nobody does software, she said. Ditto for Batteries Plus Bulbs, but the manager did call Gamers Warehouse and recommended that I try them.

I figured Gamers Warehouse was my last hope before returning to the Verizon store with Shari to pick out a new iPhone. The business name did not inspire much confidence and its Tucson Mall location is hidden on the second floor behind Dillard's in a corridor where no one goes. But it had a sign advertising smart phone repairs, and its window display consisted of a pile of many hundreds of discarded, disemboweled smart phones.

All this time, my "brick" kept trying to reboot and failing. The guy at Gamers Warehouse saw the pathetic reboot recycle, heard me explain that I had done a "factory reset" myself, and quickly concluded "motherboard". He explained that the labor for anyone to reformat and reinstall would be expensive, but a new motherboard would cost $112 including his labor. Bargain.

"Wait a minute, I may have one in back." He reappeared with an open Droid and explained he had cannibalized it for the camera. Its motherboard would fit just fine. I didn't ask questions.

An hour and a half later, I returned and the phone has been working ever since. I have new found respect for gamers. I also have a restored confidence in my own hunch, having done the factory reset and the damned thing still crashed, that it was a hardware problem.

Αθήνα και Ελλάδα (Athens and Greece)

Dinner at the Divani Palace Hotel

For our trip to Greece, Shari invested seven months of weekly two-hour Greek lessons. She can read Greek letters, she knows polite phrases that bring smiles to Greek faces, and we made a good friend in her Greek teacher.

Shari did a lot of preparation, planning and organizing. We both enjoy reading history. But when you come down to the fundamentals of traveling to a famous part of the world for the first time, it's different. One can read about Attica, Lacedaemonia, Argos, and the rugged Aegean coastline, but until actually seen, their reality is not fully realized.

The Corinth Canal

Shari had been to Greece before. As a seven year old she cruised on the San Marco through the Corinth canal on the way from Naples to Istanbul. As a nine year old she and her younger brother made connections for Libya at the old Athens airport near Glyfada. So she had some actual memories on which to hang a sense of Greece. The only connection to Greece I had was knowing my dad left my sister and me twice in 1967 in order to drive to Athens and visit his girlfriend.

We travel not just to vacate, sight-see, shop, eat and visit girlfriends, but to sense what it is really like in a different part of the world.

The Acropolis of Athens is amazing, especially seeing it for the first time from your hotel room balcony. That evening we dined at the hotel's rooftop restaurant, a full moon rising and the Parthenon is all lit up. It was a short walk away.

Greek honor guards

The next morning, we walked the few blocks, many paved with smooth marble, to be ready at the Acropolis entrance when it opened. Our reward, in addition to a smaller crowd, was to witness the Greek army honor guard ceremonially marching down the steep slope.

Greeks take independence and their history seriously. The following day we walked to Syntagma (Independence) Square and witnessed the changing of the guard before the monument to the unknown soldier. These are the guards wearing skirts and pom-poms on their shoes, but if you ever see them march, you will be greatly humbled before their severe discipline — and love of country. I was fighting back tears. My father was in an army. He was one of the few who survived. Boys and young men have willingly fought wars for millennia. Old men are more apt to think of the human destruction.

Syntagma (Independence) Square, Naflpio

Turns out that many Greek towns have a Syntagma Square. In Nafplio, a former capital of Greece where we stayed five nights to explore the Peloponese, Independence Square and some of the narrow streets leading to it are paved with polished marble and all reserved for pedestrians only. Locals and tourists came out in the evenings to spend time or celebrate birthdays in the outdoor restaurants, or just promenade in the huge open space, or window-shop in the narrow streets. Local children played games in the Square as parent generations watched, and a few vendors displayed battery-powered toys that they sold. An older man played a small piano for tips.

Turns out music is popular in Greece. The benefits of a mild Mediterranean climate include street music. By the time we walked down from the Athens Acropolis, there were several musicians along the marble street. One woman was folk-dancing with her young daughter to the sound of a bouzouki player. He was handsomely rewarded. As was another man playing traditional tunes on a violin. Later, as we lunched outside on Athens' main pedestrian concourse, Dionysiou Areopagitou, a band of some six college-aged musicians and singers toured the various outdoor cafes for tips.

We did not see much evidence of the failing Greek economy, but I did think it would be good for a Greek to learn to play a musical instrument and some songs, just in case.

Mycenae

Turns out many Greek towns have an acropolis. It simply refers to the highest place in a town. Understandably, the highest place is often fortified. Athens, owing to its wealth and hubris of its classical grandeur, adorned its acropolis with temples (and a treasury). From Nafplio, we could see Argos and its acropolis, a castle used by Geeks, Byzantines, and Venetians.

The old Byzantine city of Mystras

Mystras itself is an acropolis of sorts. According to the tour guides, the Byzantines liked to build their cities on heights. Mystras overlooks the fertile valley (a rare commodity in the rugged and sometimes mountainous Greek geography) once dominated by ancient Sparta. Unlike the Byzantines, the Spartans built their city brazenly in the open plain. Their protection was brawn and discipline, not fortified heights. Seeing the verdant plains of the Eurotas River is to understand why Sparta existed where it did.

View of  Sparta from Mystras

Ancient Sparta has reincarnated as the modern city of Isparta and the Eurotas valley today is still rich in agriculture. Argos, home of Jason and his Argonauts, and ancient Mycenae are also situated near plains that, even today, are green with farmlands, olive groves, and orchards. Time has been less kind to a bucolic Attica. The megapolis of Athens sprawls all over the plains, limited only by hills too rugged to develop or the protection of designated parks.

The ancient agora (marketplace) of Athens is only about 10 km. from its harbor at Pireas. By comparison, it is about 45 km. from ancient Sparta to its port at Githio. No wonder Athens traded far and wide across the Mediterranean and Black Seas while the Spartans pretty much kept to themselves.

No wonder Western civilizations are rooted in ancient Greece. It has a mild climate, rugged terrain sheltering the occasional fertile plains, and a long coastline on a sea once abundant with fish; and excellent yogurt.

Your basic Greek salad

Dinner at Mani Mani
in Athens

Which brings me to the subject of Greek food. Turns out it lives up to its reputation. Flavorful olives and olive oil, excellent produce, thick and mild yogurt, generous portions of feta cheese, pork, chicken, seafood, and wine, all laced with generous helpings of Mediterranean influences, make food in Greece a pleasure. As for the ouzo, despite daily doses before dinner, I confess I cannot distinguish between good, bad or, for that matter, between Greek ouzo and Turkish rakı.

Oh, it also turned out that driving in Greece was not as bad as we had feared. Slow drivers were much more common than the insane risk takers. The roads are generally good, albeit with little in the way of shoulders. Shari's ability to read Greek letters proved invaluable on side roads. Rugged areas have their switchbacks. Driving from Argos over the mountains to Tripoli was particularly rugged and scenic, if a little tough on the stomach.

The Greek motorways (freeways) are well maintained. Driving on them from the Athens airport to get to Nafplio, or from Isparta to get back to Nafplio, involves stopping at five or six toll booths that together collect about ten euros. But stay in the right lane or you will see the driver of a BMW up close in your rear vision mirror.

Paris: Medieval and Corsican

It is true that one could spend many days in the Louvre and still not take in everything. However, according to web reviews of the Louvre, "People typically spend up to 1.5 hours here." An average of up to one and a half hours?

Neither the lack of many days nor the short attention span of the typical tourist stopped Shari or me from enjoying most of Monday, our last full day in Paris, exploring the three wings and five floors of the famous museum.

Opening time is nine in the morning. We were an eager twenty minutes early to queue up with a small crowd before the main entrance. In pictures, I never really understood the glass pyramid. In context, the grand glass-enclosed entrance centered within the three wings of the Renaissance style palace works very well.

Once inside the large entrance hall on -2 Floor, almost the entire crowd rushed upstairs. Perhaps they were the "up to 1.5 hours" set. Others lingered by the amenities and gift shop of the entrance hall. Shari and I went downstairs under the Sully wing and below -2 Floor. That basement is where one can see the medieval foundations of the fortress that Philip II Augustus had completed in 1202. Shari and I like medieval stuff.

We also like antiquities. We spent several hours in astonishment seeing ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, Assyrian, Near Eastern, Etruscan, Greek, and Roman art and artifacts. Somehow we missed the Islamic and the arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas.

We did not miss Le Café Mollien, a delightful place for lunch. At least, it was delightful except for a clumsy gesture on my part that knocked over the glass mineral water bottle. It shattered on the bricks of the old Louvre fireplace by which we were sitting. The servers apologized to us as they swept up the broken glass.

Shari wondered if the disturbance related to an event from a prior life. Maybe there are ghosts in the Louvre. Maybe our visit or the old fireplace triggered a poltergeist.

Da Vinci's Mona Lisa in context

Refreshed and sated, we continued with a few more rooms of antiquities before ascending to the two upper floors that are stocked with paintings and other decorative arts: French, Italian, and Spanish. We skipped Great Britain/United States and the rooms with Northern European paintings were closed.

To be honest, we simply walked through crowds past many, many fine paintings. After several hours of looking at antiquities, the paintings were too much to take in.  Hence the advice that it takes many days to take in all of the Louvre.

Veronese's The Wedding Feast at Cana

But we did go inside the big room that featured the Mona Lisa. Shari remembers her previous Louvre visit when Da Vinci's portrait was just another painting on a wall. Now it has a wall to itself. The petite portrait is framed by a blank wall to permit excited crowds and tour groups to gather and take selfies without blocking access to other works.

As if an intentional contrast to the comparatively tiny 2½x1¾ foot smiling Giaconda, the opposite wall is taken up by a single gigantic oil painting, the 22x33 foot Wedding Feast at Cana by Veronese

Well, having seen and photographed the Mona Lisa, what else is there? It was time to leave the Louvre and rest.

Spritzes on the way

Restaurant L'Alivi

We got dressed for dinner at a Corsican restaurant in the Marais. Our hosts were Brigitte and Paul. Brigitte is Shari's step-sister. Paul is Corsican. The evening was only one of two opportunities for me to wear my dress coat and slacks. It was well worth packing the clothes.

Paul and Brigitte met us at our hotel. The Corsican restaurant was located in the Marais district, about a half mile away. Paris cafe culture being what it is, our walk was interrupted by stopping, probably randomly, at one of the sidewalk cafes that lined our pedestrian route. We had aperitifs: a spritz made with Apérol or another bitter, champagne or prosecco sparkling wine, and sparkling water.

It was dusk by the time we sat down for an outdoor table at Restaurant L'Alivi, named after the Corsican word for olive. Paul, who speaks no English, immediately got into a conversation with our waitress who was also Corsican. Both spoke the largely Italian-based language that is native to Corsica. Shari and Brigitte spoke in English. Paul and I could communicate a little in Spanish. The German couple sitting at the table next to us were increasingly amused at the polyglot of languages coming from our table.

Paul (Shari's "mon frère Zorba") and Tom

Brigitte, Shari & Paul

Actually, the Germans, who spoke English fluently, were finishing their meal when the four of us arrived and raised the decibel level. They had been a bit unimpressed by their restaurant experience, but they lingered to enjoy our enthusiasm over our plates of traditional Corsican cold cuts (thin slices of smoked wild boar and ham, cheeses and olives) and Paul's conversations with the waitress. We would bring the couple into the conversation occasionally, and, as the couple were making motions to leave, Paul bought them glasses of a traditional Corsican digestif, myrte — a red myrtle berry liqueur. They were smiling heartily as they left.

We were smiling heartily from our conversations, the wine, and having filled ourselves with cannelloni stuffed with Corsican cheese, my plate of shredded lamb with potatoes, and our own glasses of myrte.

As the snapshots taken by our telephones suggest, we were in high spirits after L'Alivi. Brigitte had us walk by the brightly lit Hôtel de Ville, the Paris City Hall, a great Parisian backdrop for our brightly lit foursome.