Traveling in the Peloponnesos - Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Traveling in the Peloponnesos

Even at a time when globalization overwhelms local distinctions and modernity crushes cultural diversity, travel can still provide some welcome refutation of such claims. Surely, most airports are virtually identical in design and ambience, as are superhighways, power stations, and hydroelectric dams. Such structures are uniform and offer few insights into the history and culture of the region where they are located; the means of mass transportation on land, water, or in the air also tend to be identical, as are telephones, TV sets, microwave ovens, and other consumer goods. Although we depend on these devices, few of us understand how they work, what laws of physics they obey and the scientific discoveries they embody. Perhaps here lies one source of aversion to modernity: it makes us humiliatingly dependent on all kinds of machines and instruments that we cannot comprehend; it also makes us further dependent on the specialized few who can make them work or fix them when they fail to do so.

This, however, is not the whole story. Technology does not completely erase traditional ways of life even when widely relied upon, and it is not equally widely relied upon everywhere notwithstanding its availability and affordability. Even thoroughly modernized Europe abounds in spots and corners sufficiently different from North America (and other parts of Europe) to gladden the heart of the traveler looking for remnants of the past and settings different from those he is familiar with. To be sure, technologically untouched areas are impossible to find in Europe—but, in any event, one would not want to spend much time in such places. There are limits to the pursuit of authenticity and heart-warming traditional ways of life even for romantic critics of modernity. On the other hand, there is an appealing element of adventure and modest risks associated with travel in less modernized parts of the world where the means of transportation are more primitive and the prevailing notions of timeliness make travel less predictable.

It is an endlessly interesting question why so many among the educated or affluent are so taken with the past and its leftovers, why the nostalgia for simpler times? The interest in the old is not merely a response to the burdens and stresses of modernity, to living in a crowded, complicated, polluted civilization. Already in the middle of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries European writers and artists traveled to places where they sought to discover and rediscover lost virtues, pleasures, sensibilities. Both the Englightenment intellectuals and the Romantics, somewhat later, avidly pursued the past, the remains of traditional societies where they sought instruction and relief from the difficulties of their own as yet barely modern world. James Boswell, Chateaubriand, Byron, Flaubert, Goethe, Heine, Shelley, and Wordsworth were among these travelers.

Werther, an outstanding literary personification of this sensibility, and certainly reflecting the feelings of his creator Goethe, mused in a small German village of his times: “Nothing can fill me with such true, serene emotion as any features of ancient, primitive life like this….how thankful I am that my heart can feel the simple, harmless joys of the man who brings to the table a head of cabbage he has grown himself….”1 Romantic nature worship sometimes merged with religious sentiments; Thomas Gray, the poet, was prompted by the Swiss Alps to observe (in 1739): “Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff but is pregnant with religion and poetry. There are certain scenes that would awe an atheist into belief, without the help of other argument.”2

These writers and artists, small in number, were the vanguard of a movement, pioneers of what was to come in our times: the popular “journeys of self-discovery” undertaken by large numbers of prosperous, educated middle- and upper-class people. These journeys, in part, were prompted by the belief that a certain amount of travel is an obligatory part of one’s education. There are, however, some broader and murkier motives blending with the more straightforward and rational pursuit of some knowledge of the world and the cultures of different societies that travel may yield.

Travel unconnected to utilitarian pursuits is linked to the rise and spread of individualism, to taking oneself seriously, and to the belief in one’s uniqueness or in the imperative to discover it. As Paul Fussell has put it, travel is also an “escape …from the traveler’s domestic identity.”3 The desire for such escape is related to the rejection of a conception of one’s identity predominantly rooted in one’s social roles, seen as far too narrow and failing to do justice to the the uniqueness of one’s individuality. Individualism is a by-product of modernity, or incipient modernity, of a heightened intolerance of conditions felt to be suppressing the wondrous and hidden potentials of the self.

The urge to discover one’s “true self” by means of travel is based on the idea that new surroundings help one to see things differently, to take a new look at oneself, and to stimulate the discovery of new aspects of one’s personality. In new, unfamiliar settings fewer things would be taken for granted, one’s eyes would be open to new realities, possibilities, insights; and one would benefit from exposure to the different customs and ways of life and types of people, from novel and hopefully transforming experiences.

A major attraction of travel is its association with novelty and change, with the suspension of routines and the promise of coming upon new and more fulfilling ways of life. But there is a paradox here since traditional societies are, or appear to be, stable and unchanging, which is precisely one of their appeals. How can these two desires, for novelty and for tradition, be reconciled?

The principal, if not often clearly articulated appeal of traditional societies lies in the moral and existential certainties they offer; people who belong to them have no great trouble deciding what to do with their lives and do not find it hard to make moral judgments; nor do they have identity problems.

It is also possible that there is a far more prosaic explanation. In the past, as in recent times, journeys were undertaken—in part to escape the harsh Northern climate—to the Mediterranean or to whereever a milder climate could be found. Certainly the reverse has never been the case: southerners have not been flocking to northern destinations. Of course it has not been only a matter of different climates but also of different incomes: populations in the less than balmy climates of Northern Europe and North America have enjoyed higher living standards and could more readily afford to travel than those in Southern Europe, let alone much of the rest of the world. The travelers alluded to here tend to assume that countries other than their own are more exotic, colorful, vibrant, stimulating. As the early nineteenth century French writer and traveler Chateau-briand rhapsodized:

Ancient and lovely Italy offered me its innumerable masterworks. With what reverent and poetic awe I wandered among those vast edifices consecrated to religion by the arts!… What a succession of arches and vaults! How beautiful the strains of music heard around the domes, like the rolling of the ocean waves, like the murmuring winds of the forests, or like the voice of God in His temple!

Chateaubriand put his finger on another motive for travel, even more pertinent in our times than it was two centuries ago, when he wrote: “Europeans constantly in turmoil are forced to build their own solitudes. The more tumultuous and noisy our hearts, the more calm and silence attracts us.”4 This is exactly what we expect and hope to find in places untouched by material progress. In such fulfilling destinations travelers hope to come upon the descendants, if not the actual incarnations, of the noble savage and what is left of unspoilt nature. For Americans and urbanized Europeans, even contemporary farmers, peasants, or fishermen will sometimes qualify as noble savages. A recent visitor to Greece typified these sensibilities as he wistfully recalled: “We stopped for an early breakfast at the Krifos Kipos taverna in the tiny fishing village Agios Nikolaos and watched the caiques come in, hung with kerosene lanterns and laden with the morning’s catch of fish.” Unhappily, he was also compelled to note that the serenity was punctured by the cries of traveling salesmen advertising their wares with loudspeakers mounted on their trucks.5

All this leads to the question, What exactly does it take to pronounce a village or small town “unspoiled”? The major requirements certainly include small size, lack of crowds, minimal presence of modern technology, and reminders of the past mostly in the form of old buildings. No village or town can be considered “unspoilt” if it is full of cars and buses or if it boasts huge parking spaces. TV antennas, too, encroach on the idea of the unspoilt even when sprouting from old houses. Small size does not automatically protect one from crowds; if a small, picturesque town is “discovered,” it will attract crowds though it may still remain small for some time.

This was clearly the case in Rocamadour in France that the present writer visited a few years ago—a splendid, small medieval town in a rocky hillside full of great gothic churches and chapels but also one inundated with huge crowds filling its small streets, packed with gift shops and restaurants. Given the large number of travelers, intent on discovering and visiting places, they cannot remain unspoiled. The same applies to the beauties of nature trampled underfoot by nature-lovers. To be sure it is somewhat easier to ration access to natural spectacles than to inhabited villages and towns. Cars can be excluded as they are from many small towns in Europe, but that is not the whole solution. Masses of pedestrians disgorged on the edge of these towns by enormous tour buses, or emerging from their own cars, encroach on our expectations just as much as traffic jams in the old town square or main street.

The countryside and small towns can also be spoilt, indeed ruined, by industry and commerce. On a recent trip to Greece I was shocked to discover a huge thermal power plant belching fumes in the center the Peloponnesos in the midst of an attractive mountainous landscape, not far from the well-preserved remnants of the Byzantine city of Mystra. I do not know when it was built and if there were alternatives to building such an obviously polluting plant. There is little doubt that area residents who thereby got their electricity would not willingly unplug their television or refrigerator in order to enjoy unpolluted air and unspoilt scenery.

My own interest in visiting the Peloponnesos, while not explicitly influenced by the impulses and attitudes sketched above, was certainly colored by them. A large part of the attractions of the Peloponnesos was the scenery: dramatic mountains, great gorges, a deeply indented shore line, and little population density. The two large cities on the Northern coast, Corinth and Patras, can be easily avoided. Almost the entire southern, eastern, and western coast is dotted with small coastal towns and harbors, complete with Venetian forts. From guidebooks I learned about the ancient Greek Orthodox monasteries hidden in a major gorge in the center of the peninsula. Old monasteries tucked into a gorge are irresistible even for those of a secular mentality.

I was also drawn to the Peloponnesos because of the Mani Peninsula in the south, famous for its desolate landscape, abandoned fortress villages, and fierce early residents—“a proud and courageous people” according to the Michelin Guide, supposedly descended from the Spartans, “exclusive and bellicose” and filled with “a spirit of adventure.” Those few remaining “still live in their steep villages dotted with olive trees on the mountain slopes preserving the cult of honor and hospitality,” the Guide further assured us. In the old days their lives revolved around bloody family feuds and successful attempts to repel invaders from other parts of Greece or from abroad, including the Turks. They were supposedly feared by other Greeks. Most of these original residents have vanished over time.

The Peloponnesos also abounds in famous ruins (such as Epidaurus, Mycenae, and Olympia), which I tend to find of lesser interest since in many instances there is more left to the imagination than to the eye on these sites, at any rate for those of us archeologically challenged. My first stop was the small coastal resort town of Tolo, which is near the better known and more picturesque town of Naflion (also spelled as Nafplio), which was the first capital of independent Greece after the Turkish occupiers were defeated in 1822. (Athens became the capital in 1834.) I am among those who did not realize (or forgot) that Greece has only been an independent nation state since the early nineteenth century following the long and unwelcome presence of the Turks, that is to say the Ottoman Empire. I suspect that most people also fail to realize how small the population of Greece is (ten million), given its historical and cultural importance.

The only ruins I visited (on the way to the Mani peninsula), and very impressive ones at that, was Mystra, a Byzantine city founded in the thirteenth century in the foothills of the Taygetos mountains, “occupying an exceptional site,” as the Green Guide puts it. It is in the area where Sparta used to be (and there is now a modern city of that name). Mystra is a widely dispersed collection of partially ruined and restored palaces, monasteries, and fortresses at various elevations, surrounded by picturesque cypresses and connected by a network of trails and roads. It, too, was occupied by the Turks, who converted churches into mosques. There are excellent views of the Taygetos mountains and the surrounding countryside.

My next stop was Kardamili, a small coastal town on the Messenian Gulf, a “simple holiday resort and fishing village” north of the Mani Peninsula and flanked by the Taygetos mountains on the East.

Further coastal explorations followed as I drove north on the pleasant highway circling the Messenian Gulf, stopping briefly in Koroni, a very attractive small port with a citadel built by Venetians and Turks, and then stopping for a few days in Methoni, further west. Here the main attraction was the huge Venetian fort and nearby Pylos (yet another very attractive and lively coastal town) and its nature reserve. From Methoni I took two day–trips to Pylos and the nearby nature reserve where I climbed a modest mountain topped by a partially ruined but still impressive fort overlooking the sea and the large horseshoe-shaped bay, part of the nature reserve. Subsequently I drove north along the shore until turning east into the mountains to stay in the small towns of Stremitsa and Dimitsana, both located at elevations over 3,000 feet.

Aside from my interest in the monasteries, I went to the area because of the Lousios Gorge, which promised good hiking and in which the monasteries were located. The first and most spectacular monastery I visited (Moni Agios Prodromu) was partly accessible by car. Less than one hour’s walk took me to the monastery located under an overhang of the cliff, part of it built into the mountain. Nearby was a small garden, a spring, and some out-buildings. I hd a glimpse of the living quarters of the monks (a handful only it seemed), the ossuary where the skulls of earlier residents of the monastery neatly reposed on shelves (hundreds of them) and a small room (quite dark) that had spectacular wall paintings. Since there were no signs prohibiting such activity, I also took a picture of the ossuary. The wall painting of what appeared to be saint was in exellent condition with vivid colors.

It is not easy to put into words what made the visit to this monastery so memorable and impressive. It was, of course, something highly unusual; people living in North America or Western Europe rarely have the chance to come upon an ancient monastery hidden in a deep gorge. At the bottom of the gorge was also a sizeable and clean stream, much of it white water. The monastery was surrounded by lush vegetation and small streams. All was quiet. The few monks went about their business, whatever it was. They were quite friendly, offering me water and olives (candy in another monastery). They had electricity and could reach civilization easily if they wanted to. What did they do with themselves? How much of their time was spent with prayer and other devotions, or with cultivating their gardens? How strong is their belief in eternity? These monks certainly made a choice by removing themselves from where most people live and from human company (other than fellow monks) and those of women, except for visiting tourists or pilgrims. I am sure that in Greece, as in much of Europe and North America, their number is dwindling. On the other hand, among the monks I saw in this, and in the two other monasteries, there were young ones as well.

The serenity, the seclusion, and the blending of the site with natural beauty were among the identifiable reasons for my being impressed. Regardless of one’s religious beliefs (or, in this case their absence) the monastic life and its reclusiveness hinted at an engagement with the spiritual realm, at a sustained determination to grapple with the pursuit of meaning in life (and death). This idea may be a romantic projection; monks may become monks for all sorts of mundane reasons, which do not necessarily include great religious fervor, spirituality, or good works. It is also quite possible that the daily rituals of devotion, rigidly regulated, divert attention from reflection and deeper, less structured spiritual quests. Nor did I have any idea if these monks were doing any good, anything charitable or humane. And yet they inspired respect and exuded more than a whiff of authenticity.

From Dimitsana we also made some day trips by car to other attractive towns in the vicinity such as Langadia and Vitina. At last we headed back to Athens with a brief stop in the wine growing region of Nemea. The last night in Greece was spent in Glyfada, a coastal suburb of Athens, upscale, modern and abounding in shops selling well known American products.

It must be readily acknowledged that one learns little of substance about people with whom one does not share a common language and way of life. In Greece many of the natives spoke some English but exchanges were largely brief and functional transactions. Even so, some impressions do emerge and linger. Driving habits give some clues to the national character, or aspects thereof, as they vary in a patterned way from country to country. Greece is clearly among the countries—along with France, Italy, Spain, and others in Europe—where people drive aggressively and dangerously.

Greek drivers think nothing of passing, or trying to pass, on two-lane mountain roads that carry a fair amount of traffic. Why are these people (mostly men) so impatient, aggressive and competitive in these situations? One explanation may be that, unlike in the United States and parts of Western Europe, the widespread use of cars in Greece is more recent and therefore owning a car is more a matter of pride and self-assertion. But there is also a certain general impatience and less self-discipline more readily found in all Mediterranean countries. In Britain, Holland, Scandinavia, and above all, in the United States and Canada, people drive in more disciplined, less assertive ways. Greek, French, and Italian driving habits are comparable to those of many American male teenagers. Self-assertion is definitely a part of the explanation. The many small shrines on roadsides erected in memory of the victims of such driving habits testify to their consequences.

The other explanation of Greek driving habits, like those of the Italians, is that they do not care much about rules. I recall on another trip, flying from Athens to the islands, how some passengers walked casually in and out of the cockpit and quite a few smoked unselfconsciously in non-smoking areas without earning a reprimand from the flight attendants. On my recent trip I also read in an English-language newspaper about chronic squatting on public lands, including nature reserves, about which the government has done little. Nor are environmental regulations enforced.

Still, it should be noted that indifference towards the environment does not seem to extend to the toleration of billboards along the highways, of which I hardly saw any, except in the vicinity of Athens. The impressive nature reserve north of the coastal town of Pylos also seemed well protected and clean; it included large lagoons, a bird sanctuary, and a spectacular bay with emerald-looking water. Generally speaking, the apparent cleanliness of the sea was another delightful and unexpected finding. The fish population was modest both in size and variety compared to the Caribbean but these waters were not a saline desert.

I think that there is a paradoxical relationship between tradition, modernity, and concern with the environment. Modernity, as manifested in population growth and pressure, and in urbanization and industrialization, is clearly bad for the environment. On the other hand, only prolonged modernity creates the kind of outlook or mentality that is self—consciously protective of the environment. The more traditional a society the less concern with the environment, partly because people depend very directly on the physical environment for their livelihood—from agriculture, animal husbandry, forestry, hunting, fishing. And being traditional also means the unquestioning acceptance of these time-honored activities that survival requires. Population densities are also much lower in traditional societies and hence there is less damage to the environment. For all these reasons, most people in these societies do not romanticize nature or the natural environment. Clearly, the environment is far more intact in pre-industrial, pre-modern societies in the absence of powerful technology.

In Greece, a more traditional society than those of Western Europe, environmental matters are likely to get short shrift. There are several reasons for this. In the first place societies must reach a level of urbanization and industrialization before the ravages of modernity and their impact on the physical environment become apparent and sufficiently alarming for action to be taken. Secondly, the more traditional a society the less widespread the self-conscious admiration of nature; in traditional, rural, agricultural societies nature is taken for granted and exploited without a second thought. To be sure such exploitation remains circumscribed and moderated by primitive technology. Only educated, urban people, generations removed from rural roots or origins, revere nature.

A degree of friendliness toward strangers is also characteristic of more traditional societies such as Greece. I often found people going out of their way to be friendly and helpful. This was the case in particular when I needed information or directions in small towns; on such and other occasions people tried to find a proficient English speaker if their own English was limited or non-existent. Aggressiveness, impatience, and unfriendliness I did not encounter off the highways; nor any hostility on account of being an American, even though one reads and hears much about Greek anti-Americanism. Such good natured behavior might have been due to various circumstances. I was among other tourists in small towns at the end of the tourist season and people who make their living from tourists are not noted for their hostility or surliness toward them, although there are exceptions: in parts of the Caribbean, and in any country where nationalistic pride is wounded by notions of servicing well-heeled strangers, such surliness may be experienced. A few years ago some Hungarian intellectuals complained, in the same spirit, about Hungarians becoming “a nation of waiters.” Interestingly enough this never seems to have occurred among the Swiss, who are capable of combining high levels of collective self-esteem with a flourishing tourist industry.

An American traveler can go to France, Italy, Spain or Great Britain every year for decades without ever exhausting points of interest, natural or man-made. I would like to revisit Greece but not necessarily the Peloponnesos and not because I exhausted all of its scenic and other attractions. Greece is a large country, with all the islands included, and full of places and parts that I have not been to and hold much interest. Such a feeling, I suspect, originates in, or is part of, a domesticated, non-utilitarian exploratory impulse. The impulse itself is not fully rational and needs to be explained, especially since it is by no means universally or even widely distributed. Enormous numbers of well-educated, mobile, intelligent, reasonably curious people are perfectly content not to travel at all, or go to the same places year after year, or confine their travel to a particular resort or a second home. The exploratory impulse of the kind noted here rests on a pure, if obscure curiosity, on some kind of unarticulated hope and vague expectation as to what may be accomplished by visiting certain parts of the world.

One must finally recognize that travel reflects contradictory desires and beliefs. We want both novelty and a change of pace, but we also want to immerse ourselves in the stable, time-honored ways of life assumed to persist in some corners of the world. We look for relaxation, for new comforts, luxuries, for more interesting food and drinks, although travel, even the most modern and convenient, is almost inescapably tiring and disruptive. We are interested in invigorating new human contacts, but short trips circumscribed by language barriers cannot yield them.

We long for the simplicity that eludes us at home but we also know that we are hopelessly dependent on the conveniences of modern technology. In our journeys of “self-discovery” we are not likely to discover much about ourselves that we do not already know. This is not to suggest that we should give up traveling or that it is not a learning experience. Yet, one of the things we do learn is that there are no magic breakthroughs in personal liberation or enrichment; that the pursuit of authentic and meaningful life is no less elusive in new as in familiar settings.


  1. Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (New York, 1962), 43 [First published in 1774].
  2. Paul Fussell ed., The Norton Book of Travel (New York, 1987), 275.
  3. Ibid., 13.
  4. François-René Chateaubriand, Atala and René (New York, 1961), 11, 98 [first published in 1800].
  5. Nicolas Krauss, “Where the Gods Are Neighbors,” New York Times Travel Section, June 18, 2000, 9.

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