Alexandersmap

    Category: Travel

    • The Slopes of Vesuvious

      “For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!” — Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

      Living dangerously isn’t so much about reckless acts of defiance against Darwinism. To live dangerously is to risk who we once were for who we might become. Once you’ve experienced the world you can’t put the genie back in the bottle, we expand into something more. Travel opens the mind to new possibilities, just as reading Nietzsche does.

      Visiting places for the first time that you’ve heard about all of your life is an education. The problem with those places is everyone else is joining you there to complete something in themselves too. I’d like to think that we all visit a place with the same objectives, but you know some just want to check a box while the enlightened few try to bring context and meaning to the visit. But let’s face it, we’re all a combination of both, it’s simply the ratio that separates the Instagram model from the student of history.

      The thing is, one person’s fruitfulness is another’s waste of time. We’re all on our own path through this lifetime. The trick is to get more comfortable with risk, for the fruit is often out on a limb awaiting the courageous.

      Pompeii with Mount Vesuvius looming large

    • Mount Etna

      “Mount Etna is renowned for its exceptional level of volcanic activity, and the documentation of its activity over at least 2,700 years. Its notoriety, scientific importance, and cultural and educational value are of global significance.” — UNESCO

      Visiting Mount Etna is relatively easy. It simply involves driving serpentine narrow roads filled with cars, motorcycles and large tour buses nudging the limits of the suggested speed. Once you arrive at the lower crater, you’re greeted by hundreds of people, souvenir shops and restaurants. Some hike or gondola further up to the higher craters and summit, others linger where the views are good enough, thank you. Personally, I’d have hiked ip given the opportunity. But there’s only so much time.

      The thing about a volcano is it doesn’t particularly care about your feelings, or about time. Volcanoes, like the ocean and stars and timeless principles, are of the eternal universe. so visiting an active volcano informs, not just about the planet, but about our fragile hold on this moment we’re here to witness it. When you’re dancing with eternity, you can’t help but feel awed and agape. Which is exactly why we made the pilgrimage there ourselves. Tourist shops aside.

    • A Visit to Malta

      “With Malta and the Mediterranean secured, the Allies were able to use them as bases to launch amphibious landings in North Africa (November 1942), Sicily (July 1943) and mainland Italy (September 1943).” — Imperial War Museum

      A visit to Malta is a rolling history lesson. A natural island fortress with great harbors and a strategic location in the Mediterranean, Malta has been an attractive stronghold for centuries. Those who controlled it wanted very much to keep it. Those who didn’t wanted very much to capture it. And so it was that Malta’s history is full of military campaigns from the Knights Hospitaller holding back the Ottoman Empire to the Maltese and British holding back the Germans and Italians.

      Winding through streets designed with defense against invading armies in mind, gazing up at the high walls of the fortresses surrounding you while riding in small boats in Grand Harbor, you feel the strength and resolve of the place. This was a place designed to withstand a prolonged siege. It’s tragic that World War II left such scar on this beautiful historical island, but it was also inevitable when war erupted. Malta was simply too important to ignore.

      Today tourism has replaced strategic military positioning, but Malta remains as magnetic as ever. The people are friendly and welcoming, the cities are clean and historically fascinating, and the Mediterranean is a lovely shade of blue. Malta has finally found an established peace. It’s a place worth exploring—with no siege required.

      Shrapnel scars on ancient walls

    • Sensory Miracles

      “Slow down and taste and smell and hear, and let your senses come alive. If you want a royal road to mysticism, sit down quietly and listen to all the sounds around you. You do not focus on any one sound; you try to hear them all. Oh, you’ll see the miracles that happen to you when your senses come unclogged.” — Anthony de Mello, Awareness

      I had the opportunity to walk around Mykonos as a guide for a blind man. His wife was eager to shop with mine, so we set them free to go be. We went for a nice walk through the miracles of sensory experience that are the streets of Mykonos. Doing this on my own surely would have been joyful (if you can’t find joy in Mykonos you are truly lost), but my joy was amplified by awareness of things I take for granted—things like variations in terrain, people walking towards me, and the many curbs, shelves and flowering vines protruding from buildings that make Mykonos such a beautiful place to wander about.

      The first thing you notice as a guide is pace. Everything slows down as you guide another person with their hand on your shoulder and your focus expands beyond yourself to what is coming up that may trip them up or bump at them from above. Once pace is established, next comes heightened awareness, that you may describe all that surrounds you both in ways that are hopefully interesting to your blind counterpart. Flowering vines, the grout between paving stones underfoot, the white painted stucco and narrow streets providing naturally cool places to move about, and the miniature cars and trucks navigating those tight streets, often prompting a retreat to doorways and up steps.

      The thing is, I will always remember Mykonos differently for having guided him through its streets in this way for a couple of hours. Having been the one seeing a place both for the first time and in this way for the first time, I can’t help but have a stronger affinity for Mykonos through that experience than if I’d simply wandered about on my own. Perhaps my senses finally unclogged as I was taught to see for the first time. We should all be blessed with such an opportunity.

    • Greek Character

      “Character is a Greek word, but it did not mean to the Greeks what it means to us. To them it stood first for the mark stamped upon the coin, and then for the impress of this or that quality upon a man, as Euripides speaks of the stamp—character—of valor upon Hercules, man the coin, valor the mark imprinted on him. To us a man’s character is that which is peculiarly his own; it distinguishes each one from the rest. To the Greeks it was a man’s share in qualities all men partake of; it united each one to the rest. We are interested in people’s special characteristics, the things in this or that person which are different from the general. The Greeks, on the contrary, thought what was important in a man were precisely the qualities he shared with all mankind. The distinction is a vital one. Our way is to consider each separate thing alone by itself; the Greeks always saw things as parts of a whole, and this habit of mind is stamped upon everything they did.” — Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way

      Greece is a place of rugged beauty, to be sure, but also of rugged character shaped by a sense of timelessness that we simply don’t have in my own country. To walk around a structure built in 444 B.C. is to taste eternity. We are humans of course, and eternity isn’t ours to embrace just yet. But we may reach for the eternal in the form of development of our character.

      Poseidon was one of the Olympians for the Greeks, presiding over such volatile things as the weather. For a Greek sailing off to fish or fight, Poseidon was a big deal, and someone to cater favor with. He also influenced the temperament of horses, and was known as the “earth shaker” for his power to control earthquakes. So building a temple devoted to Poseidon made a lot of sense, and where better for it than on a prominent cliff overlooking the Aegean Sea on Cape Sounion?

      It’s one thing to read history, quite another to stand on the edge of a cliff between the Aegean Sea and a temple erected 2500 years ago as a tribute to the god who controlled both that sea and the ground we stood on. Best to embrace the spirit of the ancients in such moments, rather than incurring the wrath of Poseidon. And that’s the thing about Greece: you feel that you’re trying to measure up instead of trying to stand out. It’s a subtle difference, but it matters a great deal. It’s not that we aren’t special (our mother’s would insist that we are), it’s that we may be integral to something far beyond our time and place. That’s the Greek character.

      The Temple of Poseidon, 444 BC

    • A Day in Athens

      “A Greek is alive to the fingertips; he oozes vitality, he’s effervescent, he’s ubiquitous in spirit. The Englishman is lymphatic, made for the armchair, the fireside, the dingy taverns, the didactic treadmill.” — Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi

      Athens is named after Athena, the ancient goddess of wisdom, and the Parthenon is dedicated to Athena, so one surely must make a pilgrimage to the Acropolis and the Parthenon when one is in Athens. And so it was that I joined thousands of people climbing the stairs to visit these ancient sites. But a day in Athens ought to include more than a visit to a few touristy places.

      A bit of traffic, a healthy portion of delicious Greek food and wine, a few Olympic sites, and mostly, some time with the lovely Greeks is essential for one to know the place. Athens, and Greece as a whole, is an easy place to fall in love with. So too the people. Highly energetic and passionate, Greeks exude the spirit of carpe diem. One must follow their example and seize the day oneself.

      The history buff in me appreciates the historic sites. The stoic in me appreciates the sense of place. The artist, the beauty. It’s surely overcrowded and a bit crazy, but timelessly lovely just the same. To ooze vitality, to be fully alive, this is the Greek way. To experience it was extraordinary, to return is essential.

    • Santorini—Calliste (the Most Beautiful)

      There’s an ancient myth that Santorini was formed when the frisky son of Poseidon, Euphemus, got the daughter of Triton pregnant. Knowing her father would be angry she told Euphemus to collect a lump of soil from the island Anaphe and to throw it in the sea to make another island that she could hide on to give birth to their child. Euphemus named this island Calliste (“he most beautiful island”), and we now call it Santorini. One could easily stick with the original name, for Calliste surely still fits.

      Today Santorini is a tourist destination known for whitewashed buildings, black sand beaches, blue-domed churches and magnificent sunsets. This naturally brings crowds, traffic and worst of all, Instagram poser types. But the place is worth the effort to get there. If you go, it’s best to linger awhile, so book a stay. The people are lovely and gracious, and incredibly, tolerate the crush of tourists quite well.

    • Meeting Marcus Aurelius

      “Does the light of a lamp shine and keep its glow until its fuel is spent? Why shouldn’t your truth, justice, and self-control shine until you are extinguished?” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      I met an old friend in Rome over the weekend. First in his (replica but still impressive) statue at the Palazzo dei Conservatoriin in Rome, then the next day on a walk through the Vatican. Marcus Aurelius was a big deal back in the day. Many of us feel he still is. To encounter statues of him isn’t surprising, but it was surprisingly thrilling. It was like seeing a celebrity out in public—you know they’re just people but you’re still just a wee bit starstruck. So it was for me with Marcus Aurelius.

      The thing is, I view Marcus Aurelius as a kindred spirit of sorts, and not just an ancient mentor. We share the same birthday, so I’m often receptive to what the Emperor has to say. so to go to Rome and not seek him out seemed inappropriate, if not ungrateful. The statue on the Palazzo dei Conservatoriin was an obvious choice, as was a visit to the museum to see the original (not in the cards this trip), but stumbling upon him at the Vatican was a bonus.

      Meditations was Marcus Aurelius’s diary, becoming public after his death. It’s foundational work in Stoicism, and the work that resonates most with me. So meeting a few days after our respective birthday seemed appropriate. Perhaps we’ll meet again one day, but as the Emperor would say, there are no guarantees in this lifetime. But we may shine bright today.

    • To Go to Rome

      You hear a lot about Rome from those who have been there. Nearly all agree it’s a crowded place, too full of tourists and the aggressive hawkers and pickpockets who prey on them. Rome is complicated: like all cities it’s got its share of beautiful and ugliness all right there waiting for you. The layers of history are undeniably present all around, impressing on you that you are simply just one more soul passing through this place.

      And yet we pass through. Rome would be nothing but ruins were it not for the masses of people who live here and visit in such startlingly large numbers. To visit is to feel a part of the hive of humanity. Personal space is ridiculously impossible to find when you seek out the places everyone must go to. Yet we still go, feeling the call, or perhaps simply a fear of missing out.

      If Vienna waits for you, so too does Paris and Istanbul and Amsterdam and Barcelona and yes, Rome. The great cities of Europe aren’t simply waiting for us to grace them with our presence. They’re doing just fine without us, and yet they welcome us when we finally do arrive. I know that every picture or observation I make about Rome has likely already been taken or made, to be repeated again by the soul to follow me. Yet I feel compelled to share them anyway, for having been there.

      To go to Rome is to see what all the fuss is about, and to perpetuate that fuss for those who will follow one day themselves. Rome may not be the center of the universe as it once aspired to be, but it remains an integral part of our imagination. Having been, I want to believe I’ll return again one day. That, I think, is when you know a place has you in its grip. And surely, it has me.

      The Pantheon and lots of company
      Build it and they will come

    • A Trevi Snapshot

      The Trevi Fountain (Fontana di Trevi) is named after the three roads that converge where the fountain sits. It ought to translate into something more, but it’s come to mean quite a bit to those who make the pilgrimage to it. And it is a pilgrimage for tourists. It’s one of the must-see attractions in Rome, and so we did our part as confirmed tourists to visit it first.

      According to Wikipedia, the fountain was “designed by Italian architect Nicola Salvi and completed by Giuseppe Pannini in 1762”. It’s “26.3 metres (86 ft) high and 49.15 metres (161.3 ft) wide”. And it needs to be that big to accommodate the massive crowds that converge on it every day. The Trevi is worth a visit, but be prepared to have a lot of company. Just remember to take a snapshot and throw a coin in to ensure your return one day.

      The Trevi Fountain, with its statues of Oceanus, Abundance and Health.