A TripAdvisor™ TripWow slideshow of a travel blog to Athens, Greece by TravelPod blogger Kerissafuccillo titled “Impossible Blue,Tiny Goats and Fleeing the Raki”

Kerissafuccillo’s travel blog entry:

“”Why must I drink just one more Raki? I paid you, I enjoyed my meal, I complimented your Mama’s cooking, and even ate the free congealed malt-o-meal that you called dessert. Now you want to poison me by insisting that I drink rubbing alchohol? I swore that my polite acceptance of this forced imbibing ended last night when I so very nicely said okay to multiple shots and later thought that my stomach was bleeding. But no, of course I’m too polite to tell you that I am frightened of going blind from your homemade Raki and will take another drink with you, Costas (or are you Nikos?) my charming Greek waiter at the family restaurant that we love so much.” Bottoms up!

One question. How can the sea possibly be this color? Okay one more question. Why don’t I ever tire of seeing baby goats? Okay just a few more questions: How do you think cultural values arise? Do you think that it always comes back to “survival” (from a biological perspective) or can it also be sort of random (similar to the concept of “genetic drift” – when a trait becomes fixed or dissappears from a population based on random mating and not driven by environmental or adaptive pressures)? Is it fair to judge cultural values? Are certain cultural values like honesty and “pride in your work” luxuries? Also, when you perceive someone or someones culture as “other” can you actually make any kind of accurate speculations?

I have been struggling with these questions since I began this journey. It is so easy to say “my people don’t do this or always do that.” It is not as easy to make those generalizations about other cultures, I think because there is such an emphasis on political correctness (in my culture anyway). It has been fun to determine what I believe are my own cultures values and then dissect those and try to figure out how they became “fixed” in my cultural history. I would be very curious to see a top ten list from every person reading this and then corroborate the lists and try to find statistically significant differences based on bioregion, socio-economic class, age etc.

Another fun one would be to see how many peoples personal values align very closely with what they percieve as their country’s values at large. For example, would you say that a pervasive Amercian value is materialism? Would you also say that this is a personal value? I can see how social scientists would have loads of fun with these types of questions, but also how unclear the data would be based on semantics and subjectivity. I think I’ll stick to biological studies myself. However, if anyone wants to make a list (you can post it or just email it to me privately if you want), I would love to have some good old fashioned dialogue about it. Or you can tell me to go audit a sociology class and stick to the travel writing. Fine. Ok. Back to Crete.

So what was I saying about baby goats (or “sheeps” as the Cretans called them)? Oh yes. They are everywhere and they are cute, sure-footed and slightly but adorably cross-eyed. We had the great fortune of renting a cute little Fiat Panda and road tripping on Crete, a great place to sneak up on baby goats. The best was when they posed for me in front of the electric blue sea on a sheer cliff. I almost drove us off of the island a few times trying to get these precious photos. So you’d better like them. The photos I mean, not the baby goats (though anyone who doesn’t like baby goats cannot be in my club anymore).

Most of the goats we saw were probably the normal domesticated variety. I had been hoping to encounter the Kri-kri, the rare wild goat which is the emblem of Crete. Currently there are only about 2000 on the island. In 1960, the numbers went below 200 (as it …”
Read and see more at: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/kerissafuccillo/1/1270232059/tpod.html

Photos from this trip:
1. “Battling for Bluest”
2. “Hike to Bolas”
3. “Homemade Olive Oil in Village of Maila”
4. “I Want to Sleep in There”
5. “I Have No Good Excuse For This Behavior”
6. “Old Monastary Near Hania”
7. “Hello Baby!”
8. “Our Styly Fiat”
9. “Stairway to Zeus’s Domain”
10. “Elafonissi Offering”
11. “A Sasquatch in Rethymno?”
12. “Old Venetian Harbor in Hania(with a Turkish Mosque”
13. “Ummm…Heaven?”
14. “Spring Lovliness”
15. “Sunset in a Venetian Harbor”
16. “Perfect Pose!”
17. “Red Sands of Africa on Elafonissi Beach”
18. “Street in Hania”
19. “Wisteria Sweetness”
20. “Giant Orchid of Putrefication”
21. “Road To Every Mountain Village”
22. “Tim Being Raptured in a CCC”
23. “Olive Tree”
24. “Still Going Strong”

See this TripWow and more at http://tripwow.tripadvisor.com/tripwow/ta-00d0-d7ae-12bb?ytv4=1

Duration : 0:2:37

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