#stab nazis 2k19

[windandwater]

First, you should know that we didn’t know about any of this when we went to Crete. But we found out, when we were told the story.

If you want to be inspired and sad all at once while learning some history, I very much recommend reading the Wikipedia pages for the Greek Resistance and Cretan Resistance in WWII. Actually, I recommend reading them anyway—hi I’m a Ravenclaw and a proponent of knowledge for the sake of knowledge—but they’re also relevant to this story.

For the sake of said story, it suffices to know that the reaction of Greece, and especially Crete, to the Nazis invading, was to resist. According to Wikipedia, this is how the Battle of Crete went for Germany:

For the first time during World War II, attacking German forces faced in Crete a substantial resistance from the local population. Cretan civilians picked off paratroopers or attacked them with knives, axes, scythes or even bare hands. As a result, many casualties were inflicted upon the invading German paratroopers during the battle.

They lost in the end, but the resistance didn’t stop then. Cretan rebels hid out in the mountains and kept fighting for the duration of the war. Wikipedia once again:

As Cretan fighters became better armed and more aggressive in 1944, the German troops pulled out of the country areas, having destroyed a number of villages in the Kedros area and executing many inhabitants, aiming to cow the Cretans. Grouping their forces around Canea, the Germans remained trapped until the end of the war, refusing to surrender to the Greek army, for fear of retaliation. They eventually surrendered to the British on 23 May 1945.

It was a three hour bus ride from Chania to Heraklion. We made this trip with the sole purpose of visiting Knossos, the oldest civilization we’ve found in Europe, which also happens to be the origin of the myth of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth.

At the beginning, the bus station in Chania was playing “Sweet Home Alabama.” Our conversation went something like this:

Me: Is that Sweet Home Alabama??? holy shit Friend: What? Me: am I hallucinating Me: tell me you’re hearing this too Me: Do they even know what Alabama is here?? Friend: Do they know Alabama is even real? Me: To be fair, I’m not even sure Alabama is real. In fact I’m pretty sure Alabama isn’t real. Or I wish it wasn’t.

A bus, another bus, and a street cat sleeping on a motorcycle. Graffiti proclaiming that a bench in the middle of a bus stop is a good kissing spot (it did not look particularly romantic). People catching the bus from stops under dripping overpasses and benches surrounded only by trees on the side of the road.

And then we found ourselves walking through the oldest civilization in Europe.

The grounds were covered in peacocks, and we could hear them screaming in the trees. I have many questions about the 19th century British man who “restored” the ruins, but after walking around them and getting very confused, I no longer have any questions about why this was the civilization that came up with the myth of an endless maze.

I no longer wonder how the people on this island and in this country looked up at the stars and the mountains and told stories about gods and monsters, or why they got so strange. So many people, in such a mild climate, in close quarters, telling stories?

Of course Crete takes its time. Of course Crete is an island of wax wings flying away and women giving birth to half-bull monsters. Of course Crete’s food will ruin you for all other food, after taking two hours to eat it.

Of course Crete is full of stories.

There’s no good way to describe the feeling of walking through ancient ruins. I think, just like the experience of living in New York, I might be spending the rest of my life trying. What I will say now is that—like New York—only the locals could describe it properly. Only the locals know the ways in which being an ancient culture has shaped them through the years and brought them to where they are.

We only got a small taste of the community, and the spirit of the people. But I can say that both are very strong.

We did some shopping, of course. There’s a row of shops right outside the ruins, the kind that pop up all over the world in tourist areas and that prey on the unsuspecting, or willingly enter into a contract with the suspecting, to prey on them.

We only intended to be there for a few minutes—we’d purchased a ticket that would get us into the Archaeological Museum in Heraklion, and had to get there before it closed.

But, you know. It’s Greece. It’s Crete.

Never go to Crete with the attitude that you need to be on a schedule or stick to a specific plan. Expect to be derailed by glasses of raki and limoncello and new friends and their stories. Expect stories about monsters.

Our first store was run by an older man who spoke very little English but found everything I said to be hilarious, so he was my instant new best friend.

The second store we went into was run by a younger guy, who started out telling us about the merchandise, so I’m still not quite sure how we ended up discovering that we were kindred spirits. What I do know is that fifteen minutes later, we had both bought more things than intended, and were yelling about politics and our terrible president in the middle of a Greek tourist shop at the end of the day.

That’s when “Sweet Home Alabama” came on in his store. I shit you not.

I had noticed the slightly-odd playlist (I think John Mayer had been mixed in there at some point) but couldn’t help commenting this time, if only for the coincidence. That’s when Nikos (his name was Nikos) said the best thing I’ve ever heard in my life:

“Yeah, I play traditional Greek music in the morning for the tourists, and in the afternoon I just listen to whatever I want.”

A few minutes later, in the middle of us still cussing out the president, “Shipping up to Boston” by the Dropkick Murphys came on. Okay.

I got to yell about going to the Flogging Molly/Dropkicks concert last year and bond over Celtic punk and talk a lot about Boston and how my family immigrated from Italy and Portugal.

“And why does your country hate immigrants?”
 “I don’t even kNOW, we’re all immigrants originally, it’s so stupid, our country just hates anybody who’s not white.” “There’s a little of that in Europe too, not in Greece because we love immigrants—“ “Yeah, fascism is coming back—“ “And we're doing NOTHING about climate change, the world is falling apart, why are you so worried about immigrants when the planet is dying—“ “WE KNOW, it’s so fucked up” “Well when the world ends I’ll just be up in the mountains fighting fascists” “HELL YEAH”

And as I alluded to earlier, going up into the mountains to fight fascists is not unprecedented. Nikos would even be following in the footsteps of his family.

When the Nazis invaded, he said, his grandfather was missing a hand, so he couldn’t fight, but he hid people in a basement. He walked out one morning and there was a pile of dead Nazis—right over there, not a hundred feet from where we were standing—and two partisans standing there with guns slung over their shoulders. They had singlehandedly fought them all off. And when the Nazis tortured Nikos’ grandfather for information later, he couldn’t tell them anything, because he truly didn’t know.

Are you getting chills? I was.

At that point I asked if the traditional Cretan knives he was selling were for stabbing Nazis. He said yes.

He wasn’t wrong.

Cretan civilians picked off paratroopers or attacked them with knives, axes, scythes or even bare hands.

The next day, we were back in Chania, walking around and getting lost in the city.

We didn’t have to get lost to find the bombed-out ruins of a building destroyed by German invaders. There were others just like it.

The stories are there, right under your feet. In the face of the person walking next to you. In the history they carry with them, just by existing in this time, in this place.

Nikos had started out telling us the story of the minotaur, which I could recite back to him verbatim. I read Greek myths as a child, and Greek philosophy as an adult. I learned the real, grownup versions of the mythology, then read plays and Homer and translated Latin versions of Greek stories. My feet walked in a city that looks like Greece but isn’t, learning the story of my country and where it came from.

We went from Knossos back to Heraklion city center on another bus, this time full of old ladies coming back from work, ignoring us, and having their own conversations. We were too late to go to the museum, and barely caught the bus back.

We had the chance to be in the place where the stories came from. And I think we were lucky to hear them from someone who has had them under his feet his whole life.

#adventures in text posts #my writing #crete #stab nazis 2k19 #greece #greece 2019