Places of worship - the very old and the quite old

I've left the tour behind and am relaxing in a cafe waiting for my greek salad before I catch my train back to Athens later today.  The waiter has just have  me a nice jug of ice cold water and I am in heaven.  Needless to say it is hot today, again.  The main sights for the past two days have been Delphi and Meteora with a brief stop in the place where 300 Spartans (and 700 other fellas) held of tens of thousands of Persians for several days until they were betrayed.  The most interesting part of that brief stop was the bus driver getting told off by the policeman for doing a u-turn in the middle of the main road.

Delphi, the archaeological site is spread over three sites, two of which used to have the village of Delphi above them but the French government (or possibly the German) paid for the village to be moved so they could excavate.  The main attraction is the Temple of Apollo where the high priestess used to provide omens.  She had to be 50 years old with no remaining ties to her family and this was such a rarity, the women of the area were fed all the best food and treated with cotton will so as to ensure continuation of the priestesshood.  I think she was basic ally stoned when she gave omens.  Yanni describes the people who ran the temple as better than any intelligence agency today.  They would collect information so as to use it when people came to find out the answer to their question.  Answers were given in riddles and recorded so as to avoid any dispute if the prophecy was wrong.  People of all over Greece (from Marseilles to Turkey) would come to give offerings and seek to find answers to the future.  The site is rich in historical sources including a wall which was the gossip magazine of the day with events and news inscribed on it and some of the tablets with the prophecy riddles on  them have been found.  The museum was also interesting but mainly because of the stories that Yanni told about the scenes depicted on the statues.  There's a really old pottery thing which is supposed to be impressive but it was a bit like the Mona Lisa (I thought it would be bigger and more impressive).

* several hours later on the train back to Athens *

It's quite nice travelling solo although I do miss the nice comfortable bus.  Meteora is very picturesque and we visited an icon making shop before heading up to the nunnery (St Stephens) and then Varlaam monastary.  Then I hopped  of the bus and did a short but very hot walk up to the Grand Meteoro - the biggest of the six remaining.  The inside of each of the churches are very colourful with painted top to bottom walls and ceilings and painting of saints adorning the walls.  There are rules about who gets top billing and what scenes get depicted where.  Many of the paintings were done by Creteans.  Apparently the monasteries were very active in the resistance during WWII and so one was bombed by the Germans and has been restored by the Greek government.  The Ministry of Culture has three committees which distribute money for upkeep of the prehistoric, the classical greek, and the byzantine era historical sites. 

I had missed the 1.20pm bus and the next one wasn't until 5pm which would have meant that I'd miss the train, so I hitched a lift with a couple of nice Romanian couples back to Kalambaka and had a nice lunch before catching the train.  Despite emailing beforehand and being told that I didn't need to prebook, all the seats were gone so I'm sitting in the eating train.  Not terribly comfortable but I have a table so I've watched a movie and done a bit of reading.

The only thing so far to really annoy me on this trip has been a 69 year old man on the tour with us.  He was very touchy but at dinner on the second night he had his hand on my arm, my leg, my back, my shoulder all bloody night while he told a story about a time he was backpacking in Scotland and ended with him embracing me (the story was clearly complete bullshit).  It's just as well he is old else I would have been extremely unpleasant.  As it was I had a very brief and to the point conversation with him the next day when he was alone.  What annoys me is that I felt bad about telling the bastard that he was out of line.

It's dark on the train now and we still have a couple of hours to go so I think I'll watch another movie.