St Demetrios' Feast Day

On Thursday, we were blessed to celebrate the feast day of St. Demetrios at his cathedral in downtown Thessaloniki (see the 'file' photo). This is the largest church in Greece, and every square inch of it was full of people! Oh, the humanity!

There were 13 bishops celebrating, as well as about 25 priests and 4 deacons. We waited in what I will loosely call a 'line' to venerate St Demetrios' (fragrant) relics, which were placed in front of the royal doors. What an experience!

We arrived around 7 AM and the church was already full, by American standards (i.e. every seat was taken). By the end, there were at least 100 times more people. I couldn't even bring my arm up to make the sign of the cross!

St Demetrios is the patron of Thessaloniki, and the whole city shuts down for his feast day, which also commemorates the liberation of Thessaloniki from the Ottomans on Oct 26, 1912. We were truly blessed to be here for that day.

Some time in the next 2 weeks, we hear, there will be a service in which the saint's relics are taken out and wiped down with cotton. They then hand out the myrrh-soaked cotton to the faithful. I've heard that you can smell the myrrh for blocks around when they do this. We hope to go, if we can find out when the service is (obtaining reliable information on schedules here is a whole 'nother story).

On Thursday evening, we met our house guest, Constantine Zalalas, at the monastery here in Panorama. He had escorted there two American nuns from St. Paisios Serbian Orthodox Monastery in Arizona, including Abbess Mihaela. He's helping them do some purchasing of church supplies and staying with us until some time next week. He has translated a slew of Greek texts into English -- a listing is available here. (I now have 175 hours of talks to listen to!) ( ;

Mt Olympus

To finish my story from our trip this weekend: After visiting Ancient Dion, we went to the town of Litohoro, which lies at the base of the famous Mt Olympus, the ancient home of the pagan Greek gods.

Mt Olympus was the modern state of Greece's first national park, and it offers some great hiking. For this trip, however, the group only walked about half an hour to a nice waterfall.

We hope to hike to the top of the mountain (about 9000-9500 ft) some time next spring or summer. You have to stay at a shelter on the mountain for at least one night to make it all the way. (Maybe Makrina would like to go!) 

Ancient Dion -- addendum

Ah! I almost forgot! Dion's Roman baths and -- most importantly -- it's public toilets! Our tour guide was VERY excited to tell us about these. Dion's public toilets were built by the Emperor Vespasian (ca. 70 AD). The radiant floor heating for the public baths was converted back into water at an open well and flushed through the adjacent public toilets. The toilets (seen in photo) seated 16, apparently. When they first opened, they were free -- but no one would use them. So the Emperor consulted a wise man who told him he should charge for them. The next thing you know people were waiting in line for hours to use the bathroom (so our tour guide story went, anyway).

It sounds like it was quite the social event!

All our photos from the trip, by the way, are available here. 

Ancient Dion

This weekend, the School of Modern Greek arranged a trip to Ancient Dion and Mt Olympus for its students, so Pelagia and I went. The University has its own tour bus that we took there. It's about an hour west, still along the Thermaikos Gulf.

We had a very nice tour guide, who told us that she had written a couple books and produced nearly 50 TV documentaries on historical sites in Greece. I doubt she was lying -- this woman was a FOUNTAIN of information. The only complaint we all had was that had TOO much information. We first stopped at the museum for the ancient city of Dion, and she could have gone on for DAYS in there. Finally, she finished and we headed off to the archaelogical site of the ancient city of Dion, dating back to the 5th century BC. The museum was -- well, it was a museum -- but the site itself was very interesting. We were very fortunate, also, to have beautiful weather. It had been rainy in Thessaloniki for quite a few days, but it really cleared up for our trip.

The photos are all from the site of the ancient city. In the second photo, I'm standing along one side of the main road of the ancient city.

In the third photo, Pelagia is looking at the site of what is known as the Villa of Dionysus, which was the home of a very wealthy resident. You can still see some of the amazing mosaic floors. Also, in front of Pelagia, what you actually see is the 18" or so underneath the main floor. This was a radiant floor heating system, which they also used in the extensive public baths in the city (dating from the Roman period, ca. 150 BC).

The last photo is of the old church of St. Thekla, dating -- obviously -- from early Christian times. Our tour guide claimed that St. Thekla was martyred here, but the literature indicates she gave up her soul at the age of 90 in Seleucia.

This brings up a related point. Greeks will usually present things as 'facts,' but some discretion is needed here, we're learning. For example, our guide, in good Greek fashion, claimed to know the history of not only Greece, but France, Germany, etc. She would tell an episode from German history and then look to the students from Germany for approval. They would say, "Hmm...we've never heard of that before." Instead of saying, as perhaps an American would, "Oh maybe, I heard it wrong," she said, "You have to come to Greece for me to teach you the history of Germany?" Yes, I'm serious. These 'histories' would INVARIABLY involve tracing how every good human invention EVER was really first invented by the Greeks and then stolen by some other country. (And you thought the father in 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' was just a caricature? Ah, no!) Oh man! You wouldn't believe some of the stories!

Just for one: She was telling a story about (who else?) Alexander the Great and one of his great battle victories, and she mentioned how his soldiers would scream 'Aye ya ya!' as they attacked. She then mentioned how the American Indians (as seen in cowboy movies) stole this war chant from the Greeks. At this point, Pelagia said, "Ok, that's too much. We have to challenge her on this one." Alas, we let it pass.

Greece in the News

This is so Greek.

Guest Room, AFTER

The top photo is of the floor in progress, obviously. It looks SO much better now than the old, dirty, industrial carpet that was there before. Most importantly, it can now actually be cleaned. The vacuum cleaners here are almost completely useless -- they have about as much power as a AA battery.

The REALLY bizarre thing is that our Greek landlady loved the room, but wanted to know what we had done with the carpet, since it was 'new.' Evidently, she wanted to keep it for future use. Yikes.

The second photo is the finished room, and the bottom photo is of the shadows cast on the ceiling by the new light fixture (which is not actually new at all -- Pelagia found it buried in our storage and she cleaned it up).