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Mrs. Orca looking over Dalgoto Ezero (2310m) toward Vihren and Kutelo Peaks, on the Five Mountains Trail (E4), Pirin Mountains, Bulgaria.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIHyAqrUVsI
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy …
John Keats
Sanahin and Hagphat were both founded during a particularly rich period in Armenian history known as the Armenian Renaissance. After centuries of Arab and/or Byzantine control, in 885 the Armenian Bagratids became the recognized rulers of large parts of present day Armenia (as well as other regions beyond its current borders). The monasteries were founded in the tenth century with the patronage of that dynasty and quickly became important centers of teaching and learning. A kind of medieval university operated at Sanahin, with learned priests teaching courses in theology, philosophy, and science. Above, the Academy Hall at Sanahin, which seems to have been a sort of lecture or seminar hall. Notice the isles of nooks where scholars could sit while they listened, debated and studied. Also notice the elaborately-carved khachkars, or stone-crosses, at the end of the hall. They are a ubiquitous and uniquely Armenian art form. The Academy at Sanahin, Armenia.
The concept for this Soviet Era megaproject dates to the 1920s, but construction only began fifty years later. It is a kind of grand staircase and gardens linking downtown Yerevan with Victory Park atop the higher section of the city. Construction was not yet complete at the time of the 1988 earthquake and the Soviet collapse. It is now mostly usable, with escalators and an art museum on the inside and gardens and water features on the surface, but there is still a huge section near the top of the complex that is currently just a pit with foundations, as one or more terraces of the cascade between the victory monument and existing structure have still not been completed. To reach the victory monument, from which fine views of Mount Ararat can be had on a clear day, you must divert off the complex to a side street then climb up an improvised stairway/scaffolding to come out on top. At the bottom (above) there is also a pretty whimsical sculpture garden. The Cascades, Yerevan, Armenia.
We spent three nights in the small town of Sanahin visiting its monastery and the neighboring monastery of Hagphat, which is on the other side of Debed Canyon but connected via a scenic day hike. While they likely had early medieval antecedents, the current complexes date to the tenth century when they became centers of scholarship under the royal patronage of the Bagratid and (later) Zakarid dynasty. Both complexes are Unesco World Heritage sites and are extremely well preserved with interesting buildings such as churches, gavits, scriptoriums, bell towers, refectories and spring houses. There are however no evident traces of dormitories for the hundreds of monks who once lived here, which must have been built of more ephemeral materials. Above, the Church of St. Amenaprkitch, built in the second half of the tenth century, Sanahin, Armenia.
I was just playing around with my phone and found out it has an astrophotography setting and decided to try it out.
Küstenwanderung abends an der Steilküste - Panorama zur späten blauen Stunde vom Felskopf der Punta des Boc auf die Küste zwischen Cala Mesquida und der Halbinsel Formentor
Moon - A Haiku
Melancholy night
high above the ocean moon
in your hair a pearl
I had to wonder if men were so blinded by beauty that they would feel privileged to live their lives with an actual demon, so long as it was a beautiful demon. — Arthur Golden
Our initial plan this summer was to spend two months in Armenia hiking the Armenian section of the newly established Trans Caucasian Trail (TCT), from near Armenia's southern border with Iran to its northern border with Georgia. Just a couple of days after we arrived, however, the US started bombing Iran, refugees started fleeing from Iran across its border with Armenia, and it became clear that it would be both insensitive and imprudent to follow through on that plan.
Armenia sits at a crossroads between Europe, Asia and the Middle East. It is Europe-facing in many ways, but in other respects it is deeply entangled in a variety of complicated Middle Eastern geopolitical issues. It enjoys generally friendly relations with two of its neighbors (Georgia and Iran) and very troubled relations with the other two (Turkey and Azerbaijan). Russian influence, intimidation and interference loom over all these relationships, as well as ones farther afield (Europe, the US). The hottest issues concern disputes over past and present borders, which have moved often and over large distances in the more than 2800 years of Armenian history, generally through warfare.
Mount Ararat (5137m), an important national symbol to Armenians but part of Turkey since the Turkish-Armenian War of 1920, broods down on the Armenian capital, Yerevan.
Mrs. Orca having a rest before we tackled Koncheto Saddle. This was the most strenuous day of the Five Mountains Trail, in my opinion. It was only about twelve or thirteen kilometers in distance, but had very steep ascents and descents, and in between a lot of traversing steep slopes and narrow ridges, which called for a lot of concentration.
A friend of ours once sat out the night in a thunderstorm in that small metal emergency shelter (2760m) in the distance. He recalled it fondly but it was not an experience I would have cared to share. Mrs. Orca near Banski Suhodol (2884m), on the way to Koncheto Saddle, Five Mountains Trail (E4), Pirin Mountains, Bulgaria.
This room (the gavit, or zhamatun) is one of the unique aspects of Armenian medieval architecture. It doesn't have any western equivalent, but it is a kind of large multipurpose hall that was attached west side of the church, generally some time after the construction of the church itself. They were gathering places for monks and parishioners, work spaces and burial places (note the many gravestones above). They often have a large oculus or lightwell in the ceiling, although this particular one, unusually, did not. The early thirteenth century gavit of the St. Astvatsatsin Church (first half of tenth century), Sanahin Monastery, Armenia.
A much-graffitied Soviet-Era train still in service at the Yerevan Railway Station, Yerevan, Armenia.
Tourists visit Sanahin and Hagphat on day trips from as far away as Yerevan and Tbilsi, Georgia. So, between the pancake hour and the cocktail hour they can feel a bit like a tourist zoo, filled with hawkers and people taking selfies. In the evening, after the busses have left, they take on a much more solemn feel.
From the middle ages until modern times the Armenian Apostolic Church was the most important institution in maintaining Armenian identity through successive occupations. In 1920, when the Soviets took over and established the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, Armenia had hundreds of active monasteries, and they quickly became the target of Soviet policy. Church land was confiscated and monks and clergy were forced to renounce their offices or else be murdered, imprisoned or shipped off to gulags.
Today Armenians are still quite religious, but little survives of monastic life except for the buildings. Religious service is kept up at the sites, however, after the touristing hours are over. We were fortunate to see an Apostolic service at Sanahin, though it was attended by no more than a half dozen parishioners. Later that night I awoke at midnight in our B&B, which was right next door, and heard the clergy singing the service again. Armenian Apostolic clergy at the tenth century Church of St. Amenaprkitch, Sanahin Monastery, Armenia.
Western monasticism's earliest roots reach back to the ancient pre-Christian world, in which Greek, Roman, Jewish and Egyptian practices all contained precedents for ascetic religious communal life, complete with rejection of materialism and even an embrace of celibacy. In the period between the advent of Christianity and its adoption as state religion in the western world, the most zealous Christians often sought martyrdom as the most direct means of emulating Christ. But after, when religious authority became allied with the state, one could no longer demonstrate one's "spiritual athleticism" through literal martyrdom, at least without setting out to distant lands as a missionary. Instead, asceticism--which combined the Christlike virtues of devotion, humility, self-denial, and self-sacrifice--provided the next best means of pursuing rigorously a Christian life.
Monasticism in an explicitly Christian form is usually attributed to the Desert Fathers, beginning with the hermit Saint Anthony, a third century ascetic who walled himself up in the desert in Egypt to contemplate his faith in solitude. In accordance with Murphy's (as yet unarticulated) Law, Anthony the hermit soon attracted legions of visitors, admirers and emulators, many of whom, rather than lead a hermit life, eventually organized themselves into monastic communities, in part on the theory that communal life would help encourage accountability.
Early Christian monastic communities were very diverse, but tilted heavily toward an emphasis on prayer to the exclusion of all else. In the sixth century, Benedict of Nursia introduced his Rule to several monastic communities in Italy. The Rule of Saint Benedict, as it came to be called, was a guide for how to organize monasteries and live a monastic life. Benedict was fairly moderate in many ways. For instance, he wrote (paraphrasing) that monks shouldn't drink wine, but since you can't convince them that, their abbot should try to ensure that they do it in moderation. But Benedict emphasized guiding principles later summarized as Ora et Labora, or prayer and labor, meaning that monks should be laboring in addition to praying, not living exclusively off of what others produced. And he insisted that monks could own nothing individually. This was an attempt on Benedict's part to ensure monks lived lives compatible with the ascetic, Christ-like ideal. Within a few centuries, the Rule of Saint Benedict was adopted by Catholic monasteries across Europe, and it remains the organizational blueprint for most monasteries today, though very few adhere strictly to the original rules governing prayer, diet, and labor.
An aisle in the Romanesque 12th century Abbey Church of Heiligenkreuz, certainly among the most beautiful monasteries we have ever visited. Heiligenkreuz Abbey, near Vienna, Austria.
This bridge, connecting Esztergom and Parkany, Hungary (now Sturovo, Slovakia), was completed in 1895, before the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which is to say, at a time when the Danube was not a border separating the two cities. It was severely damaged in the aftermath of the First World War, when Hungary and newly created Czechoslovakia set upon each other in a conflict over how to draw borders. By the time it reopened Austria-Hungary no longer existed (the empire having been dissolved) and the Danube marked the boundary between the two nations.
On December 26, 1944, toward the end of the Second World War, the bridge was more comprehensively destroyed by retreating German forces, who blew it to slow the progress of the advancing Soviet Army. In the Cold War that followed Hungary and Czechoslovakia, though both communist, were not amicable, so the ruins of the bridge stood for decades as a reminder of the 20th century wars that plagued Europe.
The bridge was not rebuilt and reopened until October 11, 2001, with European Union funds and as part of European integration. The two countries officially joined the EU in 2004, and the passport control on the bridge was removed in 2007. We walked across its broad pedestrian way filled with tourists and commuters, paused to snap photos, and thought about the remarkable and ongoing, but fragile, transformation of Europe. The Maria Valeria Bridge, the Danube, and Sturovo, Slovakia, viewed through a window from Esztergom Castle, Hungary.