Sometime around the end of the 5th century, as the power of the Byzantine empire started to wane, a number of guys who were serious about contemplating God and avoiding their mother in law made the decision to find somewhere a bit more remote and less vulnerable to invaders than the coast, and moved to the region now known as Kalambaka, about five hours north of Athens by train, though of course it didn’t yet exist.
Some 30 million years ago the area was covered by a huge inland sea, but the only thing left these days are some high rocky outcrops, and it was in naturally formed caves at the top of these outcrops that the hermits settled.
They called the region Meteora, as during the Winter the tops of the hills were the only thing that protruded from the tops of the clouds, as though suspended in space. The locals did what they could to keep them alive by putting fruits and nuts into the baskets that the hermits let down when they got a bit peckish.
Eventually, in a huge irony, the number of hermits got too large for them to keep up a pretence of living alone, so they formed themselves into small communities and built themselves monasteries at the top of the outcrops. In some cases it took them hundreds of years to get enough supplies up their outcrop to construct their monastery, but generally they survived quite well until the Germans used them for shelling practice during WWII and they quite understandably abandoned ship.
The monastic communities declined until the 60s when two things happened. Firstly Roger Moore did a bad James Bond impression and brought the tourists who wanted to find Carole Bouquet, and secondly nuns decided to reactivate the abandoned monasteries as convents.
These days there are more nuns than monks, on different hills of course. You know what it’s like at a school camp – you can walk into any dorm and know instantly whether it’s boys or girls. Well, it was the same today. We visited two monasteries, one of each, and it would have been impossible to confuse them.
Left our apartment before the sun was up, picked up a coffee and a typical Greek breakfast of donuts with lemon creme, and headed down the metro to the suburban train station where country services departed.
A busy train took us to Kalambaka, but first class was pretty cruisey for the five hours it took to get there. Picked up by a local tour bus and taken past four active monasteries to visit two more, pausing at various lookouts to admire the views.
Around fiveish we were deposited back at the waiting train for the return journey. A fun day, made even more enjoyable by 10 hours stuck in a carriage with people we haven’t caught up with for twelve months.
Meteora
Meteora
Meteora
Meteora
Meteora
Meteora
Meteora
Meteora
Meteora
Meteora
Meteora
Meteora
Meteora
Meteora
Meteora
Meteora
Our Train
Play Room On Train