CENTRAL GREECE

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Picnic at the foot of Helicon

I started my journey in Central Greece by visiting several small ancient sites in the region of Thebes where scant ruins remain but whose famous names were imprinted in my memory of studying ancient greek. Names of battles like Plataea where the Greeks had definitively defeated the Persians in 479 BC, or even Leuctra where later the Theban general Epaminondas crushed the redoubtable Spartans, or again Cheronea where Phillipe II, father of Alexander the Great, put an end to the independence of the Greek cities.

But also names linked to mythology, like the Valley of the Muses, where I looked in vain for the rare traces mentioned in my guide. At least I was able to see the acropolis of Hesiode, the oldest Greek poet, with Homer, who gave a depressing description of it : « Cursed town, vicious in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant ». This bare hillside, battered by winds, really did give you no wish to stay there.

Having found a wooded path, I followed it for a time in the direction of Helicon, the mountain of the Muses, where Hesiode claims that they addressed him while he was grazing the sheep. As for me, I did not have the pleasure of meeting them but, on the other hand, I came across mere mortals who were preparing souvlakis whilst drinking resinated wine, and who also invited me to join them. It was a group of young people with one «oldie » a man of my age who was introduced to me as the « uncle ». More of a wild man type, when, however, he discovered my former occupation, he did not fail to recite the first lines of the Odyssey, which I will translate for you, if I may : « Tell me, Muse, the man of a thousand tricks, who wandered so long a time… »

A fascinating country where the peasants quote Homer and where one hears the mothers call their little ones : « Herakles, Electra, Menelaus! Come in for your snack ! ».

The little train of Pelion

Near Volos, Greece’s third port, on the edge of the Pagasetic Gulf which gives onto the Aegean Sea, there is a region much appreciated by the Greeks but almost unknown to tourists. It is the Pelion peninsula, mountainous and wooded, mythical home of the Centaurs. It had, during the Ottoman Empire, a privileged status which allowed it to develop commerce and crafts, and saw, during the 18th century, several Greek schools, of which the main one, a proper small university, was situated at Milies. Its library held almost ten thousand volumes.

At the end of the 19th century an Italian engineer, father of the painter, Giorgio de Chirico, directed the construction of a miniature railway between Volos and Milies. Several artistic edifices were created, viaducts and tunnels, and the railway functioned for more than 70 years before being declared unprofitable. In 1995, an enthusiasts’ association succeeded in reviving it, and since then it transports tourists, at 15 kms an hour, through slate-roofed villages, offering impressive views over the sea.

I took it on a rainy day, thus getting a marvelous flash-back, on its wooden seats with its plume of smoke and its whistling, to traces of a bygone era. I talked with the controller lady and with some Greek tourists, and then, on arriving at Milies, I watched the turn-around of the locomotive by hand, on a large turntable, like that of the San Francisco tramway.

After taking myself for a walk in the village where water runs along paved paths, under huge platanes, the complete opposite of the image of an arid and stifling Greece, I visited the little ethnographic museum, but unfortunately, as it was a Sunday, the library was closed. I made a pact with myself to come back and stay in these places when I have finished my systematic exploration of Greece, to read some of its three thousand volumes still extant.

 
 
 

Postcards

To prove that one really is in « forgotten Greece », one needs only to start looking for postcards.

At Larissa, Trikala and Karditsa, Thessalonian towns of some importance, whenever I asked where I could find any, I was told « Nowhere ». That’s a shame, because these towns contain treasures, but tourists only want to pass through.

I had already experienced that in Sparta, where the foreigners’ only stop is Mystra. This town was famous in Antiquity, but its inhabitants were only interested in the formation of soldiers, not in the construction of buildings, not even military ones: the Spartans boasted that their only ramparts were their hoplite phalanxes!

Finally, at Sparta, I unearthed a shop, haberdashery-cum-hardware, where someone led me to the basement which harboured a display full of postcards, more or less curled up!

I was told that they were kept there to avoid them being damaged on the pavement!

 

The cowboy of Thessaly

In spite of my irritation about the ubiquity of English, I resort to using the term « cowboy », whilst regretting that the much prettier word « gardian » used back home in the Camargue, is unknown outside my region.

Not far from Meteora, I discovered, for the first time in Greece, a herd of about twenty horses, grazing freely on a hillside nd watched over by a rider who was silhouetted against the sky. Anxious to find out more, I addressed him immediately.

He was an adolescent, coiffured like Tintin, the current fashion, which has little to do with the nobility of the horse rider! He was mounted on a chestnut horse, barely 1.3m at the withers – we would class it as a pony – and when I asked for its type, he replied « Thessalonian », obviously.

It would mean nothing to the average man, but Ancient Thessaly, the largest plain in Greece, 80% mountainous, was home to a famous race of horse, of which the most famous was Bucephalus, the horse of Alexander the Great.

The one in front of me, apart from the cross on its forehead, was very similar to those of this epoch, notably its size: I refer you to the Parthenon freeze, where the riders’ legs go below their mounts’ stomachs. It is only through the progress in selection and nourishment that horses have become so tall – up to 1.8m at the withers – that one needs help to mount them!

As well as not wearing a saddle, another similarity with those of Antiquity was that this little horse was an entire male: the Mediterraneans, who venerate virility, never castrate. It is the Hungarians who have brought in this custom, the word « hongre » (gelding) also meaning a castrated horse.

I told the young man that, on the Island of Lesbos, I had seen a very similar race which typically moved with an amble like a dromaderie. This gait, as quick as a trot or a gallop but much more comfortable, is these days unknown in Europe, except in Iceland, even though it was much appreciated in the Middle Ages, before the introduction of the cart.

The rider replied that his did not know this gait, then went off to round up a herd of sheep, not without having pleased me with a big smile for this chat, no doubt very unusual with a tourist.

The Vlach peoples at Metsovo

On the road between the town of Ioaninna and the Meteores, truly fabulous site, can be found the village of Metsovo, much less well-known. It harbours some fine Balkan houses, with cantilevers, typical of Central and Northern Greece. One of them can be visited. The « saraï », reception room, is surrounded by a bench, upholstered with a traditional geometric pattern, a carved wooden ceiling as well as a chimney with a conical fireplace mantle, all typical Ottoman Empire. It belonged to the banker Tositsa, an « everget » ( benefactor ) like one often finds in Greece where a man who has made a fortune is expected to use it to the benefit of his village of origin.

The grandfather of this banker was a Vlach shepherd ( the French know this word thanks only to the tongue-twister : « La cavale aux Valaques avala l’eau du lac » ! ) ( « the mare of the Vlachs drank the water of the lake » ). These people, who one finds all over Greece where there are 200,000 and slightly less in the neighbouring countries, speak Aroumanian, a Romance dialect ( of Latin origin ) close to Roumanian. After having chatted in Greek with three ladies who were on their way to Mass dressed in traditional costume, I approached a group of old gentlemen who were talking in dialect. Easily recognizing the words, close to French, I asked them to tell me a story in Aroumanian ; then they talked to me about the harshness of the German occupation.

That was far worse in Greece than with us : there were dozens of Oradour sur Glane ; during this period 300,000 died of famine, and ultimately the Germans did worse things in four years than the Turks had in four centuries!

Arta

Ancient Ambracia where Pyrrhus reigned, whose costly victories have become proverbial, later the capital of the Despotate of Epirus at the end of the Byzantine Empire, has entirely ignored the tourist circuits, in spite of an exceptional number of gems : fortress, bridge, Byzantine churches and monasteries, vestiges of antiquity, museum and even an Ottoman «imaret » (asylum of the poor) situated in or very near the town. One also finds within a radius of 60 kms of Arta several little known sites of antiquity: Nekromantion, Cassope, Nicopolis, Rogous, Orraon.

The door opening on the abyss

North of the town of Ioaninna, near the Albanian frontier, there is a mountainous region prized by the Greeks but ignored by foreigners, who only value the bathing and the beaches ! It is Zagoria, in the massif of Pinde in Epirus : it comprises the National Park of Vikos, magnificent villages of stone buildings with slate roofs and wonderful bridges with one, two or three arches. As much as the modern quarters of Athens and many Greek villages are nondescript, even sometimes frankly hideous, then just as much the regions of Pelion and Zagora present an architectural unity jealously preserved : the new buildings and the restorations must respect the local style and open air swimming pools are forbidden.

The village of Monodendri harbours a little monastery which gives a striking view of the gorge of Vikos, several hundred meters deep. Behind the buildings I took a narrow path cut out of the cliff- side : my guide book mentioned that it led to a view point, but it did not mention those who had created it. I discovered his story from a group of Greek students. During the war of national liberation (1821-1832 ), the Klephtes, former bandits who had rallied to the independence campaign, had cut this path as far as a natural platform which they had fortified, and the women and children, chased from their villages by the Turkish threat, took refuge. They were protected, thirty meters in front, by a wall with a door which overlooked the gulf.

This vision, unique for me, adding to the shudder caused by the dizzying cliff, transported me to a world of danger and violence, where women did not hesitate, as happened several times in this country, to throw themselves with their children off the top of a cliff, rather than end in the harem of a pasha.

The Zagora wolves

For my second stay in this region I had decided to deepen my exploration and to discover as many stone bridges as possible. Although the Greeks are not great at building mountain roads (often they buckle and collapse downhill or they are obstructed by rocks or mud upstream) they have been virtuosos, in the 18th and 19th centuries, at building wonderful bridges whose strength and elegance defy time.

These treasure hunts sometimes required me to walk for hours, to get scratched by brushwood and even to fall into a stream. On returning from one such, I saw two young bears in my headlights, one of whom, dazzled, stopped for a second. This mountainous area with very thick vegetation also shelters other wild animals. Three days later, at the end of the afternoon, a hunter flagged me down on the road: he was looking for his dog which he described to me, and which unfortunately I hadn’t seen. He was desperate to find him before nightfall to avoid him being eaten by wolves.

The thought of this poor, petrified animal, surrounded by the pack, haunted me for the rest of the evening.

It’s not only the animals which have shown savagery (at least they have the excuse of hunger) in this remote area which has often served as a refuge for rebels. A memorial stone recalls that a certain Captain Arkoudas (it was his name but it also means “bear” in Greek) was assassinated by the Turks (they occupied the region up to 1912) beside a bridge which since then bears his name. Later, in the Second World War, the Germans ravaged Greece and there are “martyr villages” along many roads. Soon after, it is the communist guerrillas during the Civil War who scaled these mountain strongholds, where ambushes and reprisals occurred on both sides.

Plautus, Roman humorist who knew the Greek tragedies, would have applied to Zagoria his famous maxim “Man is a wolf to man”