Taking the overnight boat from Athens to Crete
island once a month for 25 years to reach my Mother's village, the
views encountered and thoughts that come to my mind from this traveling.
Why my Athens routine world is put there into a semicolon.
For the past 25 years, about once a month, I
take the overnight boat from Athens to Crete Island. The moment of boat
entry, early morning, into Heraklion harbor is very special. As the sun
prepares to rise, the clouds take a particular color and the rays reveal
Koules, the Venetian fortress and old walls, among the longest city
walls in Europe. KTEL, the intercity green bus, takes me to my Mother’s
village.
The ride is a total antithesis to the ride in the Capital.
Climbing hills, the blue sea behind getting further and lower, the
fields interchange between olive groves, vineyards and rocky parts with
greenery, a changing color pallet according to the season.
My favorite
moment is when my eyes salute from the bus window, Knossos palace, the
living symbol of Minoan civilization, the living myth of Labyrinth with
Minotaurus, Further up a stone water bridge appears above us, an early
17th century Venetian arched aqueduct that sends out a screaming
silence.
The blue and white five-dome Christ Savor byzantine church is
what stands out first from Kounavi village, my final destination.
The
brown and stone colors of the tiled houses make a playful antithesis
with the Aegean color of the cathedral church.
It is an old village, its
name likely Latin that the earliest record to it is on a Venetian
document of year 1212.
Every time I reach Kounavi, it is a travel to
another dimension.
My Athens routine world is put into a semicolon; this
village is dotted with all kinds of everything: fresh soil and old
legends, beaten nature and unbeaten traditions, stone, wood and mud
houses that maintain some Minoan features, green herbs, olive oil, and
wine.
Aged people with mustache, white hair and wrinkled face still meet
daily at kafenion for Greek coffee and news exchange.
And when the sun
sets behind Juhtas Mountain, the one with the human face shape peak
believed to be Zeus burial place, I know I have spent a day in the life
of a special island at the southern point of Europe.
