Our drive from Oia to the port was wild. Our driver passed 4 vehicles, on the outside lane, around a blind corner, with a vertical drop of a 1000 feet. He seemed to be immune from common sense.
He has many cousins driving taxi cabs from Istanbul to well, at least Santorini. I'm sure we'll encounter the other side of his family in Athens. For Greeks (Turks are interchangeable) traffic is a challenge to surmount, a game to getting there sooner, even if in the hearse. It is however a microcosm of society in the Eastern Mediterranean. Life is easy and what rules there are, need to be ignored.
There is a casual indifference to any form of authority for civil offences. Mores are adhered to, but are markedly different from ours and are a fusion of centuries of different cultures. Today's Greek or Turk doesn't understand why they are important. More importantly, with secularization in both countries, religious authority is waning, even startingly in Turkey. For the modern Greek or Turk to be who they are, and to do what they want, is a statement for the growth of existential nihilism.
Which leaves the poor traveler putting their lives in the hands of a maniac.
He has many cousins driving taxi cabs from Istanbul to well, at least Santorini. I'm sure we'll encounter the other side of his family in Athens. For Greeks (Turks are interchangeable) traffic is a challenge to surmount, a game to getting there sooner, even if in the hearse. It is however a microcosm of society in the Eastern Mediterranean. Life is easy and what rules there are, need to be ignored.
There is a casual indifference to any form of authority for civil offences. Mores are adhered to, but are markedly different from ours and are a fusion of centuries of different cultures. Today's Greek or Turk doesn't understand why they are important. More importantly, with secularization in both countries, religious authority is waning, even startingly in Turkey. For the modern Greek or Turk to be who they are, and to do what they want, is a statement for the growth of existential nihilism.
Which leaves the poor traveler putting their lives in the hands of a maniac.
Picture: Debris among the rocks, Mykonos
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