OT: Appreciating Beauty in the Classical tRAdition

/ September 28, 2016

As many of you have gathered from my absence, I spent the last week on a holiday without proper access to the internet. Hence, the weekly round-up – again – had to be skipped. Sorry. I returned on Sunday night, but the last few days I have been working on the photographic loot of the holiday, with the intention of putting together my customary photo slide shows with which I usually delight torture my esteemed audience. While I was very happy with my slide-show, it has been a bit of a nightmare in terms of uploading to a video portal for embedding on the blog. I initially made the capital mistake of setting the video to a copyrighted piece of music. For video portal #1 the finished clip was too large → reject. Video portal #2 deleted the soundtrack, which made the whole video pointless → reject. Video portal #3 also objected to the soundtrack → reject. I had to go back to the editing suite and re-set the video to another, uncopyrighted soundtrack in order to make it work. Sigh. It just takes soooo much tiiiiiime…

But here I finally present a quick look at the Greek excursion of the AHA (Armitage Hellenic Association), US and European divisions:

Forgive me if I am bragging about my holidays, but in this case the blog is the appropriate forum for my travel observations: In essence, the whole week was a privately organised fan event, as all members of our select group have met online through our shared appreciation of Mr Armitage. Going on holiday together was an exciting next step that has once again reinforced my beliefs that 1) Armitage has great fans, 2) fandom is good for you and 3) Armitage makes for a great conversational context.

There were six of us on the trip. Together, we rented a holiday house on the Gulf of Corinth and spent seven days enjoying fabulous Greek food, amazing ancient Greece sights, great weather (minus a massive thunderstorm on day 1), smooth sailing (apart from that rental car that broke down…) and fantastic company. Not surprisingly, when six Armitage fans get together, only a marginal amount of time is spent discussing the shared OOA. While the reviews of BoF  and the premiere of LLL were closely followed, in the rare instances that we managed to go online, most of our conversations quickly moved from the easy intro of “Look what Armitage is wearing at the stage door” to “I hate the menopause” 😂 although there may be a tenuous connection between the subject of the former with the symptoms of the latter…

If all else failed, the antics of the best of all travel companions, Pop!Thorin, entertained us all. This is what he got up to:

Thorin sampled some delicious Greek food, such as Greek salad and loukimades.

He was not quite as dignified when it came to our visit to a winery. Dwarfs just don’t seem to know when enough is enough…

Thorin enjoyed all the ancient sites – Mycenae was right up his street, impressive warrior culture and all.

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And Olympia appealed to his competitive spirit. Thorin could not wait to take up station on the starting blocks. He was duly pronounced the winner of the race – competing sans competition, though – immediately took up station on the nearest pedestal and wore his olive wreath with customary dignity.

Thorin loves an audience, and so he was quick to pose in the magnificent ancient theatre of Epidauros. However, his posing on the marble slab that marks the centre of the stage, attracted the anger of the site attendant – apparently it is disrespectful to pose at the sacred slab. Obliging Thorin was so quick off the slab, the picture is all blurry…

Despite the attempts of a felt-soft impostor to distract the group by sneaking his half-naked shape into the scenery, Thorin remained the centre of attentions.

After all, he *has* the most delicious peaches of all…

And thus endeth the travails travels of Pop!Thorin, king of the peaches.

My thanks go to my wonderful human travel companions – this holiday was perfect, ladies. I did not feel a moment of boredom or disagreement. You were cool under pressure (the rental car crisis in Kiato), agile on the move (Greek driving on Aftokinitodromos 8), delicious in the kitchen (that bread salad…), knowledgable in all things Greek and ancient (you know who you are), entertaining at the dinner table and on the terrace (I need that ode in writing!!!) and generally a whole load of fun. Where do we go next? I think, this should become an annual event!

 

 

 

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66 thoughts on “OT: Appreciating Beauty in the Classical tRAdition”

  11. Oooo, you do take a good ‘oliday snap, missis!

    Had to laugh about Corinth being the start of the journey; for some it was the end of most journeys as well – or was that ice-cream??

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  13. Love the peaches bracelets! Also the inclusion of those cats, especially that white one at Epidauros; and how you made Olympia look cool and green (not hot, hot, hot).

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    • The peaches bracelets were our dog tags ;-). And there were so many cats in Greece, everywhere! As well as dogs. Not sure if they had owners.
      Olympia was pretty hot, despite the green grass.

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  15. Danke für das wunderschöne Video. Bin ganz beeindruckt und freue mich, dass ihr zusammen so eine gute Zeit hattet.
    Wenn man bedenkt – das alles nur wegen eines recht unbekannten, aber sehr begabten Schauspielers… Wie das Leben manchmal so spielt. 🙂

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    • Ja, eigentlich schon irre, oder? Ich fand es auf jeden Fall bemerkenswert, dass sich da 6 vernünftige Frauen einfach drauf eingelassen haben. Wobei ich sagen muss: Ich selber kannte bereits 3 Teilnehmerinnen von persönlichen Treffen, und die beiden anderen Teilnehmerinnen waren mir aus intensiven Korrespondenzen extrem vertraut. Es war also kein Blind Date. Aber dennoch – irgendwie fand ich uns schon cool 😉. Und ich sage ja immer wieder – auch wenn mich Armitage manchmal anpisst, der Mann hat einfach klasse Fans. Irgendwas muss an ihm dran sein…

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      • Ich glaube, dass die sehr netten Menschen und die permanente Horizonterweiterung (in die ungeahntesten Richtungen) der eigentliche Grund dafür sind, warum ich mich hier so ausgedehnt aufhalte. RA allein hätte auf die Dauer nicht diese Wirkung.

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        • Da muss ich dir Recht geben. Ich bin ja sowieso der Meinung, dass uns RA eigentlich eine Aufwandsentschädigung schuldet, weil wir sein Fandom so schön für ihn machen. Aber der Junge ahnt ja nicht, was für eine Arbeit hinter dem ganzen Ding steckt…

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          • Und das ganze Herzblut, literweise Herzblut…
            Eine Schande, dass ihm das überhaupt nicht bewusst zu sein scheint 😉
            Es würde ihn nur in Verlegenheit stürzen.

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            • Och nö, nur kein Welpenschutz und APM. Das musser eigentlich aushalten. Schließlich profitiert er ja davon. Aber ich nehme die Aufwandsentschädigung auch gerne in Naturalien entgegen.

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                • Armitage Protection Mode. Kennst du die Abkürzung etwa nicht??? Geflügeltes Wort im Fandom – aber genau dazu sind wir Fanprofis ja da: Wir führen Richards Fans in die Gepflogenheiten des gepflegten Fangirlens ein… kostenloser Service. 😉

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                • Geflügeltes Wort, soso. Gut zu wissen.
                  Aber ich glaube, ich hab’s nicht so mit dem APM. Da sieht man es mal wieder, dass ich noch ganz am Anfang stehe “kicher” und froh sein kann, euch zu haben.
                  Jetzt versuche ich mal, dem Schatz dein tolles Video zu zeigen. Sehenswert!!
                  Mist – heute journal. Vielleicht später…

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                  • Normalerweise ist APM eher eine Jungfan-Reaktion. Insofern fällst du da aus dem Schema raus, wenn dich nicht der Wunsch überkommt, den lieben Richard mit Nägel und Klauen zu verteidigen 🙂.
                    Oh hehe – finde ich ja nett, dass du mein Video an den LAG weiterzeigen magst. Hab ja auch Richard weitestmöglich rausgelassen, und Pop!Thorin ist ja nur ein Pappkamerad…

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    • Ok, convinced :-D. I have just followed you on FB. And that way I have come across a really nice post about receiving your auction parcel. Sweet!
      PS: Just an advance apology that I will probably not comment much on FB. I am not particularly active there anymore, and since it is my private account, I usually don’t do much RA related stuff there 🙂

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  18. Das sieht nach einem herausragenden Wochenende mit wenig Schlaf, viel Fun und großartigen Gesprächen aus!
    Das mit dem Toilettenpapier gibt es auch in Italien oft, je nach Kanalsystem 🙂

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  19. I know this is coming late, but I am finally home with time catch up on everything. Loved your visual documentary on AHA’s adventures with Thorin in Greece. What a great trip. Sign me up for the next one. It looks fabulous.

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    • Welcome back home, Kathy! I hope you had a lovely time with K and saw lots of nice sights in Turkey and Austria.
      If there is ever another one of our AHA trips, you’ll get first refusal 😉

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