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A Glimpse into Village Life at Sinaradhes Folk Museum in Corfu

It’s quite hard to find the Folk Museum in Sinaradhes, hidden as it is down a side street near the main church with few obvious signs to it in the village, but it is well worth a visit. It offers a glimpse into life in a mountain village between about 1860 -1960 and contains a wonderful collection of items, most donated to the museum by proud Corfiots. The museum occupies two floors. The first…

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Discovering the Kaiser's Throne in Corfu

Just outside the mountain village of Pelekas in western Corfu, on one of the highest points on the island, lies The Kaiser’s Throne, a viewing platform that gives a magnificent panorama over Corfu Town and the surrounding mountains and coast. Apparently it was Kaiser Wilhelm II’s favourite spot on the island. I’m not sure why it’s called the Kaiser’s throne in English as in Greek it translates…

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Sissi's Palace - exploring the Achilleion in Corfu

In mid September this year we visited the Achilleion, a few miles south of Corfu Town. As it was pouring with rain we thought it would be a good opportunity to spend some time inside and dry off a bit. Unfortunately, the Palace was closed due to renovation work so we had to shelter as best we could while looking round the gardens. The Achilleion is a palace built by Empress Elizabeth of Austria,…

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Happy Oxi Day 2024!

Just outside the little village of Kalpaki in the Pindus mountains of Epirus, about 30 km north west of Ioannina, stands this memorial to the Greek soldiers who fought the invading Italians in November 1940. Though they were outnumbered, the Greeks, under the command of Major General Charalambos Katsimitros, held the line at the nearby Elaias-Kalamas river and stopped the Italian advance. At the…

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Fading into immortality - Kafka at the Bodleian

For the 100th anniversary of Kafka’s death the Bodleian is running an exhibition celebrating his life and work: Kafka – Making of an Icon (30 May-27 October at the Weston Library, Oxford). Kafka’s work only survived because his friend, Max Brod, ignored Kafka’s written instructions to destroy all his letters and manuscripts unread. Carrying the Kafka archive in a suitcase, Brod left Prague on one…

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Seasonal gifts from Epirus

Scattered on the mountainside, Shards of late summer sun, Keepsakes against the approaching darkness: My autumn crocuses!

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Stephen's dream - writing a poem in Greek

‘You’ve ready a lot of Greek poetry. Why don’t you write a poem in Greek?’, said my Greek tutor, casually at he end of a lesson. I rarely write poetry in English let alone trying to do it in another language, but I like a challenge. The subject came to me quite quickly, but it took longer to work out the form of the poem and how to develop it. I hoped that I could write it in Greek in my head so…

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The 1974 Turkish invasion reflected in Cypriot poetry

This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus on 20 July 1974. The heavy fighting left many dead and the island split between Greek Cypriots in the south and the Turkish occupied north, with peace being maintained by a UN Buffer Zone between them. In ‘Spoon sweet’ by the Cyrpiot poet, Kyriakos Kharalampidis, the poet visits his old family home in a part of the island…

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The Vassai Friezes

The Temple of Vassai – inside the marquee In 2012 I visited the Temple of Apollo Epikoureios at Vassai in southern Greece, blogging about it in this post. West of the industrial town of Megalopoli, Vassai is in a wild and remote mountain spot, quite some distance from the ancient town of Figaleia whose inhabitants built the Temple to Apollo in gratitude for the god sparing them from the plague.…

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Sick birds leaving Greece

I’ve been reading a few Greek poems about journeys recently, many of them rather depressing variations on the ‘life is a journey and then we die’ trope. But then I came across one by a 20th century poet I had never heard of before called Miltos Sakhtouris which is really weird. Sakhtouris was influenced by the Surrealists and this is evident in the imagery and irrational connections in the…

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King Claudius by Cavafy

This poem by Cavafy (in my translation) has an unconventional (to say the least) take on the character of Hamlet’s uncle Claudius and the plot of Shakespeare’s play: My minds turns to distant places.I walk along the streets of Elsinore,and round its squares, and I rememberits saddest story, that unfortunate kingkilled by his nephewfor imaginary suspicions. In all the houses of the poor folkthey…

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The Bishop and the Jester - who had the last laugh?

Medieval English bishops were always on the move, on average 40-50 times a year. They owned properties in other parts of the country as well as in their own diocese, including London and had to visit them in person to make sure their estates were being managed properly. The Bishop of Bath & Wells for example, owned 12 properties besides the Palace in Wells. This included his London base, Arundel…

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Encountering Art Nouveau in Brussels

We were in Brussels last weekend for a reunion of old college friends. Time was at a premium and we were not able to see everything we wanted to. Brussels is well known for its Art Nouveau buildings but unfortunately we could not fit in a tour of some of its highlights. Incidentally though we came across some interesting examples while visiting other places of interest. For example, take the shop…

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Singing rebetiko with the angels

As my post about Dimitris Mitropanos’s song Roza (https://wordpress.com/posts/wordscene.wordpress.?s=great+song+bu) has for some reason been generating a lot of interest recently, I thought I would translate another song in the zeïmbekiko style of the Greek rebetiko tradition – brilliantly performed here by Themis Adamantidis, Dimitris Mitropanos and Dimitris Basos. The lyrics, by the writer…

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The bookbinder of Vatopedi Monastery

Vatopedi Monastery, founded in the late 10th century, is the second oldest monastery on Mt Athos but the Holy Mountain’s biggest and richest. I spent a week here in September 2022 as part of a team organised by the Friends of Mt Athos clearing the ancient footpaths between the monasteries which tend to get quickly overgrown. It was a unique opportunity to take part in the life oif a monastic…

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Thermal baths, minarets and bull-slaying

North of the city of Xanthi in Thrace in north eastern Greece are a group of villages known as the Pomakokhoria. They are inhabited by Bulgarian speaking Muslims, though the villages today are increasingly becoming depopulated as people move away to find work. The first village we pass through is Sminthi which has a magnificent modern mosque and minaret, an unusual site in modern Greece. The…

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Centre of the earth

Centre of the earth is a poem by the Greek poet, Kiki Dimoula, that combines a picture of Delphi in late autumn, its historic past and long dead visitors with the memory of her own lost husband. It flips back and forth between the site’s deep history and the its present day ruins, with the repetition of the word ‘sarcophagi’ acting as a visible symbol of its decline, as do the fragmentary…