Race
Recovery—A walk to the monastery
The island of Spetses is home
to two monasteries, a veritable “us and them” of Greek Orthodoxy. Our family’s
monastery (with some exception) is called Ayion Panton and it is located on a
high point looking down on the village and distant mainland to the north and toward
the rocky peninsula called Kouzano—the former family homestead—to the east. The
nunnery is home to about thirty nuns who adhere to the mainstream Orthodox Church.
The “other” monastery—what
would institutional religion be without “the other”?—is the Old Calendarist
monastery, also a nunnery, which was defiantly built on a slighter high slope,
looking down on their heretic brethren below. The Old Calendarists, like the Russian Orthodox and a few others, follow the
old Gregorian calendar, which the church supplanted in the Middle Ages with the Julian calendar. (For example: Christmas on December 25th versus Christmas on January 7th.) A few outliers in the family have supported
the new (that is, old) monastery.
In defiance of my tired,
post-race muscles and tendons, Peter and I walked straight uphill to Agion
Panton. Months earlier I had promised my sister Dyan, sick with cancer, that I
would make this journey, lighting a candle for her and asking the nuns to
remember her in their daily petitions.
The friendly abbess with the
angelic countenance opened the chapel. We spent a few minutes in the candle-lit space. Before we left the sister sent us off with holy
oil (derived from the olive tree, not the snake) from the Panagia’s icon along
with a cotton swap that had been rubbed against the monastery’s thousand-year-old
saintly relics. It is intended as the applicator of the oil for the ailing.
The abbess cataloged the miraculous cures offered by the saints and the
Virgin Mary.
Another great force--gravity--took us on our bikes along narrow streets back to the hora (village).
Another great force--gravity--took us on our bikes along narrow streets back to the hora (village).
Cycling Tours
The next day, our last on Spetses and in
total defiance of my tired limbs following a hot and hilly 25-km race, we rented mountain
bikes. We used our pedal power to visit those relatives we had not previously
seen. In fact, in a mere five days, we managed to have coffee and sweets with
all of my grandmother’s nieces and nephews, who are much younger (80-something)
first cousins of my mother. Everywhere we visited we were treated to boatloads
of traditional Greek hospitality.
While I am not quite the
long-lost relative from the New World, I am a novelty for my very frequent
visits (since 1979) and determination to keep the family connections Old and New World alive for at least another
generation. I have cultivated relationships with my Spetses (and also my Cretan)
family over the past 40 years. Each time I visit it is a minor homecoming. And
an affirmation of the ancient tradition of unbiased, genuine hospitality
Our trusty mountain bikes
also took us to two very different beaches for our last swims—during the midday
to Garyfalos, the little cove tucked behind the Paleo Limani (Old Harbor), and
at sunset to Ligoneri, another private strip of pebbles, where we swam in the
gentle swells as the sun set electric pink into the western horizon of the Saronic
Gulf.
Our last supper on Spetses,
as it were, was at The Clock restaurant, which is so capably run by my second
cousin Yioryio. In fact, I have a half dozen second cousins who live on
Spetses, and as many again who live in Switzerland or Leeds (UK) or in the
metropolis of Athens. It is so gratifying to have made these connections with
my grandmother’s Old World home and our family that still lives there.
In some ways, I feel like
that last tenuous bridge to our Greek heritage—knowing the family history, immersed
in Greek culture, history, and folkways, and speaking fluent modern Greek. It is
a connection that I’ve tried to impart to my own children, so that they may one
day know their cousins—thrice removed.
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A
Circuitous Drive to Athens
We said our thank you’s and
our goodbyes to our hosts, Uncle Kyriakos and Uncle Yianni, and took the slower
(but not the slowest) ferry across the channel to the village of Kosta on the
mainland, where our car was awaiting us. With all four tires.
A very circuitous and
stunningly beautiful road took us through the eastern Argolid to the ancient
site of Epidauros, the best preserved theater of the ancient world. The theater
is amid the ruins of a large center that formed in the pre-classical world. It
lies astride the Sanctuary of Asklepeion, who was the healing god from
antiquity and the mythical father of modern medicine. For more than a thousand
years, Epidauros drew medical professionals, the ailing, and pilgrims from throughout the ancient world. It
was also a site for the ancient Olympiad, with a well-preserved stadium and a
running track.
After the demise of the Greek classical world, the Romans maintained, expanded, and protected this site, which continued to flourish until the barbarian invasions of the fourth and fifth centuries ad.
Our drive back to Athens included stops with a fantastic views at Modern Epidauros—which is east of Ancient Epidauros but north of Old Epidauros, place-names designed to make driving especially confusing—and then a brief view of the canal at Corinth, an engineering marvel of yesterday. The canal was a building project conceived at the end of the Archaic period (c. 600 bce), continued during the Roman occupation (with 5000 Jews conscripted for what was very likely a non-volunteer task), and finally completed a little more than a century ago. It is still in operation, used by smaller vessels wishing to skirt the long voyage around the southern and western Peloponnese on their way toward Italy and points west.
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Athens
We returned the rental car in
the vicinity of the Eleftherios Venezelos airport, using the new Attikis Odos to
defy worst of the motor madness of Athens. One wrong turn tooks us to a very
sketchy gypsy neighborhood, followed by a course correction back the rental
company office.
Thanasi fetched us from Mesogeio,
the great metropolis’s hinterland that is separated from th city proper by the long mountain called
Himmetos, and then ushered us back to the hillside neighborhood of Kesariani,
where our right-sized Air B&B apartment (complete with hot showers!)
awaited us.
The following morning, our
last day in Greece, involved a frenzied tour of downtown Athens: the changing
of the guards at the Parliament, a hike down Ermou Street (Athens’s version of
Fifth Avenue, with its tony shops and lively street life), and into the Plaka,
the old city surrounding the Acroplis and its many archaeological sites. I
played the armchair classicist, reaching back forty years into my College Year
in Athens curriculum, trying not to anaesthetize Peter too badly with my
pontifications, ruminations, and (in)expert opinion on all things Greece.
After commiting a mortal sin—not
joining the multitude on the Acropolis proper—we enjoyed a relatively leisurely
tour of the new (2009) Acropolis Museum, a splendid display of Greece’s 12,000-year
history of art, architecture, and cultural artifacts. The museum is unsurpassed
and one could spend a week touring its vast collection. Alas, our three hours
provided but a taste of Greece’ immense, rich, and brilliant history and legacy.
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The
Last Supper and Epilogue
If nothing else (but there is
much else) Greek life is all about
community, friendship, and highly animated human interaction. So our last night—dinner
with dear old friends: Thanasi, Koula, and Akis—was indeed gratifying and
special.
We walked through Kesariani,
dodging the unrivaled anarchy of cars, motorbikes, scooters, and hustling
pedestrians, arriving at a new outdoor restaurant that specialized in that neighborhood’s
own heritage: the Greeks of Asia Minor.
In the early 1920s the
diaspora Greeks of Asia Minor (more than 1 million Greek-speakers who had lived
there for several millennia) were forced overnight to flee Turkey for the safety
and relative civilization of the Greek mainland and islands. Those Asia Minor
refugees who were not slaughtered by the Turks ended up in several Athens
neighborhoods, such as Kesariani, and several of the restaurants there feature
a special type of Greek cuisine from the “East.”
We ate and ate until we could
eat not more (52 euros, with tip, for five of us) and managed to waddle back to
our apartment for our last night in Athens.
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Epilogue
Greece left its permanent
mark on my heart and soul forty years ago. If obsessions are a bad thing, this
one is an exception.
Each trip to rural Greece is a
reinvigorating exercise, one that reminds me of the power and value of a
cultural heritage that is rich, varied, and still full of genuine surprises.
For my travel partner Peter—his
first trip to Greece, his first trip overseas—that special feeling washed over
him from our first day and was both enriching and memorable.
We are grateful for this
travel experience. And already Temenos 2019 is on the wine-blue horizon.
There is always more to come
from sunny Hellas.
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