Makrynitsa, a mountain village

Thessaloniki by train takes about 5 hours, but Meteora by bus seems to be about 8.  We took the students north this year for a change, to see mountains instead of the sea.  We had been there 20 years ago with the American School for Classical Study.  On the way up we stopped for lunch in Makrynitsa, a traditional mountain town near the top of Mt. Pilion.  The whole weekend was a study of how much harder it is to live in a mountainous country, and how undaunted the Greeks have been in the face of that challenge.  It was about 287 miles, which Google calculates as about 4-5 hours.  But Google doesn't take topography into account, and with all the height we had to climb and reclimb multiple times, it took nearly 8 hours.  There are mountains in the way everywhere, and you go around and around hairpin turns even with all the new roads... they just can't avoid the mountains.

We left at 8am and arrived for lunch in Makrynitsa at 3.  Makrynitsa is lovely and tumbles down the mountain slopes.

But it took us about 30 minutes to make the climb, and the bus was struggling.  I keep wondering what drove people to live up there.  They must have climbed up for safety from pirates, but then just stayed up there.  It would have taken hours of very hard hiking to climb back down.

Gorgeous view, but how did the first settlers get up here?

The houses are made of stone with slate roofs (most roofs seem to be tile, except on this mountain where they have more rocks than anything else).

The streets are also made of rocks, with rocks put at angles to give traction even in the rain as they slope steeply.  But there is a year-round water supply, and even in summer water pours down some of the channels.

It is hard to see the slope of this street, but I wouldn't want to walk down it in heels.

 But from the attention that water gets in this town, it is clear that it is a big problem in winter because it has to be channeled so actively to make walking possible.

The ones that are horizontal are a built-in water channel.

One of several active water channels that I saw.

They care about the trees... there are wonderful old plane trees that they work around.  Several are in the plateia, but one has grown right through a shop.

They have their own architectural decorations, different from elsewhere in Greece.  The balcony isn't as prevalent, and they have small windows with wooden shutters -- more concern here in the architecture about cold rather than hot.

Finally, what they sell to tourists is very different than in Athens. Mountain villages sell handcrafted products, clearly selling Greece's traditional rather than classical heritage.  There are a lot of jams and preserves as well as many, many mountain herbs.