I feel kinda bad about not having posted anything about my Greek trip anywhere on the net this year, and I have no idea why. But to alleviate the bad feeling, I will now write a quick summary of what I've been doing the past 6 weeks (my photos tell some, but certainly not all of the story!) Because there's absolutely no way of me remembering everything in chronological order, I'll just subdivide as I see fit...
Work
The main reason I was out in Greece this year. Before I went out, I was sure I would find tons of garnets which would help me do pressure studies and so on. About a week in, I realised that this was in fact not the case. Vincci and Dina are pretty much the only two geologists to have found verifiable garnet deposits - I don't trust Eldridge's mystical statement 'garnet mica schist is commonly found where there used to be shales' ... I mean seriously. That sounds as if it came straight out of a textbook - and I saw very limited evidence for either extensive schists or garnet bearing rocks. Anyway, I collected samples of amphibolite, a few schists, some calc-phyllites, metagabbros, diabases and lavas from the Vourinos, and took 3 days in the Pindos with Dina and Annie, where we found significantly greater quantities of schists close to the contact with the ophiolite.
Apart from that, myself and Dina took it upon ourselves to map another area of the Vourinos sole - which turns out to be significantly more complex than first thought. Although ophiolite emplacement was Jurassic in age, reactivation of the ophiolite-adjacent melange (imbricate thrusts of lavas, phyllite and serpentinite) during late-Miocene thrusting (Ghikas, 2006) after deposition of the Tsotyli formation (Vamvaka, 2006) which likely coincided with subaerial exposure of the ophiolite.
For Annie, we spent another couple of hours at the pyroxenite dykes to take orientations - If you've never seen pyroxenes up to a metre long, you should go there - and I also took a couple of samples to see if there were any fluids remaining that I could have a look at. Sitting at the Makedonia restaurant afterwards, we resurrected one of Annie's ideas from 1986, which could explain all of the broad scale structures in the Vourinos in one go - exciting huh?! I would like to take credit for it, as I came up with it outside the restaurant - but as it really was a fairly simple idea and Annie had already used it before, I think that would be extremely wrong of me. Plus, there's always a chance it's wrong ... if it is right, it could completely change the interpretation of the Troodos ophiolite...
Play
Away from work was a LOT of fun! The first day, I think, of proper fun was on the 19th July, when I witnessed my first earthquake. It apparently registered 5.4 on the Richter scale, the largest in the region since the 1995 quake devastated many of the small villages - and left the school we were staying in abandoned. The details (for those who are interested) are below - but it struck in Knidi, only about 20 minutes drive from where we were staying. A 1 second shock was closely followed by a 2 second main shock, which felt as if a large truck was driving over the house. It wasn't scary at all, but definitely something to remember. The other British missed it - they were driving back from the field in the dark, and so wouldn't have felt or seen anything.
20070717_182320, M=5.4, N GreeceAnyway, after that all of us (the German, Italians, and two Americans) except the British went to Deskati for a Panagiri - basically a festival with dancing and everyone sitting out on the platea - with the major of our village. A good evening all round, and I saw a couple of old friends from the previous year - Christina and her mother, who sell sweetcorn there.
Another day saw us in Milia, looking at the largest mastodon tusk ever uncovered - a whole 5m or so long, followed by a quick visit to the local palaeontological museum and a nice meal before getting back early in the morning.
The bazaar beneath Zavordhas monastery was good, as usual - I took a picture up at the monastery, although we were too late to get any Loukoumi (Turkish Delight). I had been invited by Kostas and Christina, but didn't actually see them until we had almost got back down the hill. It was Kostas' first time up to the monastery, despite the fact he was born in the village where we were staying, Paliouria, only about 25 minutes drive away... Anyway, I went back up with them, scrounged a little Halva (not the normal type, but more like an almond jelly ... very VERY good!) and was encouraged by Christina to kiss the skull of Nikanoras, the monk who first built the monastery in goodness knows when. A slightly bizarre experience, I have to admit. Annalisa (one of the Italians) took this opportunity to tell me her woes - Giovanni, the professor organising their part of the trip, is an odd kind of guy who ended up having an affair with Maria, one of his students and about 30 years his junior. Eugh.
Anyway, I digress. We got back down, and set off for Panagia village, where they were holding a panagiri. I took the opportunity to ring home, and then got back to the festival, where Kostas invited me to Deskati for a night out. My first ride on the back of a motorbike later (no helmet, of course) watching Kostas, Christina and Annalisa squeeze onto the back of the other one and we were back in Paliouria for a quick snack, before heading off to Heineken, Tsipouro (mainland Ouzo) and probably some other drinks ... I think there was Vodka in there somewhere. We chatted in a weird mix of Greek, English and Italian and then headed to another bar, where Christina invited me to dance. I don't think I've enjoyed myself quite so much in a long time! We got back to Paliouria at four.
We had other festivals too, plus on another night in Deskati (with Kostas and Christina again, and Ioannis) I had the dubious pleasure of trying Patsas, basically tripe soup, at 3 in the morning. The next day was one of the days with Annie in the Pindos. I didn't feel quite right all day!!
The last panagiri I went to, just with Kostas and one other guy whose name escapes me, was the most traditional, with no Bakouzi - a kind of tribute too to one of the greatest traditional singers, who had died quite recently. The singers, considering the festival was in a tiny village called Paleohori ('Old Village') were apparently some of the best in Greece, and the female singers had sung at all the best clubs in Athens just 5 years earlier. I felt honoured to hear them.
Apart from that, and odd trips to Chromite mines (Xerolivado, Aetoraches) and Portisa gorge (in the Pindos) that was my life until the last few days. Whilst the other students went to visit the dam, I decided to take a trip to Ioannina, a 5 hour round trip from Grevena by bus. I thought I would be able to spend 5 hours there... how wrong I was! When I got in at around 12:30, I queued for tickets for the bus back at 6, only to be told all of them were sold out. I got the last seat back to Grevena that day ... due to leave at 2:15!! So the next 1 hour and 45 minutes was spent first going the wrong way up a main road, asking directions to the fortified citadel, turning round and walking quickly in the sweltering heat to reach it. I bought a couple of postcards and some jewellery for Mum's birthday, and had a quick look in the Byzantine fortifications (where there is a weird mix of museum, monument, and ordinary lived in housing) before walking around the lake front. I found a french car, which I proceeded to stick a note under the windscreen wipers of asking for some photos, as my camera was broken (still waiting on those!) before heading back to the depo. The bus journey back was through chevron-folded molasse, melange and ophiolite sequence, which has apparently not been mapped since the 1930s (note for future work!) so I had plenty to look at, before getting back to the village and spending another evening with Kostas. By now, his family had basically got close to adopting me, and I enjoyed two really nice meals with them... although Christina and her mother left every day at 6pm, when I was normally sitting by the cafe, sipping a 60 cent strong Greek Coffee...
The day after, we went to the Katafigio (lodge) up Mt Vourinos (or, as the locals call it, Bourinos, a pun on the Greek word for thunder) for a picnic with Anna Batsi, Annie, the English, Dina and Thomas. Oh, and Annie's dog, Terry. The strong men amongst us then took it upon ourselves to make it to the top and back in just under three hours... a feat which we made, although not without a small amount of exhaustion! Getting back at 6, we then took the hours drive back to the village, before I went out again, with Kostas and Claus (Greek, but living in Holland) to Karpero, a nice small village with some very nice bars, and a 22 year old barmaid who Kostas encouraged me to have a rather broken conversation with, whose name was Natalia, or something pretty close to that... That, of course, was my last evening in Paliouria, and I retired exhausted!!
The next day was packing, finding out that posting all our samples back home would cost not 190 euros, but 190 pounds (eeek!) and that Annie would have to spend the next day in Kozani stamping and sealing and writing out goodness knows how many release forms so that the samples were not mistaken for archeological samples, or worse, drugs...
A 7 hour coach journey saw us back in Athens, where I spend an uncomfortably hot (33 degrees) night on the balcony of a hotel. The next morning, we had a short and humourous breakfast (one of the eggs, after having been hardboiled, was found by the very nice hotel assistant to be cheeping. Poor girl had been given a rather mature egg, and had finished incubating it in boiling water (after all, with 41 degree temperatures in Athens, there really is no need for a brooding mother!)... luckily it stopped cheeping after about 6 minutes, and never made it out of the shell ... otherwise I have no idea what the girl would have done! The rest of my day before the plane journey was spent climbing Likavittos hill, chatting to some Australians from Perth, then coming back down for a Greek baguette (?!) and large and very hot Greek Coffee (my tongue is still burnt!) and eating it in Syndagma Square, watching people go by (and one guy taking rather a lot of pictures of young boys in the fountain ... I was a little disturbed by this, but the police seemed to be keeping an eye on things...) before hopping on the X95 to the Aerothromio. The flight from Athens to Schiphol was uneventful, but waiting for my plane to Norwich I spotted a guy and his granddaughter who had got on the Athens flight, also waiting for my plane! The girl was only 5, so I spent the next hour or so talking to her in Greek (or attempting to do so) whilst she danced around the seats. A great end to an amazing holiday...!
Of course, all of that work requires a desktop in my room (which I've had for four years, although now with a 'new' hard-drive), and one in my office. But being a greedy person, that wasn't really enough. So, with some of my lovely scholarship money, I decided to get my first laptop. It arrived a week ago today, and I still haven't got over how pretty it is. And easy to use. And fast! For those of you wondering, it's a Sony SR19-XN. I particularly like how Sony have bundled Adobe Standard and Elements for free. Oh, and it has a fingerprint reader. For those who want to look like Bond.
