Before I continue I would like to mention a little nugget of information that I learnt on Athos but forgot to put in my last post, and which also shows how the monasteries are no longer content with the spiritual but also stray well into the temporal realm. Among the Athonite community it is an open secret that Ratko Mladić, the Serbian general indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in the Hague, is spending time at the Hilandari monastery disguised as a hermit. So, if anyone from the ICC is reading this, you know where to find him...
Anyway, back to the main narrative. From Athos my plan was to head east towards Istanbul and Asia. A rather straightforward task when you look at the map, but when I got off the ferry in Ouranopolis, fresh from my monastic sortie, the only buses were going back to Thessaloniki - definitely not the way I wanted to go and in grave violation of my First Law. Instead a brief consultation of a map in a nearby souvenir shop (being careful not to arouse the suspicion of the owner) showed that the bus was heading north (in the right direction) for 40km to the town of Stagira, before taking a right turn west (the wrong direction) towards Thessaloniki. (If the locations mentioned here are not familiar to you then you can consult the following map.) My course of action was obvious: get off at Stagira and keep heading north until I hit the main highway heading east. Unfortunately the map wasnt particularly detailed and failed to show the roads very well, or, for that matter, contour lines that would have informed me that Stagira was up in the mountains rather than at sea level where I needed to be. There followed a few kilometres trudge to a junction to where I wanted to go and an hour's wait as the traffic along the mountain road was sparse to say the least. I was anticipating a night in the Greek countryside but luckily I was finally picked up by a friendly couple who took me a good dozen kilometres past where they were actually headed to get me back to the coast and the main road at the town of Olympiadas, for which I was immensely grateful. And although it was only 6pm the last bus had already left and it was dark, so my hitching efforts were more out of lack of anything better to do than expectations of catching a ride. By 8pm I decided to call it a day and went in search of a spot to sleep. Since the day had been pleasant with blue skies shelter didnt seem to be an important priority and so I plumped for a large log in some abandoned wasteland against which to set up a very crude lean-to. A rather short-sighted choice as I was awoken at 4am by the ever-increasing pitter-patter of rain which made me flee to the safety of a large culvert whilst trying to keep my stuff only partially wet. The rain, interspersed by a few snow flurries, was to last for the next 6 days.
Anyway, back to the main narrative. From Athos my plan was to head east towards Istanbul and Asia. A rather straightforward task when you look at the map, but when I got off the ferry in Ouranopolis, fresh from my monastic sortie, the only buses were going back to Thessaloniki - definitely not the way I wanted to go and in grave violation of my First Law. Instead a brief consultation of a map in a nearby souvenir shop (being careful not to arouse the suspicion of the owner) showed that the bus was heading north (in the right direction) for 40km to the town of Stagira, before taking a right turn west (the wrong direction) towards Thessaloniki. (If the locations mentioned here are not familiar to you then you can consult the following map.) My course of action was obvious: get off at Stagira and keep heading north until I hit the main highway heading east. Unfortunately the map wasnt particularly detailed and failed to show the roads very well, or, for that matter, contour lines that would have informed me that Stagira was up in the mountains rather than at sea level where I needed to be. There followed a few kilometres trudge to a junction to where I wanted to go and an hour's wait as the traffic along the mountain road was sparse to say the least. I was anticipating a night in the Greek countryside but luckily I was finally picked up by a friendly couple who took me a good dozen kilometres past where they were actually headed to get me back to the coast and the main road at the town of Olympiadas, for which I was immensely grateful. And although it was only 6pm the last bus had already left and it was dark, so my hitching efforts were more out of lack of anything better to do than expectations of catching a ride. By 8pm I decided to call it a day and went in search of a spot to sleep. Since the day had been pleasant with blue skies shelter didnt seem to be an important priority and so I plumped for a large log in some abandoned wasteland against which to set up a very crude lean-to. A rather short-sighted choice as I was awoken at 4am by the ever-increasing pitter-patter of rain which made me flee to the safety of a large culvert whilst trying to keep my stuff only partially wet. The rain, interspersed by a few snow flurries, was to last for the next 6 days.
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| The massive, Byzantine-era walls of Constantinople might be 1500 years old, but they have withstood the test of time remarkably well. |
