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.
What do you think? Comments welcome.
It is now Eurovision season—one of our annual highlights. Last year’s post contains some background so please go here if you are not familiar with this European Song Contest. It is nothing like American shows such as American Idol.
http://parosparadise.blogspot.com/2008/05/expat-life-eurovision.html
This year’s broadcast comes from Moscow, which was last year’s winner. The first round of preliminaries was Tuesday, the second round tonight, Thursday and the finals on Saturday.
We find it quite interesting that Turkey and Norway are running neck and neck with Greece a distant third. Last years 100% telephone voting was extremely disgusting because of fans voting for their neighbours instead of the music. So this year 50% of the votes come from a panel of judges.
We look forward a thrilling finale!
Update: Alexander Rybak charmed the viewing universe and won by the greatest margin ever. Norway was not our favourite; we liked both Iceland who came in second and Azerbaijan who placed third. It was gratifying to see results based upon merit although regional voting was still noticeable.
Since the balance of our recent trip to Turkey was pretty much a typical tourist experience I have decided not to write about it in detail.
Search any travel guide site for good information. The site we found particularly helpful with advance planning was Tom Brosnahan's Turkey Travel Planner
We enjoyed Turkey very much. We had been just a little concerned about traveling in a Moslem country but now know better. Everyone we talked to was helpful and friendly; we saw a great many smiles. The only experience we had that touched on the political or the government was when I clicked on a link to YouTube. Up popped a page that said this site was blocked by some government agency whose name I don't remember--that applied to all of YouTube.
Each of the fish vendors try to out do their neighbor in artistic display.The spice market is called the Egyptian Market for historical reasons.
OK, so we are on the ground at a remote train station on the Greece border. Now what? Next train is 4:00 AM tomorrow and it is now 5:00 in the afternoon. How will we spend the time? Looking around at where we were was a bit of a shocker! An ancient old wooden building, painted in the atrocious boring colour of gun metal grey, seemed to be our home for the next 11 hours! But the Station Master said he had to leave and would be closing! (See photos in previous post)
It turned out he closed his office, but left the waiting room open. Not that it was much of a room. One long wooden bench, and a few hard chairs, a motor scooter and a HUGE weighing machine! Michael and Martin, the German backpacker (we finally realized we must introduce ourselves if we were to be "best friends" for the next 11 hours), decided to leave me at the station, while they walked up a road that went up into the hills. Behind the station was the remnants of an old abandoned village. Interesting, but eerie. Broken windows, empty rooms, very interesting wood houses. I suddenly felt frightened and alone, and nervous. My gosh, I was directly on the border between two countries that are not the best of friends, having a pretty violent history not so long ago. Hmmmm..... I started pacing. And looking around.....
Next to the station I discovered a smallish building that was a little snack bar and had some booze inside and a man nearly asleep--decided to ignore him. While I know I am not young anymore, my mind starting working, and I was nervous that since he was old, he might not mind that I was old, and "come on to me". Ha, ha. Still.....it was only us. My protectors (Michael and Martin) were gone. And they seemed gone so long....I tried calling them on my mobile after 40 minutes. All I could hear were dogs barking....were they attacking my protectors? Would night come and they would not be back? It was starting to get dark.....Oh, what to do....Woe is me! Etc.
Suddenly, I saw them. I was mad and happy. Decided to be happy and let mad go. They had found that the road went to a village about 20 minutes up the road. While they did not actually go into the village, they saw it. So the decision was made to walk there and spend some time, finding food and warm shelter. Michael went into the snack bar and the man told him he was leaving! Leaving? Maybe going to the village? Yes? Great! So we asked for a lift up. The man really frowned when he realized he had to put 3 people PLUS luggage into his car.....but he remained friendly. (Editor: Karin charmed him.)
Once up at the village, he told us to wait in front of a restaurant. It was closed, but we understood him to say it would open soon! And it did. Two young women came, welcomed us in, and from there it only got better and better! We ordered a nice dinner. Then free drinks started arriving, free snacks, a dessert were all offered! The owner came in with his cronies and some young men were watching a football match. The atmosphere became like a huge party of laughing, drinking, and talking back and forth. We were included and made to feel like honoured guests! About midnight, we decided that we must leave, or we would be too drunk to make it down the hill! It was dark outside with few lights to find our way back down the road to the station.
Once in the station, Martin promptly laid out on the bench and Michael and I sat and nodded off, waking up, dozing while sitting up. We walked around, we felt chilled, we wondered how it could seem so long and only 15 minutes had passed. We felt like we were in the twilight zone. Then a man arrived and opened the office--without even a glance at us, he proceeded to start his paperwork. Imagine, coming to work at 3:00 in the morning! We envied him his coffee.... We did buy our required sleeping car tickets from him.
Then a train pulled in....a beautiful Turkish train. A man got out with a briefcase full of passports of the lucky sleepers on the train. While they processed the passports, we sat and watched. As they finished, and were about to leave we heard another train pull in. This was the train to take us on to Turkey but we could not get on it yet. We sat, we waited--for about another hour until the fancy train from Turkey left. A very official looking policeman came along and asked us for our passports, taking them with him. That is a weird feeling, to relinquish your passport and have them leave with it. Next we were told we could get on the train. We collected our things, and had to walk and pull them over 3 tracks with weeds to get to our train. I felt like a refugee leaving a communist country for freedom! It just felt unreal.
The sleeper car was weird. It had that little narrow aisle way that European trains have, but then you entered the sleeping compartment by going up two stairs! Once in the tiny cubicle you climbed ladders to get to the bed which was about 12 inches from the ceiling! Twins, one for Michael and one for me. The luggage was on the floor or on a rack over the door. It felt claustrophobic! I was telling myself that I must close my eyes and PRETEND it is big and spacious! We lay down immediately, only to have to get up and answer a knock at the door to retrieve our passports.
In a few minutes the train started to move!!!!!!!! Oh boy! Finally, at 5:00 AM we are leaving! The train moved VERY S L O W L Y....and crossed the bridge of the river dividing Turkey and Greece. Soldiers outside with guns, barbed wire, bright lights! And then....the train started to go faster but soon stopped again.
Another knock on the door with another official asking for passports. He looked at them and said, "Come with me." Oh, oh, what's the problem! Then we remembered that a Visa was required at a cost of 10 Euro each for Irish, 20 for Americans.The German lad did not have to pay anything. It didn't take long to pay and we were back in bed drifting asleep. We heard knocking on doors and it got louder as it got closer. At the knock on our door, we answered and got our passports back--pretty Visa stamp inside.
Soon the train was moving again and we were racing through the night across Turkey.
So we got there about 6:15 for our 7:15 train but the agent would only sell tickets to Constantinople(Istanbul to everyone outside Greece and Cyprus) on the evening train. We did not want to do that because the purpose of not flying was to see the mainland of Greece. I asked about the connecting train at the border town of Pithion; she replied with a wave of her hand and a shrug of the shoulders and said, "Maybe?" So I relied on my internet info about the connection and bought two First Class tickets to Pithion.
The rest of the story is by Karin.
When we walked out to the platform to get on the train, I was SHOCKED to see a dusty, run down looking dark blue train covered in graffiti! Some of it actually could be called interesting...but still! Michael looked at me looking at this train and said, "I did go ahead and get first class tickets". Well, good.
Our car was one of those European types with an aisle running down one side, and glassed in rooms with 6 seats inside and a door. We spread out our stuff so people getting on might think our compartment was full...and it worked!
When the train pulled out, we expected to go East...but went West. Oh my gosh, were we on the WRONG train? Nothing to do but wait and see what towns we went through and find them on the map. I thought I had a pretty good idea the towns the train would go through....Kavala, where St. Paul landed from the Holy Land, and Apallonia, a place he also stopped. I thought it would be nice to just realize that he had been in this area so long ago.
After heading West, the train swung North and as towns sped by, I realized we were going to go East eventually, but first we had to go far North, up to and along the FYROM(We both received "Welcome to Macedonia" messages on our cell phones.) and Bulgarian borders (except for a huge mountain range between us we could have looked at our neighbors!)
The train was quite comfortable, so we relaxed, and while Michael read some, my nose was glued to the window as I ticked off towns on my map! We rolled along through fields of sugar beets, some towns with industry. The towns were quaint, and very Eastern Europe looking! Very rural.....not a lot of real modern equipment...but more large wooden carts, some even with horses. Some of the tractors looked ready for retirement! Many village houses had large quantities of wood stacked for the winter. It had that "old country peasant" look. The day was beautiful, the sun shone down in rays as the clouds lifted from very rugged mountains.
The train was only about 5 cars long, only one was First Class. My goodness, coach class was pretty sad. A gypsy family was in one car. A heavy set man needing a shave was snoring with his head bobbing out into the aisle! A lady with a mop was cleaning.....and keeping her eyes on the gypsy kids. She wanted to keep them in their car and not go elsewhere, which I was glad of. The snack car...how to describe it? I have seen pictures of Russian women going to the store and the shelves were empty! That is what I saw....a lot of shelves with about 5 items on them. A long stand up counter along one side with dirty cups and plates. A "not very sharp looking" man behind the counter to take your order! Oh boy! Glad we had some food with us. Not much, but more than what was on offer here! I ordered coffee and it was terrible, so threw it down the toilet. Toilets...pretty stinky. Say no more.
We passed through the town of Drama...which has a nice name, I think! Lots of open fields, saw a sheepherder and his dog, fruit trees, olive trees. I suddenly thought..."California"! We saw some lovely lakes, some lovely valleys, really a great journey.
We arrived at Alexandropolus about 2:30 PM about an hour late. Plus we had about a 1 hour wait for the connecting train to take us to Pithio (the border). While standing on the platform, waiting, a young German backpacker on his way to Australia by way of Istanbul joined Michael and I for a chat.
The next train was a REAL shocker! A very short train and so ugly with horrible graffiti this time. No first class....everything about our trip seemed to change. On the other train, the countryside was wonderful, the seats comfortable, the windows clean. Now the villages seemed to all have military patrols. Men with rifles watching the train pass. On the map it appeared we were on the border of Turkey and heading North again. We were following a river with patches of forest, (a bit like Sauvie's Island along the Columbia River in Oregon) and directly on the other side was Turkey. It felt unfriendly, and I thought...."Russia".
Five minutes before our station another passenger, who we guessed worked for the railroad, urged us to have our bags by the door and ready to get off quickly. So when the train stopped and the conductor opened the door we were there ready...a couple of men (station masters?) from the Pithio Station come up...not to help us off, but to start shouting that we should not get off the train! Because of excitement, because of language differences, and confusion, we did not understand why we could not get off! "No get off, No train! Stay on train"! No matter how many times we told them we had to get off, that this was our destination, we kept being told that there WAS NO TRAIN, and to stay on! If we had stayed on, we would be in Bulgaria! The conductor was only interested in getting us off! His duty was to get us onto the platform so the train could continue. Well now, this was becoming bewildering. The conductor won. We got off and he jumped back on the train, and the train started moving immediately. Meanwhile, the Pithio Station Masters did not know what to do with us. What we found out they were trying to tell us is this: The train we were to connect to...had left 2 hours previously, there was no train until 4:00 AM the next morning! Just what they expected us to do if we continued to Bulgaria is anyone's guess. At least they would be rid of us!
What do we do for the next ten plus hours? That is the best part of the story. Tune in for the next post!
However, I did gather a lot of content for future posts. I will start with the last Greek island we visited on our way home, Patmos. We arrived after dark and left at sunrise, so here is the only decent photo we have.
