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TO KORINTHOS WITH A SMALL DETOUR

oh yes, there would be a lot to tell about Greece, not so much about the country, much more about the strange story that happened to me there. it was the weirdesd thing I ever went through, it was funny, it was mad it was very very exciting.

let me begin with the beginning: I came to Athens from Patras, by bus; not that I had planned to arrive there that day; rather I wanted to stop in Korinthos, for which I also had bought the ticket. but something went wrong, I don't remember any stop on the way from Patras to Athens, perhaps there was one and I just missed it, but perhaps there simply was none and you would have had to tell the driver to let you out or something like that, I don't know, I never asked and Athens for me was as fine as Korinthos would have been; so I didn't really complain when I got out of the bus and accepted that fate had brought me to the Greek capital a bit earlier than planned.

as I said elsewhere, I didn't like this city at the beginning; not a big surprise when you see where I was put by the bus, the surrounding of the busstation really is the worst part of this town. on my search for a place where to stay I met a funny looking guy in the street, he was wearing strange clothes and had a typical Irish face, well, he told me he WAS Irish and that it was one of those national holidays of Ireland that day (Orange day, is it? I don't know) and that was why he was clothed so funnily; I asked him if he knew anything about the lodgings in Athens and he just pointed down the road and said: go there, it's the best place in town, the youth hostel in the Victor Hugo street. so I went and 10 minutes later I had a room with 3 other guys; the following days I walked and I walked and I walked ...
the acropolis, the zeus-temple, the stadium, the plaka, monasteraki, the cathedral, well the usual tourist-stuff - the things that "you must have seen", when I had seen "it all" I decided to go to Korinthos;

so I bought me a ticket and got into the bus, this time I managed to get out at the right place, at the new city of Korinthos. I walked to the old Korinthos, which is about 7 km from there and put up my tent at the foot of a hill, the Akrokorinthos.
For one week I stayed in my tent completely alone, talking to nobody, the only exception when asking for something at the shops down in the village; I was plucking fresh oranges from the trees that were grown in plantations all around and was getting my water from a well nearby.

when I came back to Athens, I was so glad to see people again, I was talking all day, met a lot of nice travellers and had an unforgettable experience with Greek cookies, in fact this was the weirdest thing that ever happened to me

I wrote about it on my <a href="http://www.virtualtourist.com/m/.171074/article/1128/15/?s=U"><h3>Athens-Travelogue</h3></a>

<center><h2><font color="#cc6600">SOME SURVIVAL TIPS</font></h2></center>
(if you are on the search for some more useful material on that topic you might try the <a href="http://www.wilderness-survival.net/chp2.php" target="_blank">wilderness-survival site</a>, though I am not too sure if you wouldn't learn more if you read the following chapters ;-)

this is my little guidebook on how to make your life not too easy when camping for the first time;
let's start with the elementary lesson:

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LESSON 1: build your tent

I had bought my tent only some days before in Patras, and now I was there in Korinthos to put it up for the first time. It was somewhere near Akrokorinthos, at the foot of this hill, where you have the remnants of the ancient fortress; it had already grown dark while I had been on the walk from new to old Korinthos. Now I could hardly see my hands before my eyes. I was tired and fighting with this tent; which stick to put where? with my small maglite between the teeth (which caused the spotlight to dance around happily) I finally managed to built me a small home for the night. I was really tired then, I had little trouble to fall asleep at once. So it was only the next morning that I should find out where and how I had built my tent: I was still a bit tired and through halfopened eyes examined the interior of the tent. The first thing that struck me: why the hell was I lying so close to the wall of the tent? I tried to move away from it, to the centre of the tent, but as soon as I was there some magical power was rolling me back to where I had come from. Well even with my mind not on its heights that early in the morning I very quickly found the culprit for this strange phenomenon: gravitation. Half an hour later I was ready to greet the morning sun, stepped outside and was astonished that I hadn't rolled down the hill together with my tent during the night.
I decided to give the tent-building business another try under more favorable conditions later that day and dismantled it for the time being ...

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LESSON 2: cook your food

If you are camping, out there, nothing but nature around you; you sleep on hard ground, you wash your face at a fountain or a river, you hang your clothes on the branch of a tree ... it would just not be the right thing to do, to go down to the next village, get a table at the restaurant and order that Souvlaki. No. If you camp, you cook your own food. You go to the local market (because you don't want to wait for a rabbit to come by and die out of mercy for your grim hunger ...) and you buy, let's say, half a kilo of chicken, don't ask me why it has to be chicken; probably because it was the first word that entered my head when it was my turn to order something at the butcher's; and then: 'Koutopoulo' was about the only edible thing in the universe of my limited Greek vocabulary.

So I brought a 'Koutopoulo' back to my tent that glorious day which had been chosen to become the 'day when I tried to cook chicken on a campfire'. Now I am sure it is possible - by applying some elaborate technique or whatever - to roast a whole chicken over an ordinary campfire. But one thing I learnt that afternoon, is: you don't do it by throwing the chicken into the fire after covering it with tin foil. At first sight this might seem to be THE idea. But come back after 15 minutes or so and you'll find there is something essentially wrong with that recipe. When I opened the cover to finally earn the fruits of my efforts, I was a bit puzzled. The skin of the 'Koutopoulo' had turned a shade darker than I would have expected. 'Anyway' I thought, 'at least it will be well done; all I have to do is scratch away that carcinogenic stuff'. After doing this I was really ready for dinner. I had been running around all day between the ruins of Akrokorinth, climbing up and down the hills. I had been at the market to buy the chicken, had collected wood to make the fire, now was the time to get something between my ribs. As I impatiently try to get a slice off the thing I see it with terror: while the chicken had been burnt on the outside, the rest of it had not been too impressed by the heat of my campfire; it was not raw any more, but very close to it. And I? Was close to a nervous breakdown, not knowing wether to take the whole thing and teach it to fly again, for a last time - down the hill into the thicket of oblivion; Hunger commanded there had to be another way to deal with this. So I finally sliced it up into small pieces, covered those with the tin foil and put them back to the fire. In the end I wouldn't say I enjoyed the meal, but let's say I survived my first campfire-cooking-experience, though slightly traumatized by the chicken's bold resistance.

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LESSON 3: explore the surroundings

once you have learnt how to build your tent, and how to take care of your stomach's interests, it is now time to do something for your mind; go and explore the spot where you have planted your mobile home. Who would be so lazy and buy a map or try to get a look onto one in a tourist information centre? The real adventurous spirit sets out to discover a world of his own.
So I did. It was the morning after this night, that had seen me fighting with my tent. It was my first day camping at the hill of Akrokorinth. It was one day of seven, but as I didn't know how long I would stay there, it was clear that I had to see everything now and immediately. I had not got up too early. Now I quickly removed my tent from the disadvantageous piece of slope where I had put it the night before. After getting my things back into the rucksack the question was: what to do with all that stuff, for sure I didn't want to run around with a 20 kilo backpack on my shoulders. Since I had not seen anybody around my place so far, I decided that it was not too big a risk to hide the rucksack behind some bushes. While doing so I had the uneasy feeling that my hiding place might perhaps be a bit too good: it could cause even myself trouble to ever find it again if I didn't take care. I stood there for at least 10 minutes to burn the image of the landscape into my memory before I left for the real task: Akrokorinth was waiting.
The fortress was high up there on the hill. From my side I could only see a small stretch of partly caved-in walls. It never occurred to me that somewhere there ought to be a path or even a street leading to this touristic attraction. The shortest way is the right way I told myself and boldly walked up the hill. I had taken only the most necessary things, a day-pack so to speak; even though I soon found myself covered in sweat, panting heavily. I took a rest and looked up again. The closer I got to the walls the steeper the hill seemed to get. In the end - for the last 100 meters or so - I had to use both hands and was actually climbing on hard rock. Luckily enough there was no one around on the other side of the wall when I got over it, I sure would have scared the hell out of them, appearing all of a sudden on top of that fortress wall, out of breath as if some ancient army had been chasing me up the hill ...
Now within those walls I could see that there was not much more to the Korinth-version of the Acropolis. Grass had covered the ruins of what was once a small city of it's own. Here and there you could still see or guess where houses must have been. The walls encompass quite some area and so I strolled around and also met some fellow tourists. They didn't look as exhausted as myself, so I got the suspicion that there could be an easier way up there. I asked for the shortest way down to Old-Korinthos and earned some strange looks, as if they wanted to say:"you should know, good boy, or did a helicopter put you here?". Well I didn't care, just followed the direction they were pointing to and very soon found myself at a kind of gate or big door, which must be the official entrance to the site. I walked through it and from there a wellmaintained road led me directly to the village of Old-Korinth.

What do we learn from this small exercise? - Planning your adventures can save you a lot of energy and nerves, but then: it might well turn them from adventures into sightseeing, which would be a pity.