Fiction and Reality of Mount Olympus

I was very young when I visited Olympus for the first time. It happened during our yearly vacation in the region back then, in the eighties of the previous century. I vividly remember there was a dangerous dirt road with not much room for two vehicles to pass by, ending near one of the mountain homes with an embedded small tavern, which can really print on its portfolio that it was built on the top of gods' heavenly entrances. For some fairly strange reasons, Coca-Cola and souvlaki on the tavern's terrace felt really tasty, just as the pure and clean water from the water stream just next to it. Unfortunately, and despite all of my efforts, I couldn't see or find anything divine, out-of-worldly items, or even a glowing, shiny rock. There were no gods whatsoever. Or naked muses. Or beasts with snakes instead of hair. Or horses with wings. Or mighty heroes. Nothing. Well, I was only 10 years old. What did I know... Maybe that pair of hawks we saw flying around the highest rock across the tavern and screeching in high tones were actually Apollo and Artemis arguing about something.

On the other end, it might be that I visited Olympus during the gods' withdrawal. Way too early...

But, before I continue with the actual glimpse into modern Olympus fiction and short reviews of one hilarious book and one extraordinary comic, I think I need to write a word or two about the photo I embedded above, which might be interesting to read. This is in fact Mount Olympus (just like the highest peak shown from the air in the post header). The most famous mountain in the entire world. The mighty one. It is not the highest of them all—just slightly lower than 3K meters and not even the highest in the entire Balkans—but it was the one chosen by gods to build their own abode during the ancient times. Sitting just next to the Aegean Sea, it is the first sight you see when you travel from Thessaloniki to Athens in modern-day Greece. I took this image in 2010 from the beach in the sea resort of Leptokarya, described by Wikipedia as "the former seat of East Olympos municipality, which is part of the municipality of Dio-Olympos". During my countless visits to northern Greece in the past several decades, all of them during summer holidays, believe it or not, all of my Olympus photographs ended with a similar heavy stream of clouds above mountain peaks. It is like Olympus is always hidden in clouds for some weird meteorological reasons. Well, that was not entirely true, as I have seen Olympus naked on an occasion or two, but still, it was not often. It's like Olympus is attracting the clouds and capturing them to stay and hide its peaks.

This summer, almost forty years after my first excursion to the famous mountain, we took the perfect opportunity to board a tourist bus and venture their Olympian route, following new paved roads carrying people to the multiple resorts within the mountain base and visiting Olympus' main attractions. At least to the point where the road limits heavy buses from proceeding. The tour included the town of Litochoro, the famous Bath of Zeus, Agios Dionysios Monastery, and Old Panteleimon, a picturesque mountainous village on the slopes of the mountain. Surely seeing the sites with your own eyes has no alternative, and the next best thing is to check a couple of those travel guides and stories you can stumble on online, but as far as this post is concerned, I will leave it to my son Viktor to tell you all about it in his channel's video log we both filmed this August. If you find it pleasing, you know the YouTuber's drill—please like and subscribe... ;-)

The mountain definitely contains a beautiful charm of its own, but we all know that Olympus is best known for its part in Greek mythology, and with all its ancient fiction, it has inspired writers all over the world ever since. With some of them, the thin line between fiction and nonfiction is not really visible at once, but in the case of Michael G. Munz's amazing novel called 'Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure' one would say it is all about fiction and laugh-out-loud (LOL) moments. The gods in this comedy returned from their withdrawal after more than two thousand years with all of their entourage and got back to the active and mutual life with mortals. And they returned with a twist.

What is most interesting about the old Greek gods, compared to all of the modern religions of today, is that their godhood was not that estranged from their creation, like it is now the case with all of those Jerusalem monotheistic beliefs. Greek gods loved to mingle with mortals. And by mingle, you know what I mean, which is especially true with Zeus (probably Dionysis too). In fact, within the opening chapters of the novel, Apollo defined it best when he said that "gods are just like mortals, only... better." And that means with everything that we can use to describe ordinary people, including conspiracies, hatred, intelligence, stupidity, love, sex, affairs... It's like the Greek gods possess everything good and bad we mortals experience on a daily basis; only theirs is enhanced and powered off the charts. And of course, they could change appearances into hawks... and do other magical stuff. So, by establishing that, we can safely say that all the gods in "Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure" are more than just divine creatures. They are active characters in the story, and along with amazing Michael's narrative, which is playing with the reader on numerous occasions, it is something that gives this book, at least for me, the originality I have never experienced before. The humor is everywhere, especially in the narrative, which on many points requires a fair amount of the reader's geekery and knowledge of ancient mythology. I'll stop here with no further spoilers and only my warm recommendation.

As for the other media dealing with Olympian myths, there are numerous movies, among them "Clash of the Titans" and "Wrath of the Titans", with Perseus played by Sam Worthington and Liam Neeson as Zeus. 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, Henry Cavill as Theseus in "Immortals" was also one of the visually great movies, with heavy usage of old Greek myths and Olympian gods in main roles.

On the other hand, the world of graphic novels never disappoints, and Rick Riordan's novels with Percy Jackson adventures recently, after debuting with two motion pictures, transferred into extraordinarily enjoyable comics. The world of demigods in the two graphic books so far looks very nice and, I have to admit, much more appealing than in movies. Perhaps because reading comics was my first love from early childhood and/or maybe because these two books were my first comics reading with the Kindle way of presenting graphic novels, but nevertheless, if you are into Olympian myths and love great fiction that emerged from old tales, my recommendation for Riordan's "Heroes of Olympus" series with "The Lost Hero" and "The Son of Neptune" goes without saying.

zViktor22 YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH2BtavSrxaRyvOJS5JZaHQ

Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure
http://michaelgmunz.com/books/zeus/

The Lost Hero: The Graphic Novel
http://rickriordan.com/book/the-lost-hero-the-graphic-novel/

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.