Greece and Istanbul

This year we decided to go to the Mediterranean. Where the climate is moderate, and the sea breeze is light. In the Sept of 2023, the holiday mood was building up. The machinery of the world was conspiring to get us to Greece and Turkey! Visa offices, forex banks, international airlines, hotels, island ferries and sunset boat tours were offering us places in exchange for bucks!

The Athens airport is surrounded by hills. When we landed there, I was trying to see more than what was visible around the airport. I was trying to spot the Acropolis and other ancient remnants of the great Greek civilisation. But for now, I had to hold that task and start the connecting travel to Mykonos.

At Mykonos was our first encounter with the Mediterranean people. I don’t consider our interaction with the people at Athens airport as interaction with the Mediterranean people. Or for that matter any airport. Airports are the most globalized, standardized, and sterile of places. The same processes, the same security checks, the same book shops. Special mention of the power adaptor shops. After 200 hundred years of industrial revolution, there is a whole industry that runs on making power plug of one country fit into another. Mykonos is a small island to the south of mainland Greece. It is like a bouquet of colourful 2 storied buildings on the seaside, of windmills and of the blue and white homes on the hilly steps.

 

Our hotel in Mykonos was run by a lady (Elena) with her old father and mother to help! She was beautiful, had braided hair and wore a flowing maxi. Our hotel room had a small sit-out with a view and a constant breeze from the Aegean Sea. We could see people sailing and surfing and living the marine dream. It was the constant breeze from the sea that had the power to silence your mind. And we took a welcome break from the chatter we indulge in when we visit beautiful places. There is a place in Mykonos that was recently named ‘Little Venice’. Mild waves hit the line of houses and restaurants. And behind was a small settlement of houses, shops, narrow lanes like a textbook painting. It is a place humans have designated to relax and have fun. We had our dinner listening to the 'Bouzouki' (a Greek musical instrument that sounds like a cross between a guitar and the Indian Sarod), sipping house wine and having salads and fish.

    

The next morning, we met a lady who was selling beach wear. She talked very friendly to us and showed us her tattoo that read मायादेवी (Mayadevi) which she got when visiting India. She appreciated that Indians have always been aware of the concept of Maya and the role of illusions. Just this awareness I think, enables one to be objective. We took a ferry that took us to the last beach of the island and on our return, we hopped beach to beach back at the starting point. There were beaches where nudity was not a big deal, where the LGBTQ were not frowned upon. People were harmlessly having fun and soaking sun! We took time to swim and relax at every beach.

Santorini was the next island we visited. Our room was on a cliff. It had the view of the sea and the volcanic island that was around 3 miles into the sea. There was no human population between us and the sea and the island. My theory of what separates a developed country from a “developing” country is the average awareness, sensitivity, clarity of thought and ability to express it. It is not whether a country has billionaires or no, every country has them. It is not whether there are geniuses or no, every country has them. When summed at mass scale, it is the common man’s attitude and ability that makes a country or a society great. Here, on an evening boat tour, away from the small island of Santorini, we had only 3 crew members on board. They were our tourist guides, they entertained us, heated & served us food, helped us put on snorkelling equipment, and then washed the dishes to make the boat ready for tomorrow!

As the sun was setting, the turquoise waters started becoming darker. The sunset boat tour gave us a front seat to the daily show that nature puts up. The impression of Santorini was always like a melody in my mind. It could be due to a musical piece by the same name, composed by the Greek musician ‘Yanni’ and due to the name sounding like the Indian musical instrument Santoor!

Now we were heading back to Athens, this time to really come out of the airport and go into the lanes where once Aristotle, Plato and Socrates walked and thought. Our day tour to the Acropolis started by seeing the grandeur that was Greece (a large statue of Alexander). The Acropolis (the monument on the hill) was built 3000 years back. It saw sessions of government, democracy, theatre, war & poetry.

The amphitheater there (called ‘The theatre of Dionysus’) was a witness to the drama of civilizations and the invasions of Romans & the Persians. Just like Bharat-muni in India wrote the Natya-Shastra, we learnt that people in Greece wrote the rules of performance and stage setting, devised modes of play like tragedy, comedy, satire in 6th century BC. Aeschylus is regarded as the father of tragedy and Aristophanes is regarded as the first comic playwright. Homer is the author of the two greatest epics of ancient times, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

 

The National Archeology Museum of Athens has a room with statues of philosophers. Each one of them has made great contributions to how we think today! Engraved above the statue of Socrates is his quote that captures the gist of the pursuit of knowledge ‘The more I know, the more I realize I know nothing’. Plato advocated that there are ideas and forms in the world irrespective of limited human perception. Aristotle said, ‘It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it’. Aristotle is regarded as the father of logic. He made contributions to Science, Ethics, Politics, Esthetics, Poetry and is considered to be an inspiration for renaissance that took place thousands of years later in western Europe.

We saw many other statues of figures like Pythagoras, Thales, Epicurus & Diogenes. Although the language was all Greek, it has had a tremendous impact on English. Words like democracy, marathon, music, phobia, hygiene, dialogue, and many many more are of Greek origin.

Going through the streets of Athens in an open roof bus, it was evident that the ancient Greek were fitness freaks. While the Romans are known to have enjoyed deadly gladiator games, the Greek invented the Olympic games where physical excellence and sportsmanship was paramount. The Greeks are not covert and insecure of their bodies, they appreciate and celebrate the beautiful engineering and millions of years of human evolution which can be seen in their statues of heroes and gods. While shopping, we met a tall greek lady who was a sculptor and a shop owner. She sold us her hand-made sculpture of Aristotle. She also warned us of the Chinese statues that people falsely claimed to be made of alabaster.

Istanbul was our next stop. It is a strange place! To a European eye, it seems like a Middle Eastern city and to an Asian it seems European. It is a strategic and economic bridge between Europe & Asia. It is literally a melting pot of cultures. The first thing that strikes about Istanbul is its people. Tall, handsome, beautiful, lively & never afraid of stepping forward into action. Like Greeks, the Turks also have a long history that they are proud of. The Ottomans Turks ruled for 600 years till 1920 and at their peak had eastern Europe, North Africa & the middle east under their rule. Before them the Greeks, Persians, Romans ruled here and left deep influences. The Romans brought Christianity; the Ottomans brought Islam to Turkey. The city of Byzantium became Constantinople and then became Istanbul.

The Istanbul we saw, was modern and of European style. Mustafa Kemaal Ataturk lead the people’s movement to establish the free nation of Turkey in 1923. He removed Islam as the state religion, brought in secularism and many reforms like women’s rights & education. He kept the budding nation of Turkey non-aligned in World War II, like Nehru did later during the cold war. After this journey, the current president Erdogan has brought in a religion inspired centralized leadership and is known to depart from principles like secularism and is very popular among the masses. This story sounded very similar to what’s happening back home in India.

‘Magnificence’ is what you experience when you look at the ‘Hagia-Sophia’ literally meaning the church of holy wisdom. It was built as a church 1300 years ago, then converted into a mosque by the Ottomans. They modified the prayer wall inside to point to Mecca among other changes. Mustafa Kemaal Ataturk converted it into a museum. Erdogan converted it back to a mosque in 2020. The Hagia-Sophia still stands as a witness to all this!

Our day tour guide showed us the enormous and elegant Blue Mosque (named as Sultan Ahmed Mosque). He also said “we have many mosques already, but people and leaders today are on a mosque building spree”. One can witness this just by looking at the skyline of the city of Istanbul.

Istanbul has beautiful clean views of the city and the sea. The city has efficient public transport in trams, buses, metro, trains, ships. We took a boat trip into the Bosporus strait that connects to the Black Sea. On board the ship we saw the Sufi Dervish dance, Turkish belly dance and the Ottoman warrior dance.

The grand bazaar was full of goods, energy and salesmanship! Away from India, this is where I heard the golden words of bargaining by shop keepers: ‘not yours, not mine, middle price ok?’. The spice bazaar again made me feel this was a place close to India due to the aromas in the air. I was surprised when a shop owner asked me if India will be renamed as Bharat and wondered why. He said, we know it as India for  such a long time. I told him that the name Bharat is even older, however such political waves keep happening. After a hard day and miles of walking, it was time for Hamam, the Turkish bath! One just needs to surrender to the steady and powerful hands of the 'tellak' the person who gives you a hamam bath! 

There is a story in Jain texts about Bharat Chakravarti, who conquered the world and reached on top of Sumeru the tallest mountain in the world to hoist a flag to indicate he is the greatest king. When he reached there, he saw many flags already hoisted by many other kings. This made him feel humble, he was enlightened and then he attained Nirvana. Both Greece and Turkey have very rich heritage and prosperous history like India. All ancient civilizations have thought they were the greatest and originators of all important ideas. It is with globalization that we see how valuable each society is and how inter-dependent we all are. Travel to a distant place gives us a window into the working of the world and so colourful was this window to the Mediterranean!

Amrut, Preeti (Sep 2023)