A brief background:  The original was built in 360 A.D., burned down twice and the current building was started in 532.  It was a mosque from 1452 to 1934 and opened as a museum in secular Istanbul, Turkey in 1935.

Now the International Congregation of Agia Sophia, a US-based group founded in 2005 with the purpose of returning the building as a place of worship for all the world's Christians, is planning on holding a liturgy there on September 17, the Orthodox feast day for Saint Sophia.

(Hagia, Agia and Saint are all the same word in different languages.)

The group has notified the Turkish government but I would not expect them to receive permission for this.  Nor, I think, would I like to see them succeed in their ultimate goal. 

When Karin and I visited Istanbul—by the way, many Greeks still refer to it as Constantinople and that is what the railroad signs say—we were impressed that this superlative structure could be so well maintained and displayed in the predominately Islam country.  The Christian mosaics are displayed as predominately as the Islamic art work.  We felt this public building gave us hope that Christians and Muslims can cooperate peacefully.

What do you think?  Comments welcome.

One of the longest gorges in Europe, Samaria on Crete, opened for the 2010 season on Saturday.

The 16 kilometre-long gorge starts at an altitude of 1,250 meters at the northern entrance in the settlement of Omalos and
ending at the shores of the Libyan Sea.  The actual walk through the Samaria National Park is 13 km long, but the trekker has to walk another three kilometres to Aghia Roumeli from the park exit.

This trek is only recommended for the experienced walker with hiking boots.  Also unless you take an escorted tour you have to be an adventuresome traveller because it is easy to miss the ferry and bus connection back to Chania, the nearest city.  This happened to Karin and I when we made the jaunt in 2001.  That was one of those days you can laugh about afterwards but was not pleasant as it unfolded.

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Part two of this post is follow-up on a previous post:  Another Paros Boy Makes Good in which I commented upon Greece government decentralisation.

Recently Yiannis Ragoussis, Minister of the Interior, etc. presented the “Kallikratis” plan for re-organisation of local government.  It is to create fewer municipalities with more power and funding, he says.

What was especially interesting to me was his admission that prior Socialist governments were part of the problem as well.  Here is the quote from the Athens News Agency: 

"There is now a general awareness that the wasteful, clientist,
centralised and inefficient state is the cause of the Greek problem as we experience this today," he said.

I think we are seeing the evolution of major changes in Greece.  Who said, “We are living in interesting times.” ?