Matts Meanderings

Well, its 3am, I should be heading to bed, and so, seeing I've just been asked (again) why its called OneRoundPebble, I thought I might espouse my views on this most pertinent of topics.

As I'm sure you can see, I'm in full possession of my faculties, and make this deposition of my own free will.

Or Something Like That^TM.

Anyway, Paul and I used to have a website, called fishandmatt.com. This worked for a while, and let us do all sorts of things that non-computer nerds wouldn't even dream of doing. And, before you ask, no, it didn't involve any of this, this, that, the other thing, nor any hamster rituals.

Moving right along. Seeing I was going to go overseas, and I wanted somewhere to put my blog (this thing that you're reading now), and my photos, and I wanted to tell everyone where to find it, and also that I'd been thinking for a while that fishandmatt.com just sounded dodgy, I made the earth shattering decision to do something about it. Oh, and there was the vague possibility that Andrew/Biscuit was going to put some stuff up there, so it wouldn't have made much sense.

So, after many coffees, many sleepless nights, many domain name searches, and the occasional considered thought, I came up with OneRoundPebble. Its got that kind of ring to it that makes it memorable, different, and just the right level of coolness that I was looking for.

So that, my friends is why its called OneRoundPebble.com.

PS - anybody who wishes to complain about the content of this post, and the slanderous possibility that it doesn't actually answer the question, should get their lawyer to contact mine.

Okay, seeing I'm getting bored about writing about Greece, and I'm going to pretend/assume that you're bored hearing about Greece, I think we're all glad that this is going to be the last post about Greece.

Anyway, after heading back from Meteora, and staying in our lovely HI hostel in Athens (cheap, but not the nicest - apparently the Athens Backpackers is better), we managed to meet up with some random strangers, who invited us out on a bit of the touristy thing the next day. We ended up seeing the changing of the guard at Parliament House (they march funny, and look funny ). Actually found it was more interesting than the one at Buckingham palace. The guy that took us down there had lived in Greece for a long time, and knew a lot of background about it - for example, they wear "skirts" that have 400 folds, one for each of the 400 years of Turkish occupation, and the fluffy pompoms on their feet used to hide knives.

After that, we headed to the Olympic stadium, and saw the end of a 42km marathon, which had people in it that were staying in our hostel. Cool bit was when superman turned up - he was a real sporting type, and not using his super-human abilities. We also met with Daranee and Kent, some Adelaide kids that coincidentally enough, I caught up with last Friday.

Then, we bundled off on the bus to the airport, fretting that we were going to be late, then realised that we had the wrong time, and were two hours early... Jumped on a plane to Berlin, and slept in the deserted Schoenefeld airport, which was an "interesting" experience... One more "odd location I've slept while travelling" that I can add to the list.

How's this for a promotional shot for easyJet?

And then, it was on to France, which is a whole new topic for a whole series of posts. Oh, and i think this makes the date the 7th of November.

Meteora is a small place in the north west of Greece, one that I'd never heard of until I'd arrived there. Its famous (relatively) for its monasteries. The thing is, the monasteries themselves aren't that exciting, its more the location - they're stuck up on the top of big rocky towers. There used to be 24 of them, but they've slowly closed down, and so now there's only 6 remaining.

Varlaam Monastery, Meteora

In recent years, they've made them lots more accessible, but in the good ol' days, the only way you could get up there was via a rope basket, hauled up by the monks. A hand-woven rope basket... Some travel writer, who wrote his travel book roughly a thousand years ago (I cant remember who, or when exactly), wrote that he'd heard a rumour that they only replaced the rope basket when it broke...

But generally, it was a pretty cool place to go - the monasteries weren't that exciting, but it was still worthwhile. The biggest monastery, Megalou Meteorou, had a charnel house in it, full of skulls, which was somewhat disconcerting, especially in a monastery. Was interesting to see some of how the monks lived (and some still live). But, its turned into a bit of a tourist thing now, so the monks go off and do their stuff separately, and ignore the tourists. Its a stop on the Japanese bus tour, so it got kinda crowded at times. Oh, and ladies weren't allowed to wear pantaloons, shorts or short sleeve dresses. So, Amy had to put on a wraparound skirt over her jeans... He he he...

So, all in all, a pretty cool place to go visit, but not really worth staying very long. Oh, and just to put this in the wrong order, back to the start, about the train ride to Meteora (Kalambaka to be precise): It was about a 5 and a half hour trip, and it was a overnight train, so not much sleep, then arriving in a new town, with no accommodation, at 5.30am... Pretty painful. We ended up laying down on the floor in the station waiting room, and sleeping for a few extra hours - remarkably good sleep on such a hard floor, in such an odd location.

From Meteora, we were planning on hiring a car, and heading up to the Vikos Gorge, which is supposed to be pretty darn cool. Only problem was that we had a bit of trouble trying to find a place to hire said car. We eventually found one in a nearby town, and after haggling a bit, headed on over there to hire it. All well and good, until I pulled out my Australian license, and then it all went downhill. Apparently thats not valid in Greece. I needed an international license. Doh! Seeing places were pretty expensive in this other town (the cheapest place to stay was A) a 'pay by the hour' hotel, and B) more than we wanted to pay anyway), we headed back to Kalambaka, which turned out to be a good idea, as we managed to run into four girls (3 Germans and a Canadian) who were in learning Greek, and had headed over to Meteora for the weekend. Went out to dinner with them, and then ended up having a few drinks back at the hotel. Pretty fun .

And then, once again, it was back to our friendly HI hostel in Athens. The getting there was a bit more exciting this time, as we got kicked off the train for having the wrong tickets... At least we didn't get a fine .

Headed off, and caught a bus to Nafplia at a time that was waaay too early... (Grrr - travel buddies that are morning people...)

Nafplia is a kinda central town in the Peloponnese area, which is sort of a really big attached island, down in the south west of Greece. The plan was to use it as a base to explore the rest of the area. On the bus, we met a pretty cool American - Kevin, who was heading to the same place.

Due to one of the lovely curses I live with, I ended up with a lovely migraine, and slept the day away. Apparently I missed out on a good day of exploring the town, but, well, thems the breaks.

But, Nafplia is a pretty cool place. Its sort of on a point, between a couple of bays. Quite a nice place, with quite a few nice restaurants there. Its also got a pretty cool fortress on a hill above the town, which they light up at night. Looks pretty cool.

The fortress at Nafplia, which they light up every night. Pretty darn cool.

So, we headed up, and climbed lots of steps up to this fortress, and spent the morning exploring. Pretty cool. Quite sad, but I spent the time while I was exploring listening to the DotNetRocks internet radio talk show. But, well, I’m a computer nerd, so what can you expect?

We also headed out to a place called Epiduras, which has a really cool, pretty well preserved amphitheatre. The cool thing is the acoustics. There’s a round stone, about a foot across, in the dead centre of the amphitheatre, and if you stand there, and talk normally, you get an echo of yourself, so, it’s a natural fold-back setup. Move a foot to the right, and it stops. Very freaky, but cool. Those builders knew what they were doing.

Other than the cool amphitheatre, there was lots and lots and lots and lots and lots (et al) ruins. They weren’t even buildings. Just ruins. Big blocks of stone, being quite lazy, sitting back, and enjoying the sun. Apparently the site used to be a “health spa”, where they practiced all sorts of healing type things. Kinda interesting.

But, after wandering around all those terribly exciting ruins, in the hot sun, we went and found some dinner, and a pretty cool bar – it had some very weird stuff in it, from old tv’s (still displaying logos), to things on wires and motors that ran around the roof. Was very cool. He even had a visitors book that we all got to write in. Only slightly disconcerting thing was when the Ajax was sitting up on the shelf with the alcohol…

Other than that, I was planning on heading down to Olympia, as its got the Temple of Zeus, which was one of the ancient wonders of the world. But, the whole thing seemed like too much effort, so I thought stuff it, and slept in instead. Then, once again, it was back to Athens, stopping briefly in our friendly HI hostel to say hi, before heading off to catch the midnight train to Meteora, which is definitely a topic for another blog entry (cos it was way cool).