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Arriving in Greece by airplane or air.
Arriving in Greece by Air or Plane
I have often come to Athens by air, approaching it from every point of the compass, but the most dramatic route assuredly is from Rome. Now that planes fly so high, the bleak, bare mountains of southern Italy do not stand out in high relief, and so the impact of the sheer beauty of Greece is all the greater. Shortly after crossing the coast of Calabria, where the twin lagoons of Taranto are easily discernible, the white peaks of Albania and Epirus float like small clouds in a dazzlingly blue sky. When the outlines of these rugged moun tains grow clearer, their lower slopes reveal a subtle gradation of tints, ranging from grey to deep violet or mauve. Soon, the plane soars over the Ionian archipelago, and islands and places with enchanted names appear to rise like whales out of the sea, evoking the strange mysteries and romance of the past: Leucadia, where Sappho the poetess threw herself over the side of a cliff because of unrequited love, just to the south of the Bay of Actium, that witnessed the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra which brought such tragedy, The rocky island of Ithaca, once ruled by Ulysses, lies to the right, and to the left lies Missolonghi where Byron died use lessly and in misery. As we glide over the Gulf of Patxas, and its huge continuation the Gulf of Corinth, the tiers of brown, grey and violet mountains succeed each other on either side usually their peaks are flecked with snow in summer, in the winter and in the early spring their slopes gleam with a blinding and frosty whiteness. How chill and bare are these heights, whose harsh climate made the Greeks so tough and courageous that their hundreds would face thousands and conquer! And yet the blandness of the Attic plain bred artists, poets and philosophers, and men as brave as the austere Spartans with whom they fought. Looking northwards, the huge mass o Parnassus towers up above the sombre olive groves of Amphissa, and creates once more the illusion of journeying into a remote and poetic past. Corinth stood and still stands on the shore to the south-west, just as the canal that gashes the narrow isthmus can be seen, like a jet black stripe against the silvery grey soil These end less ranges of mountains and this narrow tongue of land that once divided the two seas on which the Hellenes sailed, help to explain the history of the Greeks and their character. On it stood a pillar of stone, carved on one side with the inscription: "Here is not the Peloponnese but Ionia,** And on the western face : "Here is the Peloponnese, but not Ionia" It was in a land thus split up by sea and mountains, that small communities could develop safely and freely into city states, that could repel the hosts of the Medes and Persians. The end came only when they fought against each other. Even when the plane is swiftly losing height, the Bay of Athens may seem as tenuous and as full of brilliance as a water colour by an artist of great genius. Islands are scattered heed lessly on a sea bounded to the south-west by the much indented coast of Argolis, a name that draws me like a magnet merely by its charm. To the north the wide arc of the Saronic Gulf curves gracefully round to the Cape of Sunion. On either side, hills of wondrous pattern are outlined against the sky harmoniously but without monotony. The airfield at Hellenikon is pleasantly situated within a few hundred yards of the sea, but the procedure of disem barking from the aircraft and waiting for the city-bound bus is just as tedious as anywhere else. The inevitable loud speaker blares incessantly, but here there is a feeling of being half-way East. The departing planes are going to Cairo, Baghdad or Istanbul on their next lap, those that arrive bring with them passengers from all parts of the Orient as well as from Western Europe. I may be old-fashioned, but I am still amazed at the swift transit from one country to another provided by aircraft, and then each plane is a microcosm of a nation and its way of life. Within a few minutes of reading The Times com fortably and consuming a very English tea brought by a still more British air-hostess, one is plunged suddenly into the busy surge of Greek life, and the cosmopolitan framework of the airport accentuates this Greek atmosphere, in this land of individualists.
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