This is a story that, like many disaster stories, starts out great, then ends in, well, disaster. Only the disaster wasn’t really a disaster, more like just a bad afternoon. And, like many tales of travel disasters, it gets less disastrous and more amusing with every retelling (for those who were there, anyway, not necessarily their listeners). I guess it’s kind of like an after-school special, in which a seemingly ideal family falls into misfortune and conflict, but then they emerge with a greater appreciation of each other, each of them having learned an important lesson about their family and themselves. Except I’m not sure anyone learned anything other than how not to back into and out of a tight parking space, and perhaps the Greek words for “go” and “stop” or their near equivalents. So it probably doesn’t reach the after-school special melodrama minimum. But anyway, here’s what happened, and you can pour (or hammer) the story into the narrative frame of your choice.
The day began with rain sprinkling down through sunshine, as the yellow rays of the sun cut their slanting way through dark clouds that had gathered during the night. Wisps of white mist curled over the dark grey cliffs of Meteora and spilled down their sides, turning to gold or silver whenever one of the sun’s spotlights caught them in their flight from the east. The cliffs stood like sentinels over the green trees and land that lapped at their feet like a slow, peaceful sea. In their shadow, we looked out from our hotel balcony onto the brown tile roofs and white-washed walls of the town of Kastraki, listening to the bells of a church ring in the morning, watching the sun glance along the bottom of the clouds and turn the distant hillsides bright green and gold.
We had arrived in the late afternoon of the day before and had driven up the ribbon of road north of the town to gaze at the cliff-top monasteries. They had closed for the day, but, counting out the coins in our budget of time, we had decided to tour at least one this morning before beginning the six hour drive south to the town of Navplion, billed in our travel literature as a quiet retreat on the Peloponnesian coast. We ate breakfast at the hotel, then retraced our route up to the largest of the monasteries, the Megalo Meteoro, hoping to be early enough to enjoy a quiet tour and make our retreat before the arrival of the tour buses and their chattering hordes.
The Greek name ‘Meteora’ translates into ‘suspended in air,’ which well describes the appearance of the monasteries precariously balanced at the tops of the rocks that jut out of the flat valley floor like ragged grey teeth. Hermits had first made their homes here in the 9th century, and by the 11th century the first community of monks was established. With endowments from pious Balkan rulers and the proceeds of farms and vineyards on the valley below, the monasteries expanded, and grew wealthy. The cliff-top monasteries offered protection from brigands and raiders, an important feature as first the Byzantine empire crumbled, and then the Ottoman empire imposed its haphazard rule, scrupulous in the collection of taxes but otherwise indifferent to its subjects. Until the 1920s, the only way up to or down from the monasteries was via baskets or ladders lowered by winches from the monasteries’ towers. Today the narrow road from Kastraki empties busses and cars by the hundreds into parking lots at the monasteries’ entrances, and as we drove up ourselves, we noted with dismay the line of busses already visible on the green hills before us, chugging up toward the cliff-tops like a line of shiny metal caterpillars.
As we rounded the hairpin turns of the road up, we caught brief glimpses of some of the monasteries on their rocky perches in the distance, and what looked like the ruins of former shelters tucked into caves in the sides of some of the cliffs: tumbled-down walls of stone, stacked without any mortar, and poles of weathered grey wood that may have been the remains of ladders. At the height of the region’s prosperity, in the 14th century, there were 24 monasteries among the cliffs here. Today, there are only six, including a nunnery, and these are as much museums as religious retreats. Some monks found the constant flow of tourists through Meteora too much of a distraction and left for the more isolated monasteries of Mount Athos on the Halkidiki peninsula, to the east of here. There, women are not admitted to any of the monasteries, and male visitors must apply for special permission. Meteora monasteries ask that visitors be respectful in their demeanor and attire (no sleeveless shirts, no shorts, and women have to wear long skirts), and their open hours are irregular, but otherwise access is available to anyone willing to pay a few Euros as an entrance fee.
At Megalo Meteoro they do still maintain a basket of sorts to carry people down from the walls after the entrance has closed. It is better described, perhaps, as a small open cable car, winched up and down taught slanting steel wires via an electric motor. We watched its slow progress the day before, as it carried a young man down from the walls. Back down on earth, he hopped on a moped and sped back to town. We saw him again the next day, dispensing tickets at the entrance.? We arrived at Megalo Meteoro shortly before it opened, and found that luckily there was only one group of tourists ahead of us. We were able to work our way past most of them? (elderly, mostly) on the long staircases to the monastery door, and so were among the first that morning to enter. After Jane, Hilary and Emily finished wrapping themselves in the complementary long skirts provided to the disrespectfully immodest, we dispersed ourselves through the stone hallways and sunlit balconies.
In what had been the infirmary of the monastery there is now a museum, displaying in well-kept glass cases religious relics, the garments of earlier generations of monks, and items owned or used by leaders of the Greek independence movement. In the kitchen, old pots and bowls are propped against the blackened walls, slowly gathering dust, and a large ladle rests across the top of a huge iron cauldron suspended over a cold hearth by chains from ceiling. The storeroom contains a huge wooden cask once filled with wine, and long-still presses squishing plastic grapes. The ossuary is dimly but dramatically lit by overhead lights and a single lamp with a yellow bulb in the shape of a candle flame, allowing visitors to peer through the doorway at the dusty rows of skulls neatly arrayed on wooden shelves.
It was still possible, though, to get some idea of what it must have been like when only the monks congregated there. I imagined the ruffle of thick cloaks and the shuffling scrape of sandals echoing down the stone corridor near the entry, the click of rosary beads and low mumbled prayers near the dormitory, and the clang of pots and smell of wood smoke in the kitchen, and work and laughter as crops are harvested, and grapes pressed into wine. Other parts of the monastery were off-limits, testifying to the fact that there are still some monks who live there, seeking solitude from the rest of the world.
In the chapel, especially, the feel of a monastery is well preserved. No photographs were allowed inside, and the tourists for the most part kept a respectful silence, shuffling across the stone floors in murmuring little groups in obedience to the directions of their guides. The chapel is divided into two parts. The antechamber is decorated from floor to ceiling with frescoes depicting the horrific sufferings of Christ and various saints. In rich, bright colors, grey, emaciated bodies are pierced with arrows, boiled in large pots, beheaded by axes, or done in by some combination of those and other horrible tortures. The saints never lose their pitying expressions, however, or their radiant golden halos. And beneath the dome of the chapel itself the theme of the brilliant frescoes changes from suffering on earth to the rewards of heaven. Bodies are no longer emaciated and grey but rounded and pink, the sick are healed and the tortured welcomed into the embrace of the Lord.
In part of the museum there are other frescoes, some still in the process of being painted, depicting some of the struggles of the Greek Orthodox Church against the Ottomans before the successful conclusion of the War of Independence. I was struck by the close identification of the Church with the independence movement. In many of the frescoes monks or priests are persecuted or killed by evil-looking Turkmen, blending religious and patriotic zeal in the composition. The close identification of a modern political struggle with the monks’ religious life seemed at odds with the purpose of a monastery, to enhance piety by removing one from the everyday world.