Via Egnatia

• by Michał Szymańczak
• Deputy Secretary General YMCA Europe
• A chapter of the book "Stalin's Lamp"
  in publishing (Polish) by Spectrum Press, Warszawa.

Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, "Peace and safety," destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you, brothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night... Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. 

     …We are walking down the road of the Paul the apostle.  It is a steep road leading to the fortress. The weather is hot but not uncomfortable... We left our hotel on Via Egnatia. Coincidentally the hotel is called the ABC which may signify the beginning of the passage of the time or the start of something else… St. Paul came to Thessaloniki when he was fifty years old. A year later he gave Timothy two letters to the Thessalonians.  One of them was the letter in which he writes about the children of the light and the children of the dark. 

     We do not know why the street we are climbing is called ‘St. Paul the Apostle’.  We believe, however, this was the route he once took to climb the hill overlooking Thessaloniki… We are passing churches and some ruins and due to our tiredness we forget about the cars and noises of the city. We begin to notice cream-coloured roses which grow near the whitewashed walls of houses and a mockingbird searching for worms in the old graveyard draws our attention.  A lonely tortoise strolls behind the gate of an old monastery constructed from red bricks… Roses, a blackbird, a tortoise… Nothing has changed for the last two-thousand years.  I had a similar feeling once in Tarsus (today located in Turkey) when I was viewing the remains of the house where St. Paul was born – the commotion from the bizarre nearby sounded to me like the noises I imagine occurred in the past.  The two nuns who were looking for the old church were, for me, a symbol of those first women who believed…

     I am fifty years old now and following the footsteps of St. Paul, beginning from the ABC Hotel.  It seems to me that I have started to understand that in this city, which sparkles with the colours of the blue sky and the Aegean Sea, colourful flowers and birds, sun and whitewashed buildings, why St. Paul called the Thessalonians the children of the light - this was meant theologically and metaphorically. And I understand why the contemporary Thessalonians are unaware that there is day and night: for them there is only a never-ending day…Isn’t it recognized by many of us that the Lord’s Day comes to us like a thief at night?

      In the ancient times Via Egnatia was a famous trade route from Rome to Byzantium.  Additionally, it also served as an important thoroughfare between the Aegean and Adriatic seas…  For me the route starts exactly here: maybe in a small tavern next to a church where I am sitting with a glass of cool Retsina in hand and the oily aroma of octopus on the plate in front of me… St. Paul, hey, are you here somewhere?

     …We board the train from Thessaloniki to Ljubljana with main stops in Skopje, Belgrade, and Zagreb.  We want to get to Skopje, another city on Via Egnatia.  The train is also historic and likewise cannot remember the Byzantine era.  Each somewhat dilapidated carriage was built in a different country – most of which no longer exist (Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary or Yugoslavia).  I would be more likely to meet the spirit of Marshall Tito rather than that of St. Paul.  However, time passes in a different way here.  The small border station on the Greek side is called Idomeni.  The passport formalities are conducted as if the Iron Curtain still divided Europe.  You must even leave the train, and collect your passport at the railway police station.  No-one is in a hurry – especially the border and customs officers.  An older man takes a harmonica from his pocket and begins to play melancholic Balkan melodies.  In the station bar coffee is served in disposable plastic cups.  To prepare the coffee also takes time.  But the train will wait and this is probably the reason for lengthy delays.  The scheduled and expected time of departure is listed on a blackboard by the stationmaster.  The blackboard is leaning against the wall in front of the Waiting Room.  We are smoking cigarettes, lit from the tip of a neighbour’s smoke, despite the fact we all have lighters or matches in our pockets.  We regard the mountains around us and loudly express our pretended surprise at the sight of the snow-covered peaks.  With delight we smell the meat on the grill, listen to the harmonica, and smile at fellow travellers and border soldiers.  And you have to remember that we are crossing the border with the country whose local name is Macedonia. To this day, in Greece, this name is the cause for political and economic boycott of their neighbour.  But we are on the Via Egnatia, so we build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

     With a long, slow whistle the train slowly pulls away from Idomeni and momentarily arrives in Gevgelija on the Macedonian side of the border.  Greek language is substituted with Slavonic speech but the mountains, the river, and the greenery remain the same.  We look out through the window at the blooming fig trees and kiwi, donkey-pulled carts laden with everything and nothing, orthodox churches and mosques. I am looking through the ‘Panorama of Macedonian Poetry’ published ten years ago.  There is a poem by Blaze Koneski entitled ‘From the train’: this is the nicest corner of the world.  I spent my earliest years here.  The train is leaving everything behind.  Once a child saw the world from here. I often think back to the past.  Fate takes me to new places all the time.  And in another poem: people smile at me behind the three seas.  But I see through the psalm of my ancestors that the loop is empty, and for years my Aegean Macedonia has been drying(Ivan Capovski).  And also: Oh you who saw the sun earlier than us and who let us fly freely (Trajan Petrovski)… Looking through the psalm of our ancestors and flying freely to all new places.  And waiting for the end of the journey….

     … We walk around Skopje.  It looks like they are celebrating a national Holiday because the streets are virtually empty.  In this ugly city which was re-built after the earthquake in the 60’s, with the absence of urban planning resulting in a chaotic cityscape, I am searching - not so much for the remains of the past as a sense of the past…. The sun is as hot today as always it was in the past…  The passers-by speak in varied languages (Macedonian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Roma).  No-one is in a hurry.  Time leaks away like water from a dripping tap in the filthy Bristol Hotel. Children beg aggressively in the streets.  In the small historical museum arranged in a former railway station, where the clock still tells the time of the earthquake, you can see exhibitions about the peoples who have been living in this country.  We spend time by the Armenian section, and then travel to the Turkish bazaar in the Moslem area of the city.  This is the only quarter of Skopje which survived the earthquake without significant damage…  We enjoy delicious kebabs, fire-grilled over aromatic wood, and drink bitter wine.  The bill is settled without any problem and paid in foreign currency.  It must have been like that on Via Egnatia in ancient times.  We pass the site where a monument to Jewish victims of the Holocaust is being erected.  Then we pass the information board indicating the house where Mother Teresa was born.  Finally we arrive back at the Bristol and order some yellow rakija and coffee.  The waiters there look very much like those from comedy films about communist Poland: lazy, scruffy, greasy-haired individuals with dandruff-covered shoulders who reluctantly take your order.  The only thing that makes them enthusiastic is tips.  They look out of the ordinary in their uniforms and white shirts.  I think that ancient Romans and Greeks must have had similar impressions about the barbarians...  However, the rakija is cool, the coffee strong and aromatic, and the accompanying glass of water effectively kills the bitterness of the liquids… I wonder what kind of music you could have heard in the streets and bazaars in days long ago?  Now you can hear wonderful Balkan standards.  A little bit nostalgic but still alive, simple and uplifting… 

     We are leaving Skopje but still keeping to Via Egnatia.  We are now travelling south towards Greece as we want to reach Ohrid.   This is an ancient town situated on the lake of the same name.   This is the cradle of the Orthodox religion, a holy place, and, first and foremost, extremely beautiful… 

      … There is a spring in the well situated between a souvenir kiosk and the museum of icons.  To drink water from this source is a must for visitors.  This is not only because of the heat, which is unbearable despite the cooling effect of the lake breeze, but also because the water comes from the depths of the earth.  Drinking it makes you want to learn more about this earth and deepen your understanding to a greater level that that of a tourist.  And finally, because when you drink you take your place in a long procession of pilgrims that have visited this wondrous place.  All pilgrims here have drunk this water just as we are doing now. Aleksandra Oledzka-Frybesowa, who wrote “Looking at the Icons”, passed through Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia.  A similar journey was made by Andrzej Stasiuk in his book ‘On the way to Babadag’, somewhere in Romania.  They both were searching for archetypes of the present.  She was doing that by looking at the frescoes and icons and he in the Balkan muddle…  And what about me?  …I am reading the book by Frybesowa: one’s place in the world (including mine) was, and still is, important.  This is because pilgrims have been coming here only for important reasons.  For one that was the need for health, for another it was the place from where they could provide assistance.  It is difficult to distinguish between both categories because even in very ordinary cases no-one can be entirely certain who gives and who takes.  Most likely, those who have been coming here were searching for one or a combination of the following: rest, health, advice, enlightenment, community, silence, introspection, and a new outlook on the world. 

     And: my eyes scan the walls from where human faces emerge against the golden background.  We are not here to find historic truths about specific epochs or people who existed back then.  Rather, we should remind ourselves of the rule of Andre Malraux who said that the goal of enormous work is to discover a sense, and the presence, of an everlasting answer to a question.  This question is asked to a man by the eternity which is a part of him. 

      How does one describe the church of St. Kliment which dominates the town and the lake from the hill?  It seems impossible, but I know that scenes from the Old and the New Testaments depicted in frescoes situated in the semi-dark chambers stuffy with candle-smoke, tell the story of events more clearly than ‘The Passion’ by Gibson.  Many people could not stand to watch that film due to the extreme scenes.  It was strange to watch them in an air-conditioned cinema, coca-cola in hand.  The painters Michail and Eutihije unexpectedly, and comparatively boldly for the times, signed their creation in St. Kliment.  In the gallery and workshop of the local photographer we view his pictures.  Their beauty, harmony, and perfection bring us to our knees.  We are walking up the steep, curved, narrow streets looking at the ruins of the ancient amphitheatre where Carreras performed recently.  His voice would have been carried by the waves of the lake… In the market we are buying sweet, brightly-coloured raisins, pistachio nuts, and the first strawberries... From a small jewellery shop we purchase a pair of earrings decorated with Ohrid pearls… On the terrace of the luxurious Gorica Hotel, situated overlooking the lake, we drink cool wine and watch the sunset.  It slowly sinks on the Albanian side of the lake.  The backdrop to all this are Pine and Cypress trees… For dinner, Ohrid trout – pastramka in Macedonian - is served.  It is pinkish in colour and compliments the fresh pepper and tomato salad…. And warm bread and thick garlic sauce…  We drink another glass of wine…. And another glass of rakija, wonderful “Antika” this time…

      Before going to sleep, I read a couple of pages from Rymkiewicz: If you my Lord would like to continue cooperation, taking any objects from this place, I will continually be asking you for help.  But do not expect my gratitude for this.  If we cannot expect anything good from you then you should not expect anything good from us either. I am falling in to an uneasy sleep on Via Egnatia… Hey, St. Paul – are you here? Did I cry out this question when I was sleeping?

Translation from Polish: Adam Rychlik

Review of the translation: Ian Luck

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