Ivan Brandon's Blog, page 52
June 26, 2011
santorini (and mykonos, i guess)
MYKONOS
start with mykonos, give it a leg up in a single way: chronology. rather talk about santorini. so: keep in mind things get better after this brief interlude.
the food was on average triple the price of the food we'd eaten in athens + about a third as good. the beaches are nice, if you're into the sort of spring break drunken dancing on your table scene, mykonos is for you.
we stayed in a small hotel called AEOLOS and they were enormously attentive and friendly. that was one of two of the highpoints of this adventure: the second: renting an ATV and riding it up and down the hills of the island. the ways to and from places constituted one of the best times i've ever had. the places themselves? there are better places.
SANTORINI
on the other hand, on every other hand: santorini (thira) was exactly what you'd want out of a greek island. santorini surrounds the volcano that birthed it, an island of volcanic rock from one of the biggest eruptions in recorded history. that volcano has since taken back some of the homeland it created… the hand that giveth covers your house in molten rock. at the red beach, for example, you can lie out on red sand under the carcasses of the homes the volcano swallowed in one of its later outbursts.
you can see the volcano from almost anywhere. when we get there, we stare out at it to excess, through a sun that sets in a kind of red i've never seen. a kind of red my camera doesn't even know how to process. we stare until the wind picks up and we realize it's time to sleep.
we sleep in a cave, humid and cold. we sleep spectacularly.
the food here is great. fresh and creative. we eat tomato fritters and mussels and octopus. we dip everything in olive oil, every place we go we drink house wine that varies between 2 bucks and five for a jug. bottles of water. bread. yogurt. i find a gyro place so good i take my last bite and order another round like it's a beer.
we rent a car and drive to red sand and black. there is no house music anywhere. fresh fish, fried cheese. we climb the mountain to pyrgos, i drive stick up a hill and surprisingly never get stuck or hit by a van. above the city there are doors on almost everything. some that seem to lead to nowhere.
at a restaurant, the owner asks me to sign a note to his daughter, to encourage her to seek out a life in art. on the back of a business card, i write: "be great". she's in the place for it.
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twitter recap 2011-06-26
so weird to go out, spend a whole day seeing a new place and when you get back the internet's just waking up. good morning, internet. #
first order of new business, NYC: maybe we can do away with the phrase "gaymarry"? let's just call marriage "marriage". #
uploading penultimate flickr batch. in that tomorrow is our (sad face emoticon) last day abroad. it'll be spent in ephesus. #
this is probably up there with the craziest places i've ever seen http://t.co/FRznanp #
alright, goodnight internet. last day in asia tomorrow. then: finally home. #
LAST DAY ON THE, uh, ROAD. today, among other things, the temple of artemis at ephesus. tomorrow: my own bed. #
FINAL cappadocia picture taken just now http://t.co/EKgYzSZ #
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June 25, 2011
twitter recap 2011-06-25
cars 2 may be the second pixar movie ever that i didn't see in the theater (guess what the first was) http://t.co/UtHAuIV #
istanbul ASR airport win: free internet and also bonus points for having an arby's and ignoring it http://t.co/cBeYPSI #
kayseri airport fail: man standing directly over my shoulder at urinal, sighing and doing peepee dance. #
uploading 100 million pics of istanbul. quickly amassing another million of cappadocia. PS: now i am in asia #lookatthat http://t.co/QM0eBxw #
"In honor of the upcoming SGT. ROCK & THE MEN OF WAR, here are @IvanBrandon's 5 favorite war stories. #
30ish pictures to go & then i'm pretty much up to date on flickr, through istanbul. here's the enormous blue mosque http://t.co/EETnHG3 #
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June 24, 2011
twitter recap 2011-06-24
hooka and backgammon. what more does a cafe need? http://t.co/mOyRSks #
with kristyn & @ycinar. this is my view, right now, drinking turkish beer http://t.co/Bc6gN8r #
ALSO: wish @ycinar a happy birthday. i'm trying to wish it with beer, but he drinks slow. #istanbul #
whoa it is also my oldest and youngest friend @beckycloonan's birthday. happy birthday, lady. #
did an impromptu signing today at @goncizgiroman in istanbul. super hip comic shop, really impressive. comic pros: GO. #
turkey. it's not for turkeys. #sorry #
alright: packing, then maybe another efes and then off to capadoccia in the morning. i'll be back one day, istanbul. #
kristyn just googled the words "cutest kittens". #
bye, istanbul. you're fantastic. #
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June 23, 2011
twitter recap 2011-06-23
you can just make out the pretty stuff over the trees #onmyway http://t.co/9S9DswU #
name idea for a turkish catering company: the döner party #
seriously i've been in tiny mountain villages that were easier to navigate on google maps. #
whoa: delcourt bought soleil?! #
legs near broken from all day walking: tonight going to a local dinner spot. but tomorrow we shall try to cross over to the asian side. #
in the meantime, courtesy of @theblairbutler's advice: here's MEDUSA, internet. FOR YOU. http://t.co/cjw06Eb #
fantastic izgara köfte (meatballs) at sultanahmet köftecisi on the recommendation of @MrJamesHowlett thanks! #istanbul http://t.co/sxTckxG #
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June 22, 2011
twitter recap 2011-06-22
in athens,waiting on plane to istanbul. according to harpers i've been out of the country long enough to have bounced 6 weekly emails #
i don't have a lot of use for partisanship, but @McCainBlogette has some decent advice for her party http://t.co/c0FjVPT #
how can writers hope to matter in this world when none of us are half as interesting as @ericcanete? #
to save myself some embarrassment, this time i looked up turkey's real name before we got there. türkiye. not as far off as i'd've guessed. #
strange to me that everything in this airport is in english, incl. the logo. nowhere the greek words for greece/athens http://t.co/EWXVtIj #
bye greece! #
HELLO, ISTANBUL. and… wow. #
let's talk about athens, internet. or just look at the pictures. http://ivanbrandon.com/athens-riots-and-food/ #
near as i can tell: everything in istanbul is just open, perpetually. it is 10pm and it might as well be noon out there. #
also, oddly: istanbul has the same main area code as NYC. #
straight to turkish pizza+beer. & if you're looking for a turkish version of 'holding out for a hero', ajda pekkan made 1 for you #shazam #
oh THERE's that throbbing pain. #stillbetterthanbroken #
whoa, i did not know i had so many turkish followers. hi there. your country's really stunning. #
anybody got a sweet tooth? http://t.co/lUMiYN8 http://t.co/XkjJPz1 #
alright: off to bed. goodnight, istanbul. goodnight, internet. #
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June 21, 2011
twitter recap 2011-06-21
fratzeskos fish tavern http://t.co/afxGSil #
we were defeated by this http://t.co/BpwvO3v #
"they caught up and set out each day in the dark before the day yet was and they ate cold meat and biscuit and made no fire." #
on the red beach: topless woman decided to camp directly in front of ruins. then acted weird at all the cameras. #maybedontsitthere #
happy belated father's day to my mom, the only dad a guy could ever want. #
i spent monday on a black sand beach eating fresh fish and drinking vodka. #garfieldwasmistaken #
super behind at site updates & posting photos. really great stuff today. red beach faces a village devoured by lava. surreal. #
"Lots of seemingly capricious and unfair factors in comics career success. Concentrate on what you can control: getting better."-@philhester #
look: it's my last night in greece. i may have been drinking. i dunno if i can drink in istanbul, so: just in case. #
alright: here's the crazy village eaten by the volcano. http://t.co/9XMv5fp http://t.co/yAWG5VT http://t.co/gU0nxML #
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athens (feat. riots + food)
we left paris really early. too early. after a month, it'd started to stick. half asleep in the taxi, to ORLY airport, where i'd never been. sleeping halfway, trying to read… landing in athens.
in the car, on the way: it doesn't look like any given thing. i've been a lot of places, and it doesn't look like any of them. but it feels it. it feels like NY in the 80s. there's not a surface in this place that isn't marked up. through the streets, the bakers in carts, the junkies drag along in daylight, sleeping halfway…
athens has seen better times. but it's also seen worse. you get a lot from a place that isn't at its best. you get to see what a place IS when it's got nothing to hide behind. athens is a real city. ornate in all the wrong ways, the ways i like. at our hotel, we're surrounded by flyers, pasted and taped over others. physical things or ideas, sold on every surface. protest, shouted out in paint. we walk out toward the city's center, in daylight, the eyes of the city following us like shadows through shifting sunlight. we eat more and better than we have any right. meat and vegetable of every kind, yogurt, bread.
here's the thing: in NY, they serve gyros made of LAMB, but not here.
backing up a bit: the first thing i ask when i see my friend vasilis, 2 years later than the last time… out of nowhere i blurt out- what do you call greece in GREEK. it never occurred to me, and suddenly it does… "greece" doesn't sound very greek.
elláda, he says. how is it possible this country has a real name i've never heard? i struggled just now, writing the name above, of athens, which is really athína. i wonder why some places get to keep their names and other places the world has a nickname for, more familiar than reality. what to call it? what they call it? what you'll all understand?
a little research shows the name "greece", maybe came originally from the illirians, who later colonized italy. it occurs to me that maybe gyros met the world a similar way, like a game of telephone. maybe through turkish immigrants… in greece they're made of pork. why would pork become lamb except filtered through a muslim culture? maybe NY's greek restaurants aren't all that greek. (my evidence is circumstantial but with ouzo it works for me.)
and the pork… i can't express how much better it makes the thing. spinning there, behind the counter… the pork glistens like a trophy. not like the american lamb, dry, charred (which works in a pinch, late at night, don't get me wrong).
vasilis texts me at 2 in the afternoon. he's just now awake, he's moving, he says: "from ghetto to less-ghetto". he'll see us later, he has a place in mind, exarchia. vasilis asks if we'll meet him there. he says 10, we tell him we're due to be up at 6am. our verbal compromise: 9:30.
the internet says exarchia's a place where the police won't go unless they have to. their presence, in recent past, leads to riots. there was a 15 year old boy who died. there's a lot that's happened in this place.
a couple years back, because of all of this: the US government put out a warning: american citizens should avoid this place. this all centers around exarchia square… in one piece, a man talks about being bitten by a dog. cherry on top.
but that's not the funny part. we steel ourselves, we walk out to find this place: and we realize we're IN it. we're staying in exarchia. we've been walking up and down the place all day.
the square's a block from our hotel. and in the center you can see what it is, you can see the tension. but the circumference is coffee and terrible music. commerce. in all the countries i've been, i've never seen such a rough patch of land enmeshed so thoroughly with capitalism. lounges, pizza. somewhere: foreigner is blasting from a bar.
vasilis shows up with norzine a little after 10:30. i drink a bottle of ouzo, watching the chemical reaction as the ice dissolves in tendrils, hanging in the glass like a jellyfish. i fall and hurt my leg worse than ever. both sides swollen and black. we talk about everything… he's drawn a lot more than i'd have guessed. a lot more than most.
his passion's as infectious as his frustration. he's got a lot of things to say on paper. he's impatient with the paper itself. with the printers. with the process.
we spend the next day at the ruins. i think all the wrong things. i take a lot of pictures, inch by inch, most of which i hate. my threadbare tigers, the soles rubbed bare, slip and slide on the marble. my leg throbs, a dull pain growing underneath.
when we get back to the hotel, there's a warning: the city's on strike. we're not leaving in the morning. we're stuck in athens. there's no one to take us out of this place. more than one person says: plan to stay there a while. says vasilis: you may see some shit, tomorrow.
the protests start a block from our bed. they're 10 blocks gone before they grow into riots. the teargas (israeli, we're told) fills every picture all over the world. on every corner of this neighborhood, riot cops with helmets and shields. down the street, there are handmade flaming barricades, to keep them out.
the tension's in the air like weather. shifty eyes. no one looks happy. everyone looks ready for something worse.
down the street we walk into a store where a smiling old man imports cheese and wine and goods from crete. he serves us shots, cheese, he smiles like no one else we'll see that day. he won't accept payment. we don't understand what he's saying.
we spend the night looking at art, eating pastries, sitting in a new apartment, forbidden from the balcony. i get to see all the new art vasilis has produced. one thing's called ELECTRONOMICON. vasilis wins.
they give us pastries for our trip. in the morning we're loaded onto a ferry and we sleep all the way to mykonos.
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June 20, 2011
twitter recap 2011-06-20
dunno if that was a scam, but i am treating it as one. plus i'm not spending $75 on a mini. #
we are on kamari beach, drinkin yr beer & eatin yr octopus http://t.co/EEb9MOC http://t.co/SRKwwXm http://t.co/gQNBvUB #
happy father's day to all my friends who are dads. #
this adventure is 80% over. day after tomorrow we get to the last country on our journey. #
so weird to root against others. i really don't get it even a little. #
watching grease in greece http://t.co/nOKJrSi #
the picture i liked most today + this is maybe the picture i'm happiest with in all the ones i took in greece http://t.co/VOo5SnQ #
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June 19, 2011
twitter recap 2011-06-19
for my non-american friends: http://t.co/EdHoELY #
i think tomorrow if i have internet i will finally post about athens. #
there is a man in this lobby asking the greek man if he speaks spanish. but it is clear if you speak spanish that this man doesn't either. #
ok, this is getting ridiculous http://t.co/l3OPbcK #
also for the all but 122 of you who have not seen my directorial debut: here it is: FOR YOU. http://t.co/e7PxQgj #
this is where i am http://t.co/IPMvOb2 #
off to santorini. #
hello, santorini. also i am staying in a cave. #
dear @EricCanete this is santorini: (taken just now for you) http://t.co/2VC6tPC http://t.co/nvzRIVN #
hey @andydiggle and @tomfowlerbug: santorini volcano tour: worth it? the internet has mixed opinions. #
from my bedroom i can see a volcano. that's a first. http://t.co/v8nJaSA #
restaurant idea: i pita the fool #
santorini from POV of shitty iphone http://t.co/3djPocQ #
8 buck wine classytown, population 2 http://t.co/yPw2zJl http://t.co/kpoWeuh #
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