Nothing is impermanent when it is captured electronically. Think about Snapchat with the "dissolving" photos that teens would send one another. Thinking they are gone from permanent record 6 seconds later, many people found out that the nude selfie they snapped was later found somewhere on the web. Safe sexting? There's no such thing. And, so it was, that after we were back on the bus, I pulled up my albums folder on my iPhone to see "Recently Deleted Photos," and there were the pictures I had snapped. Perhaps I could find the woman who demanded I delete my photos in one of the paintings on the wall. Meteora is an incredibly magical place. Six Eastern Orthodox monasteries are built atop these stone pillars that jut upright out of the countryside in central Greece, above the town of Kalambaka. Apparently, caves within the area were inhabited continuously between 50,000 and 5,000 years ago. Monks came to occupy these caverns as early as the 11th century, but monasteries weren't built until the 14th century. According to Wikipedia, "The cave of Theopetra is located 4 kilometers from Kalambaka. Its uniqueness from an archeological perspective is that a single site contains records of two greatly significant cultural transformations: the replacement of Neanderthals by modern humans and later, the transition from hunting-gathering to farming after the end of the last Ice Age." To me, this is remarkable when thinking about the history of humanity on our planet Earth.
We had traveled by bus from Athens to Kalambaka - almost a full day's journey. But well worth the trip. Perhaps most interesting was the enormity of the wine casks that the monks would use for the fermentation of their spirits. Spirits for the spiritual.
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CONRAD B. HERRMANN
INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL AND TRAVELER EXTRAORDINAIRE Archives
March 2020
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