Crete (bonus day in Paris)

More guest posting from D.

After J. and A. returned from Florence I left for another solar cell conference in Crete that was led in part by my host here in Barcelona.  Next year this conference and the ISOS conference will be combined and held together in Malta...  There were a small group of us who attended both conferences, but most of the people were different and the talks were very different.  I learned quite a lot of new things from this second conference so I am feeling very up to date on the field.

Crete is clearly a tourist destination, and this conference was at a tourist resort on the beach.  The conference schedule was pretty packed so I only really had one afternoon to enjoy non-conference aspects of the location, but it was very nice just to be there.

The view from my 4th floor balcony of the resort

Another view from my balcony

 My room was high up in the main building, some of my colleagues had cabins down closer to the beach, but I heard that was a very noisy environment, and my views were great.  I did not take a photo of the restaurant, but included in the cost of the hotel room were three meals a day at a fancy hotel buffet.  Most of the dishes had signs in four languages, but not every dish was labelled, and it was not always clear to me if something was vegetarian.  I think it would have been very difficult for a vegan.  The recreational program is also part of the resort, and I did hear the three tenors who sang opera, musical numbers, and Devo! covers.  I also saw some of the Cuban Night dancing and singing.

The resort activity & entertainment schedule

I actually stayed in two hotels in Crete, because the first night the regular hotel was already booked.  Both hotels had the same interesting energy saving system.  Your key (which is a physical metal key, not an electronic card) is attached to a fob with a magnet.  When you enter the room there is no functional electricity.  To have access to electricity you have to put your magnetic key fob into a receiver which turns on the electricity to the room.  When you leave and take the key with you, you cut power to everything in the room.  I thought this worked pretty well, but there was a mini fridge in the room, but I did not experiment to see if it had a separate power line that worked full time.  It would not be so great if every time you leave the room the fridge turns off.

Magnetic key hook switch for all power in the room.

Crete is home to the ancient Minoan civilization, named for the king Minos and it goes way back, older than the Greeks, and mostly known now by its role in Greek mythology.  We had one trip to the ruins of the ancient palace of Minos, called Knossos.  While those in Crete always knew it was there, the site was "discovered", excavated, and partially reconstructed by a English archeologist, Sir Arthur Evans, in 1900.  I did not get to go the museum where they have moved many of the original excavations, but had a wonderful tour of the site with lots of witty commentary from another English scholar who studies ancient forms of writing, and who has been living and working in Crete for over 20 years.  If you want to understand a bit more about this site than I am putting into the blog, I found a nice description of Knossos in the Ancient History Encyclopedia.

Knossos food storage not so dissimilar to what you see in other cultures.

Crete suffers from serious earthquakes, and the site may have been rebuilt a few times, but the conclusion of the era came with some serious fires which were likely fueled by oils stored in the basement of structure.  You can see the black burn marks on the original stones at the lower levels.

Knosos ruins

I understand that the mythology states that Minos hired Daedelus of Athens to design the palace so that it was a labyrinth so complex that anyone who went in could not find their way out.  Supposedly he then locked Daedelus and his son Icarus within a tower so that they could not tell anyone about the design.  Daedelus invents wings so he and Icarus can fly away, but Icarus goes to high and the sun melts his wings leading to his literal downfall.  How this story relates to reality is not clear, but the architecture was clearly very complex with 5 or six levels and many tight corridors.

Partially restored ruins that suggest the labyrinth 

The items that were excavated are in the museum which I did not get to see, but they have recreated some of these and many other things on the site.  Obviously, with time there are many criticisms of the Victorian nature of the some of the recreations at the site, so it is interesting to see and discuss, but may not be any more accurate than the mythological stories...  I should note that our guide points out that the mythology was recorded by the Greeks and does not put the Minoans in a very good light.  The Minoan culture was supposed to be quite advanced, and those who study it suggest that it had many impressive and positive attributes.

Replica of excavated tile work reproduced at the site

I did not focus much on the story of the Minotaur here but there are many pieces representing bulls at the site, and the story of the Minotaur is interesting.  The scholars note that there was a sport in Minoan culture where the athletes jumped over the bulls, and that to do this they were said to become one with the bulls, so this might explain part of the origin Minotaur mythology.  Read more at the link I mentioned earlier, the Ancient History Encyclopedia.

At the end of our tour I found this sign for thanking the guides, but it was the first visual I had seen of what the completed Knossos might have looked like.

An artist's rendition of the Knossos Complex at its peak

On my free afternoon, I walked along the beach with some of my science colleague and then into the center of town with the big stores, important civic buildings, etc. were located.  We have a friend who collect images of Ben & Jerry's all over the world, so I snapped this for her.  The Fatto a mano next door was an organic gelato shop, which we choose to favor over the B&J, but the juxtaposition was interesting.

Ben & Jerry's next to an all natural gelato shop

Interesting combination sign warning about DWI at an optician's shop

At the harbor with some of my colleagues

Beautiful sunset in Crete

There are no nonstop flights between Crete and Barcelona.  On the way there I flew Barcelona - Athens, and Athens - Crete, with a short stop in Athens.  However the same combination did not work coming back.  This opened up lots of possibilities, for my return flight.  In the end I choose to take Crete - Paris and Paris - Barcelona, with an 8 hour delay in Paris.  The last time I was in Paris was 30 years ago, and I naïvely thought that I could "spend a day in Paris" with this arrangement.  Of course it turns out that it takes about an hour by train to get into Paris from CDG airport, and of course you need to return to the airport two hours before your flight, and I had a baggage to deal with, so in the end I had about 3 hours in Paris.  However, it was enough time for me to go enjoy a walk and a lunch in Paris on a beautiful day, and to feel no guilt about skipping standing in line for anything.

My 1st Paris destination

I walked to my 2nd Paris destination

My return to the airport was interesting.  I knew where to get the first train and to transfer to the second.  However, while waiting for my second train, I was surprised by the scientific equations on the walls.  Then my intended train seemed to disappear from the monitors.  My french is very weak, (but better than my German) so I could discern an announcement about my train and that it was late.  I actually saw some folks leave the platform and started to follow but was not sure where they were going.  I returned to my platform and found some other folks with luggage and engaged them in conversation.  Two of them were scheduled for my same flight to Barcelona, and the third was headed to Prague.  Somehow we determined that our late train would arrive at a different platform at a different level of the station.  We managed to find this thanks to fellow headed to Prague who spoke more French than the rest of us.  We rode the train together and enjoyed our achievement.  The couple headed to Barcelona was from Texas and the fellow headed to Prague was from Columbia but grew up in Florida.  He first moved to Barcelona for the electronic music scene and now lives and works in Prague doing electronic music.

In the big train station on the wall? One of many equations!

An explanation!