Map of the Cycladic Islands

We had pulled several very long strings between us. Cell-phones did not exist then, letters to Europe took 10 days, at which time he had moved on. Neither did he write regularly. I had found and suggested a small hotel in the Plaka, where we would meet on August 16, 1985. This was the first such long-distance arrangement. We had still to learn confidence into each other to make it work.

The story of our meeting in Athens has assumed mythical proportions. I had arrived early that day and was, at night, sitting on the room's small balcony waiting for him. It had become very late when I spied his curly head and immense backpack in the lane below. Soon we fell into each others arms. "My," he said, "Here you are, was it difficult to find this place. Nobody knew it or could tell me. I searched for over an hour."

We went to have dinner in the Plaka where in a café on Plateia Koutlou Mousiou ("Square of the Musical Courtesans") I took this photo of smashing Cornelius.

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We spent a few days in Athens, taking the bus down to Sounion. Cornelius had perfected the oriental way of comfortably sqatting on his heels long before he went to China.

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Sounion, the promontory and the white columns of the Poseidon temple.

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A pair of lovers in the temple's corner. Makronisi in the background., the prison island for unrepentant communist poets and composers.

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Hanging over the sea.

After he had given me a lecture-tour of the "Stones of Athens" in the Agora, we walked up to Kaiseriani.

Where we spent an entire, hot August day.

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Trip into the Deep Mani

Map of the Southern Peleponnes

Map of the Inner Mani (from Chapman)

For many years Fermore's Deep Mani had been a destination on my mind. It is the western-most and longest southern peninsula of the Peleponnes. Its barren, rocky spine had been the refuge of "free" Greeks during the decades of Turkish rule. To avoid a tiring 10-hour bus ride, we took a boat following the eastern pirates' coast of the Peleponnes. We met several congenial foreigners, among them a Swede and his wife who presented us with his hunting knife as token of his friendshp. Before he handed it to me he cut his finger with the knife then mine. Mingling our blood would prevent it to be ever used against each other.... We reached Gythion after nightfall and rented a room above the chicken-coop of a restaurant owener along the quai.

Next day we continued by the only a day bus to the southern tip of the Mani. The landscape was irridiscent and halucinatory with light. Olive trees and tower villages. Like in Svaneti, Georgia and in San Giminano, Italy blood feuds taught the inhabitants to build defense towers next to their houses, where they could retire to if one's neighbours were after one. The one who had the highest tower and the largest number of male offspring won.

The tower-village of Kitta in the Cavo Grosso.

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Besides towers, which are well-known, the Mani hides literally hundreds of churches and chapels, which nobody knows - not even the Byzantine art-historians - except, that is for a few. This is a church in Ano-Bulari east of Gerolimenas where we had found a salt-incrusted room in one of two hotels. Cornelius inspected the place, which is from the 12th century, dedicated to Aghios Strátigos, and painted with frescoes. He came back saying the place was full of snakes and pitch dark. Since then we call it the "Snake Church".

Rolf having lunch in the shade of an olive tree nearWe walked a lot, entire days. We had no map, no rental car, only 2 buses, and hitchhiking proved very slow.

Tigani

One day we hiked from Gerolimenas to Tigani - a fantasy place already at its orignal conception and still in my head (see the map) - a peninsula 10 km to the north.

 These few houses are named Agia Kyriaki (Holy Sunday!). Near them starts a 2 km long panhandle peninsula, with the ruins of a mightily fortified city of the French Crusader Villehardouin. I my version of the tale Vilharduin built this castle for one of his mistresses - who was as beautiful as the place was forbidding: a rocky promontory, today waterless, except for cisterns, with a large cathedral surrounded by dozens of rock tombs, like in Montmajour near Arles.  

This is the path from Ag. Kyriaki across the panhandle, which turned out to be a confusing maze of stalacmites and salt-pools. The foundations of the city walls are visible in the distance. Parched and exhausted I found myself a shady spot under an overhang while Cornelius explored the city and the tombs..

A view of Tigani from Agitria on the coast of the Cavo Grosso. We missed the bus and hitchhiked back along the main road to Gerolimenas.

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Mycene

In Gerolimenas we had befriended an English couple on their honeymoon, Rose and Tony Shipman. She was from a highly educated upper-class family, he a journalist of half-Italian descent.... A charming pair. They had rented a car and took us back as far as Navplion in the Argolid. That night we went by bus from Nauplia to Mycene, got a room, and walked up to the Atrides' castle when everyone was leaving. The citadel is on the small hill in the center foreground. Underneath the field we are standing on are the royal beehive tombs.

Amorgos

We picked up Barbara at the airport and took the nightboat to Amorgos, 12 hours on the most rusted ship plowing the Aegean Sea. I believe it was called Kyklades II.... Its toilets were a stinking mess, but the captain was of the old stock. When we arrived dreary-eyed from the humid night on deck at six in the morning, he sang opera arias through his megaphone! All of Katapola was at the harbor to welcome the boat, and an old woman ran to the chapel at the harbor entrance and wildly rang its bell.

Tassia much older took us in. Her husband had died, and she served us special cookies, she had baked for his 40-day celebration , with the ususal honey and bread and nescafé for breakfast.

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Tassia no longer opened the second story rooms. Cornelius got his own room and we one next to it. The beds very much better than on our last visit, but the shower was still in the center of the ceiling and except in the afternoon cold.

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Breakfast in Tassia's garden. All was as it had always been. We were happy.

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We went on many hikes. Barbara on the promontory above the bay heading for Levkas and Agias Serrandas.

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Cornelius resting in the hills of Dokathismata, where our Amorgos marble woman would come from in 1991.

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Lunch in Vroutsi on our way.

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Sunset behind the houses of Levkas and the Lesser Cycladic Island. .

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The old monopati to the Chora.

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Barbara and Cornelius on the way to the Chora where he faithfully walked with her every morning....

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.....while I took the old museum's bus.

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The Chora seen from the monopati near where Barbara had discovered her favorite fig tree. To the disapproving horror of the natives, she preferred to pick them off the path from among dust and donkey droppings.....

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Mother and son floating above the eastern escarpment and the sea.

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The eastern escarpment and the chapel of Ag. Annis below.

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We spent many days in our secret garden paradise.

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Cornelius always carried a few pieces of dry bread as his mid-morning sustenance.

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This year we discovered this reservoir in which the monks stored the water from the spring. We cleaned it from weeds and used it to cool off in when it got too hot.

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This is the view over the sea from this pool. A fierce gust from behind the monastery races across the sea's surface.

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Cornelius resting on the wall of the hermitage - now the tool shack. On its roof dried figs.

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Cornelius and Barbara at Barbara's favourite spot by the gate of the moni..

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Panagia Chosoviotissa, the kalderimi to the moni. .

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In the cavernous entrance of the moni, where the monks kept a pile of old clothes for the tourists to cover their bareness with, we met two Austrian girls: Jutta Micheus and the fresh Angelika Kovacic from Eisenkappel. I got into a teasing argument with Angelika - an architecture student in Graz, who was sketching the monastic cavern. Later Barbara said, but did you not notice quiet, charming Jutta? Jutta would soon become Cornelius' friend and Barbara's and my very special attachement. After 20 years and many ups and downs she still is a very close and dear friend, a true corresponding member of our family.

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Every day we met at Dimitri's kafeneion on the plateaki where the bus stops. I would wait for Babara and Cornelius there, some days we would walk down to Katapola together, and the Austrian girls would already be sitting at Dimitri's tables. Dimitrios was an old friend - and an old communist. While his friends had long left for Athens, he held out alone trying to get his three daughters married. He complained that his wife was denser than most Cycladic women, and his mother also lived with him.

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Cornelius and Jutta.

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And Barbara dreaming of the garden on a bench by the church near the plateaki.

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One day the children left. The Austrians had to go back to Graz, and Cornelius followed Jutta. - Eight years later the Dimitra capsized in Paros harbour in a bad storm - the captain was drunk and asleep. Many drowned.....

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His parents seeing the boat off, happy and tanned from these wonderful days. - But it was not to be the end yet.

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Left to ourselves, we decided to move to Naxos or another island - and while I drove a motorcycle all over Naxos, Barbara ran into the Austrian girls - that is Angelika and her pianist sister, the other two are from Australia. Cornelius and Jutta had gone to Santorini together - but would arrive in Paros at midnight. Against Barbara's express wishes we all went to Paros that night and suprised Cornelius and Jutta. Cornelius was not at all enthused to see his parents again. We took a room and they went to sleep on the beach.

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Some mornings we would meet them at breakfast - but Cornelius was very defensive - as one can see. On Cornelius' birthday (15 September) Barbara invited all to dinner in a fast and small restaurant. In the early morning I found Barbara vomiting into the toilet: obviously meat poisening. In great panic I ran along the Paroikia's beaches and found C&J, deep asleep. They were all right but Barbara had to stay in bed for 2 days.

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Persuaded by Jutta Cornelius allowed me to take them to the moni on the mountain. Jutta and Angelika at the moni.

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Jutta picking a thorn from Cornelius' foot.

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Jutta was so happy that she was ready to fly off across Paroikia from the moni.

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Eventually also this respite came to an end. Cornelius and Jutta took the boat to Athens from where she went home and he flew to Stuttgart to join Fritz's laboratory. - The Children's Crusade waiting in Paroika for the boat.

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The boat is coming.