Dave Fox's Outbursts!

One Ear, Hold the Mustard

Four men were arrested last weekend on the Greek island of Crete after a fight over a soccer match concluded with one man biting off part of another man's ear.

According to the Associated Press, the fight erupted when a group of Bulgarians started cheering on Turkey in the match against Greece. When a Greek businessman tried to break up the fight, one of his own countrymen chomped down on his ear.

Hmmm... if this had been in America, I would have assumed the man who bit the ear off was just looking for a safe alternative to the stadium hotdogs.

The Cat Who Ate Nafplio

Nafplio, Greece
Gyrometer: 20

The hugest cat in the world just waddled under my hotel balcony. In this nation rife with scrawny strays, I am feeling traumatized by the sight.

The cat was approximately the size of me at age seven. It strutted determinedly down the road, turning right at a cement staircase that leads into the center of town. I am worried. I am wondering how this cat could have gotten so huge, and the only answer I can come up with is it must be eating the other cats.

The streets of every Greek village are crawling with felines. Many people refer to them as “wild” though they are actually quite tame in most cases. Tourists sometimes pet them and even pick them up.

I refrain from this practice because my love for kitties is superceded by my phobia of rabies. I have, however, been known to toss the cats bits of chicken souvlaki when restaurant owners aren't looking.

At my birthday celebration, which you forgot about, in the village of Kardamili a few days ago, a young kitten crashed the party and made repeated attempts to get to the tzatziki. Tzatziki is a yogurt-cucumber-garlic dip. It hardly seemed like anything a cat should or would ever want to eat. So we kept the tzatziki away from the infiltrator, but a few bottles of Mythos beer later, our guard was down, and the next thing we knew, he had his front paws on the table and his tongue deep in the tzatziki.

Figuring that his other dietary option was the lizards in the nearby hills, we decided the tzatziki wouldn’t do him any harm. And since he had now drooled all over it, we decided not to fight him for it. These kitties live tough lives and, we hoped, develop iron-clad stomach linings.

But back to the fat cat. Here’s the thing: Greece has a population of approximately 10.9 million people and 28.3 quadzillion stray cats. The cats eek out an existence dining on the aforementioned lizards, other small creatures, and table scraps from human slaves like me. They get by, but they never get as big as the Cat Who Ate Nafplio, which sauntered past a few minutes ago. I can’t confirm for sure what he’s been eating, but I sense it isn’t just gyros, and I don’t think Atkins is going to do him any good.

Prehistoric Porn

Athens, Greece
Gyrometer: 15

Erotic art is an important part of many civilizations’ history, and Greece is no exception. One artifact at the National Museum here in Athens is a small statue of a man engaged in an act of heartfelt and sensual passion with somebody he loves very much – himself.

Okay, so quit your snickering. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, in fact, if you give me about 27 beers, I might actually admit myself to having experimented with such activity myself one time when I was 14. But I didn’t inhale, okay, so spare me your morality lectures.

Anyway, we’re all adults here, unless you are not an adult, in which case stop reading this right now or you will go blind. The point is: displaying a statue of this nature helps us understand the thinking of ancient times in regard to sexuality and/or leisure activities. For anthological purposes, it is important to put things like this in museums. The tricky part is that the National Museum in Greece is excellently laid out, with helpful descriptions in both Greek and English of what you are looking at. Somebody had to write and translate a description of what this statue is doing to himself.

If I had that job, I would probably write something like, “Duh! What does it look like he’s doing?!” But the Greeks are more refined than me, and wrote the following English translation of this man in his moment of largeness:

“Figure of a robust man with direct gaze and manly bearing at a moment of action.”

Yes, the Greeks handle these delicate matters sensitively, but apparently the rest of the world is a bunch of perverts. Photography is allowed in most Greek museums; however, standing next to a statue and having your picture taken is prohibited. This is because tourists have been seen... ummm... how can I put this? Tourists have been doing naughty things to naked statues, which has led the Greek government to outlaw posing beside them.

The Balcophone

Spetses, Greece
Gyrometer: 13

In an attempt to cope with the aforementioned technology crisis, David (the lead tour guide) and I have resorted to yelling across to each other from our hotel balconies. When David needs to talk to me, he stands on his balcony and yells, “Dave!” until I wake up from my nap.

I have named this communication method the balcophone. It seems to be more effective than the telephone. I am now stocking up on water balloons for when the balcomarketers start calling.

The Meltdown Continues

Gythio, Greece
Gyrometer: 8

I don’t mean to sound alarmist, but I think the world might be coming to an end. I wrote a few days ago about how all of my personal technology seems to be crashing and burning. This did not worry me in a Doomsday kind of a way until a few minutes ago.

I was laying in bed in my hotel, watching a bad American movie subtitled on Greek television, when a much more basic technological meltdown occurred. Not a computer crash or a mobile phone with no signal, but... BLAMMO! Just as a lengthy commercial break was ending, all of the power in town went out.

I am currently writing this in my journal on my hotel balcony, using the flashlight on my cell phone to light my note pad. (My telephone will not make phone calls, but at least it’s handy in a power failure.)

The entire town of Gythio appears to be blacked out, except for one restaurant directly below my window, which has fired up a noisy, gas-powered generator so they can keep cooking their octopus.

“You didn’t happen to bring a noisy, gas-powered generator with you, did you?" I asked a tour member with an adjoining balcony. Alas, he did not. It was not on the packing list we sent him before the tour.

Now sirens are blaring in the street below. Fire engines and police cars are zooming by. I am scanning the heavens for flying saucers.

The logical thing to do when plunged into darkness at this time of night would be to go to sleep, but between the sirens, the generator, and the pending destruction of our planet, that seems kind of futile.

Protection for Your Funny Bone

Gythio, Greece
Gyrometer: 7

On the road through the Mani Peninsula this afternoon, we passed a common sight: a man on a motorcycle with a helmet dangling from his elbow. David Willett, the lead tour guide, who is also a former long-time editor for Lonely Planet: Greece, explained this phenomenon.

Greek law requires motorcyclists to wear a helmet at all times. If they don’t, they can be fined. But the law does not specify which part of the body the helmet must be worn on. Many people here have taken to wearing their helmets on their elbows.

Be Careful What You Bargain For

Olympia, Greece
Gyrometer: 7

One of the people in my tour group was very excited the other night. In Delphi, she had bargained hard for a discounted price on two guidebooks to the town. She thought she had gotten a great bargain. Later on she realized... both of the books were in Greek.

Giorgos the Worm

Langadia, Greece
Gyrometer: 7

My tour mascot for a few hours this morning was a worm. I named him Giorgos.

Giorgos crawled under the door of my hotel room early this morning just as I was crawling out of bed. He wandered around the tile floor while I brushed my teeth and was waiting for me outside the bathroom door, wagging his tail as I emerged.

Giorgos seemed like a happy worm, unlike the room's previous mascot, Dimitri. Dimitri was a scorpion. I say "was" because by the time I arrived at the hotel last night, he had been flattened underneath a desk, apparently by a previous tennant.

What puzzles me is: how and why did Giorgos and Dimitri come to my hotel room in the first place? Langadia is a tiny Peloponnesian village, perched precipitously on a steep mountain -- okay terrain, I suppose, for a worm or a scorpion, but my room was on the third floor. How did they get there? Did they crawl up through the pipes or take the elevator? Dimitri was unfortunately in no shape to answer that question, and when I asked Giorgos, he didn't answer either. I don't think he understood my English.

Technology Bites

Athens, Greece
Gyrometer: 6

Nothing seems to work anymore. Nothing.

My mini computer manufactured by Dell, the most incompitent company in the universe, has crashed again, just like it did in Italy two months ago. Again, all of my data is gone and my Internet connection is dead. I am now blogging by hand -- literally -- writing in a notebook with a pencil and entering my throughts at cybercafes when opportunities arise. I imagine this is a little bit how computers worked in the 19th century.

Faced with a travel emergency when I arrived in Athens on Saturday, I went to my hotel's business center to use their overpriced Internet connection. But thanks to another technical glitch at Dreamhost (the other most incompitent computer company in the world, and the people who host my main website... for not much longer), I could not access my e-mail at a moment when I desperately needed to track down the phone number of the lead guide I am working with on my tour.

After an hour of screaming profanities at an uncaring computer momitor, I finally did locate David's mobile phone number. When I phoned him, however, he did not answer because his phone was not working.

Meanwhile, he was also trying to phone me from another phone. But my phone was not working either, thanks to misinformation I received from my mobile provider. When I switched to AT&T Wireless last month, the guy who sold me my new phone assured me I could take out the AT&T SIM card (the chip that determines the phone number and provider) and replace it with a European SIM card. He promised me the phone was not "locked," blocking the use of other SIM cards. That was not true.

From Greece, I called the guy who sold me my phone in America. He told me to call AT&T and they would give me a code to unlock the phone. At this point I entered a web of voice mail that asked me repeatedly whether I spoke English or Spanish and then disconnected me a couple of times. Finally, I reached a human being (or something slightly resembling one) who told me AT&T did not have that information and I would have to call Nokia. Nokia said no, only AT&T had that information. I called the guy at the phone store back, who promised to sort out the problem and leave the code I needed on my home voice mail in Seattle. I never heard from him again.

I am beginning to miss the days before e-mail and mobile phones and cheap phone cards, when I used to give my friends a simple address to write to me: "Dave Fox, Poste Restante, Athens, Greece." I'd stop by the post office when I was in Athens, hoping to receive two-week-old news from home.

Jimmy the Gyros King

Mykonos, Greece
Gyros Count: 5

I met a legend in the gyros world yesterday. His name is Jimmy. He's Greek, but he lived in Canada for a while, them moved back to Greece, opening what is now the most popular Gyros stand on the island. He's been there 32 years. Gyros are his life.

I met Jimmy on my second swing past his restaurant. I bought a gyros on my way back to my hotel but again found myself miserably lost, looping back past Jimmy's 30 minutes later. There was nothing I could do but order another gyros.

I told Jimmy about my quest. He was sufficiently impressed that he gave me a free plastic cup full of wine to liquify me for the rest of my quest to find my hotel.

I have since had to face the reality that my 32 gyros in 32 days goal is... well... doable but not really practical. Once my tour begins, I won't be able to keep up my current pace, and there are too many other yummy things to gorge myself on in this country. But I am not conceding defeat, just lowering my expectations, still planning to beat last year's official count of 17.