Τύχη (Tyche)
June 17, 2014
Things just seem to even out in Greece. When Tyche (pronounced “Tee-kee” in modern Greek), the goddess of fortune, gives you hell in the morning, she’ll relieve you in the afternoon, and even offer a little Greek xenia (guest-friendship/hospitality) to go with it. This balancing act describes the day that Josh and I went to Mycenae, the last day before we left for our excavation.
The day began with a simple bus search. Find bus 051, which supposedly arrived every 10 minutes, and take it to Mycenae. Well, that sounded fishy from the get-go (I doubted that a bus left for Mycenae every ten minutes – how many tourists were willing to take a tour hour bus ride outside of Athens to warrant that many busses?), but we figured we would at least start by searching for this magical bus. After some wandering we finally made attempts to communicate and discovered where the bus was located, but got mixed results from there. Bus 051 didn’t actually go to Mycenae – it went to the main bus station, from which we would take another (coach – woo!) bus to Mycenae. Figuring that out ate up another half hour. Oops. When we finally arrived at the bus terminal the next bus was full, so it was off to the truck stop-esque café to kill an hour until the next bus left. So even though we were awake at 7am, we hopped the 11:30am bus to Mycenae and would be arriving around 1:30pm, about the hottest part of the day. Well, it could be worse…
But instead, it got better. The bus ride was pleasant, the scenery was great, and the company wasn’t too bad either. I even managed to sneak in a little nap (our hostel neighbors had been pretty noisy the previous night – ugh)! When I had just finished applying my sunscreen (SPF 70 that day) the driver announced that we would arrive in Mycenae (okay, well, Fichti, the nearby town) shortly – half an hour ahead of the projected time. Woo again! We got off the bus, bought some water for what we were told was a 5k hike to the ancient citadel, then began our journey. Less than 100 meters into it, a nice old man in a little red car pulled up to us and asked, “Mykenes?” (the modern Greek pronunciation for “Mycenae”). “Nai!” (“Yes!”) we responded. Then he motioned for us to get in his car. Under normal circumstances in the US I would never have gotten into his car, but this was a nice old Greek man simply offering us a ride at the hottest point of the day. I had no qualms about hopping in. Hurray for Greek xenia! Instead of arriving at Mycenae all sweaty and exhausted, we arrived fresh and with full bottles of water. Then, as if Tuche still felt badly about the bus fiasco that morning, miraculously the ticket saleswoman handed us tickets without asking for money. Free ride and free site entry? The day was turning out to be pretty great.
Or so we thought. Towards the end of our Mycenaean exploration (which, by the way, was amazing, even though it was a repeat trip for me) we noticed a giant black cloud looming towards us. Josh and I both had our big fancy cameras and had spent the day clicking away. Now the rain cloud threatened our non-water proof camera bags, filled with new nerdy images and silly videos of us singing in the tholos tombs (it echoes well – and when else can you sing the Oompa Loompa song on an archaeological site?). We decided to go to the site’s museum before dealing with the rain cloud. We hoped it would blow over us before the museum closed and we had to walk back down the hill to the bus stop in Fichti. But in all honestly, I thought we were doomed to get stuck in the downpour. But alas, Tuche was nice to us again and when we exited the museum (which had fantastic displays, by the way) the cloud had mysteriously disappeared. Fortune was still on our side.
On the walk back to Fichti (no, no other nice old Greek man offered us a free ride back to town – you can’t always be so lucky) we began to panic when both of us realized that we hadn’t paid much attention to the ride up to Mycenae. How the heck do we go back to Fichti? There were only a few intersections and we knew the general direction of Fichti, so we couldn’t be too far off, right? Well, after picking a direction, then getting confirmation from a man we startled in a camp site who was wearing only his speedo, we knew/hoped we were on the right path. Again, Tuche was with us and we made our way back to the bus stop at Fichti and grabbed seats on the next bus to Athens. The day was a success. So, when in Greece (okay, well, anywhere, for that matter), even if your day starts out shitty, things will even out and you will get to sing silly songs in a four thousand year old tomb. May there always be a nice old Greek man to give you a ride.
