The Minoan Legacy

Often, I found myself giving a glimpse of thoughts of where I would move on this world in order to acquire at least a little bit better life compared to what we currently have. Or when. Has there ever been a time in history when there was a civilization with a more dignified style of living? With society built with a more honest foundation toward themselves and their neighbors. With equality among people, gender, color, skin, and different cultures. With not at all or just a hint of superstition and religiosity. With no temples higher than schools and people's homes. With cities without strong police keeping order and without military of any kind. Was there a country without fortifications, both real and metaphorical? With no or just a bearable hostility toward others...

There is definitely no such idealistic settlement in this world. Not now. But there was one before. More than three thousand years ago on the island of Crete. The first civilization in Europe and perhaps the first and last one that fits this description. The place where I would time travel without hesitation if I could.

We know them in our history books as the Minoans, but that wasn't their real name. What they called themselves we don't know. We don't understand their letters and can't read their tablets. They built marvelous settlements with almost all the modern infrastructure we are familiar with today. Glorious city-palaces with paved roads between them. With main squares where they preferred practicing sports and arts instead of going into temples to pray. They were people who invented and lived one idealistic, peaceful life and based their wealth on trades among themselves and all the others across the sea.

Unfortunately, after several attempts throughout eons, human nature and natural catastrophes destroyed Minoan civilization, and these people at the end dispersed fully, and their way of life faded away for good. Among neighboring civilizations and their saved documents, as well as with the Bible, their names were probably either Keftiu, Kaptarians, Caphtor, or Kabturi. Or if you like, we can even call them Atlanteans if we connect Plato's story with the Minoan volcanic eruption that reshaped the island of Thera in the middle of the second millennium BC. Perhaps we should wait for their Linear A script to be revealed by maybe another Rosetta Stone, but until then, Sir Evan's label for Minoans based on the old Greek mythology is the best we've got. Nevertheless, this blog post is not really history research, and more stories about related old times I tried to list below in the references, but one thing is for sure. The end of Minoan culture, which started with earthquakes and at least one cataclysmic volcanic eruption, faded and dispersed during the final couple of centuries of the second millennium with hostile raids and occupations over time from both directions: mainland Greece in the face of old Mycenaeans and ancient invaders from the direction of the Middle East.

However, their life based on solely manufacturing goods and food, honest trade, sports, arts, and all the non-hostile human activities was once indeed possible and flourishing. Unfortunately, their legacy is, as it seems, lost for good, and after more than three and a half thousand years, we are living in a world filled with fear of self-destruction with little hope for humanity to survive the next three millennia. Anyhow, the road, or to better say, the airplane, took us this summer to the island of Crete, and we landed at the Chania airport, which is also the military base that hosts both air and nearby naval forces. The sight of supersonic fighters constantly flying above the beaches, heavy military aircraft parked next to the civilian runway, and large destroyer ships anchored in Souda Bay was definitely not something old Minoans would evolve into if history played the cards differently. After visiting the Knossos archeological site and the wonderful museum in Heraklion dedicated to these ancient people, I am certain of it.

Caused by the city's amazing scope and Minoan fascination for bulls, centuries after the fall of civilization, Greek mythology created one of the most famous stories with characters as strong as Daedalus, Icarus, King Minos, Theseus, and, of course, the Minotaur captured in the center of the labyrinth. On the other side, the most plausible truth of why Knossos was built the way it was built is simply because Crete was positioned on top of the movement of the African tectonic plate under the Eurasian plate. This is causing lots of earthquakes, small and big, and results from the complex geological process; the entire eastern side of the island is sinking while the western part is rising. The ancient builders purposely made the palace in this way in order to sustain constant ground shake, with buildings and chambers literally supporting each other from all directions.

It probably goes without saying that I am fascinated with Greece and the Greeks. Their amazing history and all the contributions their ancestors gave to the rest of the world are enormous. With this summer trip, I rounded out walking the lands of all three main stages of ancient Greek times. Classical Greece that belongs to the mainland north of Sparta, the Mycenaean epoch that precedes them in the time of Agamemnon, and now the ancient civilization of Minoans that precedes them all. Surely, there are many more sites to see, but somehow I felt today that I fulfilled the genuine urge to visit all the main places and to walk the same paths where stories from history (and mythology) took place.

Our prime vacation time this summer was in Agia Marina, a cute little place several kilometers west of Chania, where we spent a wonderful ten days exploring local beaches and took an excursion to the old Venetian harbor in the old city and its nautical museum with an exact replica of the Bronze Age Minoan ship. The second trip to Heraklion and Knossos completed our travel through the history of the island, and the following day-by-day travel video clip Viktor and I made hopefully will show you more than still images could, especially if you have never visited Crete before.

Surely, summer vacations are never about visiting museums and the history of the area. It is also about the present, and in the most hedonistic fashion, we also visited the Balos Lagoon, one of the greatest beaches in Europe, and, most of all, tried to enjoy the time by meeting local people and visiting local sites and the neighborhood. It is hard to say what we liked the most, and I guess the best thing is to say that Crete is an exceptional place to visit. Something we will definitely try to do again. Many thanks to all the good people we met this July, especially to the crew of Fly Fly Travel and their great guides, Nebojša and Dobrivoje, for all their super-professional work and help.

Image and video refs:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Tp8ugeNBg07zE9q52
https://www.greecehighdefinition.com/greece/

Refs:
http://www.odysseyadventures.ca/articles/knossos/articleKnossos01.html
http://paleoglot.blogspot.rs/2010/01/minoan-name-for-minoa.html
http://www.minoanatlantis.com/Minoan_Science.php
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22527821
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knossos
https://www.timemaps.com/civilizations/minoan-civilization/
http://ancient-greece.org/history/minoan.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_civilization
https://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/.../HIST101-2.3.2-MinoanCrete-FINAL.pdf
http://www.ancient.eu/Minoan_Civilization/

Cyclops of Peloponnese

Another 'Greek' vacation came to an end after we chose to take and risk a little, probably the longest drive toward the ancient civilization cradle in history of all of our summer vacations. Driving in a row for 14 hours is not exactly fun as expected, but in the end, when I put all the 'pros' and 'cons' after a couple of years of planning and anticipating our first visit to the famous Peloponnese, it was worth the wait. But before a story about sites we visited, I'd like to share some thoughts about the journey itself. This year it was the weakest link of our entire vacation, and little 'pros' can be taken out of it. First of all, it was too long, and with 40+ degrees Celsius outside, it was far from being pleasurable and relaxing. If you add to the 'cons' list too many moments with driving poor roads and unnecessary waiting time on borders and tolls, especially within the transiting country of Macedonia (FYROM), I am not far from the decision that next time we will be choosing a different route for the travel to Greece and most likely book the plane instead or for smaller trips to check out the new highway the European Union is currently building in Bulgaria.

Fortunately, all the 'cons' ended with journey alone, and all the good mood and perfect vacation spirit recovered fast as soon as all the 'pros' overcame in days of one full week of our second vacation south from Greek Macedonia and our first visit of the Greek capital, its municipality area, the Corinth canal, and ancient Peloponnese.

Perhaps the most exciting time we spent during the first couple of days was filming the remaining scenes for our short film "Game of Life" (embedded below), which we were playing with all summer long. It all started pretty benign and just like another father-son playtime, but somehow it evolved into a real project with a decent storyline, filming scenes on four major locations, and also using chroma keying technology with a green background for dialogues. With the last scene taken in Greece, we now have 90+ video files in total. Anyhow, this was one of our best plays so far, and we both enjoyed very much with all the bloopers and improvisation. The most importantly, this film would not be possible without a lighthouse, as it plays a major role in the story, and we found it just 20 kilometers from our hotel with tremendous views of the entire Corinthian gulf. We spent three days on the site and nearby beach and finished all the 'Greek' scenes. In the above photo, Viktor, with our 'nerf' portal stone preps, is posing in front of 'Faros Melagavi' built on the rock near the 'Vouliagmenis' lake where we filmed the last portal scene and also just next to the ancient archaeological site of 'Heraion of Perachora' - a sanctuary occupied by a real oracle, just like the one in Delphi, dedicated to the goddess Hera and built in 9th century BC. Here, just next to the old ruins of the temple of Hera, I found a stone perfect for a green screen scene we already filmed in our living room 'studio' and more or less successfully merged it into the film's main dialog.

In a way, we were, sort of, pioneers in exploring Corinthian vacations from Serbia. This was actually only the second year for travel agency "Balkan Fun" to organize a stay in Loutraki, a seaside resort located in the Gulf of Corinth and just a couple of kilometers from the western exit of the Corinth Canal. It is actually a thermal spa center known from ancient times with natural water springs with multiple healing abilities. If you bought bottle water in Greece anytime in the past, the chances are that some of them are from Loutraki spa. We stayed in the hotel 'Mon Repos', a very nice old hotel with a genuine 'Otis' elevator from the middle of the previous century. If you watched 'Kate and Leopold', you probably know what I mean. The town is not perfect for families per se; the beach is not sandy and wide, and deep water comes very soon from the rocky part, but if you are in your twenties, with the famous hotel Casino and numerous nightclubs, you are in the right place. If you are older and with small kids, don't forget to come here with the car so you can be able, like we did, to explore the neighborhood.

Anyways, we chose to come here with 'Balkan Fun', not only because they were the only agency offering Loutraki for the fair prices, but also because of their numerous bus excursions to the Athens and Peloponnese. Anja Bačanin, our travel guide, did a perfect job organizing the tour, and with her 'radio host' voice in decent buses, she perfectly provided all the information needed. I admired her for her ability to tell a story with thousands of years of ancient times perfectly wrapped into just five or ten minutes. Not all travel guides can do that, and with these words, this is our thanks for all her efforts during our stay and especially for the two excursions we shared with the group.

And from two excursions on the Greek mainland, one was a visit to the ancient Acropolis of Athens, which was one unforgettable day. Especially for me, as this was my second visit to the site, with the first one being when I was younger than my son today. I still have a scanned image of me in the Acropolis some 40+ years ago, and all my efforts to find the same amphora where my old photo was taken failed, probably due to the fact that a new museum opened in the foothills of the site since then and all small artifacts are probably moved there. Still a couple of 'déjà vu' memories triggered in my mind, especially at the gate. Too many years passed, I guess—I was perhaps 3 or 4 years old, and it is not easy to remember things from that distance in time. I am still happy I experienced a couple of flashes of familiarities and resemblances.

The second excursion was named 'Discovering Peloponnese' and it justified its name widely. To be honest, quietly I was all in for this vacation this year, just because of this trip and especially for a chance to visit Mycenae fortress. Within the second millennium of BC, Mycenae was one of the major and only centers of Greek civilization, and if you ask me, all the ancient Greek times later, including 'Classical Greece' that flourished in a couple of hundreds of years and started somewhere in the 5th century BC, have to thank their origin in Mycenae. It was populated all the way from Neolithic times, ever since probably the last ice age, but the most prosperous times were around 1350 BC, at its peak when the entire site was built in a famous Cyclopean masonry style with massive limestone boulders and no use of mortar of any kind. In Greek mythology, Cyclops, the one-eye giants, supposedly lived before the last ice age and in ancient times, were the only ones capable of lifting stones, and some of them we saw on site were larger than two meters in height and probably weighed tons. Well, if you ask me, the Cyclop builders in this and any other cases, were probably elephants, strong horses and "expendable" slaves, but still, ingenuity of the old masons never disappoints. Their ingenuousness and beautiful museum with alien-like artifacts is something I will remember for a long time.

The peak of the Mycenae dated just a couple of centuries after the devastating volcanic eruption of Thera, or the well-known Minoan eruption of the island today known as Santorini. I wrote more about it in posts Aegean Sea and Atlanteans, but in a nutshell there is a theory that survivors of old Minoan civilization (Atlanteans?) or at least some of their ancestors, after the eruption, came here and founded Mycenae in the first place or mixed with natives. Artifacts found that resemble Minoan deities are one of the evidences that it might be true, along with similarities in the written language used. That's the history and scientific hypotheses, but as far as mythology says, Mycenae is founded by legendary Perseus, a demigod, the son of the ultimate god Zeus, and mortal woman Danaë, daughter of King Acrisius of Argos. If you didn't see "Clash of the Titans" and "Wrath of the Titans" with Perseus played by Sam Worthington, go ahead and 'rent' them; they were not that bad movies at all, despite all my reservations, and best of all, the script of the second movie offers the answer to the ultimate question of how and why gods from Olympus ended their presence on Earth.

Of course, the excursion was not only about the ancient Greeks—we were privileged to visit the Corinth Canal itself, the legendary sanctuary of Epidaurus with an amazing amphitheater, probably bigger than the one in the ancient Hierapolis of Pamukkale in nowadays Turkey, and most of all, the old capital city of Greece—Nafplio, an amazing city with colorful history that one time in the middle ages was ruled by the Republic of Venice. It was the capital of the First Hellenic Republic and of the Kingdom of Greece in the early 19th century, and its mixed architecture is still visible today. Viktor and I visited their small and wonderful war museum that is hosting many items and stories about the last millennium, including a model of the Venetian warship from the time.

Sometimes I wonder if one lifetime is enough to visit entire Greece and its ancient and modern sites and cities. Probably not. One thing is for sure. More summers are waiting ahead.

Anyway, this vacation gave us lots of knowledge and experience, and I am sure with this year there are less and less sites still waiting to be explored and seen. Aside from a couple of Aegean islands still on my to-do list, regarding Peloponnese, I still have a couple of regrets, especially if I think of Sparta and ancient Olympia. Speaking of Sparta, what we didn't miss and stopped to see during our journey was the "ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ" monument, next to the highway and old site where the famous battle of Thermopylae happened. Leonidas I, as I wrote in posts Fishermen and Pirates of Evia and Warfare Then and Now, led a small army to defend Greece from Persian invasion in August 480 BC. He failed to defend Greece from Xerxes' large army at Thermopylae, but even today, after 2500 years, his bravery will be remembered as the greatest last standby battle ever recorded. Not to mention the movie and famous line "This is Sparta", which is not only artistically perfect but also not too far distant from the facts as well.

ps.

I rarely publish on the blog personal photos that are not ours, especially not selfies, but this post deserves an exception. The following image is made by Anja, our guide. Great colors and style. Well made. I mean it. We are somewhere in the picture and not just us; behind the group to the left is my backpack, which I accidentally forgot to bring with me, and coincidentally, where it stands, is the exact spot where the first image from this post was taken.

As for the rest of the images in the post, this time I chose to include only selected photos that are following the story, but there are more, and all of them are in the album named, well, you probably guessed, Cyclops of Peloponnese. Needless to say, I recommend the entire destination, travel agency, and all the excursions.

Image refs:
https://goo.gl/photos/rLdZuPdaApQTCv5N8

Refs:
http://www.visitloutraki.com/
http://www.nafplio.gr/en/sightsmenu/stateandprivatemuseums/warmuseum.html
http://www.fungroup.rs/
https://www.facebook.com/anja.bacanin

Thassos Island Today and Before

The age of this blog is both old, in the sense of the fast maturing of the internet and IT technology in general, but also very young if we are counting human age in the old-fashioned way. When we first visited Thassos Island a dozen years before, the internet and social sharing technology were about to enter their unstable teenage years, so to speak. It was the time when I bought my first digital camera, the HP PhotoSmart C850, with its state-of-the-art optics and digital technology from the time. Pictures from Thassos back then in the summer of 2003 were probably my first attempt to take more artistic landscapes from our Greece vacations, and today is perhaps the time to compare both what changed in photography gadgets and also Thassos itself after a full 12 years.

Let's start with images first. After 12 years in time distance, I decided to choose the same number of images for this post—half of them shown above, all taken with the HP Photosmart C850 with a 4-megapixel CCD sensor, and half below, taken from this summer vacation with the Nikon D5200 and CMOS sensor with approximately 20 megapixels more than in the old HP. It is insufficient to say that 12 years of maturing of technology in optics, hardware, and software is easily noticeable.

As for Thassos Island, very little changed over the years. Local people are still the same, very hospitable and friendly; beaches are the same as they probably were hundreds of thousands of years before; the Aegean Sea is still crystal clear, just like in the time of Zeus; the company and the sun are the same hot, like in all Julys in previous millenniums and eons.

What is a little different are the people who are visiting Thasos—this year there were more tourists from Eastern European countries, like Romania, Bulgaria, Moldavia, Ukraine, and Russia, and fewer from Western Europe, which is probably the result of the anti-Greece media campaign due to the political conflict between the Greek government and the EU and the financial crisis in Greece these years. I have to say that at least during our stay on Thassos I couldn't notice any crisis or any problems whatsoever. Man-made crises are always like that; they always have profusely enhanced exposure in media, and the truth is never on either side in conflict and never in media. I know it is a cliche, but you have probably heard the phrase "trust no one", and if you ask me, it is always the ultimate truth when it comes to raw propaganda and news in media, especially if it is related to some political affairs like the current one in Greece vs. the EU (and by EU you can freely read Germany).

http://www.thassos-island.com/

Atlanteans

If I am going to give a thought or two about ancient Atlantis, its mysterious people, and all the conspiracy theories behind it, there is no doubt that I'll first think of the origin of the story. Classical Greece and Plato. One of the most famous scholars from BC. In his own time, Plato was definitely the top Greek philosopher from ancient Athens, who lived in the fourth century before Christ and dedicated his entire scholarly life to philosophical research and development of modern society and politics. The method he used in his publications was dialogues, a very popular way of expressing scientific thoughts at the time. Plato's dialogues, in which he never took the role as one of the participants, were often the front story accompanied with narration, but in some of them he even excluded the narrator and presented his work in pure novel style, with his characters carrying the story all the way.

In regard to today's title, two dialogues are especially interesting—Timaeus and Critias. Participants in the dialogues were Socrates, Timaeus, Hermocrates, and Critias, and Plato tried to describe the perfect society time-framed way back before the old Classical Greece. In short, these two dialogues describe a tale from a man called Solon, another Athenian, who, during his travels throughout ancient Egypt, learned about mysterious people who lived and perished many generations before. Twenty years or so before these dialogues, Plato had written his masterpiece "The Republic", in which he discussed what he thought of an ideal state with a 'just man' and the meaning of justice in general from the point of view of Greek cities from the classical time. His ideal state was named 'Ancient Athens', placed in existence 9000 years before Plato's time (or 900 if the suggested error in translation is true), and governed with a superior and almost utopian society. As it seems, Atlanteans are used in Plato's books just as an example of how even the enemy that was so powerful, beyond any current comprehension, is incapable of defeating a perfectly regulated society. After that the story went wild, and Atlanteans, who tried to enslave the entire Mediterranean, were easily defeated by 'utopian' and perfectly organized Athenians. In the aftermath, their superb armada retreated to their island, and the gods in their final rage destroyed the entire Atlantean civilization, which Plato described in his famous words, "There occurred violent earthquakes and floods, and in a single day and night of misfortune, the island of Atlantis disappeared into the depths of the sea." In the second dialogue, "Critias", Plato described in more detail the origin of the 'ancient' Atlanteans, with extensive use of old Greek mythology, as Poseidon's heaven, who created a perfect society that ultimately, over time, started to fade out as soon as they started losing their divine origin and got overwhelmed in corruption.

Today, we have great knowledge about ancient Greek times, and so far there are no scientific facts in favor of "ancient of the ancient" Greek society that is older than 3 millenniums BC, who fought mighty civilizations that came from the other side of the Pillars of Hercules and both vanished without a single trace. However, there is a faint clue and tons of theories of where Plato really found inspiration for this incredible tale.

Reconstruction of a late Cycladic Ship (© 7reasons, Michael Klein)*

As for the faint clue, I would vote for the ancient Minoan civilization and their predecessors, who preceded the Greeks in the Aegean and suffered ultimate decimation from both natural disaster and human invaders. They lived on the island of Crete within the ancient settlements of Knossos and Gortyn and also on the northern Aegean island of Thera (Santorini) in the ancient site of Akrotiri, which, just like Roman Pompeii, is remarkably preserved after the tremendous volcanic eruption. Their civilization flourished in the late Bronze Age and, like in Plato's words, within a single day and night, around the year 1600 BC, disappeared into the sea in one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in the history of the entire world. What is today known as 'The Minoan eruption of Thera', seismologists tend to classify as four times more powerful than the well-known explosion of Krakatoa. If Minoans had more settlements in the neighborhood, which was likely, they were all destroyed and sunk during the natural reshaping of the archipelago. A massive eruption, no doubt, created a large tsunami wave that probably reached all the way to Crete and ultimately decimated the Minoan people in the northern part of the island. In the following years, pirates and thieves from the sea and land took the chance and made sure for Minoans to never recover to what they once were.

Well, in conclusion and after this small history glimpse, if you ask me, there is a fair chance that Plato's Atlanteans are truly based on ancient Minoans. After all, 2300+ years ago, in Plato's time, the world wasn't big, and the entire cradle of the civilization, as we popularly call Greek Classical times, was small and all about the Aegean Sea. Even the Mediterranean was too large for wooden galleys and far travels. Ancient Minoans came to the Aegean two millennia before Plato, and after their misfortune, I am sure the legends and myths about them grew slightly above the facts. Still, their language, clay tablets, art, pottery, architecture, and overall history prove they once were a very respectful and organized society.

There is no doubt that Atlanteans from Plato's 'Timaeus and Critias' served just a supporting role in this piece of philosophy, but still, ever since, the Atlantis story has had a large impact on literature, comic books, and movies. They are used in tons of novels and portrayed as an insanely advanced civilization with all the technological wonders, perfect cities, flying ships, state-of-the-art armory, etc. There is no bay or gulf in the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Caribbean that some rich adventurer or scholar didn't try to find the Atlantean ruins or at least to post a new theory of the Atlantis site or a conspiracy theory of some sort. To be honest, I am really ok with that—if you look at it from the entertainment point of view, what you get is very much fun, and if you read it on the beach, it surely adds another level to your vacation time.

This is exactly what I did this summer, and during our ten days of R&R on Thassos Island of the northern Aegean, I loaded all three books of The Origin Mystery on my Kindle and swallowed them all in record time. Honestly, from this trilogy I expected a lot, and this is exactly what I got! You have to be brave to make yet another novel about Atlanteans, and A.G. Riddle wrapped it just right. He managed to connect several sci-fi genres into one successful story. For my taste all the sciences are there and connected perfectly. Biology, virology, genetic research including junk-DNA involvement, physics and space travel, quantum entanglement, Antarctica, known history, and the use of connection and conspiracy theories like the Nazi bell (Die Glocke) or the Roswell UFO sighting. Play with time dilation and hibernation. Space battles of enormous proportion. Explanation of gods and ancient astronauts. If you add the usual 'Indiana Jones' type of adventures and romance, there was no better choice for me this July. Perhaps, using so many connected sciences in the plot is too risky, as the author faces the challenge of choosing what is more important and deserves to be explained better at the expense of other technologies or speculations, but I don't mind. All in all, Riddle's Atlanteans are perhaps the best version I've read in a long while, and I warmly recommend it.

Reconstruction of the Akrotiri Supervolcano (© 7reasons, Michael Klein)*

As for the real Atlanteans, or in this case ancient Minoans, I hope some of next summer will lead us to the southern Aegean, and then this story will earn another post in the thread. No doubt with images from ancient Akrotiri. In the meantime, don't miss the below link with incredible scientific reconstructions from before the Minoan Eruption made by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archeology (LBI ArchPro).

Image credit:
* The Akrotiri Supervolcano (© 7reasons, Michael Klein)

Fishermen and Pirates of Evia

The road this summer took us approximately 700 km south to the second-largest Greek island, Evia (Εύβοια). Starting from this year, we decided to leave Macedonian Greece and start spending our vacations visiting other regions of the country and this southern part of the Balkans. Our vacation resort was located only about 100 km from the spot where the famous 'Battle of Thermopylae' took place and where, in the late summer of 480 BC, King Leonidas of Sparta confronted a large army of the Persian Empire led by Xerxes the Great, who was trying to occupy ancient Greece in the second Persian attempt. The Greeks were vastly outnumbered and faced with imminent collapse after the betrayal during the second day of battle. Leonidas dismissed the majority of his army and, in the most famous last stand, remained to guard the narrow pass of Thermopylae only with 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians, and 400 Thebans. We all know what happened next. At least many of you saw the movie, and although it was diverted from the real happenings and portrayed Leonidas defeat in a more or less artistic way, this was one of the most striking battles of them all. In the following months and years, Greeks managed to stand on their feet and finally, in a couple of naval battles, forced Xerxes to withdraw and to finally end the war.

Anyway, history aside, we spent ten days in the town of Pefki, at the northern shore of Evia. It is inhabited only by local fishermen, and its small harbor is occupied with small- and medium-sized fishing boats. Every night this small fleet was sailing out from the bay and in the morning was returning with tons of various catches for local markets, restaurants, and further industrial export. Fishing is a very successful business in Evia, and there is no surprise if you see a fisherman's latest model of Mercedes-Benz parked next to his boat. Of course, during the summer, the small fishermen's town grows into a large tourist resort, and over a couple of previous years, the Serbian 'tourist armada' started to grow rapidly. Many Greeks have already learned a couple of Serbian words, and lots of menus in local restaurants and tavernas are already translated to Serbian as well. Even the Serbian flag is waving on the beach next to the Greek one in several places. I guess Persians did it all wrong; instead of invading the Greek peninsula, they only needed to sail here for summer vacations and start spending gold and coins, and Greeks would probably raise their flag for free. :-)

This vacation was a perfect chance to test our Olympus µ TOUGH-6010 under the water. Viktor and I were very excited about this and made tons of photos and video clips. The camera heroically withstood salty water, and some of the photos, after little post-processing, turned out very well. Video clips, although not in too high resolution, captured nice underwater activities, especially in those times when Viktor dropped the camera to the sandy floor and we had to search for the little thing while it was recording all our efforts from the bottom of the sea. Crystal clear water of the Aegean helped a lot, and we are looking forward to our next underwater adventures.

Πάργα

In our part of the world summer vacation is the most important one for most people. There are several reasons for this, and probably the major one is that during July and August in this part of the western Balkans, where we live, temperatures can go as high as 45°C (113°F), and the obvious solution is to pack your bags, jump into the car, and go to one of four nearby seas for a couple of weeks to cool off and enjoy (and also to change the everyday scenery and recharge your inner batteries, which are always seriously depleted when summers come).

Due to the shortest distance and good roads, Greece is probably the best destination for a car trip to the seaside that takes less than 10 hours of driving. Unfortunately this is one of few routes for all those "gastarbeiter" people who mainly work in Germany and other western countries and during summers form very long rivers of vehicles toward their home destinations in Turkey and other countries. When they hit borders along the way, this is a nightmare you want to avoid. Once we had bad luck and got stuck in one of 7 lanes between the Serbian and Macedonian (FYROM) borders and waited 4 hours to pass through. This is why we always travel halfway during the night and cross the borders around dawn or so to avoid crossing peaks and giant waiting times. The return way is always smoother, and we mainly use borders for rest and shopping. Like I already wrote in the post Aegean Sea before, short car destinations in Greece are all connected to the Aegean Sea, but this time we chose to check out the Ionian basin and try the relatively new motorway the Greeks built not so long ago. Only once I spent vacation in this part of Greece, and I remember it was a hard job for my father, as the curvy road from the Aegean to the Ionian Sea included one mountain after another, and driving through them required full concentration all the way with frequent resting points. Today, this is a different story with the new modern freeway, and the same destination is now reachable within 3 hours or so. Believe it or not, this new route includes about 60 tunnels almost 50 km long combined, and during summer heat, driving through all the tunnels comes extra handy and relaxing.

Since this was the first time for me driving this road, I decided to use a little help from modern GPS navigation. It was only needed for the last hour of the trip, where we needed to leave the motorway and find our way to the final destination in Parga, a small and old town located some 40 km south of Igoumenitsa port across the Corfu island. I didn't have any specialized GPS car devices before, and I decided to risk it a little and use the smartphone instead. I bought cheap navigation software called "Navi Ninasus" despite not so many recommendations online. To my surprise, it handled all the situations extremely well and pointed us exactly to the front gate of our villa without any problems. Rerouting was perfect and fast, and it proves very well on the ship and on foot as well. You can see it in action in the photos below, and if you want to save some serious money in the big GPS market, this one is a very good solution.

When we visited our travel agency (Big Star Niš) and told them that we decided to go to Parga this year, Stefan, one of the agency owners, while describing the house we wanted to hire, said something about a nearby olive forest that looks exactly like the scenery from "The Lord of the Rings", a fantasy trilogy based on J. R. R. Tolkien's famous book. Of course, I was a little skeptical about this but at the same time very curious to explore. The moment of our arrival, when I first saw the large olive tree just above our villa, I was eager to go to the forest as soon as possible. So we did the very next day, and if you look at the next couple of photos from the woods when we made a shortcut our way to the Lichnos beach, I am sure that, like me, you will agree that old olive trees are something special to see, and to tell you the truth, if Bilbo Baggins or Gandalf jumped out of some tree, I wouldn't be surprised at all. My only regret is that we didn't hit the time when olives are being collected with large nets villagers are using for this purpose. I am sure this would be something worthwhile to see. Needless to say, our landlady on our last day gave us a bottle of olive oil as a present, made exactly from the olives collected right from the woods we saw and photographed, and with this blog post I thank her for all her hospitality and kindness. The same level of gratitude goes to Stefan and "Big Star", which is one of the best travel agencies in Niš.

Perhaps to better feel and, in this case, hear the forest, I took a couple of seconds-long video clip showing all the beauty of old olives:

According to a couple of wikis I read, I learned that Pargians are descendants from the old Greek tribe called Thesprotians. Perhaps the best-known resident in ancient times was Odysseus himself, who married Thesprotia's queen of the time by the name Kallidike and spent many years in this area leading the tribe and fighting many wars as their king. Unfortunately, if we leave mythology aside, real history for Pargians was not so cheerful, especially much later in the Dark Ages when these people shared violent times with the active neighborhood. They survived different rulers and occupations starting with Normans, Venetians, French, British, and Ottomans, not to mention constant attacks from various pirates from the sea. Today, the monumental fortress built for their defense is the sour witness of the old times, standing above the small town for centuries. In the town below, old narrow stone streets, similar to those of Corfu, are now wonderful tourist attractions, along with four beaches, all very different in nature and appearance. Surrounded by large hills and dense forests, Parga today is one of the few real tourist paradises during summer, filled with voices of dozens of different languages, especially at night when it is not easy to find an empty chair in local tavernas. In addition to Parga's social life, to me, Greek vacations are always more about reading books and enjoying peaceful moments. This time I brought "The Lost Symbol" and swallowed it in just a couple of days. If you want to learn something more about worldwide Freemasonry, this is the book for you, especially if you are, like me, a big fan of Robert Langdon's adventures. We had a large garden in front of the house with a big stone table where, below the shadows of lemon leaves, reading Dan Brown's book got additional pleasure. On the other hand, for Viktor no summer vacation can pass without his tablet and a couple of video games (picture to the right).

Just 20 km offshore, there are two small islands called Paxos and Antipaxos. According to the legend, Poseidon himself used his mighty trident and sliced the southern part of Corfu, making this small archipelago paradise just for him and his wife, Amphitrite, to enjoy some peace and quiet. Compared to nowadays worldwide religions, I really love Greek mythology and their amazing stories. I mean, come on, if you are creating a mass of fairy tales, using wild imagination is a must, and ancient Greeks did it very well. Of all religions in existence today and those extinguished in the past, Greek former beliefs are probably the best in the history of mankind. Anyway, there are many boats sailing to the Paxoi Islands every morning, providing a one-of-a-kind experience of swimming in the same waters where Poseidon enjoyed his time with his wife alone on the beach. A small boat even entered one of the sea caves, providing a unique feeling for us, but the best was the moment when one of the boats turned loudspeakers toward the cave and played James Brown's famous song "I Feel Good". The echo from the cave provided a sound effect I had never heard before. Don't miss this trip if you are spending vacation in Parga or Gaios, the main town of Paxos Island, where we enjoyed "Τσιπούρα" delicious Mediterranean fish with teeth.

The second boat trip was a ship cruise to Corfu and the island of Vido (Greek: Βίδο), a special place for Serbian history where more than 5000 Serbian soldiers were buried at sea. At the beginning of World War I, the whole Serbian army was forced to retreat by the major offensive by Austrian and Bulgarian armies. In just two years of war, the Serbian army declined from 420,000 to the number of 150,000, ending on the island of Corfu with the help of Allied forces' ships. Those who didn't survive harsh wintertime during the long walk over Albania's mountains were buried on the island of Vido, and those who couldn't find empty burial space on the island were just buried in the sea near the island. This very spot where they are buried is called Blue Sea Tomb, and there is now an almost hundred-year-old poem, "Ode to a Blue Sea Tomb", describing the pain and suffering of the Serbian people and soldiers during WWI. I simply wrote "History is sometimes painful" in the book in the memorial. And I meant not only Serbian history. For more about our trip to Corfu, please read the post Streets of Corfu, where I experienced a a unique kind of déjà vu that I tried to describe there. Following are photos from Corfu and Vido, and the second image is of the Serbian House at 19 Moustoxidou Street, which is one great museum dedicated to the WWI events.

But life is always going on, and history is there to remind us of our failures and our brightest moments. We should use it to learn from it, but honestly speaking, I have that feeling that humans have a long way to go in order to start avoiding mistakes and stop repeating violent behavior from the past.

Well, this post is also a photo collection from the vacation, and now is the time to choose the best photo taken. Of course this is subjective business, but if you ask me, the honor goes to my wife, who took the opening photo of this post. I am sure for some of you this would be just a bunch of rocks on the shore, but for me this is the perfect example of accidental photography and Pareidolia. My wife actually just wanted to take a photo of the rocky formation from the taxi boat when we were returning from the beach to Parga, but after we saw it on the big screen, from this angle, it looked amazingly like a giant prehistoric fish or sea dinosaur with a large fin or flapper on its back.

Needless to say, we all fully recommend Parga and the Ionian Sea for summer vacation. I am sure we will be returning here in the future, maybe next time to northern Corfu or one of the southern Ionian islands.

Streets of Corfu

Long ago I started to experience that one extremely memorable dream. One of those that doesn't fade out with the first morning sunshine. Instead, it was regularly popping to the surface of my mind, making me wonder if these vivid images, haunting me every now and again, were just a product of my imagination or perhaps there was something more hidden beneath. In the dream I wander the narrow streets of an unknown city, one after another, and after a while I stumble to the big square with large monumental buildings decorated with dark reddish bricks with no signs or any familiar markings I can recognize. I was always wondering where all these colorful images originated from and somehow always had that feeling that I am probably missing an important link to fully understand the whole picture.

Recently this final link suddenly appeared, and during our vacation last week I accidentally found my dream site, and all missing pieces finally placed together, forming a memory almost 40 years old. Somehow, subconsciously, I have always known that it wasn't the dream at all and all the streets and buildings were very real and instead represent one of those almost forgotten recollections hidden deeply in my memory banks. What I saw in my night vision was the lost memory of the city of Corfu.

It all happened when I was the age of my son today. I was about 7 years old when my parents chose to spend vacation on the island of Corfu in the northern part of the Ionian Sea, just about 100 km away from the southern cape of the famous heel of the Italian peninsula. While waiting for the ferry in the early morning, we took a walk to the empty streets of Corfu (Greek: Κέρκυρα), the main city named after the island itself, and what was once one small walk under the morning sunshine now is just one almost faded memory for some reason refusing to die and from time to time reminding me of a beautiful site I experienced so long ago.

A couple of days ago, almost four decades after my last encounter with the island, I decided to take my wife and son on the tourist cruise to Corfu. The ship was medium-sized and filled with approximately 300 people of different nationalities and a not-so-small group of Serbian tourists. During the final two years of World War I, the island of Corfu served as a refuge for the Serbian army that retreated there on Allied forces' ships. More than 150,000 soldiers, royal government officials, and civilians established Serbian administration in exile during 1916-1918, while in Serbia under occupation of Austrian and Bulgarian armies, only women, children, and old men stayed. We started browsing the city in the street of Moustoxidou, where next to the French Consular Agency lies the honorary Consulate of Serbia, or simply the Serbian House, the museum completely dedicated to the WWI events that happened on the island and the island of Vido (Greek: Βίδο) across the harbor (first three images above).

The center of the city is a labyrinth of narrow streets, and it requires great orientation skills to remember where you are or where you were in order to find the place of interest. While we waited in front of Sorbonne's office of the French consular building, I got the idea to use the extremely elongated portrait size of the 16:9 aspect ratio of the digital format and start taking photos of small stone alleys. Generally I don't like this format compared to its landscape counterpart just because the image looks too narrow in the vertical direction, but in the case of the streets of Corfu, I could say this is an ideal combination. We didn't have much time until the ship departure time, so I chose the "Scene Selector" feature on my Coolpix camera (which is a somewhat improved automated mode in Nikon's software for digital cameras) and started clicking at the beginning of each street we crossed. After little post-processing (mostly minor changes in brightness, contrast, and sharpness), this blog post is the result. I included on this page 36 images of beautiful small and narrow streets, all taken in the center of Corfu.

When I was 7ish years old, I was a lot smaller, streets were empty, and everything looked large to me. This is probably why I remembered the whole site and its mystical appearance in the early hours. Especially when we stumbled upon big city hall with loud church bells echoing through the streets. Today tourism changed the scenery a lot, and streets are full of various stores, coffee shops, and restaurants. Compared to the 70s, now walking the colorful streets full of people and friendly salesmen brought a familiar environment of other Greek towns. However, the unusual city's topography, with up and downhill streets oriented in all directions, provides Corfu with little authentic feeling and a small glimpse of the old times when civilization was still knocking on the doors of all Greek coastal towns. My wife chose some small, authentic Greek tavern run by an old couple where we experienced even further travel to the past, where traditional Greek hospitality was still not influenced by modern times and Wi-Fi hotspots and where time flowed much slower.

Our free time in Corfu was between 2 and 4 PM, and photographing empty streets or scenery was mission impossible. Still, I managed to find a couple of empty streets and alleys or ones with not too many people inside. These photos (in the above last segments) ended probably the best, showing Corfu's special mixture of Venetian, British, Italian, Greek, and Byzantine architecture that mainly originated in the 18th and 19th centuries.

At the very end of this special photo story, I can only recommend this part of the Balkans highly, along with Parga—a small town where we settled for 10 days in a family villa next to an amazing olive-tree forest. I am sure this part of western Greece hides many more interesting places to visit and photograph. If you add the crystal-clear waters of the Ionian Sea and friendly faces wherever you look, I am sure spending just one vacation on the island is way too little time. I will definitely come here again in the future, and this time I am not going to let new memories fade again to the point of haunting dreams like before. I have to say, though, that when I was walking the same streets again after a long time, I didn't experience the typical déjà vu feeling like I described in the blog post last year. Even though there were some glimpses that looked familiar, too much time passed, and I guess I wasn't able to recognize exact spots and views, probably due to the fact that children and adults experience events and scenery differently, and not just because of different points of view but also because a child's mind is a lot emptier, and they simply don't have much data to compare with, especially if they are experiencing something for the first time. Nevertheless, the whole experience with my lost memory was at least unusually unique, and I doubt I would encounter many more like it.

Streets of Corfu (Full Photo Album):
https://photos.app.goo.gl/TLw83qgV8ZmMe1Gi8

Parga:
https://www.mpj.one/2013/08/parga.html
https://photos.app.goo.gl/vSM1DFFafrfvMxU96

Corfu (Wiki and Web):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corfu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vido
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Campaign_(World_War_I)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Serbs_Corfu1916-1918.jpg
http://www.greeka.com/ionian/corfu/corfu-architecture.htm
http://www.pargagreece.co.uk/