Posts Tagged ‘Greece’

Floating Monasteries!

Posted: November 3, 2024 in Travel blog
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Floating Monasteries! What image does that phrase bring up, when you close your eyes? I actually pictured medieval buildings floating in air. Needless to say, this caught my fancy, and I decided to include it as part of our itinerary during our visit to Greece. I am talking about Meteora, which literally means “suspended in the air” in Greek; the land where twenty four monasteries were built on inaccessible peaks. Monks started settling in this region of Thessaly from the 11th century itself; some records says that monks with climbing skills had been living in rock caves since the 9th century. In the 14th and 15th centuries, these Christian monks faced increasing persecution as the Ottoman empire expanded and, in this period, these monasteries were built on inaccessible locations so that the monks would have a safe haven. How they managed to build in such places, is quite beyond me.

The town nearest to Meteora is Kalabaka, which is about three and a half hours’ drive from Athens. Kalabaka is basically a small, quaint one street town with some nice restaurants. There are day trips by bus from Athens but since we prefer to explore on our own and wanted more flexibility, we decided to rent a car and drive. We started from Athens by mid-morning and arrived at Kalabaka by around 3 pm. While there were twenty four monasteries that were set up during the medieval period, only six are operational now and they house about 17 monks and 40 nuns. The monasteries are all set up to handle the tourist traffic and you don’t see any monks or get to see the areas that they use regularly. These monasteries are closed on different days of the week and our plan was to spend the afternoon of Sunday and full day Monday at Meteora and cover the important monasteries, as all but one of the monasteries were open on those days. An additional point to be considered while planning the itinerary is that the monasteries close by 3 pm or 4 pm. On the day of arrival, we had planned to go to the Holy Trinity Monastery and so we rushed there, soon after check in.

This monastery is also known as Agia Triada and is a difficult to access as it involves climbing up some 140 steps. It was set up in 1475-76 according to Wiki though local legend says that the monk, Dometius, the founder of the monastery, arrived at the site in 1438. During the initial times, it could only be accessed by ropes. This was the case with most monasteries, and it was only about 90 years back or so that the Greek government made roads that could help with the access to these monasteries. 

We made the climb up the 140 steps without too much trouble and there is a small courtyard on top and a chapel. The views were just breath taking and I don’t think I am capable of describing it. On the top, we found the arrangement used by monks in earlier times to haul up people and material. There is a large pulley like attached to a rope that passes over a hook dangling over a sheer drop, right to the bottom. People and material were then carried up in a rope net; the steps we used were added much later. Of course, prior to this arrangement, access was possible only through rope ladders and whenever the monks faced any threat, they simply pulled up the rope ladders and secured themselves. Some of these rocks are about 400 metres high and going up and down must have taken some effort! These days, there is also a small cable car type of arrangement from the car park directly to the monastery. This is used for transporting goods and the monks that can’t make the climb. 

The Monastery of Holy Trinity was featured in the 1981 James Bond film “For your eyes only” and couple of other films as well. 

You can see many unusual and thus interesting rock formations as you drive around the mountains in Meteora. Wiki says that about 60 million years ago, a series of earth movements caused the seabed to go up, creating a high plateau. The rocks are mostly sandstone. There are many trails one can take in Meteora but we didn’t try any because of lack of time. There are many rocks that can be accessed from the road, or the car parks and climbers would really love it.

As can be expected, such a location has great sites to watch the sunset and there is enough information to be found on where to go, on the internet. After finishing the Holy Trinity Monastery, we went to Sunset Rock and the sunset was just amazing. It was so peaceful and quiet. No wonder that the monks came to this area, meditation comes rather naturally here. We made best use of our two evenings at Meteora and visited two spots and spent time there. There was a reasonable crowd in each location, and you had to arrive a bit early to get the best spots.

One interesting aspect I noticed is that there is no railing or any such protection anywhere. You are expected to behave reasonably and sensibly and watch out for your own safety. The drops are rather sheer and deep and a fall could definitely be fatal. On the second day evening, someone lost a bottle or something like that and it caused a little bit of consternation among those present – guess it struck everyone that it could be you instead of the bottle, if you aren’t careful!

Next day morning, we set out to see the most famous of the Meteora monasteries – The Great Meteoron. It is the oldest and largest of the monasteries and was founded in 1356. We arrived early, as soon as the monastery was opening up, as this place could get crowded as the buses from Athens started arriving. Even then, we had to wait for a bit. This is quite a steep climb (more than 300 steps) and we overheard a Malayali family discussing the climb and in the end, the elderly parents decided to not attempt it. This monastery also has a cable car from the car park area, but I guess it is only for official use. We made it to the top without any trouble and the climb itself is worth it because of the views, especially that of the Monastery of Varlaam, which is quite nearby.

There are many buildings at the top including a beautiful church, courtyard, kitchen etc. Some of the areas have restricted access and there is no photography allowed inside the church (the image below is one I found on the internet), which is quite a pity as the interior of the church is quite rich and beautiful. There is also a museum inside the monastery and supposedly, the library at the Grand Meteoron is the largest in Meteora and it has about 1350 codices. 

Note: This photo of the interior of the church is sourced from the internet and not taken by me.

The courtyard had some beautiful frescoes and the rope net arrangement was seen here as well. 

View of Monastery of Varlaam from the Great Meteoron.

The kitchen was pretty large and had all kinds of utensils, baskets and all preserved as it might have been in the olden times. 

The Great Meteoron left us in awe, and we all felt it was well worth the effort. It was quite hot in Meteora in June and the sun was doing its best to make it even more uncomfortable. Next on the list was The Monastery of Varlaam. It is the second largest monastery in Meteora and was founded in the mid of the 14th century by a monk named Varlaam. After Varlaam died, the rest of the monks deserted the monastery, and it was abandoned for a century of so till two monk brothers named Theophanes and Nectarios reactivated it. 

This is a beautiful monastery, and you have to go up some 200 steps or so before you step into a wonderful courtyard. 

There is a small museum that brings out how life was, for the monks in the olden times. I found that quite interesting. I tried to imagine myself as a monk here, without the tourists milling around, contemplating the mysteries of the universe and time. If there is a ranking of locations suited for such an activity, this must definitely be one of the top-ranking ones.

There is also a small room with beautiful frescoes and a fantastic ceiling.

Here too, photography is banned inside the church – which is quite a pity – and I reproduce an image I found from the internet.

Note: This photo of the interior of the church is sourced from the internet and not taken by me.

One key attraction at the Varlaam is a wooden barrel that was used to store rainwater. This is a huge barrel which can hold up to 12,000 litres. It is made entirely of wood and the locking system to make the planks watertight is quite clever. 

The lift arrangement used in other monasteries was found here as well.

After lunch, we proceeded to the Monastery of St. Barbara or Roussanou. This is a small monastery, occupying the whole of the rock it stands on and was built in the 14th century. These days it is occupied by nuns and about 15 nuns live here. It is very easily accessible from the road and from the other side, there is a wooded path that leads to a bend further up the road. The Malayali family we had seen at The Great Meteoron came here as well and a nun came out to meet them. So, I assume a Malayali nun has made it to this remote monastery. We didn’t see them afterwards and so couldn’t check the veracity of this assumption.

Photography wasn’t allowed inside the monastery, but I wasn’t aware of this and clicked a few photos before the clerk alerted me. 

It has a nice small chapel and some displays in a room outside. The pathway through the woods, behind the monastery, is quite enjoyable.

This was the fourth monastery we visited, and we didn’t have enough time left, to visit the remaining two. The two days involved a lot of going up and down steps and we were happy we could handle it without any trouble. 

Meteora is a magical place indeed and I wasn’t disappointed that the experience didn’t do justice to the image that came into my mind when I heard of this place the first time. The town of Kalabaka is pretty nice too and I can easily see myself spending a week here trekking to the various monasteries and taking life easy, in between. It was our last evening at Meteora and we soaked in one more sunset before we said goodbye. 

Visiting Nikos Kazantzakis

Posted: June 20, 2024 in Travel blog
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“I first met him in Piraeus. I wanted to take the boat for Crete and had gone down to the port.” Thus starts the legendary work Zorba the Greek. A book that captured my imagination and caused me to wonder at the character and the author alike. My favourite of all that I have read of Nikos Kazantzakis. Yet, this was not his first book that I had read, and there is an interesting incident that led me to Zorba. In early 2001, I had been to Cyprus to meet a client and for some reason, we started talking about philosophy and the client (Costas) told me there was a Greek writer he respected quite a lot who turned to Zen Buddhism in the later part of life. I asked Costas whether he was talking about Kazantzakis, and he literally stood up in astonishment, that someone from such a distant land as India knew of Kazantzakis. I told him that I had read The Last Temptation of Christ and Report to Greco and explained to him that in my state Kerala, good many people knew Kazantzakis and his works, most of which had been translated into Malayalam. I also narrated to him the law-and-order situation that happened when a play based on The Last Temptation of Christ was staged at Thrissur. When Costas took me to meet his CEO, I was introduced as a man who had read Kazantzakis and the CEO asked me whether I had read Zorba and I hadn’t, at that time. Thereupon, Costas was given the responsibility to ensure that I was gifted a copy of Zorba the Greek before I left Cyprus and that was how I came upon Zorba. 

When we planned a trip to Greece recently, one of the important points in the itinerary was to visit Crete and go to Heraklion, Nikos Kazantzakis’ city. I wanted to reread Zorba one more time before I visited Crete but that was not to be. Kazantzakis was born in the city of Heraklion in Crete in 1883 and his roots went back to a village called Myrtia, which is near Heraklion. He was deeply spiritual and a free thinker and this meant he was often in conflict with the Greek Orthodox Church. The church did not appreciate Christ Recrucified and The Last Temptation of Christ and many from the clergy wanted him to be excommunicated, though that didn’t happen. While this was going on, it seems that Kazantzakis wrote to the Church as follows: “You gave me a curse, Holy fathers, I give you a blessing: may your conscience be as clear as mine and may you be as moral and religious as I.” What a man!

He passed away in Germany in 1957 and it was his desire to be buried in Heraklion. The clergy with their narrow mindset declined to give space in any cemetery for him. Thus, he was laid to rest near the old Venetian city walls of Heraklion, atop a hill. It is amazing how often religious leaders completely lose track of what they are supposed to propagate in the first place – love and humanity. 

We arrived at the location of his grave at around noon, and it was totally deserted. We parked at the base of the hill and walked up; I had doubts on whether the place was closed. There were no directions and we saw one building first with its gates shut and that didn’t look like what we were searching for. We walked past the building and soon came upon the solitary, simple grave. 

On the grave is written “I hope for nothing, I fear for nothing, I am free”, according to his wish.

Someone had left a copy of an English edition of Zorba on the grave, and I stood there in the scorching sun and read the first few pages from the book. Somehow, it felt like an apt gesture. Earlier in the trip, we had been to the port of Piraeus in Athens to catch a boat to Hydra and as I read the first couple of lines, I felt like I was there in the little café that rainy morning. 

Photo: Sandhya

We spent a few minutes on that lonely hilltop, and I felt that Kazantzakis would indeed have preferred to have been buried there instead of a cemetery; the word freedom makes more sense there.

After a brief stop at Fort Koules (a Venetian fort built to protect the harbour), we set forth to the Nikos Kazantzakis Museum. This is in the village of Myrtia about 18 km from Heraklion. It was a pleasant drive through deserted, winding roads passing through small Greek villages. This museum was set up by Yorgos Anemoyannis, a Greek set designer, who was a cousin and friend of Kazantzakis, in 1983. He was helped quite a lot in his efforts to collect manuscripts and other display material by Eleni, Kazantzakis’ second wife. Anemoyannis converted his own house and purchased another small adjoining house that belonged to a relative to create the museum. The museum is managed by Nikos Kazantzakis Museum Foundation which is a non-profit private entity supervised by the Ministry of Finance and the Decentralized Administration of Crete. It stands on a small square with the essential coffee shop at hand. 

Kazantzakis was an admirer of the Chinese writer Lu Xun and it seems their styles were a bit similar, to the extent that they were called “Chinese Kazantzakis” and “Greek Lu Xun” by some friends. There is a museum in China set up in the memory of Lu Xun and these two museums collaborate with each other, facilitating a virtual meeting as Kazantzakis and Lu Xun never met in their physical lives. This sculpture installed in the square was donated by the Chinese museum.

As you enter the museum, you are greeted by a bust of Kazantzakis and a sculpture of a hand holding a pen.

There is a small theatre inside where a 20-minute video on Kazantzakis was played. From the video, I learnt that the last published work of Kazantzakis is titled “Aniforos” and that it was published in 2022! It seems the book was written in 1946 but never published. On enquiry, I was told that the English version is yet to be released. 

The museum has a lot of first edition copies, letters, personal effects of Kazantzakis displayed. I read the following in the museum: “Odysseus, he who sailed upon the octameters I was writing, had to be made to view the abyss with such a Cretan Glance without hope and fear, but also without insolence as he stood proudly erect on the brink of the precipice (from Report to Greco). The “Cretan Glance” with which all of Kazantzakis’s heroes are endowed is a particular moral stance, best summed up as the absence of fear and hope in the face of futility, the abyss and death. Kazantzakis conceived of it in a vision, while leaping at the Minoan bull leaping fresco, and believed that it resulted from the synthesis of diverse cultures and opposing perceptions.”

It was quite a coincidence that I had been to the Minoan site where this fresco had been discovered (Palace of Knossos) earlier in the day where a replica of the fresco can be seen even now. 

This fresco is supposed to date back to 1450 BC, and this was an important sport for Minoans. In this, a man faces a raging bull and then somersaults over its back to land on his feet behind the bull. As I was looking at the fresco, I was struck by the similarity of this sport to Jallikkettu from Tamil Nadu. In both, man is trying to establish his victory over a strong animal, the bull. But we digress, let us get back to the museum. 

Kazantzakis worked on a sequel to the Odyssey from 1924 to 1938 and he considered this to be his magnum opus. It has 33,333 lines and follows the structure of Homer’s Odyssey but is about a final journey undertaken by Odysseus after the end of the original work. His most famous works were all published after this – Zorba the Greek (1946), Christ Recrucified (1948), Captain Michalis (1953), The Last Temptation of Christ (1955) and Report to Greco (1961). In 1947 he moved to Antibes in France to concentrate on writing and as can be seen from the above, his output was prolific. Zorba got him international acclaim and I was struck by the fact that Kazantzakis was already 63 by the time it was published!

Even though he had a large desk at his house in Antibes, he preferred the table in the living room as his space to write and this table is displayed at the museum and on it, you can see the first edition of the Odyssey published in Athens in 1938 and limited to 300 numbered copies, notebooks containing concepts, words and phrases used in Odyssey and a box Kazantzakis used to store Cinnamon, Nutmeg etc.

Yet another display is the first Greek edition of Zorba the Greek (which was originally titled Life and Times of Alexis Zorbas) along with a photograph of Yiorgis Zorbas, who inspired the character, Alexis Zorbas. However, it seems that Yiorgis Zorbas and Alexis Zorbas were actually poles apart in character! Yiorgis Zorbas was a friend of Kazantzakis and a letter he sent to Kazantzakis from Cairo in 1920 about his travels, is also displayed. 

Yet another display that caught my attention was a notebook with notes for The Last Temptation of Christ (in Kazantzakis’ handwriting) and the first edition of the book.

The museum is not very large in size, but it is has a lot of memorabilia connected with Kazantzakis and one can easily spend 2-3 hours there. This is a tremendous initiative to honour a great writer and thinker.

To our good fortune, the Director of the museum, Ms. Marilena Milathianaki, was present when we visited. She was pleasantly surprised to see visitors from India and she said that it is very seldom that they get Indians coming over. In general, it is difficult to reach the museum as it is far from Heraklion and there is hardly any public transport (she said there is only one bus per day) and so you need to have some private means of transport to be able to visit. She spoke to us about their collaboration with the Chinese museum and even invited us for a function that was to take place on the 19th of June wherein a new sculpture was being unveiled with some talks and a musical program. Unfortunately, we were leaving on 19th morning and hence couldn’t accept her invitation. 

It was very educative and interesting to talk to her and she was also excited to hear about Kazantzakis’ popularity in Kerala. We congratulated her on the important work that they are doing, and she invited us to visit again whenever we are in Crete again. We parted with this gracious lady after taking a photograph.

To me, this visit was the highlight of the entire trip to Greece. I felt that the Government should do more to ensure that the museum is easily accessible to the public and enlarge it; maybe they will, one day. Heraklion should be proud to be known as Kazantzakis’ city and I think they realise it, as the airport is named after him. As I walked back to our car, I turned back for a last look at the museum and saw this fantastic mural. Kazantzakis standing tall on the Cretan coast!