It had been Barbara's greatest wish to go back and spend a few weeks on our beloved Cycladic islands where we had found the sea warm and the people exceptionally friendly in 2004. Then Cornelius invited us to spend some time with them in Rome. We finally decided to fly with BA via London to Rome and from there by cheap Aegean Airlines to Athens and back. We would spend 8 days each in Rome and 4 weeks in Greece.

Rome, September 6 - 11, 2005

Cornelius picked us up, dead tired, after work at night. We had not seen their new apartment after Anne-Cecile's move back to Rome. Ulysse greeted Nona Barbara with a wild cheer, but Nono Rolf is still a scare-body. AC and Cornelius had given me their bedroom and Barbara the guest room, so we slept very well. It was cool and occasionally rained a little.

Ulysse's Third Birthday

Ulysse on the big bounce cushion. On the 10th is my, on the 15th Cornelius', and on the 13th of September Ulysse birthday. He became every bit of 3 years old!

What does a German grandmother do? She bakes a cake for our birthdays,

he is allowed to help and lick the bowl..... 

Cornelius had moved Ulysse's birthday party to the 10th - for which I was eternally grateful. You can see how "grown-up" he is among the children of their friends....!

He delights, of course, to play all kinds of little antics and to show off, here his new boots! - One day Barbara and Ulysse went to the zoo and let themselves be scared by the big teeth of the hippopotamus.

Six Blue Eyes: Anne-Cecile, Cornelius, and Ulysse with his new harmonica (Rome, Sept 2005)

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He played so loud and beautiful that Barbara's flute-player came over from Amorgos and joined him

Villa Adriana with Cornelius

 0n another day Cornelius took off from work and drove his parents to the Villa Adriana, a most tranquil place.

Despite a brief downpour it was a wonderful, enchanted day.

Naxos, 12 - 23 September 2005

Naxos Map

The flight to Athens with Aegean Air was comfortable and uneventful. Uli May had reserved a hotel for us in the Piraeus (Hotel Skorpios) - for euro 50.- ! We didn't expect much, but the room and bath was large, modern, and clean, and when I pulled the heavy curtains aside - the huge window was filled with the view of the blue sea to the horizon! - Later we discovered a large painting of a naked suggestively posed woman over the bed! How discreet such things are being handled in Greece! A highly recommended place.

We took the Blue Star "Paros" early next morning to Naxos, a 5 hour ride through the western Cycladic islands.... Dina and Kosta Karabatsi awaited us at the pier, and in the late afternoon we went to the beach.

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Dina Karabatsi and Aghios Prokopios Beach

This is Aghios Prokopios Beach, 3 minutes from Dina's house. There were many parents with small children, mostly in the nude. I saw Ulysse walk by many times.

The sand is coarse but stretches for several miles south.

These four from Holland were always the last ones to leave at night.

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After the crowds were gone we had Aghios Prokopios Beach to ourselves.

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 "Red Lake" a shallow pond filled with red, brackish water behind the beach, surely the perfect breeding grounds for mosquitos..., but very pretty in the evening light. - There were no more mosquitos by the end of September.

One night Dina and Kosta prepared rabbit in our honor which Neophitos roasted over a charcoal fire in the back. His charming sister Vassilisi sits next to him. Dina - whose name is an abbreviation of Konstantina ("nt" being pronounced like our "d") has become our dearest Greek friend. This year we also got to know Kosta (Konstantinos) better, an intelligent and insightful man with much experience, both Greek and German.

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Chalkis and the Teghйa

View from the bus to Chalkis. Naxos is a big enough island that in its interior one sometimes forgets the existence of the sea. Chalkis lies amid old olive groves among the strangely shaped hills in the bckground.

Studying the new topo-map of Naxos under an old olive tree on a hike near Chalkis. (see the map of Naxos)

Lunch at Ioannis' charming restaurant in Chalkis.

This year I had had plans to photograph the light and the people of Greece. Both turned out too difficult and elusive - the light is too strong except in the late afternoon - and interesting people pictures happen only occasionally :

Near the door to the kitchen of the restaurant sat a good-looking young man brooding over a glass of beer, maybe Ioannis' son? - He caught my attention because he looked like he should really be in a monastery on Mount Athos.

During the hour I watched him, two young girls passed by attempting to talk to him.

He looked right through them, without a word.... A village tragedy? - "O Thanos" ? - There are many very old customs alive in the islands: like the daughters inherit the house and the property from their mothers. If there is more than one daughter it is split. The sons are paid-off with an education, money, or the business of their fathers. The men are only squatters on their wives' land, like the year-king in pre-hellenic, matriarchic times - 4000 years ago....

The Teghйa, Aghias Georgios Diasoritis.

In the Teghйa, the area around Chalkis I counted more than 20 venerable Byzantine churches. They hide in olive groves and near-deserted villages. Most are locked. Some are painted with beautiful frescoes inside. This is Aghios Georgios Diasoritis (the Saviour), 10 minutes west of Chalkis. It is guarded (9-14) by a young girl from Melanes, who will read you your horoscope (she is doing that for Barbara in the shade on the right), but knows little about the extensive, unusual cycle of frescoes inside the church.

Aghios Georgios Diasoritis from the east.

An unusual depiction combining the expulsion from paradise with a collection of apocalyptic monsters (the colors are not authentically true, in reality one sees almost nothing!). Below are the condemned to the right and the blessed to the left. - Like in Ossios Lucas, the Capella Palatina in Palermo, or the Norman cathedral in Cefalъ, Sicily the fresco in the copula of the church depicts Christ surrounded by 12 archangels (instead of apostles). This mystical neoplatonic interpretation, connected with the writings of the so-called "Pseudo" Dionysos-Aeropagitos shows that the frescoes were painted during the half-century before 1030 AD. Murals from that short period are rare. - Unfortunately the little girl prevented me from taking a photo of the copula (only one picture per tourist!) - and I have not been able to find these frescoes published.

Moni Fotodoti Christou

Every time we visit Naxos, we make a pilgrimage to the deserted monastery Fotodoti Christou, Christ the Light-Giver above Dhanakos. It overlooks the Lesser Cyclades and Amorgos in the distance. A quiet place far from the tourists. Usually we spent a day there. But this time (this photo is from 1992) the moni was surrounded by scaffolding and a crew of workmen noisily pumped concrete slush into the cracks between the loose stones. They were friendly enough, let us stay, and the foreman took me into the church - which is hidden inside the castle-like structure. He wanted to show me their latest discovery: frescoes which had emerged from under the layers of plaster. The copula had turned out to have originally been painted only with flowers, birds and some geometric designs! A sure sign that it was painted during the Iconoclast Period ! This discovery at once advanced the date of the church to between 726 and 853 AD. It had previously been thought to be from the 13th or 14th century. The towering monastery (actually once a convent) had been wrapped around the church in the 14th century. - Unfortunately, without risking a brocken leg or skull, I was not able to climb the interior scaffolding to photograph the ceiling... There is one other iconoclast church on Naxos, Aghia Kiriaki, in a remote location northeast of Apiranthos. The famous "Panaghia i Drosiani" (near Moni north of Chalkis) is older (6th cent) but was painted before the iconoclast period. Other churches from this time are found in Cappadocia.

. Barbara writing a long letter to Anik

 . and later in her diary for Kelly Wood.

Demeter Sanctuary South of Sangri

However, the discovery of this year was the Demeter Sanctuary near Ano Sangri.

On a low hill, in the center of a wide open, fertile mountain-megaron archologists discovered in 1949 a very interesting sanctuary to Demeter. - It is visible in the center of the circular area in the middle ground of the photo.

Serious Greek-German excavations took place during 1976-95. They showed that the 6th-century building was the first marble sanctuary in Greece - even the roof-tiles were from marble. It was a "telesterion", a place for performances of the "Eleusian" mystery plays in honor of the Hellenic (matriachal) Trinity : Demeter, her daughter Kore (alias Persephone), and the old Crone Hekate.

The archeologists found the five (!) columns of the portico and more than 1600 marble pieces, in the surrounding churches and farm houses, that the reassermbled building is now the most complete (50%), archaic (530 BC) temple site in Greece. Elegant and architecturally sophisticated, it presages the subtle and refined dimensions of the Athenian Parthenon by almost 50-years! (Did Ichtinos, the architect of the Parthenon and the telesterion in Eleusis, come from Naxos? A not completely irrelevant question, since there is another highly sophisticated, older site at Iria on Naxos - various stages of a temple to Dionysos from the 8th to the 5th century BC.

And more: the reconstruction has been arranged in such a way that besides the pre-Hellenic evidence, the foundations of the 8th-century AD church (in the center of the telesterion, oriented east-west) are also visible. A small 14th-century AD chapel which sat on top the rubble has been moved a few hundred feet south-east. This allows to simultaneously see the sacred structures of 4000 years. - One of the most intelligently arranged archeological sites I know.

View of the telesterion from the southwest. The fenced-in area encloses remnants of pre-Hellenic times: among them two holes in the ground and the foundation of an altar where in pre-Eleusian times (before 1000 BC) sacrifices to the Great Goddess were performed. One hole must have contained the intoxicating brew drunk by the priestesses, the other may have received the blood of the sacrificial victim - a young man - o thanos, the year-king....

To me, whose imagination of early Greek times is strongly influenced by Mary Renaults historical novels, this must have been the place where to Ariadne fled after she had arrived from Crete with Theseus. Here, drunk, she participated in the dismembering of the King of that year and forgot her Greek hero and lover. Theseus, nauseated by the sight of her, sailed for Athens alone....

The Lesser Kyklades

Between Naxos and Amorgos hides a flock of small islands: Iraklia, Schinoussa, Keros, Kato and Ano Koufonissia, and Donoussa each with a village or two and a few permanent inhabitants - the ultimate in island solitude. Most are bare and only Iraklia has a mountain to speak of. They were already inhabited during pre-Minoan time as the many graves show where "Cycladic Idols" were found (3500-1800 BC).

Years back (1991) there used to be a small kaпki plying the waters between Naxos and Amorgos which called at each island and at Egiali and Katapola on Amorgos. Then a trip took six to seven hours and the final stretch to Egiali over open water could be very rough. Now this tiny boat has been replaced by the "Skopelitis Express", a somewhat larger boat, which takes only 4 hours and is much more stable...

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Light and shadows. .Keros Island ftrom the east. In the 1960s a large collection of broken Cycladian Idols surfaced in the art market ("Keros Hoard"), reportedly found on Keros and (clandestinely) sold. The reason for the figures having been broken (apparently before 900 BC) is a mystery.

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People. The arrival of the boat on remote Ano Koufonisia island is the day's happening. Villagers waiting for the boat.

Four tourists have disembarked. An expectant cluster has formed around them. Now comes the ritual of negotiating for their rooms. The woman with the girl on her hand won the competition and took them to her house. There are only about 10 houses at the khora of Ano Koufenissia. At Katapola on Amorgos, later that night, a chorus of some 40 women, shouting and waving photos of their rooms, were vying to sell the tourists their rooms. Usually their husbands waited by their cars in the background.

As the boat leaves old and young go back to their games.

The sun setting behind the steep backside of Naxos. As on our first visit to Amorgos we arrived in total darkness.

Amorgos, 23 September - 7 October

Amorgos Large Topo-Map

For the friends who admire panoramas! This one was stitched together from 3 photos: Katapola Bay seen from the road to the Chora. The houses on the far left are Katapola proper. Left center is the oldest village, Rachidi, and on the far right Xilokeratidi. On the shoulder of the conical mountain to the left is the Hellenistic (2nd cent BC -1st cent AD) city "Minoa" with a theater and walls. Right in the background the eastern escarpment of Naxos is visible, dead center Iraklia, Ios to the left of it. These first days were splendidly spectacular, - the sea was truely that blue! Click on the picture to expand.

Next morning the "Skopelitis" was waiting in Katapola to make the return trip to Naxos. Once a week the Blue Star "Naxos" comes from Kos (6 hrs) and passes through Katapola on her way to Piraeus (10 hrs), the only direct connection to Athens (except for a medical emergency helicopter).

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Light and shadows: Katapola Bay on a moody afternoon. To the right is the hump of Iraklia, way in the back the island mountain of Ios. The weather this year was often hard to take. During the night a cold wind blew from the northeast which during the day often turned south, resulting in broody, overcast days steepened in unpleasant humidity that made breathing difficult. Barbara had a cough, head-aches, and a cold which she had brought from Rome. I may have carried the viral pneumonia for over a week (no fever, no pain, only a great fatigue) which later lead to the bizarre water in my chest. Anyway, I felt already lousy when we moved to Amorgos. In the end we decided that the second half of September is probably most always, and early October is certainly every year too late for the Islands.

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Sunspots on a hazy Bay.

"Panos' Rooms" in Xilokeratidis

View from our kitchen balcony (we had 3 balconies at Panos'!} at Titika's place, were we stayed in 2004

Dina Karabatsi had given me a card advertising "Panos' Rooms". With the help of half a dozen shouting women (among them his mother!) we found charming and reticent Panos at Katapola pier at night. He took us to his place in Xilokeratides and offered us a modern 2-room-kitchen-efficiency for the off-season price of euro 25.- !! - For some reason Panos Psichogios (35) has a bad image in Amorgos, some say he drinks, others that he is on drugs. For this reason I would like to go on record, that I have found him an exceptionally polite, intelligent, helpful, and friendly person, far above the average islander. We have never seen him under the influence of alcohol or drugs during the 2 weeks we stayed in his house. In addition, his house offers the best rooms we have found in Amorgos in 30 years. - He is not married and there is no permanent woman in the house. - But he appears to have many female admirers (pictures of them are tacked up on a bulletin board in front of his office!). - A funny incident happened during our stay: A group of women invaded and occupied the house for a week!..... One evening a young woman in her Sunday best knocked at our door. With a smile she declared that "unfortunately Panos has left us. I am the new manager of the house. I will help you wherever I can." She gave us the impression that she had been Panos' fiancee for many years. She first dismissed the cleaning woman (another friend of Panos'?). Next day she and his mother (!) noisily and under much laughter took control of the place. - His mother brought new linens and for a week cleaned the rooms! - On the day of our departure, Panos resurfaced.... - Would Dina please explain this to me? Could it be that Panos' poor reputation is caused by his owning and occupying this house? In Amorgos land can only be owned by the women! - I swear, next time we will stay at Panos' house again - and I'll get to the bottom of this story.

Barbara in our kitchen at Panos'

Barbara's room and balcony.

Eugene and Anna Sarolea

The Saroleas and Barbara in the Chora. In September 2004 Barbara had, on one of her lonely hikes to the Chora Amorgou, befriended Eugene and Anna Sarolea from Leidschendam in Holland. Anna is a passionate photographer and Eugene a former teacher of Byzantine music. When we planned our 2005 visit to Amorgos I tried to persuade them to meet us again in Katapola. They had been in Crete and after a nearly impossible Odyssee by boat and catamaran suddenly one morning surfaced at Panos' place. The pleasure on both sides was great. We undertook several excursions and had many dinners together.

Eugene and Rolf on our kitchen balcony. Eugene is now almost completely deaf - which did not prevent him from singing Eastern-Orthodox church hymns - in Old Slavonic - with Anna in the the litttle churches we visited together. - A great delight. - But conversations between us four were always difficult for him to follow. So, one day he and I had a long talk in German on our balcony, where there were no acoustic reflections or other voices interfering.

Eugene at the Cafй "O Thanos" in the Chora

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One day Anna drove to Arkesini and promised to bring back some pictures for me. She sent them in April 06. Now there are two Arkesinis on Amorgos, I was not sure which one she visited. One is an old village overlooking the east coast. The other an archeological site overlooking the west coast - west of Vroutsi. It can only be reached on foot along a monopati from Vroutsi. - Anna left Eugene behind, hiked there alone, and discovered a very old ruined castro.... Her two pictures make me most jealous. What a numinous site!

A church along the path, to the torre shown above (Anna Sarolea 2005)

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Kafeneion "O Thanos"

Demeter admiring Barbara's Sufi-necklace. At the Plateaki in the Chora, surrounded by five small churches, three in a row: Agh. Thomas, Agh. Taleleos, and Agh. Stavros, and two more across the square: Agh. Treis Iearches and Agh. Zoodias Pighi, the Living Spring, Ioannis opened a small kafeneion decades ago. He loves classical and better Greek music. Sometimes we would have a coffee at his place but we never talked to him. This year Ioannis had put up a sign over the door, "Kafeneion O Thanos" in Greek, of course. For a long time I puzzled about the word o thanos, which I couldn't find in any of my Greek dictionaries..... Then I struck up a conversation with his beautiful, callipygous daughter. Her name turned out to be Dhнmitra (Dйmeter). "My name is not derived from the Greek saint Dimitrios but from an acient Greek Goddess." She said when I asked her how she was called. I smiled. Did she know about the origin of the triangles above so many doors in the Amorgos Chora? I asked. Yes, she said, the triangle refers to the Great Goddess. "I just finished reading the Da Vinci Code". - Now I had to laugh, what a surprise! Later I asked Ioannis whether he had a recording by Maria Farantouri. He did and that broke the ice. While Maria sang Theodorakis, Ioannis told me of his jewelery making and his life. - "No, no I am not from here, all this is my wife's property. I am an outsider...." He smiled lopsidedly. I did not associate him with o thanos until, in my half-dreams at the hospital, it suddenly occurred to me that thanos comes from thanatos, death and that thanos is the companion of the queen-priestess, the year-king of matriarchy, the one-who-must-die.... O Thanos and Demeter....

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View from Kalotaritissa over the southern tip of Amorgos. To get to the southern most end of the island you have to rent a car, very few people live there any longer. It is very old, once arable land, now much neglected with wonderful views of the islands: Iraklia, Ios and Santorini in the distance. Click on the picture to enlarge it.

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King Minos and I Panghia Epanochoriani

The church of the "Mother-of-God-above-the-village" of Langada

Barbara reading at noon on the wall surrounding the Panaghia Epanochoriani.

Lagkada-Langada ("gk" in Greek is pronounced like "сg" with a hard g) is a small, pretty village above Egiali at the northern end of the island and the Panaghia Epanochoriani is the prettiest church in the area. We discovered it in 1991 and have been coming back to it every time. Usually we would take the bus to Langada, but this time we had reached the first week of October and the bus schedule had changed. Besides I was feeling worse every day, short breath and great weakness. Barbara rented a car - a colorful Korean mini-box for $20/day. It was a cold overcast day.

From the Chora the road climbed high into the lonely mountains and there, by the side of the road stood a strange hooded figure carrying a bag with bread and a cheese on a stick over his left shoulder and waving at us with his right. He had long, unkempt gray hair, a matching, wild beard and was dressed in an old, tattered jacket - below which he was bare: beautiful shaped thighs, a pendulous penis dangling between them.... It all happened so fast, that I did not press my shutter, and maybe in this case the imagination delivers a better picture than the camera could. - King Minos ! - We met him once more very close to the Chora. The villagers must be well aware of his existence and tolerate him. I inquired: "O, you have met Saint Gerasimos," laughed the man in Katapola, "he is a deaf-mute. Why should we have him locked up in an institution, he is harmless." Once again it occured to me, that only the Greeks have for millenia considered the deranged and crazy God's sacred creatures.

The simple interior of the Panaghia Epanochoriani

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Moni Chosoviotissa and the Garden of the Monks

In a vertical rock-wall of the eastern escarpment of Amorgos hangs the venerable Monastery Chosoviotissa 300-meter above the blue sea. From the windows of its cells the monks see only blue water. It was founded in 1036, today only 3 monks live there. Their Gerontias (Elder) recently became ill with cancer and had to be moved to Naxos. I always thought that there was no cancer in the Greek monis....

Barbara reading on the stone table in the garden of the monks.

The monks have a vegetable garden above the sea, which has been our secret hideaway for decades. A lilting spring issuing from a bamboo reed waters their fields. There is a chapel, a small hermitage-shack, and a stone table with two benches in the garden. We discovered this paradise in 1976 and have spent many blissful days there. At one time I even had an official permission by the Gerontias to stay there. We had not been back for a long time and discovered that they had ruthlessly cut down the lemon and the fig trees which had given shade to the table and the spring in the past. It was an unhappy day. I lay down in front of the hermitage to sleep - and got very cold.

Unhappy in paradise.

Trying to warm up on the stone table. - Next day my breathing had turned so short that Barbara dragged me to the local medical emergency station. - They have two physicians on the island who serve three such government emergencies. A helicopter is available for critical cases. It took me 15 minutes to limp the 150-m from Panos' place to the medical station. The doctor turned me around, jabbed a powerful shot of antibiotic into my behind, and told me to come back in two hours. Meanwhile he asked the school teacher to come over and translate. When I returned somewhat improved the two put me on a 7-days antibiotic regime (Augmentine + some other antibiotic). My breathing became better, but my great weakness was now accompanied by attacks of profuse sweating.

We decided to begin our retreat on 7 October and take the one boat to Athens as far as Paros (5 hrs), where we knew of a comfortable place to stay. There, after 5 of the 7 antibiotics-days had passed, and I still was not much better, Barbara took me to the Paros medical station. Four lively young doctors investigated me. They took an x-ray of my chest and discovered a huge shadow covering my entire right lung...! Now all hell broke loose. They offered me a free helicopter transfer to an excellent hospital in Athens! How I would have loved to go on this Flight with Ikarus! But I did not want to get stuck in an Athens hospital no matter how good. Barbara was very unhappy about my obstinacy, - but I did not feel as sick as that x-ray suggested, my breathing had eased, nobody could find anything wrong with my lungs using an ordinary stethoscope, nothing hurt me, I had no temperature, only my weakness and the sweating attacks bothered me. I was sure I would make it to Los Angeles.

On 11 October we braved a 4-hour boat ride to Piraeus followed by a 2-1/2-hour flight from Athens to Rome, where a dead-tired Cornelius, faithful soul, picked us up at night. Barbara paid for us to fly on the 14 October, 4-days-earlier, to Los Angeles, where we arrived, I in a wheelchair, after 18-hours via London. Next morning Kaiser confined me to the hospital - which became the most excruciating part of this whole experience, staying 5 days in that hospital.

The lung shadow turned out to be fluid outside of the lungs. By the time they got around to draining the liquid (3 days later) there were only 150 ml left of what must have been about 2 liters initially. The fluid proved sterile and free of any malicious cells. The origin of this bizarre production has never been explained. Probably it was caused by a partially suppressed viral pneumonia. - We later found out that Margit May had a viral pneumonia which lasted 6 weeks from the day we met them in Athens.....

Barbara emerging from the farmakeion, the pharmacy (nexty to Dimitri's cafe!) in the Chora Amorgou.

Rome, 11 - 15 October 2005

 Asleep in Ulysse's bed under the mobile. We spent 3 days in cold Rome. I sometimes slept in Ulysse's bed during the day, because his room was warmer than the others. Central heating would only be turned on in November....

This is the ship of Odysseus sailing under the planets of Ulysse's natal-horoscope. I was much touched that thanks to Cornelius' circumspection my paper mobile of three years ago was still alive....