Monday, August 29, 2005

Surfing Sappho!

I'd been planning to write something about Sappho, the greek poet who Wonder Woman characterises so often as "suffering", but I got kinda sidetracked, so this isn't that piece. My curiosity led me off the main topic of Sappho and into her famous island home, Lesbos.

Lesbos is an island of eastern Greece in the Aegean Sea near the northwest coast of Turkey. Well, it used to be. It's called Lesvos now, which means that strapping greek hunks of manhood don't have the confusion of being called lesbians, just because they are geographically challenged. In fact it is the name given to a prefecture of Greece that covers several islands, as well as being the name of a specific island in the cluster, kind of like New York, New York, I guess. And if you were thinking that it was a tiny rock with a picturesque, sunny, rural village where olive skinned amazons made out inbetween milking goats and suchlike, it might surprise you to know that the island has around 110,000 people, cash machines, internet cafes and an airport.

Surprisingly, Lesvos does not seem keen to embrace its heritage and encourage tourism in the way most countries do. There is no Lesbian theme park or sapphic tourist center. In fact some lesbian related cruise ships have been denied permission to dock by the conservative authorities, although whether they are against single sex 18-30 cruise ships depositing hot babes who will scare the locals by making out on the sunny beaches, or just cruises composed of saddos with video cameras but no life whose idea of a vacation is spying on hot babes making out on the beaches is unclear.

1 comment:

Davide said...

well, as far as i know, the letter beta (b) is pronounced "v" in greek. then, even in the old times, lesbos was read as lesvos. to write the "b" sound you have to use mi-pi "m-p", if i am not wrong...