Julian Worker – Travel Newsletter 2 – Greece

Welcome to the second newsletter of this blog. My writing this month has been about Greece.

I’m going to publish a book in the Travels through History series for Greece : The Peloponnese (similar to the ones for Northern Spain, The Balkans, Southern France, 9 Greek Islands, North-East England, Poland and The Baltics, and Armenia). I was waiting until I’d visited The Saronic Gulf islands and Kythira before proceeding. These books are travelogues and not travel guides. 

This is what I wrote for Hydra:

From what I gathered beforehand, most people have heard of Hydra in connection with the Canadian singer Leonard Cohen. He had a house on the island for many decades and I tried to find it for many minutes, but in the end I’m not 100% convinced I did, as there was no sign indicating I’d reached my intended destination. The front door didn’t look the same as the one in the photos I’d seen, but I did find a street named after Cohen so that will have to do. If you ask me for directions, I’d have no idea how to start as the small alleys and slightly wider streets form a bit of a maze in this part of the old town on Hydra. It’s a fascinating place with colours, plants, small churches, and wrought iron features at irregular intervals, mixed with a few anchors, balconies, and large pots containing succulents for good measure. Walking down a narrow all-white alley in the sunshine felt like stepping into a sauna.  

Even the pharmacy here is a place to visit, with its signs indicating that no groups are allowed in and that no photos can be taken inside. There are small drawers, vases in glass-fronted cabinets, and occasional, recognisable containers with vitamins inside. Saying it resembles a museum would be doing the owner a disservice, but it is somewhere where you can remember how chemist shops used to be when commercialism wasn’t so rampant.

I had arrived on the hydrofoil and managed to find the pension I was staying at without too much trouble. However, this was in the daylight and I knew that it would be night when I came back from dinner, so I had to make sure I had sufficient landmarks for me to find the pension again in the dark. 

There were plenty of places to eat in the alleys, streets, and squares, but I saw a sign for a restaurant that pointed to a gateway with a courtyard beyond. I ventured through the gate and saw people sitting under overhanging trees and lamps strewn around the garden. I obtained a table for one near the entrance and ordered my food. I was craving some salad and when The Greek Salad (an original choice for Greece I agree) arrived I wasn’t disappointed as the large bowl was full of tomatoes and onions, topped with a large piece of feta cheese that covered the bowl. I ate the fruit and vegetables and about ⅔ of the cheese, but that was all I could manage. I had a quarter litre of the local rose too and I felt full. 

By the following morning, I was hungry again and set off to find breakfast by the harbour. There were a number of places open and I ordered a large bowl of full-fat Greek yoghurt with honey and a black coffee ‘sketos’ which means coffee without sugar or milk of any kind. The locals began to arrive and smoked their cigarettes while drinking black coffee, some were expressoes but not all, and ate not much else other than the occasional omelette. This was their morning social club so they chatted with people they knew at different tables as well as with the waiter and with passers-by and the fisherman on their boats.   

The Historical Archive Museum of Hydra on the eastern side of the harbour (the hydrofoil stops right outside this building) houses many items donated to the museum by the descendants of the influential families of the island in the 1800s who  were instrumental in the launch of the Greek War of Independence. The museum has a nautical theme which reflects the strategic importance Hydra held during that time as a safe harbour from which to launch the Greek fleet. 

The current museum building was finished in 1996 and houses the archives and an impressive array of swords, clothing, replica ships and portraits. One of the most prized possessions of the museum is the decorated, silver urn that contains the embalmed heart of Admiral Miaoulis whose statue can be seen overlooking the harbour mouth on the eastern side.

The prominent bell tower standing proud above the port area belongs to the Church of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary where dormition is the orthodox equivalent of the assumption in the catholic church. The three-level bell tower is constructed from marble from the island of Tinos. It was designed by Venetian and Genoese architects in 1643, when it first began to operate as a women’s monastery. Today, only the main sanctuary is in use, with some of the former nun’s cells having been converted into civil offices, while others have become part of a small ecclesiastical museum.

I decided to explore some of the old town and found the Tetsis Museum of Hydra, housed inside the old residence and studio of Panayiotis Tetsis, who donated his residence to the Historical and Ethnological Society in 2007. The museum features vivid, colourful walls, and its interiors are decorated with countless paintings and various artworks of Tetsis. 

Some hydrofoils from Hydra heading towards Spetses do stop at the town of Ermioni on the Greek mainland. This may or may not alter your itinerary plans but it’s good to know this option exists should you be planning to do some island-hopping in the Saronic Gulf and then head over to the Peloponnese.   

In the next month I’m intending to publish another book in the Travels through History series called Travels through History : Armenia and Georgia.

This is the chapter on Gori and The Caucasus. 

Stalin’s original Georgian name was Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili. The Russian equivalent of this is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. During his years as a revolutionary, he adopted the alias “Stalin”, and after the October Revolution he made it his legal name, so he became Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin.

Stalin is probably the most famous person born in the country of Georgia and my next stop was at the Soviet-style town of Gori where Stalin was born. Here, I visited the museum – it’s a shrine really – and learned about his life. 

I’m sure most people know that Stalin initially began training as a priest in the Georgian Seminary before abandoning religion to become a brigand and join the new Bolshevik movement. It’s been suggested that Georgia escaped the worst horrors of Stalin’s regime because he was afraid of his conservative Christian mother. You have to remember that in Stalin’s case “escaping the horrors of Stalin’s regime” still means 80,000 Georgians were shot, 800,000 were deported, and 400,000 were killed during the period of the Great Patriotic War between 1941 and 1945. With Stalin, statistics quickly lose their impact. 

The Stalin Museum itself is really fascinating though I’d start outside with the place of his birth which is preserved under a glass-roofed Doric temple. This temple was erected by Lavrenti Beria, a fellow Georgian who was the longest-serving and most brutal of Stalin’s secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and after World War II. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, he was responsible for organising purges such as the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and officials. As soon as Stalin died, Beria was living on borrowed time, and he was executed at the end of 1953, barely six months after Stalin died. 

Stalin’s private railway carriage is worth seeing too. The fittings are basic but comfortable. The carriage has six axles to bear the weight of the armour plating.

Entering the interior of the museum is like stepping back into the days of the Soviet Union. The decor is drab, there are offices with signs for the most menial of tasks, and the lighting is somewhat subdued. Individuals are not allowed to walk around on their own, there are guided tours given by people who have answers to all your questions, even though those answers don’t come close to the truth. I declined the opportunity to buy a Stalin fridge magnet or a mug with his face on it. To be fair, in 2010 the museum did open a mock secret police cell in the basement providing limited coverage of The Terror, the resettlement of people, and the expulsions to the gulags. 

Everyone traipses up the stairs past a bust of the man himself and into the first of three rooms. This deals with his revolutionary life up until the death of Lenin in 1924. Stalin wrote passable poetry and was the first editor of Pravda. 

The second room deals with his life up until World War II. There are many interesting photos and it’s revealing as to who’s in the photos and who isn’t. Stalin was very adept at having his opponents (as he saw them) removed from the record as though they never existed. Kalinin is in many photos, but Trotsky is only in one small photo. There’s a photo of Lenin and Stalin smiling into the camera, but there’s a thought that perhaps this is a montage of two photos, as Lenin really didn’t like Stalin, especially after Stalin insulted his wife. There’s also a letter on the wall from Lenin to the Communist Party about Stalin that has been edited / redacted to make no mention of his opinion Stalin was ‘a coarse, brutish bully acting on behalf of a great power’. There were suspicions Stalin might have been a tsarist police double agent in the pre-revolutionary days, but the great power Lenin mentions is even less well known, the only possibility really is Britain which occupied parts of Transcaucasia.  

The third room covers the period 1941-45, the Great Patriotic War in Soviet terms, and the last five years of WWII elsewhere. After this there’s an odd assortment of exhibits such as a bronze death mask, the pen he used at Potsdam, his shaving kit, and a mock-up of his Kremlin office. There’s also a large number of gifts that were given to Stalin, most of them thanking him and the Soviet Union for saving The West in WWII from the Nazis. 77% of German casualties were on the eastern front.     

The next stop is the Ananuri Fortress overlooking a reservoir on the Aragvi River. Ananuri was the seat of the Dukes of Aragvi, a dynasty which ruled the area from the 13th century. The castle was the scene of numerous battles.

In 1739, Ananuri was attacked by forces from a rival duchy, commanded by Shanshe of Ksani and set on fire. The Aragvi clan were massacred. However, four years later, the local peasants revolted against rule by the Shanshe, killing the usurpers. The fortress remained in use until the beginning of the 19th century. In 2007, the complex was placed on the tentative list for inclusion into the UNESCO World Heritage Site program.

When the castle was under siege, it held out because a secret tunnel led to the water and provided a way to get food and water to the people in the fortress. The enemy finally captured a woman named Ana, who was from Nuri, and tortured her to reveal the location of the tunnel. But she chose to die rather than giving the secret away. Hence the castle was called Ananuri, and she became a legend.

The fortifications consist of two castles joined by a crenellated curtain wall. The upper fortification with a large square tower, known as Sheupovari, is well preserved and was the location of the last defence of the Aragvi against the Shanshe. The lower fortification, with a round tower, is mostly in ruins.

There are two churches. The older brick-built Church of the Virgin dates from the first half of the 17th century. The larger Church of the Mother of God (Ghvtismshobeli) was built in 1689. It has a central dome and a carved grapevine cross on the south façade. 

From Ananuri, I headed north into the mountains. The scenery becomes more dramatic the further you go along the Georgian Military Highway. I stayed in Gudauri (2196 m), a winter ski resort overlooking an epic gorge. North of Gudauri, the Kazbegi region is a picturesque area, with alpine meadows and towering snow-capped mountains. 

On the way to Stepantsminda, make sure to stop at the Russia–Georgia Friendship Monument or Treaty of Georgievsk Monument, built in 1983 to celebrate the bicentennial of the Treaty of Georgievsk and the ongoing friendship between Soviet Georgia and Soviet Russia. The monument is a large round stone and concrete structure overlooking the Devil’s Valley. Inside the monument is a large tile mural that spans the whole circumference of the structure and depicts scenes of Georgian and Russian history. 

The reason most people come to Stepantsminda is to hike through Gergeti village up to the iconic Church of the Holy Trinity or Church of Tsminda Sameba, located at 2710 metres above sea level, on a hilltop overlooking the snowy peaks of the Caucasus Mountains. The circular walk covers seven kilometres with an ascent and descent of around 1000 metres each way. It should take around three to four hours to complete. 

The area is a treasure trove of mythology – Prometheus was chained to the majestic Mount Kazbegi (5047m). This part of the Caucasus is also a protected area and is home to a variety of flora and fauna. Georgia has over 100 different mammals, and, although the European bison and Caucasian leopard have become extinct, there are still wolves and bears in the mountains.

The entrance to Gergeti church is to the west. The church was built in the 14th Century with the tower added a century later. The belfry is separate. Although this seems like a large church to be found on its own at such a height, the ruins of another church were found in 1913 at a height of 3,962 metres on Mount Kazbegi. 

Back in Stepantsminda, be sure to seek out the statue of Alexander Kazbegi, a Georgian writer who studied in Tbilisi, Saint Petersburg and Moscow, but on returning home, decided to become a shepherd to experience the lives of the local people. He later became a journalist, novelist, and playwright. His most famous work, the novel The Patricide is about a heroic Caucasian bandit named Koba, who, much like Robin Hood, is a defender of the poor. Koba has nothing but contempt for authority. This book inspired one Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili,  later known as Joseph Stalin, to use Koba as a revolutionary pseudonym. Now you know what links Stalin and Robin Hood.