Barbara wanted to spend time with Marga in Tübingen - or was she escorting German tourist through the Wild West? I don't remember. We agreed to meet in Athens. Cornelius was pausing his studies at Berkeley, was hitch-hiking in Italy, and would spend the coming winter at Fritz Keilmann's lab in Stuttgart. This gave me the idea of meeting him too in Athens. We made plans months ahead of time, because he would be incommunicado as long as he was traveling in Italy. I arrived at the agreed upon hotel in the Plaka and didn't find him. Full of expectations I sat on my balcony that night, would he find me? was something wrong with him? when I saw his curly, blond head below me in the narrow lane. We fell into each other's arms, and for a few days explored the Stones of Athens together (he had taken a course with that name at Berkeley).

Cornelius at a kafeneion on Plateia Koutlomousiou - the square of the "music-loving courtesans"  

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I took him up to Kaiseriani where we spent a beautiful, lazy day.

 It was hot and he drank a whole liter of Gatorade and....

 ...slept an hour.

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Sounion 

To escape the heat in Athens we took the bus to Sounion.

Cornelius squatting at the Sounion bus terminal in Athens.

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The akragas Souniou - the promontory of Sounion 

Cornelius suspended above the sea at Sounion. 

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On the steps of the Poseidon Temple.

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The Mani

For years I had dreamt of a hike in the mysterious Mani, the southern-most tip of Greece and the Peleponnese. Instead of the crowded bus we took a boat from Athens along the seemingly inaccessible coastline of the Peleponnes to Gythion.

 Rock islands and mountains along the coast of the Peleponnes.

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Ano Boulari near Gerolimenas. The Mani is the most barren, rockiest part of Greece. During the four hundred years of the Turkish occupation of Greece the Mani became the refuge of revolutionaries, the persecuted, and other often dubious patriots. Entire villages resettled there, which resulted in a very mottled population. Add the Greek penchant for blood-feuds, every ethnic group and many a family waged constant war with other clans and families. This led to the building of private defense towers, where one could barricade oneself from one's enemies and throw bombs on one's neighbor, if one's tower was higher than his. The tower villages of the Mani became famous - see, for instance, Patrick Fermore's tales from his sojourn there.  

Kitta among olive groves. 

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Lunch in the shade of an olive tree near one of the many Byzantine churches.   We found a suitable "hotel" in Gerolimenas, a forlorn former pirates' hide-out where everything tasted for salt, the air, the water, the bed sheets, and the miserable food... We did take hikes from there, but the heat and the unrelenting sun made walking a real chore, and there was only one bus and too few cars to hitch a ride....

The houses of Ag. Kyriaki west of Mezapos, which lies at the handle of a white peninsula - crusty salt puddles between stalagmite rocks - on which Villardouhin had built an impregnable fairy castle - Megali Maina- for himself and one of his mistresses.

 The towers of the village of Ano Boulari where we walked from Gerolimenas in the evening and...

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...discovered the ruined Byzantine church of Agios Stratikos (St. Michael) 11th-cent. - Cornelius' snake church. Afraid to enter the dark cave, we missed its murals and that of another, older church (Ag. Panteleiomon) near by.

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Mycene

 We had befriended an English couple on their honeymoon in Gerolimenas - Tony and Rose Shipman, she upper-class, he an Italian-born journalist. - They took us back to Navplion in their rental car. We went by bus to Mycene, walked up to the archeological site in the evening and spent a restless night among braying donkeys and crowing roosters in an ultramodern, German-style apartment in the village.... Cornelius will remember that place.

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Awaited by both of us at the airport Barbara arrived one afternoon. Next day we left on the "new" Kyklades, another second-hand ship already aged to a rusty brown under blistering paint... The toilet alone was worth the experience.... But it was piloted by a boisterous captain of the old school. When we arrived in Amorgos at six in the morning after damp night sleeping on the hard fore-deck, he sang opera arias through his bull-horn from the bridge! The whole village was at the pier. An old, crazed woman ran to the harbor chapel and rang the bells - what a welcome!

 Breakfast under Tassia's arbor, just as we had remembered: honey and butter on fresh bread and a decent coffee...

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A happy biji and his beautiful mother

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 Mother and son floating over the steep east side of the island

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Naturally we spent many hours hiding in our secret garden paradise. 

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 Cornelius in the cool pool of the monks looking at the sea.

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 View from the pool of the wind-swept sea. A gust is racing like snow across the water.

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 In the late sun on the wall of the hermitage in the garden.

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Barbara dreaming of the Garden on a ledge in the Chora.

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 On a visit to Moni Chosoviotissa... To confuse me today, or to please Cornelius, Barbara carried a wardrobe of 3 different dresses! Usually her dress defines the year the picture was taken. She had worn the dress with the orange sash to Greece in 1982!

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...we met Jutta and Angelika from Eisenkappel in Austria. Angelika was working on architectural drawings, one sees only an arm of her. The two became our hiking companions, and Jutta has remained a close friend of ours ever since...

The beach at Aghii Serandis is beautiful but not as clean as the pebble beaches on the eastern side. The Gumpen of the brook, if there is enough water, are better.....

 Lunch at a Kafeneion in Vroutsi.

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Cornelius and Jutta... 

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 The houses of Levkas and the lesser Minoan Islands in the evening light. The hump of Iraklia is seen in the distance, the southern tip of Naxos on the right.

One day Cornelius and the other Austrian girls decided that they had lazed long enough on Amorgos and sailed off on the Dimitra, the new (second-hand) ferry boat to Paros, Mykonos, and Amorgos, which after a collison with another boat was to capsize a few years later in the harbor of Naxos. The captain had been drunk...  

... leaving his happy parents waving from between the potato bags at the pier of Katapola. To us it seemed that this summer had come to an end, but it would end differently... 

All of a sudden alone, we decided to move to Paros where we had been so happy in 1982. We had to change boats in Naxos, a town that held few temptations, it had always appeared like the Grand Central Station of the islands. A wait of a few hours moved me to rent a motorcycle and explore the island. Barbara wanted nothing of such a noisy ride.  

The following morning was very quite and wind-still and I was able to catch another beautriful reflection in the harbor.

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Paros

 Jutta pulling a thorn out of Cornelius' foot... We had a wonderful time together, and...

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 ... Jutta was so happy that she was ready to fly off....

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Eventually also this reprieve came to an end: Cornelius and Jutta left for Athens in a crowd of young people who were waiting for the boat at Paros' pier...  

The Boat is coming....!