Where competition beganOct 22, 2010
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What do I think of being in Olympia? I'd say I'm excited.
Hello 4th century BC
Helma posing at Leochares' Philippeion
| I gotta say, “Holy crap, ancient Greece is amazing.” An hour and a half after rolling out of bed this morning, I found myself standing upon the ruins of the training gymnasium for athletes in the first Greek games. My location? Olmpia, Greece. A little farther down the path was the surviving pieces of the Leonidaion, a hotel where VIP guests stayed during the Greek Olympics (fun fact – athletes camped around the outside of the Olympic grounds). If I wouldn’t have been on a guided tour in the middle of Olympia, I wouldn’t have believed any of it. It’s really quite amazing. Our guide told us how old school journals had enabled historians to piece together not only what things looked like in all of the glory, but also what purpose each of the structures on the massive campus fulfilled. These accounts also happened to mention a little place called the Temple of Zeus and, without really knowing much about it, I soon became infatuated. The focal point of this massive building was an absolutely enormous (like 2 stories high enormous) ivory and gold statue of Zeus created by a master artisan named Pheidias. Ten minutes later we walked into the workshop where this guy built the whole damn thing about 2500 years ago. My mind was kerboggled. I have never been crazy into history but I am telling you, when you’re standing there, the sh*t comes to life. I immediately felt the urge to read everything there was to read about the Ancient Greeks and then continue on to Alexander the Great just to make sure I got it all. By looking at Helma I could tell she was just as enthralled as I. The experience, however, would have been nowhere near as good if it had not been for our incredible guide. Just as she had the day before, she wowed us with her extensive knowledge, masterful story telling abilities, and general Greek sense of humor. Then she made my Olympia dreams come true by guiding us down the path to the ancient stadium. The path was lined with bases where bronze Zeus-honoring statues once stood. Apparently, they doubled as the hall of shame because they were actually mandatory donations from anyone who had been caught cheating in the games. I don’t know about you by I love a good calling out. When we got down to the field itself, I had to work hard to keep from letting out a squeal of delight. Luckily I had gotten a little of my excitement out minutes earlier by doing a shirtless pose beneath the arch of the gate to the stadium, otherwise I would have surely lost control. The stadium was a sight to behold and though no one dared challenge me to a foot race, I still felt like a part of history. Last but not least, we toured the Olympia Archeological museum. They had some pretty cool stuff in there including statues that looked like they had been laser cut by an infallible machine. It turns out they didn’t have even have TI-83 calculators so someone actually had to make it all by hand. I couldn’t comprehend how they carved such perfect pieces of art (or how they found the square root of numbers that didn’t have whole number roots. Yea, chew on that.) My favorite was a Hermes statue that had been almost perfectly preserved thanks to a fall into some soft mud and a later sandwiching by some more soft mud. I took a professional photo of it, patted myself on the back, and headed back to the bus with my eyes glazed over in awe. For the next 2 hours, I happily let my mind race in and out of reconstructions of the mammoth ivory Zeus statue, ancient battle scenes with the Persians, and how I would give anything to see what the ruins had looked like before they were ruined. The landscape on the bus ride eventually tore me away from my daydream and my thoughts shifted back to Corfu and wanting to own some property in Greece. Every beachside town embodied paradise and that most certainly included our coffee stop choice at Nafpatkos. It was at that point that Helma’s “I love Greece” urges reached a fever pitch. For the next hour on the bus she filled my ear with how great it would be 1). To have any one of the houses we passed 2). To own a boat and have it parked in anyone of the docks we passed and 3). To have me buy her a horse. The last one seemed a little out of place but I supposed that childhood dreams die hard and let it go. At 6pm, we arrived in the mythical area known as Delfi. We checked into a hotel room with a million dollar view overlooking the water, and then I proceeded to obliterate the low hanging light fixture while doing some arm circles to loosed up my shoulders. My bad. We ate another huge dinner and then rolled down the hall to our beds. Greece for life. |
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