Back from the land of gods
The trip was wonderful, as was the taekwondo camp. This year, we visited Mycenae, Meteora, Thermopyles, and also the Patras winery (whence I have no photos, but we were all drunk anyway).
Mycenae is a beautiful megalithic pre-classical Greek site, where Heinrich Schliemann believed to have found king Agamemnon - the famous mask is about two centuries older than the Trojan war, though. But still, Agamemnon's spirit is present on the site and one feels the might of the military nation the Mycenaeans were. I was stunned by the Linear B, the system of which resembles that of Egyptian hieroglyphs. I was very disappointed by the concrete walkways for tourists, though / I remeber the site fifteen years ago, when it was a tough climb, but this wonderfully preserved site was just as when Agamemnon walked its streets. Now it's ... somewhat sterile. I refused to photograph that, because I love Mycenae and want to keep it in my memory as it used to be. The circular tombs, where the kings and perhaps also the highest dignitaries weer buried, are beautiful and NOT reconstructed, thank gods.
The reconstruction works are even worse at the site of Epidaurus, which has a beautifully preserved and functional theatre (nobody knows how it works - the Americans have measured the theatre up and build an exact replica somewhere in the US, but the acoustic is bad). The surrounding site, though, ios being rebuilt in new marble and looks pitifully ugly. The Greeks say it's the UNESCO who wants these reconstructions ... They are destroying the atmosphere of these sites.
Meteora is a complex of over 20 monasteries dating to the 12th - 17th centuries, today monks still live in about six of them. The landscape of Meteora is stunning. and it's SO funny to see a monk being pulled up the hill into the monastery in a net. I loved the ossuary, but I like skulls in general, otherwise only one of the monasteries we visited had original decoration. One learns a lot about Christianity in these monasteries - the frescoes look like pictures of Hieronymus Bosch (I really loved Leviathan and Hell), and the walls abound with pictures of variously (rather ingeniously) tortured saints. Seeing all these saints ... these people are as polytheistic as it gets, they just don't admit it.
Our final destination, Thermopyles, was a Taekwondo trip. The Spartan king Leonidas is mentioned in our encyclopaedia as an example of indominable spirit, so we went to pay him homage. We were searching for the actual battlefield, and walked several untrodden paths to finally find it, but I had to prove my own indominable spirit as our path led past sevral HUGE spiders... I made it and so stood at the site of the battle of Thermopyles, where a thousand Greeks faced a million-headed Persian army.
More later...
Mycenae is a beautiful megalithic pre-classical Greek site, where Heinrich Schliemann believed to have found king Agamemnon - the famous mask is about two centuries older than the Trojan war, though. But still, Agamemnon's spirit is present on the site and one feels the might of the military nation the Mycenaeans were. I was stunned by the Linear B, the system of which resembles that of Egyptian hieroglyphs. I was very disappointed by the concrete walkways for tourists, though / I remeber the site fifteen years ago, when it was a tough climb, but this wonderfully preserved site was just as when Agamemnon walked its streets. Now it's ... somewhat sterile. I refused to photograph that, because I love Mycenae and want to keep it in my memory as it used to be. The circular tombs, where the kings and perhaps also the highest dignitaries weer buried, are beautiful and NOT reconstructed, thank gods.
The reconstruction works are even worse at the site of Epidaurus, which has a beautifully preserved and functional theatre (nobody knows how it works - the Americans have measured the theatre up and build an exact replica somewhere in the US, but the acoustic is bad). The surrounding site, though, ios being rebuilt in new marble and looks pitifully ugly. The Greeks say it's the UNESCO who wants these reconstructions ... They are destroying the atmosphere of these sites.
Meteora is a complex of over 20 monasteries dating to the 12th - 17th centuries, today monks still live in about six of them. The landscape of Meteora is stunning. and it's SO funny to see a monk being pulled up the hill into the monastery in a net. I loved the ossuary, but I like skulls in general, otherwise only one of the monasteries we visited had original decoration. One learns a lot about Christianity in these monasteries - the frescoes look like pictures of Hieronymus Bosch (I really loved Leviathan and Hell), and the walls abound with pictures of variously (rather ingeniously) tortured saints. Seeing all these saints ... these people are as polytheistic as it gets, they just don't admit it.
Our final destination, Thermopyles, was a Taekwondo trip. The Spartan king Leonidas is mentioned in our encyclopaedia as an example of indominable spirit, so we went to pay him homage. We were searching for the actual battlefield, and walked several untrodden paths to finally find it, but I had to prove my own indominable spirit as our path led past sevral HUGE spiders... I made it and so stood at the site of the battle of Thermopyles, where a thousand Greeks faced a million-headed Persian army.
More later...