Getting to Meteora Greece

So the plan for the Easter weekend was to get to Meteora, Greece. A place with amazing rock formations and even more amazing monasteries perched atop them.

First we were distracted by Thessaloniki, the second city of Greece, and its wonderful calamari.

Then we got stuck at a random railway station in the middle of nowhere (Paleofarsalos) and waited hours for a train connection that was meant to be minutes... at least there was spring sunshine to enjoy.

We eventually arrived in Kalabaka, at the foothills of the Meteora mountains, hiked up a steep, tall mountain for an hour or so, then found ourselves running from busfuls of Japanese tourists.


But it was all worth the effort as this was indeed a spectacular place.

(I'm squinting, not winking)

Greek Orthodox Easter

Its the biggest event on the Greek Orthodox calendar so we arranged to attend a midnight service to witness the candle lighting ceremony. The hotel provided us with candles and red-dyed eggs, so we couldn't not go really.

The church was an old, quite small church that was rather spectacular inside, but the majority of people were outside for the service.
I wish I had a photo of the outside and the amazing effect the candle lighting part of the ceremony had. Suffice to say it was something to experience the spread of light from the centre all around the grounds from person to person. Combined with the traditional singing of the priests, the group of armed soldiers and the military band (that seemed to be there to play only when the General was walking past), it was quite an event.

Heritage gets crowded

Last weekend I went to Thessaloniki in Greece. Quite a cool city, though it was pretty dead due to the Easter weekend....
Anyway, there is lots to see even if nothing is going on, and just hanging by the water in the sunshine was a great feeling after winter in land locked Kosovo.

All over town there are relics of former empires and traditions, it was fascinating to see so much heritage on almost every street... however I got the feeling that with so much of it, it was in danger of losing its appeal, especially to locals.

This was evidenced by the general feeling of crowding around many of these objects, development encroaching on churches and ruins all over town.





At what point do you simply have to stop providing appropriate space around historical buildings and allow a modern city to develop and flourish?