Greek travel diary: The west meeting the east

After Nijmegen, Amsterdam, and Brussels, I wanted the last destination of my last Euro-trip to be different, different from all the locations I had visited earlier in Europe. By this time, I was thoroughly bored of European city squares/piazzas. Even the Roman ruins could not instill enough excitement. As for the ubiquitous museums, it's better not to remind me about them… I wanted the trip to be very unplanned and the location not touristic. A quick google search, and I zeroed in on one location: the Meteora (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteora).

?24th May, 2011. I arrived in Volos, airport. Assuming that the location “Nea Anchialos – Volos,” as it was written in the email, was somewhere in Volos, I boarded a bus. In the city center, I sat in a taxi and showed the driver the email. He started driving. After about 15 minutes, the taxi was out of the city, appearing to be returning back to the airport. Concerned, I asked the driver if he was taking me to the right location. He replied in Greek, which I did not understand, but his facial expressions calmed me down. After another 15 minutes, the taxi stopped at a hotel in Nea Anchialos, a small town between the airport and the city of Volos.

?A quick refreshment, and I took a stroll. The seaside was nice. There was an archaeological site nearby, which was not in my itinerary. I came back to the hotel and decided to relax in the lobby. The owner of the hotel (it was a small hotel) greeted me and showed eagerness to start a conversation. He asked me about my hometown in India and our culture. Feeling obliged to return the favor, I told him how much I like Greek civilization and Greco-Roman architecture in particular. I told how everyone in India knows about Alexander, after which I asked him about the nearby archaeological site. The two items, I guess, did not mix up well: “His father (Phillip) destroyed that city,” he said. I paused and exclaimed, not at the revelation but at the man’s perspective. I always feel curious to meet people outside academia who show eagerness to learn without any apparent benefit, because we, in academia, learn for a living. He then talked about the evil Germans and how they have ruined Greek economy (google Greek economic crisis) The conversation finally ended with him advising me to take the bus at 9 am to Kalabaka.

?Not having recovered from my earlier tours, I was tired and fell asleep soon after dinner. The next thing, I heard someone knocking my door. “Friend, you were supposed to go to Kalabaka. The bus will arrive in 15 mins.” After realizing that the next bus will come after about 3 hours and seeing him more serious than me, I got ready quickly. He drove me to the bus-stop. Well, I missed the bus. Took a bath in the sea and ate a heavy breakfast.

?At 11.45 am, I finally boarded on a bus. The weather was great. The sky was very clear. Arrived in Kalabaka at around 3 pm. For someone who took interest in geomorphology, The Meteora was truly majestic (https://meteora.com/meteora-creation-unique-geological-phenomenon/). The only thing more majestic than it was the human will to build dwellings on the top of those giant rocks. In case you are wondering, the Meteora hosts an array of Greek orthodox Christian monasteries, dating back to as early as 11th Century. After sometime there, I felt something familiar: the feeling was pretty much the same I would have while at a Buddhist monastery in India. Their love for seclusion, morality, and celibacy – Buddhism and Christianity seem to have some invisible connections, even though their core beliefs are vastly different from one another, the former has a materialistic bent and the later fully creationistic. These thoughts bothered me on the way back to the hotel (arrived at around 9 pm). Before sleeping, I was glad to find my conjecture not being as implausible as I thought. The link between Christianity and Buddhism is an active area of research. “It is conceivable that the Buddhist versions served as a model for the Christian one, but was modified in accordance with Christian requirements and incorporated into the context of the New Testament in such a way that its origin was obscured. We may therefore assume that religions have typically evolved not in isolation, but through an interplay of mutual interpretation, appropriation and rejection, shaped by religious imagery, historical events and changing economic and political conditions:” https://www.unibas.ch/en/News-Events/Uni-Nova/Uni-Nova-134/Uni-Nova-134-Buddha-and-the-early-Christians.html

?The west was in fact a lot closer to the east than we are aware of (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_Christianity#/media/File:AsokaKandahar.jpg). ?????

Picture caption. A monastery at the Meteora. Swastika type symbol at the archelogical site, Nea Anchialos. The spoked wheel appears as a Greek variant of Dharmachakra (the wheel of Dharma), although I did not find any literature backing this up. Dharmachakra suggests that time is cyclical with no beginning or end; things move in cycles. ?The Abrahmic worldview is very different: time has a linear definition. It started with creation (modern term: big bang) and will end with the day of judgement (modern term: big crunch). Nothing before or after this time period is possible.