Islands in the Sky

March 26, 2007

Kalambaka, Greece

The past two days have been pretty relaxing, for the Classics Trip. Two days ago we had a very short day, going around Thessaloniki and looking at the classical monument that it contained, and then yesterday was the Greek Independence Day, celebrated by closing everything except for restaurants and by us by having a free day. I was very happy—I think I lost the taste for the breakneck pace over spring break and am working to reacclimate myself to going going going all the time! Today we have visited a few archaeological sites, all of which have been closed because it’s a Monday, and that’s the day that no museums are open. But we are making our way slowly to the Greek coast, where two days from now we will load the ferry and head off for Italy!

The day before yesterday started late, with a wake-up call at 7:30, which we were very happy to receive, and we awoke to a beautiful bright and sunny day. We set out from the hotel on foot to see what Thessaloniki had to offer. Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece, behind Athens, and contains a good deal of stuff from the Roman and especially the Byzantine period. During the Byzantine empire it was second in importance only to Constantinople itself, and much of the city itself is dominated with the great domed churches that are the hallmarks of the Eastern Orthodox religion.

Our first stop was the ancient Roman agora, dated to the 2nd C AD and located only a few blocks from our hotel in the middle of the more residential part of Thessaloniki. One minute we are walking along these narrow streets with a apartments rising up four stories with gyro restaurants and little shops below, and the next minute we enter a fenced in square with ancient red brick ruins poking up out of the dirt. There is not much left to the agora except for a bouleterion—a small theater, and the remains of a few stoas that met to form a colonnaded courtyard. All of the ruins are set several meters down from the current ground level, a testament to the city’s long period of occupation.

We also stopped in Agios Demetrios, the largest church in Thessaloniki and one of the most prominent churches in Greece. Founded over a Roman bath complex in the 5th C AD, it is a 5 aisle basilica that was popular before the cross-in-square type was developed later. Closer in floorplan to that of the Gothic churches, it is rather long and narrow with a crossed plan near the front before the holy of holies, and ended in an apsidal end toward the east. Not much of the 5th century stuff remains, the church was burned down in the 7th C AD and later restored, and burned again in the 19th century. But it still remains quite impressive for its size and for the different periods of ornamentation. We walked into the middle of the Orthodox service—two priests with long robes sang a series of songs, which Toumazou told us related to the worship of Mary. The inside of the church was austere white in many areas, with a pitched timber roof. The 5 aisles were demarcated with colonnades topped with floral capitals that looked like they dated from another of different time periods. The most ornate part of the church itself was behind a huge dividing screen of ornate gold leaf and icons. The chanting of the priests echoed throughout the whole church as we wandered up and down the aisles, peering in at the niches where tall thin candles burned in tubs of sand, releasing a soft scent of incense. The voices rose and fell around us as we contemplated the mysteries.

We wandered around for a while before exiting the church to revisit the exterior—a bunch of brick and white stones concentrating around the arches. The entire outside is perforated in a series of threes—three entrances to the doors, arched over with brick, three sets of windows in the clerestory, all covered with a bunch of white latticework. The outside was plain and austere, lacking superficial exterior ornament except for around the windows.

Then we continued on, heading down the waterfront until we reached the Rotunda—an area built during the tetrarchic period, in the 300s AD, as part of a larger complex of the palace. Originally intended as a mausoleum for the emperor Galerius, this building was never completed as such and later was converted into a church. The building is massive and sturdy in the roman fashion, dominated on top by a big dome in the center with the later addition of a porch on the western side. The building does not give away its secrets until you enter in the echoing space and find the larger round space surrounded by arches and niches along the interior. Although most of the inside is covered in scaffolding, small bits of frescoes and mosaics still cling to the walls, on the insides of the arches. Small foul and birds dart in and out of the latticework, glittering patterns in the dark. Shafts of sunlight come slanting in through the windows. On the far end of the church, the niche held a crucifix, outlined in the glowing sunlight and backed by the raw masonry of the inside of the church.

Continuing to the outside, we walked around the whole outside of the rotunda before going to the Via Egnatia—the former main street of the city, which lines up the three major monuments in the city—the Rotunda, the Arch of Galerius, and the Palace. The Arch of Galerius was built by Galerius to celebrate his victories over the Persians at the end of the 200s AD. A big arch that went right over the road, it was four sides with a dome over the center and had multiple registers of sculptural ornamentation—clusters of shallow relief with fighting figures and parades and triumphs. Three of the four sides of the arch have fallen away, exposing the red brick under the marble exterior. This is one of the most complex of the arches in the Roman world, and represents the culmination of a development of Roman monumental arches. Nowhere else do we see a tetrapylon of such complication in the ancient world.

Exiting the Arch of Galerius, we moved toward the sunken remains of the palace complex, in line with the Via Egnatia and finally leaving the roman ruins to rest we moved down toward the waterfront. From there we were free! Toumazou let us go early and some of us opted to go the Byzantine Museum. But first we walked for a while, along a wide boulevard crowded by pedestrians and bounded by green space. Alexander reared up before us, a massive statue in bronze—a horse rearing up, brandishing his sword and spear and facing east, toward the empires he conquered. The sun was bright and the sky was perfectly blue, without a single cloud, and we walked along and sunned ourselves before taking a number of pictures and heading back toward the city and the Byzantine Museum.

The museum itself was deceptively housed in a building of squat modernist brick with flat ribbon windows, a big block surrounding an inner courtyard. We walked in and saw the high ceilings and the brightly lit displays with a whole history of the Byzantine empire. The museum was big and very well done and we wandered slowly through the halls, not taking notes but taking some pictures. A few things that interested me were that in one of the churches with a basement crypt with barrel vaulting, the spaces between the arched ceiling of the crypt and the level floor of the church were filled with a bunch of terracotta amphorae. I saw a number of floorplans of Byzantine churches, ranging from the long type to the cross-in-square plan, a number of capitals and elaborate floral capitals. There were a number of icons from the Paleologan dynasty, when the Venetians and the Italians gained contact with the arts of the east and brought forth a resurgence in naturalism that had been lost since the end of the Roman empire. We also saw a number of engravings that came in vogue at the time—complicated masses of lines with saints, George slaying the Dragon, and Mary with child.

Finally inundated with all of the gilt and images, and embroidery, and starving because by then it was late in the afternoon, we left the museum. Anne and Ambrice and Jess and Sam decided to go back to the hotel, but Chris and I saw what looked like an amphitheater on the map that we had. We decided to go see it—maybe it was an ancient arena that the program had overlooked. We winded our way up the streets toward the arena, past a Sports Museum that I decided that I am definitely going to visit in the summer, and reached the arena to find that it was not a roman ruin, but a modern incarnation in squat boring concrete and metal. There was a running track located around the complex on the side, and we walked around and around it before determining that there was no roman arena close by and we walked home. We ended up taking close to an hour—we had walked much farther than we thought, and ended up back at the hotel starving and tired. So after some gnutella and bread, we had a nap. After laying down for a bit, I went down to a small internet café by the hotel with good sun and read more of 1453, which detailed the development of canon in the Ottoman empire—who under the ingeniousness of Mehmet ended up casting a canon of 27 feet long and capable of throwing a canon 1 mile and burying it 6 feet down. Because the walls of Constantinople were built before the development of guns, they were unable to hold the recoil of the canons and gave the Ottomans a supreme advantage. With three shots of their canons they could reduce the hundred year old fortifications to rubble….

I ran into Ambrice and Jess later, and we decided that we should have a wine and cheese party, really classy, to celebrate the free day. So we went shopping for wine, cheese and crackers and worked on setting up the room. Ambrice and Jess were in charge of invitations, and later we worked on setting up the room. Our room was originally a double that had been converted into a triple with the addition of a cot, so we moved the mattress to one of the other beds and then took the frame outside to the porch. We arranged the crackers neatly on tiny trays, set out the wine glasses, and got ready for the party.

The party was a great success, we asked everyone on the invitations to have “cocktail attire,” which for the classics trip meant some skirt or dress that we had brought for the trip. Most people ended up dressing up in skirts and dresses and some of the boys wore collared shirts, and people ate the cheese and drank the wine and generally acted very sophisticated until late at night, when the wine took its effects and we all got loud and rambunctious. Even Toumazou and Jarrett ended up showing up, and they put on a big soccer game—the Turks and the Greeks, and talked and laughed late into the nightl I actually ended up sleeping on the crack between Ambrice and Stewarts beds, too lazy to get my own from off of the balcony.

The next morning was a free day and a holiday, but I was unable to sleep in and woke up early to a huge breakfast. We were originally going to go to the Orthodox mass to celebrate the Greek Independence day, but because it was also daylight savings time our 9:00 was actually 10:00 and we ended up missing it. So Ambrice and I had a wonderful Law and Order SVU marathon until the late afternoon, until my laziness overwhelmed me and I decided to go on a run.

I ventured down Agios Demetrios street until I reached the church itself and turned to run toward the waterfront, enduring the stares of all the Greeks the whole time, until I reached the harbor, choked with people in the outdoor cafes and walking along the ocean. The day was dazzlingly bright and warm and I enjoyed people watching as I made my way up toward the White Tower, one of the landmarks of Thessaloniki. People ambled along the ocean, entirely too overdressed for the warm weather in their black and leather and tights and tall boots. I ran all of the way down to the end of the harbor and then back, into the city toward the arena and finally arriving at the hotel much later.

Then it was more chatting, a shower and a walk around the city before another picnic, some reading and bed. The free day was wonderful, and incredibly lazy, but it was over and it was time to pack and do work before the early morning.

This morning it was back to go go go… we had a 6:30 wake up and a big breakfast before packing all of our things on the bus and heading out for the day. The first stop was at the site of Pella, the birthplace of Phillip II and Alexander the Great, and the capital of the Macedonian empire. Unfortunately it was Monday, so the place was closed, but Tomazou had us exit the bus anyway, in the middle of a pretty severe rainstorm, so we grimacingly stepped out and walked along the highway until we reached a break in the fence and could peer over the links at the ruins of walls and columns. We walked back along the fence as the trucks roared by and sprayed us with water—the start of another crazy day.

We got back on the bus and Toumazou continued his lecture as we endeavored to dry off our soaking jeans and settle in for another long drive. We unloaded again, this time at Vergina, another famous city in the Macedonian empire, the place of Phillip II’s assassination at the hands of a jilted lover. But, unfortunately, this place was closed also. We sat on the bus as Toumazou ran around the terrain, and he finally scampered back down to tell us that if we climbed up the hillside we could reach a vantage point to see most of the ancient site. So we did, braving the steep terrain until we came to a low hill from which we could see the low foundations of walls and a few stunted fallen columns. The most impressive part of this site and the only place visible to us was the palace complex, built in around 300 BC when Pella itself was increasing in importance. However, this place was always reserved for the funerals of the Macedonian kings, and the tombs of Phillip II and most of his family (with the exception of Alexander, who was actually buried in Egypt) are located here. However, we did not see much of anything execept for the wet and steep hillside which we struggled to navigate on the return. So far a pretty disappointing day.

We returned to the bus for the ride to our final destination—Kalambaka. However, as they tend to do, plans change and our early stop at the hotel was prolonged for a detour to Meteora—a place located high in the mountains with a large number of monasteries. Initially I was kind of unhappy about having to forego my early stop at the hotel for another site… that was until the bus made its perilously windy trek up the steep cliff face and we came out at the top.

Meteora reminded me very much of Sedona, with the notable difference in color of the rocks—where Sedona is a lovely shade of red, Meteora is a slate grey. But the cliffs rise up in the same steep fasion, eroded into fantastic shapes by the forces of wind and water. They create tiny islands in the sky, atop which these monasteries cling. Most of the monasteries are dated from the 14th century, and some are accessible only by rope and ladder. And how often are the ropes replaced? According to Tomazou, who asked one of the monks, “God decides.” Scary.

The place looks like something out of a dream, and I can clearly see why the monks would have been drawn here; anyone who wanted contact with God could see him written on the fantastic rock formations and on the sweeping valley with its terracotta roofs that opened up before us in the valley below. The mountains in the background were obscured with a thick cloud of fog, but the weather was holding so far so we moved out of the bus and toward the biggest of these, a monastery upon an island in the sky, with its ramparts hovering on the edge of the void. To one side of us we could see where a series of lines had been strung across a shallow valley and to the far side where the monastery rose up in its steep strong masonry before us. However, in front of us were a series of steps leading down the valley and back up again to pierce the walls of the monastery and allow us entrance. Not trusting myself to the will of God, I opted for the steps, and was rewarded with spectacular views down the cliffs and across to other monasteries perched like birds atop small posts, careful not to spread their feet to far for fear of ending up in the valley below.

We descended and then ascended the steep steps, with a low retaining wall that separated us from the long drop below. Then it was up and into a tunnel in the rock and more steps before emerging in the monastery itself. All women were required to hide their trousers with skirts, which the monastery provided for us. They were simply these long sarongs in black and white patterned fabric that we wrapped on over our jeans, looking ridiculous and feeling less reverential toward the place than we had before. We all took pictures, the boys looking on and chuckling, as we tied the awkward garments around ourselves and took the ramps up into the main part of the building.

The monastery had been converted into a museum, and contained different sections where the old winery, kitchens, and mess halls were displayed, as if they were still in working order. The other parts of the place had been converted into museums for Byzantine and monastic art and culture. There were a number of old uniforms for Greek soldiers, and I finally realized that the goofy uniforms I had seen in front of the National Palace in Athens could be explained by looking at the early 1900 military uniforms—stockings and long tunics with berets and tasseled shoes.

We saw a number of engravings and tons and tons of icons, ranging from fairly old to contemporary, everything done up in that ornate yet static style that is the hallmark of the Byzantines. We also saw the infirmary of the monastery, designed with a dome in the center and four wings extending below it. The dome contained a hole in the roof and space for a large hearth underneath, allowing for ventilation and the expulsion of noxious gases from the sick and the dying. The infirmary had two stories connected by the dome, with the elderly of the monastery on the top floor and the sick on the lower floor, everything was surmounted by brick barreled vaulting.

The whole monastery was arranged in a way that to get closer and closer to the church we had to wind up and up and around, and coming on to a ledge we were afforded another fantastic view of the landscape with its steep sculpted grey cliffs and the grey clouds and rolling foothills. The church at the top of the mountain had an apsidal side in red brick, the arches outlined with smaller blocks of masonry highlighting the curves and folds of the apse. We entered the church and came upon detailed frescoes, dimly lit by the sunlight streaming in through the upper windows. The frescoes contained crowded figures set in triangular outlines—the lives of the saints and Mary and Jesus.

Coming from the antechamber we entered the major portion of the church, ornate in gold and silvered icons. This space was less crowded, but contained no less impressive images adorning the walls. I walked up to one of the columns beneath the arch and came upon an altar that held an image of the saint and for one of the first times paid attention to the intricate detailed carving of the flowers and florals snaking their way up the arms of the altar and across the front up to the ceiling. They looked to be hand carved, and some were guilded and others remained wood-bare, but a testament to the care and love of their creator. Candles flickered in the dim light and brought a warmth to the cold grey day.

We stepped outside of the sanctuary and back into the cold and the drizzle of the monastery. It had begun to rain again and we walked around a bit more before finally exiting, walking down the steep steep stairs in the slick, and coming back up up to cross the valley and come on the other side of the straight between the two islands in the sky, and back on land once again, we surveyed the sculptured spectacular cliffs once again, before retreating to the dryness of the bus and the eventual safety of the hotel.

Kalambaka seems like a friendly enough little town from what I have seen of it, Jess Ambrice and I watched some Law and Order with Chris before heading on the town to find a gyro place. This was one of our last places in Greece that we were going to visit and knowing that we were going to miss the gyros tremendously we ate our fill—tzatziki, French fries, and all, and continued around the town. We pirated some internet from a street corner nearby—the crazy Americans again, and I was stopped by a man who asked me in Spanish where the nearest internet café was located. I surprised myself in my ability to give a convincing—if broken answer to the question and sent him along his way. Leave it up to us to find the internet within the first five minutes of coming to our destination—its our only connection to the outside world.

Now its back to the hotel for some relaxing, reading and blogging before another long day tomorrow. One more night in Greece, the next on the ferry, and then we are in Reggio.