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Corfu Between Tales and Reality

Among all religious beliefs, the Greek pantheon of colorful gods is perhaps the best described in the history of all human religiosity. There is literally no piece of Greek land, portion of the sea, or tiniest island that has no origin in radiant old mythology. The island of Corfu is no exception as well. Apparently in the mythological history, it was one of those unnamed islands in the region of Scheria where the mighty Poseidon spent a portion of his eternity with the freshwater nymph Korkyra. Their descendants, the Phaeacians, as described by Homer in Odysseus' adventures, inherited the island and named it after Poseidon's lover. The final shape of the island owes its appearance to Poseidon as well, when he separated Paxos from Corfu with his trident in order to create a love nest for him and his wife, Amphitrite (sea nymph this time). I don't blame him; both Korkyra and Paxos are beautiful and colorful islands, and he obviously knew his craft well. I understand his affection for nymphs as well; he was the sea god after all, and in the aftermath of the mythological creation, he alone is most likely responsible for the origin of the human race on a total of 227 Greek islands, including Atlantis, but that's a different story.


However, the reality and history of Corfu are much different and much less idyllic. Being in the cross-worlds in the Middle Ages between the Ottoman Empire and western civilization, the history of Corfu was turbulent, to say the least. The island managed to survive and keep its Greek identity after numerous raids by barbarians and conquests by Europeans during the medieval period. The origin of the first people on the island is not much known. According to Homer, they had some relationship with the Mycenaeans (Dorians), but it is not scientifically proven true. Furthermore, there were no ancient ruins dedicated to Poseidon at all. There are two ruins excavated so far, one of a temple dedicated to Hera and the other, the most significant temple built around 580 BC, dedicated to the goddess Artemis, which was monumental in dimensions for the time. In the above picture is its full, around 20-meter-long pediment portraying a living Gorgon (mythical creatures with hair made of living, venomous snakes, most likely Medusa or one of her sisters).


After ancient times, the island was ruled by the Romans first and then went under the Byzantine Empire. After the Byzantine period ended (around 1267 AD), Corfu was vulnerable to the constant pirate attacks and raids by its neighbors and crusaders and stabilized only when Venetians occupied the island in 1386. These olive trees from the picture above are seeded by Venetians and considered to be more than 500 years old. The Venetians ruled for more than 400 years and ended their rule in 1797. Most of the Venetian dominance left a big mark on today's island architecture, including the large fortress. After that, the island was occupied by the French, followed by a strange alliance of Russians and Turks, then the British, and finally, on 21 May 1864, after the London Treaty, Corfu and all the Ionian Islands united with Greece.


The most important milestone in the history of Corfu happened during the Turkish siege of 1716, when Venetians managed to defend the island and stopped the Turks in their advances toward Europe. Fighting alongside Corfiots were Venetians, Germans, Italians, Maltese ships, Papal galleys, galleys from Genoa and Tuscany, Spanish galleys, and even Portuguese forces. The Turkish failure in Corfu was a historical event of enormous importance—who knows what would happen if the result of the battle went otherwise? However, the other parts of Greece and their southern islands weren't that lucky and went under Ottoman occupation, causing a large number of refugees and migration toward Corfu. In the following centuries, more immigrants arrived from Illyria, Sicily, Crete, Mycenae, and the Aegean islands. Of course, in this small blog story, I didn't mean to go much into historical events, but I always like to learn a bit more about places we travel to. If you want to know more, the reference links below are a good point to start googling.


This summer, we visited Corfu and its picturesque village of Messonghi. At the same point in history, the small village, along with neighboring Moraitika, was established by Cretans and Peloponnesians. With its interesting feature of the Messonghi River, small and nice beach, crystal-clear waters, and amazing people, this village was our host for 11 days of our vacation, and we fully recommend the stay. Beside the archaeological museum, we also visited the Serbian House dedicated to the Great War events and one nice museum called "Casa Parlante", dedicated to the ordinary life of one British aristocratic family from British rule in the middle of the 19th century. The most impact on me personally was the traditional Corfu dishes called Sofrito and Pastitsada, and their recipes dated back 200 years in the past. Last but not least, our big thanks goes to Spyros, his family, and their fine Georgina apartments, where we stayed the entire time.

Refs:
https://atcorfu.com/corfu-history/
https://greeking.me/blog/visit-corfu/item/207-corfu-the-island-of-the-phaeacians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corfu

In the Footsteps of Pino Lella

It doesn't happen often that after reading a book, you can compare most of the places and some of the portrayed characters with real sites and buildings along with real protagonists from the historical story. Actually, this never happened to me before, and after I'd reached the last cover of 'Beneath a Scarlet Sky', a novel written by Mark Sullivan, published in 2017, I saw the rare opportunity of visiting the city where it all happened and where all the sites still stand today. Not much later, and after my entire family read the novel or at least got familiar with the story, we packed our backpacks and hit the road. In the aftermath, the result is this blog post along with an embedded video story as a documentary of the half-day walking tour of Milan in Italy, where everything happened more than 70 years ago. In the spirit of a fair warning, I advise you to read the book first before watching the video since it might spoil the reading for you or to wait for an upcoming series or movie with Tom Holland in the lead role.


The novel is based on the true story of an Italian teenager, Pino Lella, who lived in Milan during the second world war and, within the last two years until the very end of WW2, helped many Jewish people escape to Switzerland over the Alps and, in the final year, acted as a spy for freedom fighters while being a personal driver for General Hans Leyers, Adolf Hitler’s left hand in northern Italy. Pino survived all the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation and deeply fell in love with Anna, a girl he met on the streets of Milan on the day of the first bombing of the city. He constantly dreamed about the future they would one day share.

This book tour would not be possible at all without fantastic Valeria Andreoli from BellaMilano, who guided us throughout Milan beautifully for almost five full hours! It was amazing to mix the real streets, all the buildings, the castle and the cathedral, hotels, the train station, and even the monumental cemetery with our vividly built images of all the places we already formed from the book and Mark Sullivan's amazing narrative.



Undoubtedly, spending three days in Milan for us provided lots of more opportunities for visiting the history back to the time all the way to Leonardo da Vinci. Around the year 1482, he moved to Milan to work for the duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, as an engineer, sculptor, painter, and architect. Until 1499, when Milan was invaded by the French, he left behind the 'Last Supper', a famous mural painting of Jesus and the twelve apostles; many paintings, including 'The Virgin of the Rocks', Milan's Narvigly, the system of navigable canals to ferry people and merchandise in and out of the city, 'Leonardo`s horse', an uncompleted equestrian sculpture; and many more.

We were especially interested in Leonardo's engineering projects and his machines, models, and sketches displayed in 'Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia—Leonardo da Vinci' and within a new exhibition dedicated to this amazing man called 'Leonardo3' stationed in 'Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II', another Milan landmark from the 19th century. This second video log of Viktor's shows a glimpse of what we managed to visit and learn.



(Un)expectedly, at the end of our first visit to this great city, we have left with much more footage from what we initially planned to make with Pino Lella's and Leonardo's stories. All these are now packed in this third video embedded above, and if you like to see more of Valeria and stories hidden behind Leonardo's paintings, especially the ones he did in the Sforza Castle, if you want to learn what you need to do if you are in search of a good luck charm during your first visit to the legendary 19th-century shopping mall, or if you are eager to check out one great Italian restaurant along with a couple of more places we managed to visit, this is the video definitely worth clicking on.

As for us, I am more than sure that Milan definitely didn't see us wandering its streets for the last time. The rest of Italy too.

The book references:
https://bellamilanotours.com/footsteps-pino-lella/
https://marksullivanbooks.com/

Beneath a Scarlet Sky:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32487617-beneath-a-scarlet-sky (en)
https://www.newtoncompton.com/libro/lultimo-eroe-sopravvissuto (it)
https://www.knjizare-vulkan.rs/istorijski-roman/44294-pod-grimiznim-nebom (srb)

Museums:
https://www.museoscienza.org/en
http://www.leonardo3.net/en/