Travel Photography, Writing and Photoblog from Matt Feldman

Tram #12, Prague, Czech Republic

I was shopping. After years of abuse, I finally retired some much-loved and oft-abused travel clothes. Pants that had climbed (and slid down) a Moroccan mountain. A shirt whose longevity was vastly disproportionate to its 8 dollar price tag. Shoes that had seen more than a dozen countries on four continents. And while this gear was like my travel family, its best days were behind me, memorialized with so many passport stamps. Days before my next adventure was to begin, I needed some new clothes.

But while browsing at REI, I realized I didn’t know precisely what I should be browsing for. Cold, warm, rain, sun – I had not checked what to expect two days and 6000 miles into my future. Idling in the shorts section, I made a few phone calls, trying to find someone at a computer who could check European weather. Nobody came to my meteorological rescue. But Central Europe in mid-June shouldn’t be a problem, I figured. Even a summer visit to the Arctic Circle doesn’t seem to be much of a problem anymore. I bought shoes, shorts and lightweight t-shirts. And I sealed my fate.

With a 12 hour layover Brussels, planned specifically for a quick city visit, I plan my photos and strategize how to use my new camera equipment. This is my first European trip with digital gear. The leap to digital has been long in arriving – I waited until the crop of affordable SLRs offered performance equivalent to the slide film I had been shooting. But beyond the convenience of not hauling around several pounds of film, priced at roughly $1 per exposure, so many creative doors had been opened. Unlimited shooting. High dynamic range photographs. Time lapse. And – my latest passion, made infinitely easier with digital capture and software processing – panoramas. I envision 360 degree shots from the center of the Grote Markt. Time lapse sequences of people and trains transiting Gare du Midi. Forget the new, I want to go back and recapture my old haunts with all the digital possibility I can muster. And what about Paris? Maybe I should use my interlude between flights to head south and spend the day in my favourite city before returning to the Brussels airport. Mental images of the food market of Rue Mouffetard send me to the Thalys website, looking for cheap last-minute train fares between Brussels and Paris. E40 gets me there and back in plenty of time for my evening flight to Prague. Should I go? Will the weather be different in either city?

Seconds after reaching the BBC weather site, my entire trip starts to unwind. Paris: 57 and rain. The same in Brussels. Prague: 59 and thunderstorms. For days. Heavy rain in Budapest as far as the forecast can predict. This is June, right? I confirm the forecast with other sites but the verdict is unchanged: all of Europe is trapped under clouds and heavy rain. Hobbled by awful weather for at least 5 days of a 14 day trip sounds like my personalized version of the Czech Water Torture Test. I quickly need to recalculate how I’m going to spend my next two weeks.

With some flexibility owing to my airline reward ticket, I begin by considering alternate locations. I need to fly in and out of Europe using the same cities and dates, but the final destinations can change. The old favorites are out: Marrakesh is blazing hot. Croatia is too wet. France is expensive and wet and Italy is really expensive and wet. New, unexplored locations don’t work, either: Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia are all soaking. Scandinavia, while sunny, must be excluded because I would need to finance it by auctioning a kidney. I zoom in and out and scroll around the weather maps, querrying cities like a frantic lost dog searching for my home. Moving southeast, I finally strike sunshine. Athens. I pick up the phone.

By noon, the gears of travel finally begin to grind. I head to the airport, but with a brief stop at the FedEx terminal to retrieve the new camera lens that had arrived this morning. With an uncharacteristic smoothness in my travel plans, I arrive at gate C8. I think – maybe – that I might even have brought everything I intended. It hasn’t happened yet in eight years, but without any glaring packing errors, I consider the possibility.

My contentment is short lived. Two hours and 200 miles later in New York City, another moment of panic. I reach the gate for the flight overseas and the screen behind the check-in counter says Brussels is 68 and sunny. No. Were all those weather sites wrong? Have the continent-spanning storms just vanished? Have I upended my plans and budget and committed to a totally unnecessary diversion? I start sweating.

Descending through the clouds in the morning light over Brussels, I've never been so relieved to see a thunderstorm.

The internal debate over the precise details of my Athens itinerary continues right through the airplane's descent into the city. Stay a night, see the sights then move over the horizon to the islands? Or pack in a days' worth of photography and hyperaggrivation and take an overnight ferry to gyros paradise?

My gut says to go with the known quantity. Stuff it in and get out. But with each visit to Athens, the progress is palpable. Things are cleaner, newer, more accessible. People swear at me in better English. Maybe it deserves another chance. I collect my bag from the luggage belt and head for ground transportation, still uncertain about what to do. Despite the overwrought analysis of the last few hours, I can make a case for both choices. I consider leaving my decision to fate (or, as some might call it, laziness), and taking whatever bus is waiting, be it to the city or the port. But beside the car rental counters, I pass an official Greek Ferry office. Maybe I should look at the options. As I unclip my pack, I see the schedules. A cabin bunk on tonight's overnight ferry to Santorini is only slightly more expensive than a night in an Athens hostel, putting me within striking distance of Lucky’s Souvlaki in time for breakfast. I had written a list of Athens hostels and directions. Decision made, I throw it away.

The bus swings onto the highway toward the city. Olive trees. Reddish rocks baking in the sun. Warm air coming in through the open windows. Major monuments on my afternoon schedule, an easy trip to Santorini set for tonight. This is better than gambling on dodging rain drops in Prague. I like this.

I awake to long blasts of the ship’s horn. Figuring the ferry is pulling into one of the first stops, I grab my camera and head above deck. Expecting to see Ios or Naxos, I instead recognize the rock walls and caldera of Santorini, the last stop. Passengers are pulling luggage through the halls and toward their cars on the vehicle deck. A family is applying suncreen at the stairs to the exit. It’s not yet 8 am but I'm not the only one salivating for gyros on shore.

It's great to be back. I give my bus fare to the same guy I've been giving it to for years and watch out the window as we climb the narrow switchback road up the cliff face. You can always spot the first-timers with their cameras bouncing against the glass, their eyes wide at the sheer drop to the water below. But the view this time yields something different and tragic: The giant circle of an oil spill containment boom. In April of last year, a 500-foot cruise ship with 1600 people aboard struck rocks here and sunk just feet from shore. All but two passengers escaped, in what was a very public spectacle seen by thousands from balconies and cafes in the town above and broadcast online. Passenger video of the evacuation showed just how close the ship was to the cliff wall before being towed off the rocks and into the caldera, where it sank later that evening. The location of the spilled oil leaves no doubt about the initial strike -- the ship was very close to the caldera wall, but just below the surface, the wall wasn't as vertical as expected.

The subsequent investigation would reveal a discrepancy between the actual location of underwater rocks and what was shown on the official navigational maps. The ship struck rocks that were not on their charts. But nonetheless, why would anybody bring a cruise ship that close to a volcanic cliff?

The bus unloads in Fira and I make my way into the main square. I guess I should find a place to stay for a few days.

It's busy. There’s hustle. Bustle. Bling, even. Outdoor cafes are full. Music is playing. Traffic is so dense that police are directing. I walk up the street, with an interlude at the amazing bakery, and deposit myself in the office of a family-run hotel that was a perfect fit on my previous visit to the island. I'm back.

The next few days embody vacation. A true retreat. Reading on the beach. Photography. Scuba diving. Eating a half dozen gyros a day. Yet Santorini has taken on a different character. It is an island fully in service of the cruise ships that now call here daily. The narrow streets of Fira are awash in jewelery shops, display cases of gleaming watches, souvenir trinkets and "Minoan" art. Big dollars. Big flash and big flare. And when the cruise ship-of-the-day departs, the real island returns.

I think back to my first visit to the island in June of 2001 and the white-knuckle bus ride from the port, standing jammed into a rickety, hand-me-down bus from western Europe. The island has seen much prosperity since then, in what I suspect is another example of the Olympic investment paying huge dividends. There were barely any backpackers here in 2001, all staying in the cave-like hostel north of the main square. Sometime after 2004, the hostel was bulldozed to make way for more shopping, and a local law was passed to prevent the construction of its replacement. Seven summers after my first visit, the only backpacker-oriented accommodation in Fira is a campground. They only seem to want the higher end tourists now and the fistfulls of dollars they might bring. When such a rising tide raises all the boats, it's hard to blame them. But still, power to my backpacking people.

After a few days of exquisite relaxation, with weather beginning to change in Europe, I book a cheap flight from Crete to Prague and plan to bring an end to this little sunny detour.

Trapped. Even before heading to the port, I realized the Aegean Sea was choppy, which isn't helped by the enclosed decks and assigned seats of the high-speed ferries. But over the span of four hours, that rough ride would mean the people in the seats in front, to my right and behind me all needed multiple uses of their seasickness bags. Cue the clip from Wayne's World. The only saving grace was the window on my left and the distraction of soccer highlights on the big television.

After seven years of the magnetic pull of Santorini, I have finally pushed further south into the Aegean to visit the island I had intended to see so many years ago. But as the timing of my flight to Prague dictatates, it needs to be a quick trip. If there's sun in central Europe, I need to be there.

With its industrial and more gritty aesthetic, Crete moves at a pace far removed from Santorini. The walk from the ferry terminal to the bus station might as well have been a walk back to the heart of Athens. Gone are the idyllic whitewhashed walls, church bells and blue domes of Oia, traded for grafitti tags and murals, a busy Champion megastore and empty lots stacked high with tires and pallets, all set beside a noisy four-lane highway. I think back to 2004 and the parallels to transitioning out of the Greek bubble to the east in Kusadasi, Turkey. If only I could find an apple tea.

A bus takes me west to the city of Rhthymno, where I wander the tiny streets, fishing port and old fort. But the hostel is nearly empty and it doesn't seem like there's much worth staying for. A return to Heraklion looks like a good option. Back at the bus station and without a guidebook, I follow a group of backpackers to their hotel and spot a hostel along the way. Needing only a bed and a meal before departure to Prague, my standards (and budget) are low. A visit to the archaelogy museum brings a fascinating look at thousands of years of Cretan and Minoan history. And the air conditioning is a nice treat. I eat at an outdoor cafe and dive into my guidebook with plans for tomorrow in Prague.

More coming soon...