Thirasia – Sacred Bread, Holy Wine
by Glenn Steiner 2008
Some classes go smoothly, flowing like quicksilver from beginning to end. Others are filled with pitfalls: unseen, fraught with circumstance. Yet, it is this interjection of real-life experience with the dosage of theory that enlightens the student and makes Greece the perfect crucible of learning.
“Each Beginning Digital class goes to Thirasia,” or so my syllabus read for Beginning Digital.
By the morning light, I had had my doubts. Perched on the concrete quay of Santorini’s Athinios port, I stood on my car’s bumper and looked seaward. Whitecaps stretched as far as one’s eye could see. The gulf between Santorini and Thirasia was filled with bits of sea-born fluff, thrown into the aether by closely packed steep waves driven by madman winds. They seemed far away, hovering off towards far away Sikinos and Ios. In truth, they were marching towards us.
The dreaded meltemi winds (Beauford 9+) had come up several days prior to the workshop, scuttling ALL ferry and airplane traffic in and out of the island. Magically, they had relented but only just the night before our voyage.
The journey to Thirasia was sweet and filled with mystery and illumination as traveling across a sea-filled volcano could be. Our ferry swept close to the islands’ red and black striated lava cliffs. Following the line of the wind’s shadow, the ferry healed momentarily as she emerged into the diminishing blow and settled back onto her course to Riva. We emerged from the dark bowels of the ferry without rancor and ran the gauntlet onto dry land.
Little did we know, that the wind giant had just decided to take yet another great breath before letting fly again.
Following an hour’s shooting in the sweet morning light at Riva, we drove along the main road, past old ruined stone shelters in the flat before climbing up the arroyo through PotaMOS whose name means ‘river’ in Greek, and over the rim to ManolAS.
Like FiRA, Manolas sits defiantly on the blacked edge of the volcano. Unlike her twin sister, Manolas still sleeps, blissfully unaware of the torrents of tourists that plague Santorini. Her unpainted, faded white buildings cascade chock-a-block over the caldera, “kato-kato,” down-down to the staircase’s end by the harbor of Korfos far below.
The class spent the day exploring the unhurried airs of Thirasia before taking a lovely lunch at a seaside taverna at Korfos, dipping their feet in the warm waters while eating succulent fish.
When riding a bicycle, they say that all hills must be earned. What goes down, must come up. And so it is with hiking. After plates of Mezedes, bottles of water and portions of gyros me patates, we all made the long hot slog back up the steps to return home.
Cresting the ridgeline, vagrant winds scoured volcanic pumice and thrust fine dust high into the air before settling slowly back to earth. Our white rental car looked a little sad, if not slightly sandblasted, a reddish-black in color. The winds buffeted our car unmercifully.
Back at Riva, we sat on the quay awaiting the ferry. I lectured about the Meltemi winds, their history and how they are drawn from the cold steppes of Russia past the Greek islands and sucked down to the heatfields of Africa. I looked out from the car’s window and shook my head. A vast field of swirling whitecaps, which had earlier sat hovering offshore, had turned the gulf between Santorini and Thirasia into a sea of white.
I spun the car around and prepared to board the Xpress Thira, an old small rustbucket, from the rear, “Greek style.”
The ferry touched ground. Things looked good. One line was secured. The ferry man smiled and waved us on frantically.
The Greeks and Greek gods both have a sense of humor. I couldn’t see it then, the deck hand now reminds me more of Charon, the undertaker of Greek souls to Hades, than an employee of the Nisos Thira.
Taking his clue, I gunned the rental car and backed semi-blindly towards the ferry’s gate. Unfortunately, Aeolus the Greek wind god of ancient times had other plans. Aeolus opened his sack of winds and blew a great gust of forty-five knots square at the ship’s beam. The top, windward part of the Nisos Thira took the brunt of the force and the ship healed, lifting the entry gate about 18-20 inches or so above the concrete quay. Blinded by the read view window, I followed the deck hand’s advice and backed “smack” into the end of the gate as if I had run into a stone wall. Striking the gate about bumper level, my rental ‘thudded’ to a halt. The meltemis gusted and the ferry’s massive gate continued its merry slide off my bumper, grinding and sparking across the quay.
Through my rear view mirror, Charon kept on madly waving.
The thought of a repeat performance in this Greek theater dulled my enthusiasm. The real possibility of getting half the rental car onto the ferry’s gate with the other half still on the quay, before the ferry pulled away, frightened the hell out of me. Disgression being the better part of valor, I stayed with my students and decided not to abandon our safe perch. We craned our necks and watched incredulously.
The ferry dragged, sparkling like the Fourth of July as it sped sideways across the quay. The one line had not been enough. The Captain had lost his gamble. The wind-driven ferry picked up speed until the ferry’s gate struck one of the great steel cast bollards, to which the ferries usually tie off with a metallic “thunk.”
Think of the gate as the lever and the bollard as the fulcrum. The rustbucket’s gate shivered with the force of the collision. The bow of the Nisos Thira pivoted sharply towards the shallow part of the harbor, the small fishing boats which bobbed merrily in the Meltemi, and solid land. Facing a lee shore disaster, the Captain did the only sensible thing. He pulled up the gate over the bollard and gunned his engine.
The Captain tried to swing into the wind. He had two problems. First, the Meltemi continued to push against his superstructure like a metallic hammer beating against a metallic sail. More importantly, the Nisos Thira, like most boats and ferries, steered from the rear. His propellers growled and thrashed as the stern of the Nisos Thira swung wildly toward the shallowest part of the harbor, narrowly missing the neighboring fishing boats by a scant two meters. My students and I watched open-mouthed from the quay of Thirasia.
I thought to myself, maybe the Gods do love us after all, as the last ferry of the day headed back into a sea of whitecaps over to Santorini.
This drama of Grecian proportions had just played out in under four minutes!
Stranded, we were, and all the other passengers as well!
Yet, the ‘stranded’ villagers talked quietly among themselves and seemed unconcerned. In fact, they all queued back to the quay. I could see that a fishing boat was preparing to leave. In the fading light, I put the students on a small caique or open fishing boat headed to Oia at the north of Santorini island. I stood by the car and waved to them, as they headed boldly into the maelstrom, back to Santorini.
I stood there for a moment in mute contemplation. The students HAD wanted their space for a night to shop, dance and celebrate. I had wanted my space as well. Damned funny, how things work out sometimes.
The Greek gods, they do say on the islands, favor fools and travelers.
So here I was, stuck on a primitive island, the sun had almost set and I could see no hotel in sight.
It was time for a beer in the one taverna that was open. It’s light flicked dimly as I walked across the now abandoned road. Cracking open a Mythos, the taverna owner said there was not a single hotel or domatio (room) to take at the port. The night grew perceptively a little darker at this point. Finished my beer, I stood and watched the lights of Oia grow brighter through the darkening sea fog. The students were in God’s hands now but I thought that I could see them pull into Ammoudi port below Oia. I thanked the inn-keeper, jumped back into my rental with a gouged bumper and rattled up the mountain back into sleepy Manolas.
I wandered for about an hour in the saturnine darkness, climbing up and down the face of the volcano, in search of a room. Unfortunately, no one really knew if there were any. At all!
Then fortune smiled. I found a young man with whom I could converse in Greek who told me of a place on the far side of town. The night then brightened immeasurably.
After much searching wandering through unlit Venetian corridors, I climbed up to the home of Dimitris’, a former ship’s Captain. He agreed to rent me a cheap room for about 25 Euros, a good deal considering the alternative of trying to fit my macro 100 kilo body into a micro car for the night.
As for food, the only place open on the entire island was back at the ferry harbor.
Thoughtful Dimitris did know of a place. There was a very small market in town down by the town’s dirt parking area where I had left the rental. He told me to ring the bell of the store, and then to wait patiently.
An inky blackness had wrapped itself around Manolas. I stumbled down the street, ‘cobble stoned’ and hypoglycemic from hunger. An older couple waited by the mart politely. I rang the bell and waited and tried my best to smile. I listening to the beautiful tenor voice broadcast from the village church. I was starving and the grumbling of my stomach seemed louder than the priest’s singing.
Fifteen minutes later (…a Greek minute, as time passes at a slower rate on Thirasia), who walks down the pathway but the village priest, an ebullient Pappas, dressed in black hat and robes with a great bushy beard, my savior.
“Ah Yes, Dimitris is my brother!” he boomed proudly. I wandered through the store, looking glumly at the canned products on the shelves, when suddenly the priest handed me this huge ring of fresh, warm sesame-studded bread along with a glass of deep red Mavrodafnis wine. The Priest cheerfully sold me a couple of cans of beer and ena megallo nero, a big bottle of water. I toasted his health, “Geia sas!,” and thanked him warmly. Refreshed by the veritable body and blood of O Xristos, I took another sip and bid him farewell. By the growing starlight, I followed the path up the hill, returning to the Dimitris’ place high on the hill.
Kicking my boots up on Dimitris’ rickety balcony, I cracked open a beer and stared up to the star filled sky.
Who would have figured that from this potential crash and burn would come new wonders and new friends?
I had called the students. They had had their adventure on a fishing boat and their night on the town. So did I, albeit, not the one that I had expected, sitting at Tropical, my favorite taverna on the ‘other’ edge of the volcano on Santorini.
I have a belief that any port in a storm serves the intrepid traveler. But sharing the blood of Xristos and eating holy bread given to me by the village priest really takes the cake.
I sat in the swirling, seething dust-filled meltemi winds and watched the lights beckon from Santorini, not unlike the glistening stars that shown overhead. Finishing my beer, I savored the last sesame seed from the holy bread before turning in and making it an early night.
After all, the Pappas had said that there was another ferry coming to the island, “proi proi,” early early, and I had another class to teach in the morning.
- © Glenn Steiner 2008
