Once our plane landed in Athens we took the metro into the center of the
city to our hostel, being diverted from the subway stop underneath Parliament
due to the protests and riots occurring there in response to the economic
condition of the country. Once we got checked in we met this guy named Rene’
from Spain who we were sharing a room with and since he had already been in
Athens for a few days he recommended a local restaurant called Smile to us,
which turned out to be amazing. We each got a Greek Salad, which was completely
incomparable to the ones I’ve had in the states, I got a lamb gyro, a glass of Greek
wine, and we split some Greek Doughnuts, all for eight bucks. Plus we met the
lady that owns the place with her husband, named Connie, who was born in Greece
but grew up in Chicago and on a visit to Greece twenty years ago unexpectedly fell
for a man and decided to move here and marry him. We talked about the economic
failure that Greece is currently experiencing and all of the political activity
around it until Margot and I were the only patrons left in the restaurant and
they were closing down. After saying good-by to Connie twice, since she called
us back to the restaurant after Margot accidentally tried to pay her with Turkish
Lira, we went straight to bed.
On the morning of Monday November
12th we woke up and got some pork and chicken gyros for breakfast at
this little shop down the street from the Acropolis. From there we walked up
the Street of the Tripods, one of three main streets that existed in ancient
Greece, and arrived at the Theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus. The performances
associated with the festivals of Dionysus were held at the Athenian agora until the stands collapsed
in the 6th century B.C. and forced the performances to be moved to
the south slope of the Acropolis. During the 5th century B.C. construction
began on the open air theatre here. Eventually the stands of the theatre expanded
all the way up to the base of the Acropolis and the entire theatre was made of
marble. The remains of the theatre were pretty amazing and I was surprised to
find that we were actually allowed to walk around on them and take a seat in
the marble stands. Down by the stage many of the seats became elaborate pieces
of marble with designs or names carved into them, signifying the owner of that
seat. After wandering through an abundant variety of ancient Greek sculptures
and the remnants of marble buildings while taking in incredible views of Athens’
outrageous urban sprawl, we came upon the Odeon of Herodes Atticus a couple
hundred yards away from the Theatre of Dionysus on the southern slope of the
Acropolis. The gorgeous theatre was built in 161 AD by the Athenian magnate Herodes
Atticus in memory of his wife, Aspasia Annia Regilla. The three-story
stone front wall was still standing, or rather its renovated and restored
version was, but the wooden roof made from cedar of
Lebanon timber was no longer shielding the amphitheater’s 5,000 possible
occupants from the bright sun.
From the Odeon of Herodes Atticus we
finally began our hike up the side of the Acropolis and arrived at the entrance
to this architectural marvel, the Propylaea. Constructed in the 5th
century B.C. this marble entrance to the Acropolis was not built to act as a
fortress gate, yet the Athenians still used the entrance to keep out the
ritually unclean, runaway slaves seeking the protection of the gods, and anyone
who would be a threat to the states Treasury, which was protected on top of the
Acropolis. I thought it was also interesting to note that many gates, such as
the Brandenburg Gate that I saw in Berlin, were designed based on the Propylaea
in Athens. After passing through the Propylaea our eyes finally rested upon the
amazing Parthenon, the Old Temple of Athena, and the Erechtheum. The Parthenon looked
even more majestic than I had anticipated. Even though a large portion of the
building was destroyed or under reconstruction the building still took my
breath away. The colossal size of the building was amazing and I couldn’t
imagine seeing it back in its hay day. Wandering around the building admiring
the reliefs, sculptures and designs all over the building I forgot all about
the amazing view of the city behind me and didn’t want to move on. Finally I
became content with the time I got to spend with the amazing structure, moving
on to see the Erechtheum, which is where Athena and Poseidon faced off in order
to win the duty as protector of the Athenian territory. Poseidon struck a rock
with his trident and a salt water spring appeared, but then Athena struck the
ground and the world’s first olive tree sprang up, which the Athenians
preferred over the salt water spring, declaring Athena as victor.
After coming back down from the
Acropolis we walked over to Parliament and saw the weirdest changing of the
guards of the trip, every three steps the guards stop and sweep their feet on
the ground like a bull does before it charges, which meant that it took them a
good ten minutes just to walk up to greet the guards that they were replacing. Then
a sergeant comes over and as the new guards stand straight as a whistle he
adjusts the uniforms that they just messed up by trying to dig a hole in the
ground with their feet, making sure that they look good and classy. In
addition, I’m pretty sure that American cinema used hand-me-downs from the
Greek army in order to clothe the elves portrayed in our movies because they
look exactly identical. However, I got my picture taken with one of the Greek
guards and he was definitely not an elf, I felt like I was standing next to a
statue because the dude towered so far over me I was completely engulfed by his
shadow. After getting my picture taken with the giant Greek elf guard we walked
through the National Garden of Athens, which is a park full of foreign plants that
made me feel like I was in a tropical paradise, popping out of the Garden by
the ancient Greek Panathenaic Stadium. A day earlier the Athens Marathon had
actually finished right at that very stadium.
After hoofing our way back across
the city to our hostel we hung out with Rene’ for a while before grabbing
dinner at a nearby restaurant called To Katie Allo. Although I found the food
to be mediocre we got to enjoy the owner jam out with all of his Greek friends
in a corner of the restaurant. And when I say, ‘jam out,’ that’s a very loose
term, for they weren’t really jamming but making soft, delicate and beautiful
Greek music. It was an awesome and very tranquil experience. They also amazed
me by sucking down cigarettes like it was their day job in between or sometimes
even while they were playing their instruments. The really friendly guy who
served us when we came into the restaurant had mastered the art of holding a
cigarette while playing a bouzouki and had a beautiful voice to match. After
sitting there enjoying the music for an hour after they had cleared our table
we decided it was time to go on home and get some rest.
On Tuesday we woke up and went to
see the Arch of Hadrian and nearby Temple of Zeus. The Arch of Hadrian was part
of a road spanning from the Temple of Zeus to important state buildings on the
eastern side of town when it was constructed in ancient times and displays one
inscription on each side of the arch. The inscription facing the Temple of Zeus
reads; “This is Athens, the ancient city of Theseus,”
while the other side reads, “This is the city of Hadrian, and not of Theseus.” The
inscription meant that the ancient Roman Emperor Hadrian was the founder of the
modern and thriving Athens, while the mythical founder-god Theseus was credited
with the original founding of the city. In other words, the city of Athens used
to be a product of the god Theseus but was now the sole-product of Emperor
Hadrian. Although the Temple of Zeus has mostly been reduced to rubble, leaving
only a fallen column on one side while the opposite corner displays a small
section of the amazing building still intact, when you walk up close to its
base you start to understand the glory that the Temple of Zeus was when construction
finished in 456 B.C. The fallen column on the ground extends the entire width
of where the building once stood and its diameter must have been at least ten
feet. I wish I could have been around to see the enormous structure before it
was destroyed in 426. We also walked all the way around the Acropolis and found
our way through the Agora to the Temple of Hephaestus. Resting on a hill
looking over the Agora of Athens (Forum of Athens), the beautiful marble building
constructed in the 5th century B.C. is somehow still mostly intact.
The building, which was initially named Temple of Theseus on the false
assumption that the Athenian hero’s remains were buried under the temple,
became known as the Temple of Hephaestus when inscriptions within the temple
attributed the remains instead to the Greek god Hephaestus.
After walking around the Temple of
Hephaestus admiring the 2,400 year old reliefs and engravings we went to catch
the bus to the Cape of Sounio, waiting over an hour for the insanely late bus
to finally show up. The two hour ride out there went by in a flash as the
coastal road that we were on gave us an amazing view of the sea and all of the
Athenians swimming in it. We arrived to the Temple of Poseidon just in time to
admire it’s splendor under the setting sun. The skeleton of the temple is all
that remains but it is still an amazing spectacle, especially when highlighted
by the pink and red colors of the sun setting over the Aegean Sea, which rests
at the base of the cliff which the temple is perched upon. The body of water actually acquired the name
Aegean Sea when Aegeus, king of Athens, leapt to his death off of this very
cliff ledge. The legend goes that every year Athenians were forced to send
seven men and seven women to King Minos of Crete as tribute, whom he would
place inside a labyrinth containing a Minotaur, half man and half bull. Aegeus’
son Theseus had volunteered as a tribute and thus went to Crete to fight the
Minotaur. He had agreed with his father that if he defeated the monster he
would sail a white flag upon his return to Athens unlike the customary black
flag. However, after successfully defeating the Minotaur he forgot to bring
with him a white sail and was thus forced to hoist up the black one. Aegeus,
anxiously awaiting his sons return spotted the black sail from the Cape of
Sounio and overcome with despair plummeted to his death on the ocean covered
rocks lying below. We met our friend
Rene’ out at the temple and after wandering around the cliff’s edge gazing out
over the sea and gawking up at the amazing Temple we wandered down to wait for
the bus to come pick us back up. We then began the two hour bus ride back into
Athens.
Once we got back into the city the
three of us decided to go see Skyfall at the cinema and asked our friend Emanuel,
also staying in our room, if he wanted to come with us as well. So the four of
us embarked on a two kilometer walk out to the theatre and saw Skyfall in Athens.
During our venture down a main street in Athens I couldn’t help but take notice
of the insane amount of motorcycles and scooters zooming past us. There were so
many bikes in Athens that I think they might actually out-number the cars two
to one, which is something I’ve never encountered before and honestly is the
one thing that I didn’t like about the city. First of all, the bikes are so loud
that whenever they drive by you can’t even think let alone have a conversation
with the person standing right next to you. And since they are ALWAYS driving by,
having a conversation on the street is a hopeless effort. Secondly, this crazy
thing happens every time a stop light turns red in Athens that I’ve termed the ‘W
Wave2’ effect. The first time I ever ran the Boulder Bolder I was a
scrawny little kid that had never ran a timed race before and thus they placed
me all the way back in Wave W. But I was a determined little shit and so as my
wave approached the start line I wiggled my way all the way up to the front of
the wave and when they shot the start gun I just took off, leaving my entire
wave walking in my dust. On a much larger scale, this is what happens at every
stop light in Athens. Every motorcycle slowly maneuvers its way to the front of
the pack and when that light turns green a huge pack of fifty motorcycles
screeches into motion, leaving all of the cars rolling in their dust. This
means that the cars have to wait like thirty seconds after a light has turned
green for all of the bikes to clear out so that they can finally kick
themselves into motion without knocking someone’s bike out from under them.
This seems completely illogical to me but we did manage to effectively navigate
our way through the motorcycle crammed city to see Skyfall and on our way back
stopped for a 1 AM dinner, meeting two Canadians who had stayed in our room
just before us and thus knew Emanuel, before going back to the hostel and
collapsing into our beds.
The following morning we went to
the Acropolis museum with Rene’, where all of the original sculptures and
stones from the Acropolis that had been replaced by copies were being stored on
display. The next few
hours served as a Greek history lesson via art. I learned that in the 14th century B.C. the
native Greeks carved these stone boxes which new couples would put a silver
coin inside in order to bring good luck and faith to their marriage. I learned
that after a very prosperous 10th century B.C. the area near the
Acropolis experienced widespread poverty and grief over the next three
centuries. During the 8th century B.C. the area began to prosper
again and the ancient Olympics began in 1764 B.C. During the Archaic period,
800-400 B.C., they became affixed to carving these really intriguing Kore sculptures.
The sculptures are mostly of women, although they also have a different, much
less popular variation, which is of a man. The Kore sculptures supposedly played
a key role in the invention of the severe art style, depicting women whose
clothes were so tight that they made visible the outlines and curves of the
body underneath, while simultaneously depicting the body in motion. Instead of
simply standing still and posing the women would usually be holding up her
skirt and taking a small step forward, this of course would show you that the
statue was in motion, albeit a small and slight movement.
After learning of the Kore I moved
on to learn about the birth of the Greek democracy, maybe the first true democracy
in human history. The foundation was laid out by Solon around 550 B.C. when he
enacted Solon’s Reforms. After creating the democracy it was declared that
these reforms would stay in place for at least the next ten years, allowing
Solon to leave the city and watch it prosper from a distance. However, four
years after he left the city of Athens the democracy was falling apart, people
in political positions began to deny resignation when their terms were due and
some unappealing positions were never filled. The democracy eventually fell to
a tyrant and Solon returned to Athens to declare that the Athenians were
cowardly and stupid for allowing this to happen. Around 500 B.C. Cleisthenes
came to power as the son of a tyrant, however even though he was a man of
wealth and power he sympathized with the poor and helpless, establishing a new democracy.
In 462 B.C. Ephialtes perpetuated the democracy that Cleisthenes had
established.
Moving forward in time I admired a
marble statue of the goddess Athena, learning this awesome story of Enkelados,
who was a giant raging war upon the Greek Gods. According to the myth, he was
one of the first giants to attack Greece and the goddess Athena took it upon
herself to go take care of him. Sometime during the fight that ensued Athena
threw the island of Sicily at him. He was eventually defeated by Athena and the
island of Sicily had been created in the process.
Finally, I began to learn about
the Parthenon and its tragic history. The first Parthenon was destroyed by the
Persians in 480 B.C. and the Athenians delayed rebuilding another Parthenon for
many years because they wanted to leave the ruins atop the Acropolis as a
reminder of what those damn Persians had done to them. However, in 447 B.C. they
changed their mind and the construction of the modern Parthenon began. It only took
an astonishing nine years to construct the massive structure situated atop the
Acropolis. In the 5th century A.D. when religion invaded Greece the
Parthenon was converted into a Christian Church dedicated to the Virgin Mary
and after the Ottoman conquest of Greece in the 1400’s the Parthenon was turned
into a Mosque. The Ottomans began using the Parthenon as a store room for
ammunition and gun powder as well as a place to protect locals when the
Venetians laid siege upon Athens and the Acropolis. During this siege, on September
26th, 1687, a Venetian canon ball hit the Parthenon, igniting the
gun powder and effectively blowing up the ancient 2,000 year old structure,
killing hundreds of people and destroying the majority of the building. The
remains of the building were left relatively untouched until in 1786 the 7th
Earl of Elgin came and tore half of the sculptures off the building to take home
to Britain with him, as well as one of the columns of the building. These portions
of the Parthenon are on display at the British Museum to this day, which is a
source of constant irritation between the Greeks and the Brits.
The artistic architecture of the
building is quite fascinating though. There are ninety-two metopes around the
building, which are reliefs, and each side of the Parthenon depicts a story via
these metopes. The east side depicts the battle between the Gods and Giants,
the west side depicts the battle between the Athenians and the Amazon Women,
the north side depicts the sack of Troy, and the south side depicts the battle
between the Lapiths (a Greek tribe) and the Centaurs. According to this myth,
the Lapiths invited the Centaurs to one of their weddings. However, after the
reception the centaurs had become quite drunk and started walking off with all
of the Lapith women. This obviously upset the Lapith men who understandably
began a battle with those damn drunk Centaurs, the outcome of which is unknown.
Just above the metopes is the frieze, a continuous relief depicting the
Panathenaic Procession, which occurred every year to honor the goddess Athena.
The frieze depicts literally hundreds of people leading goats, cows, pigs, etc.
into Athens in order to be sacrificed in the name of Athena.
And lastly, there are the two
pediments, which are the two triangular portions above the east and west
entryways. The East Pediment depicts the birth of Athena, the daughter of Zeus.
It is said that Zeus was experiencing an awful headache and asked Hephaestus to
bludgeon him with his forging hammer (seems logical), which Hephaestus obliged
to do (what a good friend). Upon striking Zeus, his head split open and out
jumped Athena fully clad in armor. The West Pediment depicts the contest
between Athena and Poseidon to become the patron of the city. This is where
Poseidon created the salt water spring and Athena the olive tree. Athena
obviously won, who wants a little salt water spring when the entire
Mediterranean Sea is right there?
After visiting the Acropolis
museum we took the metro into the sketchy part of town, Ammonia, grabbed a taxi
cab to the sketchy bus station and then hopped on a bus to the beautiful city
of Nafplio. After getting directions from a man who grew up in Greece but had
since moved to Montreal, we arrived at our hotel and were welcomed by the
nicest lady in the world named Leah. Once we got acquainted and Leah showed us
our room she pointed us in the direction of a nice restaurant. After sitting
down at Amalora and glancing at the menus we thought we were ready to order,
however when Margot attempted to order her dish the waiter simply replied with,
“No.” To which Margot replied, “Oh, you’re not serving the dish? Let me look
for something else then.” “… No,” was his reply. After awkwardly looking at the
menu for a while he finally got fed up with Margot and said, “Who told you to
come to this restaurant? This is a Greek restaurant. You do not order off the
menus. Nobody uses menus in Greece! You ask me what to eat and I will tell
you.” To which Margot calmly replied, “Okay, what would you recommend?”
Pointing at Margot, “You will have the pork with walnut sauce; and you,”
pointing at me, “will have the pork with mustard sauce.” “Oh, okay then,” I
replied. “Could we please also have a liter of your house red wine?” “No, you
will have a half liter and we will see from there.” Feeling completely man
handled I watched him walk away from our table before exchanging looks with
Margot. The food was delicious, the wine was mediocre, and the price was steep,
but the experience was priceless.
On Thursday the 15th,
we got up and walked around the city a bit, exploring the harbor and admiring
the huge castle sitting atop the giant hill on the west side of town. After
circling the tiny town we grabbed a quick breakfast from a bakery before
grabbing a bus to Mycenae’s, with a bus transition in Argo. During the bus ride
out to Mycenae we met this Canadian girl named Liz (Elizabeth) who just so
happened to be staying at the same hotel as us. So when we got to Mycenae we
decided to join forces and check out the ancient fortress/palace together, in
fact we were one of maybe five people at the fortress so joining forces may
have been inevitable. Mycenae is one of the oldest sources of visible
civilization in Greece and contains the oldest reliefs in the world, which are
in the form of two lions who are on top of the Lion Gate, the entrance to the
city. We walked around, checked out a grave circle, and sat down admiring the
maze of fortress walls and the beautiful landscape that was laid out beyond it.
After enjoying the view for a while we found the underground cistern and I
somehow talked the girls into following me down the pitch black staircase using
only the faint red light that my camera emitted right before sending off the
flash. After wandering around the fortress and checking out the foundation
where the two thousand year old palace used to stand, we took the bus back into
Nafplio and grabbed lunch at a place nearby. We had an appetizer called 999
stairs, symbolic of the 999 stairs that lead up to the cities castle, but also
coincidentally this happened to be the 99th day of Margot and I’s
trip. After lunch with Liz we did some blog work and relaxed a while before
going out to dinner with Liz to this restaurant that was right next to our
hotel and turned out to be really good and cheap. It was this small family
owned restaurant and the father, who was this huge but very friendly man,
served us our food, giving us a free dessert of sliced apples sprinkled with
cinnamon, which is a traditional post-dinner snack in this part of Greece.
On the 16th we woke up
early, met Liz, and climbed the 999 stairs (that turned out to be just 925
stairs) to the top of the Palamidi Castle in Nafplio. I learned later that when
the steps inside the castle are included then it’s actually more than 1,000
steps to reach the top of the castle, which still doesn’t explain why the
Nafplians claim that it’s 999, but all I can say is that it was a lot of damn
stairs and I was exhausted when I reached the top and began learning about the
castle. The amazing fortress, 216 meters up on top of a cliff, was built in
only three years from 1711 to 1714 by the Venetians during their second
occupation of the region. A year after the completion of the castle fortress it
was captured by the Turks and remained under their control until 1822, when it
was captured by the Greeks. From the top the three of us sat down and enjoyed
an amazing view over the Greek landscape to the East, the tiny town of Nafplio
to the North, and the majestic Argolic Gulf over the edge of the cliff to the
West.
After exploring the castle walls
which extend much farther than I originally expected, I don’t know how the
Venetians built this massive structure in only three years, we descended the
925 stairs and said good-bye to Liz, deciding to use the rest of the morning to
go for a swim in the sea off the gorgeous beach that was tucked into the bay
just below the castle. The beach was immaculate, excluding the toilets, and
instead of a fine sand or broken sea shell’s it was made of thousands of medium
sized rocks. The water could have been a little bit warmer but the scenery was
beautiful, the company superb, and the weather was amazingly hot for it being
November fucking 16th. After treading all the way out to the fishing
buoy’s we air dried ourselves underneath the hot winter sun and grabbed our
stuff from the hotel. After inhaling half a gyro while walking through the town
we hopped on the bus back to Athens.
We got into the city and jumped
off when we saw a metro stop, which we easily used to navigate our way back to
the stop right down the street from our hostel. We grabbed dinner at the same
place as when we were previously here, To Kati Allo and the guy was really
happy to see that we had returned, greeting us with a smile and serving us a free
pastry dessert after we had finished our meal.
The next morning we took the metro
to the main train station and waited around for our two o’clock train destined
for Kalambaka. About halfway between Athens and Kalambaka we experienced
something that could only happen in Europe, the train took a smoke break. The
conductor came over the train’s speakers and announced, in Greek, that we would
now be stopping in the middle of the woods for a ten minute smoke break, which
effectively emptied the entire train. Luckily this really nice Greek lady told
me what was going on beforehand because otherwise I would’ve been pretty damn
confused watching all of the train’s inhabitant’s jump off in the middle of the
dark forest and huddle around smoking cigarettes. ‘Did the train just die? Is
this the train stop for picking up werewolves? Are we burying a dead body? Why
are we stopping in the middle of the fucking forbidden forest?’ are some of the
thoughts I presume would’ve gone through my mind.
Our train eventually rolled into
Kalambaka at about 7 PM and we hired a taxi to take us up through the town to
our pension right at the base of meteora, which is the name given to a
geological phenomenon towering over the town of Kalambaka. Meteora, which
translates to ‘suspended in air,’ is a group of sandstone pillars that jut out
of the ground like a city of stone skyscrapers, reaching heights off seven hundred
meters; and resting upon six of these stone giants is an ancient monastery. Once we arrived to the pension you could make
out the line on the cabs passenger side window where my nose had slowly risen
up and up as I followed the light beams illuminating what I could only assume
was the entrance to heaven.
After
calming down from the giddiness that seeing meteora had caused I found a couple
hours of sleep before waking up with more energy than I knew what to do with.
We enjoyed a great breakfast provided by the pensions incredibly friendly and
generous owner before starting a day that reminded me of the one spent visiting
the mystifying Cliffs of Moher in Ireland. Although we could have taken a taxi
up to meteora that would have driven us around to all of the monasteries for forty
euros, we opted for the hypnotizing hike up the valley between two five hundred
meter tall sandstone pillars that were slicing through the clouds like a knife through
a piece of cardboard. Even though our feet despised us for the torment that we
put them through that day, we made the right choice. Notching about fifteen
more kilometers of wear and tear into our tennies, half of which was on steep
hilly terrain, was worth it a time in a half for the views that we enjoyed
while standing in the sky.
After spilling out of the top of
the valley I finally understood the full extent for the reason behind the name
meteora, it literally looked like the entire area was suspended in mid-air. The
mist of the morning was wrapped around the sandstone pillar towering over us
like the clothes on a Russian toddler during a fall afternoon, leaving the
monastery to float atop the clouds like the Russian child’s face floats atop
his seven layers of clothing. It was so mystifying that half of me expected
James Bond to jump out of a window and parachute down to Kalmbaka leaving the
Monastery and the evil scientist inside to explode above him, while the other
half expected Lysa Arryn to drop out of a Moon Door and plummet to her death.
After overcoming the urge to sit
down and gaze up at the Holy Trinity Monastery for the rest of my life, we
climbed the dramatic stairway wrapping up and around the five hundred meter
tall sandstone pillar until we summited the rock and found ourselves amidst the
fog on the front steps of the monastery. We went inside and discovered what
looked like a home with dozens of doors that lead to what I can only assume
would be living quarters. Being allowed to peek inside one of the rooms the
space was about as large as a full size mattress and the ceiling was as tall as
I was, which seems extremely small but what does a monk need to do with a bunch
of space anyways. Of course there was a church inside the monastery as well, whose
tiny space was crammed full of beautiful ceiling paintings and an iconostasis. After
walking down the main, and only, hallway of the monastery we popped out on the
other side and found ourselves on the edge of a sheer cliff peering down on the
miniature town of Kalambaka. It was amazing!
The next monastery we went to was
the St. Stephen Nunnery, where nuns continue to inhabit its walls six hundred
meters off the ground. It was here that I experienced for the first time a
church whose walls and ceiling were entirely covered with paintings depicting
the martyrs of the bible. As we found this in the following four monasteries as
well, I assume that it must have been a common practice in the area, however I
can’t understand why. The martyr depictions pretty much boil down to paintings
of every possible way a man could die two thousand years ago. You could be
skinned alive, crucified upside down, shot full of arrows, burned alive,
attacked with grappling hooks, continuously stabbed with a spear, eaten by a
lion, beheaded by a sword, stoned, beheaded with a saw, eaten by crocodiles,
beaten to death, etc. etc. It was overwhelmingly brutal and vicious but when
you stepped back and looked at the church’s innards without isolating a single
painting to analyze I found that the overall appearance of the church was quite
beautiful. And once I spotted the iconostasis sprouting up at the end of church
I was effectively distracted from looking at the brutal paintings, it was made
completely of hand worked wood with exquisitely intricate designs and detail.
The pillars holding up the iconostasis didn’t stand straight but instead wound
up themselves in a dazzling display of animals, women, and flowers. Once again,
the view was amazing!
After St. Stephen’s we had a long
walk ahead of us to get all the way over to the Roussanou Nunnery, but it was
totally worth it. Here the church was right in the middle of the valley,
perched up with two monasteries to its left and two to its right, offering mind
boggling views of the other monasteries. Here I learned about the talanton
which is a wooden plank that the monks would smack with a wooden club in order
to announce that it was time to gather for church service. It was described to
me that just as Noah hit a piece of wood to announce that it was time for the
animals to get on the Ark to be saved from the flood, the talanton announces
that it’s time to get into the ‘Holy Ark,’ the church, to be saved from the
cataclysm of sin.
Continuing to the right of
Roussanou we came upon the Varlaam monastery. This monastery achieved the most
dramatic location with the southern side of the building creating a smooth
continuation into the side of a six hundred meter tall cliff. As all the other
monasteries it included an open deck with a rope and a net. Back before the
monasteries had stairs the monks would reach the monastery by getting inside a
net and allowing themselves to be hauled hundreds of feet up to the monastery
by his fellow monks. But the worst part is that they didn’t replace the
nets/ropes with new ones until god willed them to break. I didn’t have a huge
problem with this, I mean why change something if it’s not broken, but wouldn’t
stairs be the first thing that you built. How did you get all of the materials
up there to build this deck with the rope and net operation? And however they
managed to do this, how much easier would it have been with some stairs? That’s
just my two cents, it seems a bit illogical.
The last monastery that we visited
was the biggest and the highest, the Great Meteora Monastery. This one was
indeed large, containing a library, a church, a hospital, a wine cellar, an
ossuary, and several classrooms; all situated on multiple levels. The fact that
this huge structure was meticulously resting six hundred and fifty meters in
the air on the top tip of a rock was mind blowing. The Great Meteora Monastery
was the first of twenty monasteries to be built atop the rocks, constructed in
1372. In the 9th century a group of ascetic monks inhabited the
hollows and cut outs scattered among the giant cliff faces, which they continued
to occupy until in the 11th century they finally realized that living
in small rock fissures hundreds of feet in the air was idiotic. How they
reached these small ledges chipped out of the side of the rock edges, which
reminded Margot and me of Sky Cells from GOT, I have no idea, but it has to be
one of the most inconvenient housing locations in human history. After the
hermit monks moved out of their cliff caves the area became immensely popular among
Greek Orthodox monks due to its isolation from any political upheavals or instability.
In the 14th century Athanasios Koinovitis lead a group of monks to
Meteora and, as the story goes, after he was lifted by an eagle to the top of
Broad Rock he began construction on the Great Meteora Monastery atop it. The
only way up to the otherwise inaccessible monastery was via a rope ladder,
which the monks would draw up whenever they felt threatened. Since its first
inhabitant the remote location of Meteora has become a constant place of refuge
for the persecuted people of the area. During the Byzantine era and Ottoman rule
the Greeks used Meteora as a sanctuary and during WWII the Germans and Italians
bombed and looted the area due to an intuition that the area was hiding war
criminals. Thus the twenty monasteries became six, only two of which are still
inhabited and each of those is occupied by less than ten monks.
After the Great Meteora Monastery the
exciting part of the day was over but the fun was just getting started. This
whole time we had been walking farther and farther away from our hostel and
ended up spilling out of the rock pillars in a completely different town, called
Kastraki. We found this town to be much smaller than Kalambaka and very much
engrained in the idea of an off season being, well, off. The streets were empty
and the hotels and restaurants lining the streets where all dark inside; it was
fucking eerie. After walking out of Kastraki and reaching the city limits of
Kalambaka we finally found an open restaurant and since we hadn’t had any food
since breakfast that morning, we were literally beginning to starve. We savored
over some chicken and pork dishes while
this family set up for a baby shower that was about to take over the
restaurant. The lady who was organizing it generously gave Margot and me each a
pink cupcake before we left them to their baby shower. We finally finished the
trek back to our hostel at around 8 o’clock and refused to go back into town,
barely mustering up enough strength to stand up and use our legs to walk to the
bathroom.
On Monday November 19th
I woke up and discovered this beautiful note from my travel buddy informing me
that I was now twenty two years old and that we were going to somehow find a
way to celebrate during our epic voyage from Kalambaka in central Greece all
the way to Rome. First we stocked up on food given to us by the pension owner and
walked down to the bus station at around eleven AM. The next bus wasn’t until
three so I spent my time wandering around the city before our bus finally
arrived forty minutes late. As we began to approach the bus we immediately
began to understand why the bus was so late, it was packed full of stupid
people. The undercarriage was so full that the bus driver had to open up
another section containing the bus’s engine and placed my bag in there. As I
was dealing with my bag Margot was busy kicking some people out of our seats,
which started a chain reaction felt by the entire bus. Since nobody was in their
right seats to begin with, when the dead beats that were in our seats were
forced to find their actual seats and kick out its occupants, those dead beats
had to hunt down their actual seats and kick out its occupants. This process
was repeated until everyone was eventually sitting in a new seat and an
obviously frustrated guy in the second row said something in Greek to the bus driver,
which I assume from the bus drivers reaction was something along the lines of,
“Why the fuck aren’t we going anywhere?”
After the bus finally took off we
were expecting to miss our bus connection in Ioannina and tried to spend the
ride relaxing and catching up on some sleep before we had to deal with the
hassle of finding a new way from Ioannina to Igoumenitsa in a couple hours.
However, the ride was much too beautiful for me to fall asleep. Soon after
leaving Kalambaka we were winding our way up a mountain side surrounded by a
fog that eventually engulfed the bus like a fat kid does a candy bar. We were so
far lost in the fog that all I was able to depict where two red lights resting amidst
a sea of milk, leading our way up the mountain. Eventually we popped out of the
fog and saw it drifting below us like the snowy midst that swirls barely
hovering over the ground on the top of A-Basin. I was reminded even more of the
Rocky Mountains as we began to enter tunnel upon tunnel, passing through the small
Greek mountains. The strong fluorescent lights, the chilly air outside and the
small mountain towns barely visible in the post sunset light all reminded me of
driving up to the mountains with my college buddies on a Friday night.
We eventually got into Ioannina
and to our pleasant surprise we found that the bus to Igoumenitsa didn’t leave
for another ten minutes. I grabbed our bags from the busses engine compartment
while Margot bought the tickets and we rendezvoused at the new bus, just barely
making it in time. After regaining our normal breathing speed we enjoyed
another two hour ride on the bus to the ferry port in Igoumenitsa. Here we got
our ferry tickets to Bari, Italy, Margot bought me my birthday pizza dinner and
we waited until our ferry finally arrived an hour late to pick us up.
