Fred Hoyt's Travels

The end of the Rhode(s)

36 hours ago we were arriving in Rhodes, the last stop on the incredible journey of the past three weeks.  The now-Greek island is a destination for tourists headed for the beaches there from northern climates—they tell me that Russian tourists have become the dominant customers.  Our plane, coming from Munich to Thessaloniki, had a number who were already in the beach mode, with swimming towels draped around them, ready to go in that wonderful  Aegean as soon as they hopped off the plane.

As our cab sped toward the old town of Rhodes, I thought we might have detoured to Miami Beach, as we passed hotels and beaches….until we turned the corner and in front of us was the old town, a city that summarized so much of what we’d seen the last three weeks (and my previous four on the May trip)—the battle between East and West.

As one of the crossroads of the Eastern Mediterranean, the island has had a long history—Mycenaean, Greek (Hellenistic), Roman, Egyptian influences, Byzantine, Genoan, Turkish, Italian, etc., but the impressive fortifications that surrounded the old town were medieval, built by the Knights of St. John, which purchased the island from the Genoese (who had in turn gotten it from the Byzantines, who by that time were pawning, literally, the crown jewels to retain what was left of the Empire), in 1309.  The Knights, kind of an international fraternity, had emerged during the Crusades doing hospitality and health care to the Christians in the Holy Land, and gradually combined that with a military unit.  When  Saladin drove the Crusaders out of Acre and hence off the mainland, the Knights bought Rhodes and built a wall around the city.

The hospital, now used as a museum, is an original building.  Sometime after the Italians took the island from Turkey as a spoil of the Balkan Wars (1912), Mussolini had the palace of the Grand Master rebuilt to original specifications, adding such touches as mosaics from the island of Cos, and a plaque, still there, dedicating the rebuilt palace to Victor Emmanuel, then King of Italy.  The overall aura is stunning, but our guide, an archeologist by training, noted that “real” archeologists were unhappy, because the palace was on the supposed site of either the Colossus of Rhodes (one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, a statue to “freedom”) or another ancient wonder, the Temple of the Sun (Helios), and the Italians never excavated.

The city was a bastion in the swirl of Turkish-European relations, and the Turks tried two sieges—1480, and again in 1522.  The latter siege, led by Suleyman the Magnificent (who got turned back at Vienna, in one of the important battles that saved Western Europe from Islam), brought 200,000 Ottoman troops against probably 10,000 knights at most.  What turned the battle was a traitor in the Knights, who apparently hid the gunpowder, and shot arrows telling the Turks the knights were out of ammunition. The traitor, who had wanted to become the Grand Master (a lifetime position), was discovered, and drawn and quartered, but the Knights nonetheless surrendered.  They got to leave with their weapons.

Many years later, apparently a spark went off where the gunpowder had been hidden, blowing up a number of buildings—which led to the need to rebuild the palace when the Italians took over.  Most of the old buildings are still there—especially Byzantine, medieval, and Turkish, including hamams, Catholic Churches, and a Suleyman mosque much simpler than the Suleyman mosques in Istanbul.

The other highlight for us dealt with nature—not the sea, as you might have expected, but a valley where butterflies congregate in the summer, attracted by a tree that grows in abundance.  The valley is a national park, so it was pretty well protected, and provided a very different ending to our trip—it had nothing to do with Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Turks, Italians, or Knights—just with nights.  And we discovered Samos moscato at a dinner!  Great sweet wine.

We’re home now three weeks after we started—Zagreb, Varazdin, Piltovic Lakes, Split, Hvar, Korcula, Dubrovnik, Kotor, Cetinje, Sarande—Butrint, Corfu, Itea, Athens, Thessaloniki, Rhodes.  I think I need a vacation from vacations—unless that means “work”!

August 11, 2013

The road to Rhodes

We’re at the last stop on our vacation, the Island of Rhodes.  I’ll have more to say about it tomorrow (we arrived late this afternoon, and are staying in a boutique hotel in the “old town”), but I wanted to say a few more words about Thessaloniki.

Yesterday (seems longer ago), we took a boat tour to Mount Athos, with 20 Orthodox monasteries, one of the largest religious concentrations this side of Tibet.  I almost said we went to Mount Athos, but that semi-state has tighter security than North Korea.  For one thing, half of mankind (women) is excluded.  The founding myth of the peninsula is that the Virgin Mary set foot on it, and the monks have decided no woman can top her—despite some EU efforts to open it up.  After all, the Byzantine emperor ruled in 1050 or thereabouts that only men would be allowed on Mount Athos, and his writ still stands.  Indeed, the monks follow the Julian calendar, the last holdouts anywhere in the world.  Byzantium is still reasonably alive on Mount Athos.  For another, the community accepts only 100 Orthodox visitors and 10 non-Orthodox a day, in a process of selection that can take months.  You can stay for three nights, if chosen.

The alternative for us was a boat trip that skirted one side of the peninsula, from which we could see I think it was nine of the monasteries. Some clung to the sides of the cliffs (Mount Athos itself is almost 6500 feet, rising abruptly from sea level!) and look like the hanging temple I saw in China last year; others have elaborate layouts that look like they ought to be in Russia, with the onion domes (actually, that was the Russian monastery).  The monasteries, built as early as the 9^th century, possess some incredible relics that were on display in a special exhibit in the Thessaloniki museum

I would be remiss if I did not point out that the seafood has been especially good in Greece.  We had a wonderful meal courtesy of George Kambroulogou and his wife; IWU gave me his name when I asked for alums in Europe, and though George (class of 93) only knew me by reputation (he was kind), he generously welcomed us to Brussels, where he works for the EU.  When he heard I was going to be in Thessaloniki, his home town, he told me he’d take us out to dinner since he was going to be there when he was on vacation.  George might have taken a Chinese philosophy class at IWU, since he embraced the Confucius saying, “It is a pleasure to welcome guests who come from afar.”

Because our plane was at 2 this afternoon, I had a free morning, and with a free bike, I resolved to either revisit some places, or go to see sights we could not get near because of parking problems or lack of time.  Sunday morning seems to be an excellent time to explore cities, and bikes are a great way to cover a lot of distance reasonably quickly.  In addition, the churches had services, so the churches were used as churches should be.  I spent some time at the palace of Galerius, the Roman agora (marketplace), the great walls constructed initially by Theodosius, Hagia Sophia and another church that still bore an inscription boasting that the Sultan had taken it from infidels—along with a nice ride along the Thermatic Gulf.

Five hours later, we were in Rhodes, in the old town, which between 1309 until 1522 was a possession of the Knights of St. John, who having been driven out of Jerusalem, held the island against the Turks.  The fortifications—as you might imagine—will be first on my tour—since they’re close by, and a museum.  Double treat!

August 9, 2013

Thessaloniki

If I wanted to bet on a sure thing, I’d bet none of you has ever had an email—or a letter—from Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, at 1 million people.

That’s too bad, because the city has a lot to offer that’s different than what you see in Athens.  For one thing (unlike Athens), it is a port city; we’re a half block from the Thermatic Gulf, and biking here in the morning on the seafront promenade is different than biking the constitution trail, as you might imagine.

Here’re four reasons you might consider including Thessaloniki on your itinerary the next time you are in this part of the world:

First, it’s now the biggest city in Macedonia (not the country that broke away from Yugoslavia and is still causing the Greeks nightmares—Greece has contested the right of the other Macedonia to use the name Macedonia); that’s maybe not a big deal today, but if you remember your history of the world, Alexander the Great was a Macedonian who in the fourth century spread Greek civilization to the Indus and much of the known world—dying at the age of 33.  Today, Carolyn and I went to two nearby sites which were associated with that Macedonian dynasty that first united the Greeks (under his father, Philip II), and then, under Alexander, dominated Eurasia.  Archeologists found the tomb of Philip, with its wonderful gold wreaths and other items, and created a museum over the tomb (which included one of his seven wives) that has the items.  We also went to the nearby Pella museum, more recently excavated—it opened last year with EU money—which has some wonderful floor  mosaics.  Pella was the capital of Macedonia at a time when it was on the Gulf; erosion moved the Gulf nearly forty miles away, which led to the foundation of Thessalonica, named for the wife of King Cassander, who was one of Alexander’s daughters.  The local Archeological museum stresses the history of Macedonia, with its own collection of gold jewelry—with nary a reference to those upstarts down south (Athens).

Thessalonica, and the rest of Macedonia, came under Roman rule around 140 BC, and for the next 1400 years was mostly Roman or Byzantine.  The heyday of the city was probably around 300 AD, when Diocletian’s fellow coruler, Galerius, made Thessalonika his capital.  There’s an Arch of Triumph he built, the remains of a palace, and a rotunda that has (like so many of the churches) also seen use as a mosque.  Impressive as well are the walls that Theodosius, who encircled Constantinople with the walls that held the city safe for most of its history, built in the 4^th century B.C.  After all, Thessaloniki was a major port on the Via Egnatia, the main route between the old and new Rome. The extant older churches, some going back to the 6^th century, including a copy of Hagia Sophia (called Hagia Sophia), have icons and mosaics and frescoes that are dazzling.  There is a stunning Byzantine museum that has mostly local art, with nary a mention of the New Rome (Constantinople).

Captured several times by the Turks, it finally came under Ottoman rule in 1430, and while the Turkish population left in 1912 (after the first Balkan War, when Thessaloniki became part of Greece) or 1923, when over 90,000 Greeks from Asia Minor were “exchanged” for Turks in Greece after Turkish armies defeated the Greek/Allied forces that tried to partition Turkey, there are still some Turkish influences remaining.  The White Tower, one of the brand identifiers, joining the coast with the city wall, and at various times a prison, was built by either the Turks or the Venetians; a fortress at the top of the highest hill (the Acropolis) also became a Turkish prison that the Greek government also used for political prisoners until 1974, when the Greek dictatorship fell.  One famous Turk—Mustafa Kemal, better known as Ataturk, the man who created modern Turkey, was born here.  We went to his birthplace, which is part of the Turkish consulate, but the promised museum is still abuilding.

Finally, as a consequence of the Turkish conquest, the city welcomed a large number of Sephardic Jews, from Spain.  I remember that Bayazit II (I think that was the Sultan) listed among his achievements in his tomb, sending ships to take the Jews from inquisition-driven Spain to the Ottoman lands.  Thessaloniki was one of the main destinations, partly because, as our guide noted, the Turks wanted several minority groups to balance the Christians (Paul preached here in  50 AD—we went to the monastery that is now on the site—and some say the first Christian community was in Thessalonica).  The Jerusalem of the Balkans (as it was known) lasted until Nazi occupation; in 1943, 50,000 Jews from the city were sent to concentration camps.  96.5 percent never made it back.

Unfortunately for the historians, though, most of the old city was burned in 1917, and the planning for a new city—or the preservation of the heritage—has not been entirely successful.  The Roman Agora (the marketplace) got uncovered when the city tried to build a courthouse; the courthouse did get built elsewhere, but preservation in Greece in general, and in Thessaloniki in particular, has been a struggle.  It’s interesting to note that the EU, which has been taking Greece to task for its economic weaknesses, has been funding a lot of the excavations.  It’s just that there’s so much here!

August 7, 2013

Goodbye to Athens

There are some advantages to having been in Athens four  times in three years. For one thing, it means that even if we went to the same things, I might pick up something new.  For example, did you know why the Olympic Stadium was built where it was?  Reputedly, it’s where the runner of the first “Marathon,” coming to announce the victory over the Persians, blurted out the victory—and literally died.  And as often as I’ve ridden the metro in Athens (one of the few places with no graffiti), I’d not really paid attention to the excavations, which are part of the décor; dig anywhere in Athens, and you’re back in the 6^th century BC (when Athens had sewage disposal pipes, a system lost on medieval Europe).  Or you might get taken somewhere new, like the Orthodox Cathedral, which would have been more impressive had it not been under wraps.

For me though the advantage was that when we had free time in the afternoon, I knew what I wanted to do—and I had some unfinished business from May.  I had, for one thing, never walked around the Acropolis hill; I had gotten halfway last May, only to realize the wondrous sites closed at 3—I realized that at 3:15, so I hit them first.  Our guide had mentioned the Agora (marketplace) as worth a visit, since it was not only a sprawling ruin, but a well-designed museum, and you know how hard it is for me to miss a museum.  In addition to the marketplace, it had temples (which became churches, and in some cases became mosques), with a lot of reconstruction.  It has the largest Doric column temple in existence today.  I also had time to visit the library of Hadrian, a first century AD emperor who spent a lot of time adding to the monuments in Athens .  He built a triumphal arch that marked the division between the Roman and Greek parts of the city, and completed the Temple of Zeus (with its enormous columns) that had been begun 500 years earlier!

With an hour and a half remaining, I took the subway to an area of the city that housed a number of museums.  One that I really wanted to see was closed on Tuesdays, and I decided I would visit either the Cycladic Art museum (I think 1100 BC), or the Byzantine and Christian art museum, which I’d visited three years ago before I had been to Constantinople.  What I decided was that I would go to the first one I came to—since I had barely enough time to waltz through  I came (happily) to the Byzantine museum, housed in one of those 19^th century palaces that dignify Athens almost as much as its ancient ruins.  The exhibits included some discussion of how the Parthenon was transformed into a Church, and a nice history of icons in the Orthodox Church (for about a century, the controversy over their acceptability threatened to blow the Orthodox church apart).  I had time enough to buy the catalog, and get back to the boat for our closing ceremonies.  Cruises tend to end with a filet dinner and baked Alaska, and this was no different.

But probably the best thing about having been to Athens as often as I have of late is that I did not feel compelled to stay there longer, which is why I’m writing this 180 miles away, in the second largest city in Greece, Thessaloniki, eagerly awaiting a guided tour tomorrow that will add to my knowledge of the Greek world, the Roman world (one of the co-emperors with Diocletian made it his headquarters), the Byzantine world (it was the second city of the Empire), the Venetians, the Turks (Mustafa Kemal, who turned Turkey to the West after World War I was born here)—in short, more of what we’ve seen for the last two weeks.

August 5, 2013
The Womb of the World
If you are in the port of Itea, Greece, I can confidently say two things
about you: first, you’re on a smaller cruise ship, because it’s a small
port; and second, you’re likely to be there to visit the “womb of the
world,” the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.  The famous oracle is located
only about 12 miles (and up almost 2000 feet) from the ocean there, but
nearly 120 miles and 3 hours from Athens.

For nearly 900 years, Delphi was the center of the Greek world,
alternately called the womb, or the navel of the world.  Part of the
reason for its prominence is that the oracle at Delphi correctly
predicted one of the Persian king’s defeat—ironically, in a cryptic
response to the Persian king.  He sent a delegation to ask what would
happen if he invaded Greece.  He was told a great empire would be
defeated; he did not realize it would be his, but then, he didn’t ask
the right question.  The serpentine column that one of the grateful city
states erected in Delphi in honor of that victory (the site became a
kind of “bragging place” where the disunited Greek city-states—the
inconclusive 30 year Peloponnesian war between the various city states
resulted in an exhausted stalemate– could in peace construct things to
boast about their wealth) now graces Istanbul, because Constantine
brought it there in 330 as part of the decoration for his city.  What
better to display the might of the New Rome than a victory column
celebrating the Greek victory over its greatest rival—Persia.
The Athenians were the richest city-state, and consequently, had the
most ostentatious buildings, including one that touted the victory at
Marathon (which doesn’t mention any contributions of the other city states).

As it turned out, the location generates energy because it lies on a
fault line, and has suffered from a number of serious earthquakes . The
temple of Apollo, one of the most solemn places in ancient Greece, is also located over an area that generates a number of gases, one of which produces clear thinking if inhaled, and scientist believe it was this
gas, rationed out to the women who did the predictions, which helped the reputation of the oracles.

Delphi’s prominence lasted until the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius ordered the destruction of pagan places, though for a time, there were Christian symbols in the area.  Never a “city,” Delphi nonetheless had an arena that seated about 5,000, and a track that accommodated 20,000 people, both in reasonably good repair today. There’s also a wonderful museum, piecing together what they have found, including one of the 38 bronze statues believed to have been at Delphi, and a horde of gold bracelets and jewelry and ivory that was damaged in a fire, but could not be thrown away because it represented Greek gods, and thus was buried, only  to be rediscovered in 1939.

We stayed in Itea for about 6 hours, and I think there were three things
to do today: one was to shop in Itea,  where the banks closed about
2:00, and there were few stores other than cafes open (the interesting
Orthodox Church closed its doors at 2 also); second, swimming in the Ionian sea, which was fun because it’s very saline, and floating took no effort at all; and third, today we watched air planes attempting to put out a
forest fire in the area.  There were five them that skimmed the sea to pick up water and return to fight the fire.  I don’t think you can count on that happening every day, however.

We’re on our way to Athens, where this part of our journey will end.  We
sailed through the Corinth Canal on the way, a 4 mile cut through solid rock that had been a dream since the 7th century BC, and was actually started by Nero.  It was only in the 1890s, however, that the project was seriously begun and completed.  In May, when I went with my students to the Peloponnese,  we crossed over it from above.  At places, the top is almost 300 feet high, and it is a small passageway, but it saves going all the way around Greece to get from the Adriatic to Athens.

I think the oracle said we would be in Athens by midnight tonight! I
hope she’s right.

Cosmopolitan Corfu

If you enter Greece from the north, by sea, you’re likely to visit the island of Corfu, Greece’s most northern island, and the 7^th largest of the 1000 islands that comprise the “Greek Isles.”  It’s also one of the most unusual, partly because of its “modern” history.  Venetian from the fall of Constantinople in the 4^th Crusade (more or less 1204 through 1797), it was successively French, Russian, and British occupied before Britain, in 1864, returned it to Greece.

Part of that history was reflected in what we saw today.  Carolyn and I chose the tour of the Achilleon, the palace built by the young and beautiful wife of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria/Hungary.  His wife Elizabeth, better known as “Sissy,” was a member of the Bavarian Royal House, who fought depression especially after she learned Franz was having numerous affairs.  She fled home, but returned on the condition that she be given a great deal of autonomy.  Thus, she built a palace here in Corfu, which was devoted to her fascination with Achilles.  Our guide, a Corfuite (?) with a strong British accent, enthusiastically described the statues and paintings, and regaled us with tales, long forgotten, of the Trojan War (I’ll bet most of our tour crowd had read the Iliad and the Odyssey in college; I did). The extra treat for me was that when she died (assassinated in Switzerland in 1898 by a  crazed socialist), Franz Joseph sold the estate to his good friend, Kaiser Wilhelm II.  The Kaiser’s contribution was to put an enormous statue of Achilles at the point where he could see it as he sailed in on his yacht, the Hohenzollern; it’s still there, but missing is his (so typical of the Kaiser) sign, “A great warrior, built by the Great Emperor of the Germans,” which lasted until Allied soldiers, recuperating in World War I when Achilleon was a hospital, took it down.

I went as well to the Museum of Asian Art, tantalized by the fact that there WAS an Asian art museum on the island of Corfu.  I read that it had 10000 artifacts.  I wasn’t told that the building was itself worth seeing.  The collection is housed in the Palace of St. George and St. Michael, which it turned out, was built by the British High Commissioner as residence and administrative center when the island was part of the Ionian islands protectorate of Great Britain (1815-1864).  The palace had his throne room—if you can believe that the High Commissioner had a throne!—and the furnishings of a neoclassical building.  The Asian collection was interesting as well, with the collection coming from the 19^th century ambassador from Greece to Austria, who purchased the items in auctions in Vienna.  The explanations were intriguing in their connection between Greece and Asia.  For example, the exhibit on Buddhist sculptures dealt with Gandahar, an early period that originated in the parts of India where successors to (Greek) Alexander the Great ruled.  The Buddhist statues resembled Apollo or Dionysus, with togas that could be in a Greek temple.  The more I looked at the Buddhist statues, the clearer the connection became.  The other link was between Chinese cloisonné and Byzantium.  After the fall of Constantinople, many Byzantine artists fled to Armenia and Georgia, where their art made it on the Silk Road to China, giving rise to the art form every visitor of China today recognizes.

The Byzantine art museum, housed in an Orthodox Church, made a similar point: mostly 16^th through 18^th century icons, the early ones were painted by artists who were from Crete, where many artists had fled after the Turkish conquest of Byzantium.  Later icons were painted by Cretans who had fled to Corfu after Crete fell to the Turks.  The latest icons showed the influence of the Venetians, who ruled Corfu for over 400 years, and revealed additions of the Baroque period.

The two forts , built by the Venetians, indicated the importance of Corfu as a military and naval outpost, particularly effective in turning back the Turkish navy, then the French attacking British interests in the Mediterranean, and finally, the British protecting the Mediterranean supply lines to India.  The fort has the lion of St. Marks, then the barracks of the British, and now houses the Ionian University Department of Music.  For good measure, there is a small museum with relics from a Byzantine church that was on the site.

No wonder this is a major stop for cruise ships, and for tourists who want warm (now hot!) summers.