Meteoric Meteora Greece

Over this past Easter Holiday my wife and I, and Tyrone a fellow Peace Corp volunteer travelled to Kalampaka, Greece.  This is a town in north, central Greece - and a bit off the usual tourist trail.  This area is famous for ancient monasteries built upon towering rock columns.  This World Heritage Site is well worth a visit for its testimony to human accomplishment, religious dedication, and just plain awe.  The food is pretty good as well.  First, no description is complete without a bit of geology.  For you non-geologists, this is your cue to go let the cat out.

This unique region in Greece sits on a broad river plain; and in the uplands are towering rock formations, hundreds to almost 1000 feet tall.  These rock towers are made up of sedimentary conglomerates, indicating that they were formerly part of deep river bed deposits, or possibly a sea bed.  At some point, even before I was born, the surface was pushed upward, then eroded by huge water flows, wind and rain.  These forces created huge stone columns standing in isolation at the edge of the plain.   Here is what it looks like now  - cool, huh?

People generally believe that around 700 - 900 AD, hermit Christian monks used the area as secluded housing,  living in the many eroded caves in the columns.  Being monks, and probably consumed by the desire to outdo their fellow monk, they began to construct  bigger domiciles and even churches at the tops of some of the columns.  The construction phase really took hold in the 14th and 15th centuries, when the area became a center of religious monastic study, and there was plenty of free real estate to choose from.  This also coincided with periods of invasion for that area, and the lower-level monks headed to safer and much, much higher ground.

Given that the consolidated sedimentary rock is not good for building or supporting large structures, the monks hauled every bit of construction material up the towers.  They used ladders, ropes, and their backs.  They also had to haul up all food, water, tools, wood for building and fuel and probably pizza.  The level of effort to achieve the result cannot be guessed.   Eventually, 23 monasteries were constructed, but only 6 remain today.  Over time, the size of several of these expanded to consume all available space on the top of the column, and create a large enough structure to hold a whole community of monks all doing monkish things like creating manuscripts, making extraordinary religious articles, embroidering detailed vestments in gold and silver, and my own personal favourite - building a wine barrel the size of a bus.   They also constructed all the things needed to support their community for cooking, working, creating ground level gardens, clothing, rope and on and on.  Not bad for a bunch of bearded guys that looked like lost members of the band ZZ Top.  But, with a single-minded purpose, anything is possible.

Here is Kathy walking the 70 story hike up to one site.  She is smiling, I was not.

Here is a shot of other stairs.  Most were pretty good and allowed for many tourists to make the otherwise near impossible trek.

This is the Holy Trinity monastery.  We liked this a lot as it was small, beautiful, and set on a solitary rock tower. 

 Here to the left is a cable car leaving a monastery.  It is that grey box.  It carried a single woman, dressed for Easter.  We never did figure out how to get the monks on the other end to give us a lift, so we walked.

 Here is a large complex, the Saint Stephen's monastery I think.  They all followed a common theme with an incredible ornate church with beautiful frescoes.  Living areas were along the outer courtyards, with a whole internal area given to the needs for daily living and contemplation.  Every room had a fantastic view and you could see why the way of life was special.  Even more amazing is that each of these only has a handful of monks living there today.  When we were there they mostly kept a wary eye on the waves of tourists.

Here is the Grand Meteora Monastery, the largest.  This one is reached through a cave cut through the stone.  A great  defensive touch and also kept the busloads of Bulgarian tourists to a single file line for a change.

 Some monasteries had bone relics of famous Byzantine patrons or those of particular high religious status.  These were in fancy silver boxes.  The guys that did the work hauling stuff got to have their bones put on a rack in the cellar.  Seems like a bit of inequality, but more people were interested in these hauler guys than the elite bones of the silver box set.  I don't know what is stored in the 2 lock-boxes, but I'd guess it is the latest crop of haulers discovered in parts of the monastery still being restored.

 You are probably getting the idea that this is a really cool place, which it is.  Here is one more picture of a monastery.  This one had the bridge option - another fine defensive touch.  We visited all 6, and were glad we saw every single one.

We also visited a small Vlach village high up in the hills.  Here is their wind-swept church.

Closer to town, in Kalambaka, we got to meet a few people.  Here is the owner of a small taverna where we ate.  We looked alike, and there must be some DNA shenanigans in play.  He is my mini-me.  We later stopped by for roast lamb.  On Easter, everybody cooks lamb.  It is a bad day for the lamb but pretty good for everyone else.  Everywhere you went you heard music, could smell food cooking with lemon and garlic over wood fires.  It was great.

Also, since it was Easter, the place was busy.  Easter is the biggest holiday in Orthodox Christianity, and the whole town gets into the act.  On Good Friday, we went to a church in town and listened to the service.  Church services are sung, and the recitation was a series of lyrical vignettes about each Saint painted along the walls of the church.  There are a lot of Saints.  Following that, the Bishop, priests and congregation gathered outside where a town band was waiting.  They struck up a solemn chord, the men carried a covered relic of some sort and they walked through town, band playing, men singing and people following along with candles.

Candles also played an important role the following night.  We went to a 6th century church in town for midnight service.  There, after  the lyrical service, the church lights were dimmed, and candles were lit in the front, and used to light all the candles held by the rest of the people in the church.  It was quite beautiful.  Later, the Bishop came out to say a lot more words to people waiting outside.  Here is the Bishop getting his candle re-lit as it was a bit breezy that night.  We enjoyed this a lot.   Below is the 6th C church and its bell tower.

 OK, now if you are squeamish - you may now go and let the cat back in.  On Sunday, nearly all families celebrated the holiday by firing up the barbie, and slammin' on the lamb.  This was done on large, wood fired grills, sometimes even 2-lambers for the big groups.  We tried the lamb at mini-me's taverna and I must say it was quite tasty.

We also had a taste of canned peaches that Tyrone bought at a monastery.  They tasted like summer.  Mixed with Greek yogurt the next day they made a fine breakfast.

We all wish you a Happy Easter, a bit late, but heartfelt.  Next year, maybe, you can hold your own candles in a 1000 year old church.  Just let us know and we'll light the way for you   . . . Kathy, Al and Tyrone