Joanna Lumley's Greek Odyssey (2011) s01e03 Episode Script
Episode 3
I'm on a journey around the fabulously diverse country of Greece.
It will take me from her historic cities .
.
to her most remote outposts.
I'll be meeting Greeks from all walks of life and learning about their traditions and the way they live.
You think that's a jumper and this one isn't.
But it is.
Greece is also the birthplace of European history.
This is where western civilisation began.
Drama, democracy, language, science, medicine.
This country has given us so much and it's influenced the fabric of our everyday life.
In this programme I'm going to explore some of the 1,400 Greek islands.
Each has its own story to tell with a fascinating history spanning thousands of years.
It's always very strange to know where you are is exactly where people from Biblical times or history books or legends were.
Here.
It was here.
Along the way I'll be taking my research seriously.
Wonderful.
(SPEAKS GREEK) I shall ignore health and safety at my peril.
They don't suddenly just go, "blip", like that, do they? Sometimes.
Oh, well And we'll meet a Greek shipping magnate in a journey to find out how one of the world's greatest maritime nations has influenced so much of what we take for granted today.
The island of Spetses is half a day by sea from Athens.
One of Greece's famous shipping magnates has flown us at his expense to his luxury yacht so that I may talk to him about what it is to be a Greek islander and seafarer.
When you come to Greece and you're told you're gonna meet a Greek shipping magnate, you kind of hope that the boat will look like this.
(BLOWS) Fabulous.
Welcome.
Joanna Lumley, Captain Sarcos.
Captain Sarcos, how lovely to meet you.
Lovely to have you on board.
Captain Sarcos is a self-made man with the sea in his blood.
(HOOTER BLASTS) His family started as maritime traders and over the centuries they've conquered the world's shipping routes.
Despite Greece's economic woes, he still finds time to be on board his beautifully built ketch, the Christianne B which he bought from the Bulgari family.
The success of Captain Sarcos's family and others like him was born from necessity.
Centuries ago, island life was poor and it was difficult to eke out a living so they took to the sea to seek their fortunes.
So the sea is what they became masters at.
They ruled the sea, they ruled the ancient sea and then, with the great Greek shipping magnates, they ruled the modern seas as well.
Captain Sarcos's forefathers would be green with envy over the technology available to seafarers today.
Once, many sailors would be required to set the sails.
Now it all happens at the push of a button.
I had no idea that you could set a sail by pressing just a lever and that beautiful sail unrolls.
As a piano player has his keyboard, this is my keyboard.
It's fantastic.
Is that a Union Jack we're flying? Pardon me? What is this red flag? It's the English flag.
The English seaman's flag.
Why have we got the English flag up? Because we have you on board.
English guests.
Is that true? Yes.
Well, that's fantastic.
Can't do the Poros Canal.
Well, the way you're going, we won't be surprised.
The Poros Canal is a narrow stretch of water which passes the tiny island of Poros.
Which, coincidentally, is where my affection for Greece began 40 years ago.
I was showing a flat in London and we decided to save our money and come to Greece.
This was 1966.
And I'd been told to go to an island which I thought was Poros so we bought our tickets and we came.
We were brought by a ferry to this enchanting little town and we found two rooms in villager's houses and stayed there.
And it was only later, actually during the trip, when somebody said, "Why did you come to Poros?" I said, "I think that's where we were told to go.
Poros and Naxos.
" And they said, "Not Poros, it's Paros and Naxos, a bigger island much further out.
And you came to Poros?" But by that time we'd fallen in love.
We had the best holiday you can imagine.
And that is where my love affair with Greece started.
It was just enchanting.
Over the centuries, Greece's islands have attracted the attention of many invading forces.
perhaps the most famous of these is the Ottoman Empire.
Between the 15th and 19th centuries, the Ottomans from Turkey dominated the seafaring nations of the Mediterranean, using the Greek islands as strategic bases for their ships.
They were bitterly resented by the Greeks whose own empire, 2,000 years before, had stretched from Athens to India.
By the early 1800s, the people of Greece were on the verge of a revolution.
One of the key revolutionaries was a woman called Bouboulina, who, today, is recognised as a national heroine.
Her home has been preserved and is looked after by Philip Demertzis-Bouboulis, a descendant of Bouboulina.
Yes, this is the big living room of Bouboulina's house.
She was born inside a prison in Constantinople.
She grew up here on Spetses.
She married twice.
Both her husbands dies at sea with sea battles with pirates.
Did they have their own ships? Their own ships, yes.
They used to take her with the ships, something unheard in those days, for a woman to sail.
Then she inherited a very large fortune which she spent in the first three years of the Greek War of Independence.
She gave all her fortune for our freedom.
In 1820, Bouboulina used the wealth she'd inherited from her two husbands and built a small navy of eight ships to blockade ports against the ruling Ottomans.
A year later she was raising the Greek flag, having helped to liberate Nafplion, the city which would become the new Greek capital.
This is a very famous painting here in Greece.
It is the original and it shows Bouboulina attacking the castles of Nafplion.
Look at the way the painter has the men inside the boat.
Cowering in fear.
They are scared in comparison to the way he has made Bouboulina, standing up, fearless.
She is the only woman in world naval history that has the title of an admiral.
An admiral? An honorary title given to her after her death.
That must be a first in the whole world.
In the whole world.
As she liberated islands and ports from the Ottomans, she risked her life to save others, particularly the women from the ruling Pasha's harem.
However, Bouboulina's last days were not to end at sea.
She met a very unfortunate end.
She was killed here on Spetses in a family argument, believe it or not.
After all that? After all that.
It was a very Very tragic.
Very tragic and inglorious end for this woman that she did so much for her country.
Bouboulina may have had an inglorious end but, like our Boudicca, she's one of Europe's greatest heroines.
Tomorrow I'm travelling to Crete, Greece's largest island, whose history has been shaped by tyranny and warfare.
Homo wrote in his epic poem, The Odyssey, "There is a land called Crete in the midst of the wine-dark sea.
" 'A fair, rich land.
" After such sentiment, who could resist the journey to Greece's far-flung outpost? Far behind me is mainland Greece and Athens.
Far in front of me is Libya.
This island we're coming into is Crete, the largest of all the Greek islands.
This is it's capital, Heraklion.
It was incredibly important both to the ancient Greeks and the Minoans and all the people before that because of its position, bang in the middle of the ocean.
Everybody who traded had to come past.
It's fabulously beautiful.
It's already got a feeling, not quite of Greece, halfway between Greece and Africa.
Halfway to the beginning of the middle of the Earth.
And why not, because it's the birthplace of Zeus.
The God of Gods.
Crete's position between Africa and Europe means that whoever controls the island, commands the Mediterranean.
Never was this more significant than in the Second World War.
In 1941, Hitler, realising the importance of Crete's position, ordered its invasion.
It was the first airborne assault in military history and the first time in the war that the Nazis encountered mass resistance from the local population.
Some of the fighting took place near Mount Psiloritis, Zeus's birthplace.
In its shadow lies a village called Anogia.
Elani Fanariotou, my translator, has brought me to this small town which was at the centre of the Cretan resistance during the German occupation.
Many of the townspeople here lost their lives as a result.
During the occupation, Nicos Fassoulas, a boot maker in the village, narrowly escaped execution by the Nazis.
(SPEAKS GREEK) Nicolas.
Ah, Nicolas.
Can I sit here? How long has he been a cobbler? So, he was making shoes during the war? Can he tell me about that time? Mr Fassoulas was also an eyewitness to one of the most daring exploits of the Second World War, when two British agents, William Stanley Moss and Patrick Leigh Fermor, assisted by the Greek Resistance, kidnapped the German commander of Crete, General Kreipe.
Disguised as Germans, they passed through 22 checkpoints before climbing to the village of Anogia and spiriting him away to the mountains.
It was a huge propaganda coup for the Allies and later became the basis for the movie, Ill Met By Moonlight.
Did he see General Kreipe pass through? You saw it.
(TRANSLATOR) I saw him.
The Germans pursued them for 18 days.
But they were unable to stop the British taking the commander prisoner and transporting him to Cairo.
In reprisal, it was ordered that every male in Anogia should be executed and that the town itself should be destroyed.
He must have seen the terrible reprisals on this village.
I read that it was razed to the ground.
Did you lose friends? Personal, close friends from this village, during the reprisals? Look at this.
"Order by the German general Commander of the garrison of Crete.
" "Because the town of Anogia is the centre of the English intelligence on Crete and because it was through Anogia that the kidnappers, with General von Kreipe passed using Anogia as a transit camp, we order its complete destruction and the execution of every male person of Anogia who would happen to be within the village and around it within a distance of one kilometer.
" So, that was when .
.
this little village, this tiny town, was completely razed to the ground.
Most of Anogia's 4,000 inhabitants sought safety in the mountains while the Nazis took three weeks to destroy their town.
Patrick Leigh Fermor, one of the two British agents who kidnapped General von Kreipe became a household name.
His daring exploits are still told today.
There's a great story of General von Kreipe watching the dawn one morning, making a great quote and I don't know if it was in Greek, ancient Greek or ancient Latin, and Patrick Leigh Fermor completed the quote and they looked at each other and realised, without a war, they were people with exactly the same kind of background.
Vital to the operation to kidnap the General was the Crete Resistance.
When they weren't fighting the Germans, they lay low in the mountains, living with the shepherds.
The shepherd's descendants still tend their flocks as they would have done during the war.
(GREEK GREETINGS) One of the shepherds, Manolis, is taking me to the very same pastures.
We're going up in this, it's a 4x4.
The track gets very tough from here on.
It's easy to see how the Resistance fighters could have melted away into this landscape.
(BARKING) Thank you.
(INTRODUCTIONS) This way of life hasn't changed much for centuries.
Cretan Resistance fighters would have had to live much like these shepherds to today on a basic diet of meat and cheese.
Can I feel it? Yes, yes.
It feels, at the moment, like milk.
But, presumably, with this heat underneath it, it's going to thicken up like custard.
I see.
Woman's task.
Men sitting watching meat, women stirring.
I see.
Special sheep-milking trousers going on here.
When the fighters weren't disrupting the Germans, they'd have chipped in with the work in the fields.
I'll watch you first, I think.
Dmitri, you show me, you show me.
You show me once and you show me once, then I'll have a go.
Will you forgive me for not having a go? If it was one sheep, a very tame sheep, and it was very calm, I could have a go at it and get it badly wrong cos it's quite a skill.
But with a hairy avalanche waiting you can sense there's quite an expectation that it's gonna be done and done properly and I'd mess it up.
Know what I mean? Oh, a lovely jump.
You can't tell which ones are gonna jump and which ones aren't.
You think that's a jumper, this one isn't, but it is.
Fantastic.
East along the coast from Heraklion there is a tiny fishing village which sits opposite the island of Spinalonga.
In the past, locals used the heavy fortress to protect themselves from pirates.
More recently, in the first half of the last century, Spinalonga was one of the last leper colonies in Europe.
Eurus, a local boatman, has kindly agreed to take me to the island.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Though leprosy has been virtually eradicated in Europe, hundreds of thousands of new cases still occur each year in the developing world.
That was the hospital.
This one? Yes, the big one was a hospital.
It was like a real town.
The people had their private houses.
You can see the small buildings.
They had a cafe, they had a normal life.
The only difference was it was like a prison.
If someone was inside, he was not allowed to go out.
The doctors and nurses, they lived here or they came across? Yes, yes, they was here.
Lived with the sick people, together.
I don't know much about leprosy, do you catch it? How do you get it? The truth is, nobody knows yet how you can get leprosy.
They found the medicine, everybody's OK, but they can't find how How it started? Yes.
In the 1940s an effective treatment for leprosy was discovered and Spinalonga was finally abandoned in 1957.
Just over here is the main gate.
The people from here, when they past this gate, was only lepers.
Nobody else except the lepers.
It must have been frightening to come here as a leper and make your entrance through Yes, the first feeling when you come on this island - Big, iron gates.
In 1904, 251 patients were settled on the island.
And during its 50 years as a leper colony, more than 1,000 people passed through its gates.
Once on the island the patients received food, water and social security as well as medical treatment.
Eurus's great grandmother was a nurse here.
The way to the hospital.
And here's the hospital.
The doctors, the nurses, all these people who was here, every day, they care.
The people, life was really hard.
I know stories from my grandmother.
It was difficult for these people.
People thought it was a disease you could catch.
If you want to go in, maybe we can do it.
It says, "No entry.
" OK.
You want to try? Yeah, I do.
Big windows.
High ceilings.
Yes.
Windows with bars on them.
Look, this must have been some sort of sick bay with such high windows with the old shutters.
You know, they have so big windows and so high because the air have to pass because the smell, it was really bad.
It smelt? Yes, the people, the sick people had the very, very bad smell.
Imagine here, all sick people with, in the beds, to see the village and all the area outside.
They not have the chance to go from here.
And if they were in this hospital, they knew they were gonna die.
Yes.
Just as Scotland produces the finest whisky in the world, the area to the east of Spinalonga reportedly produces the finest raki on the island of Crete.
The favourite drink in Greece is raki.
They drink ouzo and Metaxa brandy, but raki is what everybody drinks.
It's a sort of local moonshine, local hooch.
I imagine it differs from area to area.
I thought it might be made, like all white spirits, from, I don't know, potatoes or celery choppings.
But it's not, it's made from grape skins.
I love it, I think it's delicious.
You don't drink lots of it, you just have small amounts.
but today I'm going to a little village called Siteia and I'm gonna meet somebody who'll show me how he makes it.
Apparently, each family makes its own.
I never really thought of that.
Stelios Petrakis has the biggest raki-making still allowed for personal consumption in the region.
Thank you.
Smells beautiful.
Wonderful.
It's wonderful.
I can't think how to say, "Wonderful.
" (TRANSLATES) The grapes are mulched down in water then heated over an open fire.
Steam rises through the teapot-shaped kazani and then cooled in a tank of cold water.
As it cools, it turns back into liquid.
And the liquid is pure alcohol and the first which comes from the woody stem of the grape is lethal, it's 98 percent proof.
The old women here use it for medical purposes.
They use it for cleaning, back rubs, alcohol rubs.
You've heard of this.
But the second is this unbelievably pure, clean, clean liquid.
You don't get hangovers from this because it's completely pure.
Once the first woody alcohol is taken off, you've just got this extraordinarily clean pure stuff.
It just takes two hours to make this dancing mixture.
It's unbelievable and quite a large quantity of it, too.
I'll just taste it again to make sure, you know It tastes better with every sip.
You become less articulate but more appreciative with every sip.
Several times a year, family and friends get together for prolonged raki-making sessions.
Tastings are an excuse for a huge feast.
Lovely little olives.
Mmm! The cooking is overseen by Stelios's wife.
This is extraordinary.
It's a wonderful way of eating globe artichokes.
In the northern countries we tend to boil them entirely until the leaves become loose enough to drop off then you scrape the leaf, cut the choke out and just eat the heart.
Here they cut them and eat them raw.
It's just the same, you eat as much and sometimes you can scrape it with your teeth.
Then you eat these crunchy bits but these bits, which usually are cooked, .
.
they eat raw with lemon juice on.
It's wonderful.
We can try that at home.
The traditional music played in part on a Greek lyre, is accompanied by equally traditional Greek dancing.
Under the influence of the raki and against my better judgment, I'm persuaded by Stelios's friends to take part.
My idea of utter hell is being made to do dancing without any tuition.
And pretending that it's completely normal.
(SINGING IN GREEK) I've got a lunatic on my right who thinks he's leading the dance.
Far across the Aegean Sea is an island which played a significant part in the lives of the ancient Greeks.
Kos was a destination for the sick who wanted to be healed.
What began here thousands of years ago continues to play a significant part in our lives today.
For this is the birthplace of Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine.
He believed in clinical observation, logical analysis and the healing power of nature.
He believed in putting the patient at the centre of the diagnosis.
He believed in diet, a healthy environment and, above all, he managed to tell people that it wasn't their fault they were ill.
It wasn't a punishment from the gods, it was simply that the body was sick.
He managed to separate completely, religion and medicine for the first time ever.
To this day many doctors still take the Hippocratic oath before they practice medicine.
They say, Hippocrates, though mortal, is descended from the god of healing, Asclepius.
Manolis, a local historian, is taking me to the Asclepion, a sort of health spa and healing sanctuary.
Some scholars say that, in fact, Asclepius we the first real doctor.
He was human.
And after being so good and so perfect in medicine, after he died, they made him a God.
I see.
And they invented the myth.
That's very rare, to be made a god.
Yes, it's very rare.
And Hippocrates is a descendant from Asclepius, he's the eighteenth descendant of the god himself, of Asclepius.
Medicine running in the family? Yes, that was the way.
There were hundreds of Asclepions in ancient Greece.
But now, looking at these abandoned ruins, it's quite difficult to imagine them buzzing with life.
They should be more than one terraces.
In most cases there'd be three.
Is this the first terrace here? Yes, this was devoted to the body.
The second one would be devoted to the soul.
And the third one, to the spirit.
Body, soul, spirit.
Here we would have the rooms for the patients, all surrounding the first terrace.
So, like a great, sort of, hospital laid out? Yes.
Exactly.
Exactly.
They've chosen the most beautiful position.
It was a prerequisite to have a unique location.
And a prerequisite to have water? Yes.
Exactly.
Very interesting statue at the top.
It looks like Pan.
Exactly.
Small god of the woods.
Half goat, half human.
He's playing a pipe.
The pan pipe.
The pan pipe.
We have the Green Man in England who's very like Pan.
He lived in the woods.
He had no morals as we have them.
Everything was fine.
All right.
The animals were good, all this was good.
You take that, it's yours, I'll have it.
I love you, I leave you.
He had no morals.
Like the 70s? (BOTH LAUGH) Something like the 70s, with pan pipes and letting the hair go.
Having fun.
Celebrating.
Above the hospital stood the temples so that patients could worship their gods and show their gratitude.
People came here with a sense of absolute purpose.
They came because they wanted to get well but they had the faith already, they knew their god was here.
Yes.
They would bring what to offer? They would expect you to bring something.
For example, an animal.
If you had no money, you could always find some nuts.
Some milk.
In most cases the animal would be killed, cut.
The intestines would be burned so the smoke would go up to the gods and they would be pleased that you're remembering them.
But the rest of the animal would be eating.
The ancient Greeks realised they couldn't be healed through worship alone so, through incredible foresight, they also built a medical school inside the grounds of the temple to teach the science of Hippocrates.
Here it would be like a podium, the teacher would be here teaching them the lesson.
Hippocrates was the first one to cry out and say, "There is never an illness without a natural cause.
" Before him they believed very much that the gods were giving the illnesses.
Hippocrates said, "I respect the gods but I'm sorry, there is never an illness without a natural cause.
" He went so far that until the 19th century his books were still studied worldwide.
Here we are at the third terrace.
Just like today, sadly, not all illnesses could be healed.
So, on the third terrace was a temple where those about to die could give their soul and spirit to the gods.
What did it look like? Like something you wouldn't want to miss and would make you feel so humble, so small.
That by giving your soul to the god, you were sure that you would be healed.
This was majestic.
Enormous.
Exactly.
Dominating the hillside.
Exactly.
Sunrise on Kos.
Manolis has arranged a trip to the neighbouring island of Nisyros which is home to an active volcano.
Kos and Nisyros are part of a chain of volcanic islands which stretches across the Aegean.
In Greek mythology, Poseidon is the tempestuous god of the sea who was seen to throw a huge rock at an escaping Titan.
As it crashed into the water that rock became the volcanic island of Nisyros.
And every time the volcano erupts, people believe it it the pinned-down Titan trying to escape.
The last eruption was in 1888.
Nisyros is a tiny island and one of its few vehicles is the school bus, which we commandeer for the day.
The volcano, with its five craters, covers almost half the surface area of the entire island.
Stefanos is the biggest of the five craters.
The smell, it's sort of sulphurous but it's got another smell on the back of it as well.
Yes, and one that is really unique.
He's alive, he's changing all the time.
Depending on the weather, depending on the wind.
It's never the same.
And the fumaroles, how close to them can we get? Not really close.
As close as we get, the crust is thinner.
The steam that comes out from the fumaroles is up to 100 Celsius.
Look at these fantastic colours.
The sour yellow and baked.
This must have been from rain then drying out? Exactly.
If you listen, you can hear it bubbling.
Yes.
(DEEP RUMBLING) This is not good to touch, is it? Not good to touch.
One of the nicknames is (INDISTINCT) (INDISTINCT) is Bum.
Exactly.
Bumless.
So, if you sit, it will burn.
(GASPS) It's acid.
I'm quite enchanted that in such a place of desolation and, sort of, absence of life, there are such stunning patterns.
You couldn't find an art designer to make you lovelier, more beautiful arrangements of how it dries.
It's like nature doesn't have to bother to be ugly or horrible.
Nature is an artist itself.
It's just beautiful.
They don't suddenly just go, "blip", like that, do they? Sometimes.
Oh, well Sometimes.
That's why you should never go I'm honestly not gonna do that.
I think I'll just not do that.
This feels as though we're on another planet here.
Some say it resembles the moon.
How the moon would be looking like.
That's why Moonraker was shot here.
Moonraker? yes.
The Bond film? Yes.
Roger Moore? Exactly.
Some shots of the moon were exactly where we are right now.
How extraordinary.
We're catching the ferry to Patmos.
We've got ten minutes.
I can't tell you how much we travel with.
I haven't got a ticket.
Over there.
I've got a ten.
Thank you very much.
It's rather hairy.
There's a sense that they stop, they're not concerned.
They just say, "We're stopping ten minutes.
" It goes up, gone.
The ferry from Kos to Patmos takes an hour and a half, stopping equally briefly at Kalymnos, Leros and Leipsoi.
Try to get your head round that this is all one country.
It's customary to travel by boat all the time.
because everywhere feels like little, different nations, almost.
They're all different little islands.
And they're all Greece.
It's wonderful.
This is Turkey, just there.
But in the old days it was ancient Greece.
Just down the coast is a place that used to be called Halicarnassus, now Bodrum.
You can take a ferry from Kos to Bodrum, takes 19-20 minutes.
Over there.
That's where the first man to write history in a way that made it a story that people could understand.
He wasn't always dead accurate but he was considered to be the very, very first great historian.
His name was Herodotus.
A magical man.
Fantastical.
I love people when they can't get all the facts, just make it up.
I think we do the same today, actually.
Patmos is dominated by an 11th century monastery, dedicated to St John the Divine, who was exiled to this island by the Romans in the first century AD.
It was while living here in isolation in a cave that he dictated the last book of the New Testament, Revelations, to his faithful assistant.
This is extraordinary.
This must have been the entrance to the cave.
This is the cleft in the rock through which he heard, apparently, the voice of God speaking.
Just through here.
Now we're inside the cave.
He would have looked out, down over the hills, to the sea.
He'd been exiled.
Maybe because he was a troublemaker or maybe ancient Rome had sent him away, but he stayed here two years in this cave.
The cave is dappled with these dints and he found a dint here and, apparently, this is where he lay and slept.
They've made a crown over that holy place.
Because he was quite an old man, when he got up he'd find a notch in the wall which he'd put his hand in and pull himself up through that.
Here we see John resting, receiving the wisdom.
Here, supported by angels, are the seven churches of Asia minor.
And the stories he was receiving in this period of intense meditation, were absolutely phenomenal.
I don't think it matters which religion you are, to read the book of Revelations is, in itself, a revelation.
So many of the words we know and so many of the things we say like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Fire and Brimstone, a bottomless pit, ruling with a rod of iron.
All these phrases come from the book of Revelations.
What an extraordinary place.
It's always very strange to know that where you are is exactly where people from Biblical times or history books or legends were.
Here.
It was here.
It's evening now and we're heading towards Athens.
It's the end of this extraordinary journey around these islands in Greece.
It has been eye-opening.
I don't think I ever realised how different every single island was.
Each one seems to have its own character, sometimes its own customs.
Its own particular pride in its own olives or wine or cheese making skills.
Or its own history.
But the thing that's impressed me most is how far-flung Greece is, through her 1,400 islands.
How do you make a country like that work? It's only recently that it has been Greece as we know it.
Before it was the Hellenic people, the Hellenes who spread all over these lands.
With their own particular customs between each other, all uniting against the countless empires which seemed to have trodden all over them.
And yet, at the end, they spring back again.
Absolutely amazing.
And still the Greeks are grounded, if that's not the wrong word, in the sea and I think that's what's made it so thrilling.
In the last episode of my odyssey I shall travel to the fiery heart of Greece.
Whoa, little boys! It's just strangely scary.
Climb halfway to heaven to visit the gods on Mount Olympus.
And see monasteries suspended in the air.
It will take me from her historic cities .
.
to her most remote outposts.
I'll be meeting Greeks from all walks of life and learning about their traditions and the way they live.
You think that's a jumper and this one isn't.
But it is.
Greece is also the birthplace of European history.
This is where western civilisation began.
Drama, democracy, language, science, medicine.
This country has given us so much and it's influenced the fabric of our everyday life.
In this programme I'm going to explore some of the 1,400 Greek islands.
Each has its own story to tell with a fascinating history spanning thousands of years.
It's always very strange to know where you are is exactly where people from Biblical times or history books or legends were.
Here.
It was here.
Along the way I'll be taking my research seriously.
Wonderful.
(SPEAKS GREEK) I shall ignore health and safety at my peril.
They don't suddenly just go, "blip", like that, do they? Sometimes.
Oh, well And we'll meet a Greek shipping magnate in a journey to find out how one of the world's greatest maritime nations has influenced so much of what we take for granted today.
The island of Spetses is half a day by sea from Athens.
One of Greece's famous shipping magnates has flown us at his expense to his luxury yacht so that I may talk to him about what it is to be a Greek islander and seafarer.
When you come to Greece and you're told you're gonna meet a Greek shipping magnate, you kind of hope that the boat will look like this.
(BLOWS) Fabulous.
Welcome.
Joanna Lumley, Captain Sarcos.
Captain Sarcos, how lovely to meet you.
Lovely to have you on board.
Captain Sarcos is a self-made man with the sea in his blood.
(HOOTER BLASTS) His family started as maritime traders and over the centuries they've conquered the world's shipping routes.
Despite Greece's economic woes, he still finds time to be on board his beautifully built ketch, the Christianne B which he bought from the Bulgari family.
The success of Captain Sarcos's family and others like him was born from necessity.
Centuries ago, island life was poor and it was difficult to eke out a living so they took to the sea to seek their fortunes.
So the sea is what they became masters at.
They ruled the sea, they ruled the ancient sea and then, with the great Greek shipping magnates, they ruled the modern seas as well.
Captain Sarcos's forefathers would be green with envy over the technology available to seafarers today.
Once, many sailors would be required to set the sails.
Now it all happens at the push of a button.
I had no idea that you could set a sail by pressing just a lever and that beautiful sail unrolls.
As a piano player has his keyboard, this is my keyboard.
It's fantastic.
Is that a Union Jack we're flying? Pardon me? What is this red flag? It's the English flag.
The English seaman's flag.
Why have we got the English flag up? Because we have you on board.
English guests.
Is that true? Yes.
Well, that's fantastic.
Can't do the Poros Canal.
Well, the way you're going, we won't be surprised.
The Poros Canal is a narrow stretch of water which passes the tiny island of Poros.
Which, coincidentally, is where my affection for Greece began 40 years ago.
I was showing a flat in London and we decided to save our money and come to Greece.
This was 1966.
And I'd been told to go to an island which I thought was Poros so we bought our tickets and we came.
We were brought by a ferry to this enchanting little town and we found two rooms in villager's houses and stayed there.
And it was only later, actually during the trip, when somebody said, "Why did you come to Poros?" I said, "I think that's where we were told to go.
Poros and Naxos.
" And they said, "Not Poros, it's Paros and Naxos, a bigger island much further out.
And you came to Poros?" But by that time we'd fallen in love.
We had the best holiday you can imagine.
And that is where my love affair with Greece started.
It was just enchanting.
Over the centuries, Greece's islands have attracted the attention of many invading forces.
perhaps the most famous of these is the Ottoman Empire.
Between the 15th and 19th centuries, the Ottomans from Turkey dominated the seafaring nations of the Mediterranean, using the Greek islands as strategic bases for their ships.
They were bitterly resented by the Greeks whose own empire, 2,000 years before, had stretched from Athens to India.
By the early 1800s, the people of Greece were on the verge of a revolution.
One of the key revolutionaries was a woman called Bouboulina, who, today, is recognised as a national heroine.
Her home has been preserved and is looked after by Philip Demertzis-Bouboulis, a descendant of Bouboulina.
Yes, this is the big living room of Bouboulina's house.
She was born inside a prison in Constantinople.
She grew up here on Spetses.
She married twice.
Both her husbands dies at sea with sea battles with pirates.
Did they have their own ships? Their own ships, yes.
They used to take her with the ships, something unheard in those days, for a woman to sail.
Then she inherited a very large fortune which she spent in the first three years of the Greek War of Independence.
She gave all her fortune for our freedom.
In 1820, Bouboulina used the wealth she'd inherited from her two husbands and built a small navy of eight ships to blockade ports against the ruling Ottomans.
A year later she was raising the Greek flag, having helped to liberate Nafplion, the city which would become the new Greek capital.
This is a very famous painting here in Greece.
It is the original and it shows Bouboulina attacking the castles of Nafplion.
Look at the way the painter has the men inside the boat.
Cowering in fear.
They are scared in comparison to the way he has made Bouboulina, standing up, fearless.
She is the only woman in world naval history that has the title of an admiral.
An admiral? An honorary title given to her after her death.
That must be a first in the whole world.
In the whole world.
As she liberated islands and ports from the Ottomans, she risked her life to save others, particularly the women from the ruling Pasha's harem.
However, Bouboulina's last days were not to end at sea.
She met a very unfortunate end.
She was killed here on Spetses in a family argument, believe it or not.
After all that? After all that.
It was a very Very tragic.
Very tragic and inglorious end for this woman that she did so much for her country.
Bouboulina may have had an inglorious end but, like our Boudicca, she's one of Europe's greatest heroines.
Tomorrow I'm travelling to Crete, Greece's largest island, whose history has been shaped by tyranny and warfare.
Homo wrote in his epic poem, The Odyssey, "There is a land called Crete in the midst of the wine-dark sea.
" 'A fair, rich land.
" After such sentiment, who could resist the journey to Greece's far-flung outpost? Far behind me is mainland Greece and Athens.
Far in front of me is Libya.
This island we're coming into is Crete, the largest of all the Greek islands.
This is it's capital, Heraklion.
It was incredibly important both to the ancient Greeks and the Minoans and all the people before that because of its position, bang in the middle of the ocean.
Everybody who traded had to come past.
It's fabulously beautiful.
It's already got a feeling, not quite of Greece, halfway between Greece and Africa.
Halfway to the beginning of the middle of the Earth.
And why not, because it's the birthplace of Zeus.
The God of Gods.
Crete's position between Africa and Europe means that whoever controls the island, commands the Mediterranean.
Never was this more significant than in the Second World War.
In 1941, Hitler, realising the importance of Crete's position, ordered its invasion.
It was the first airborne assault in military history and the first time in the war that the Nazis encountered mass resistance from the local population.
Some of the fighting took place near Mount Psiloritis, Zeus's birthplace.
In its shadow lies a village called Anogia.
Elani Fanariotou, my translator, has brought me to this small town which was at the centre of the Cretan resistance during the German occupation.
Many of the townspeople here lost their lives as a result.
During the occupation, Nicos Fassoulas, a boot maker in the village, narrowly escaped execution by the Nazis.
(SPEAKS GREEK) Nicolas.
Ah, Nicolas.
Can I sit here? How long has he been a cobbler? So, he was making shoes during the war? Can he tell me about that time? Mr Fassoulas was also an eyewitness to one of the most daring exploits of the Second World War, when two British agents, William Stanley Moss and Patrick Leigh Fermor, assisted by the Greek Resistance, kidnapped the German commander of Crete, General Kreipe.
Disguised as Germans, they passed through 22 checkpoints before climbing to the village of Anogia and spiriting him away to the mountains.
It was a huge propaganda coup for the Allies and later became the basis for the movie, Ill Met By Moonlight.
Did he see General Kreipe pass through? You saw it.
(TRANSLATOR) I saw him.
The Germans pursued them for 18 days.
But they were unable to stop the British taking the commander prisoner and transporting him to Cairo.
In reprisal, it was ordered that every male in Anogia should be executed and that the town itself should be destroyed.
He must have seen the terrible reprisals on this village.
I read that it was razed to the ground.
Did you lose friends? Personal, close friends from this village, during the reprisals? Look at this.
"Order by the German general Commander of the garrison of Crete.
" "Because the town of Anogia is the centre of the English intelligence on Crete and because it was through Anogia that the kidnappers, with General von Kreipe passed using Anogia as a transit camp, we order its complete destruction and the execution of every male person of Anogia who would happen to be within the village and around it within a distance of one kilometer.
" So, that was when .
.
this little village, this tiny town, was completely razed to the ground.
Most of Anogia's 4,000 inhabitants sought safety in the mountains while the Nazis took three weeks to destroy their town.
Patrick Leigh Fermor, one of the two British agents who kidnapped General von Kreipe became a household name.
His daring exploits are still told today.
There's a great story of General von Kreipe watching the dawn one morning, making a great quote and I don't know if it was in Greek, ancient Greek or ancient Latin, and Patrick Leigh Fermor completed the quote and they looked at each other and realised, without a war, they were people with exactly the same kind of background.
Vital to the operation to kidnap the General was the Crete Resistance.
When they weren't fighting the Germans, they lay low in the mountains, living with the shepherds.
The shepherd's descendants still tend their flocks as they would have done during the war.
(GREEK GREETINGS) One of the shepherds, Manolis, is taking me to the very same pastures.
We're going up in this, it's a 4x4.
The track gets very tough from here on.
It's easy to see how the Resistance fighters could have melted away into this landscape.
(BARKING) Thank you.
(INTRODUCTIONS) This way of life hasn't changed much for centuries.
Cretan Resistance fighters would have had to live much like these shepherds to today on a basic diet of meat and cheese.
Can I feel it? Yes, yes.
It feels, at the moment, like milk.
But, presumably, with this heat underneath it, it's going to thicken up like custard.
I see.
Woman's task.
Men sitting watching meat, women stirring.
I see.
Special sheep-milking trousers going on here.
When the fighters weren't disrupting the Germans, they'd have chipped in with the work in the fields.
I'll watch you first, I think.
Dmitri, you show me, you show me.
You show me once and you show me once, then I'll have a go.
Will you forgive me for not having a go? If it was one sheep, a very tame sheep, and it was very calm, I could have a go at it and get it badly wrong cos it's quite a skill.
But with a hairy avalanche waiting you can sense there's quite an expectation that it's gonna be done and done properly and I'd mess it up.
Know what I mean? Oh, a lovely jump.
You can't tell which ones are gonna jump and which ones aren't.
You think that's a jumper, this one isn't, but it is.
Fantastic.
East along the coast from Heraklion there is a tiny fishing village which sits opposite the island of Spinalonga.
In the past, locals used the heavy fortress to protect themselves from pirates.
More recently, in the first half of the last century, Spinalonga was one of the last leper colonies in Europe.
Eurus, a local boatman, has kindly agreed to take me to the island.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Though leprosy has been virtually eradicated in Europe, hundreds of thousands of new cases still occur each year in the developing world.
That was the hospital.
This one? Yes, the big one was a hospital.
It was like a real town.
The people had their private houses.
You can see the small buildings.
They had a cafe, they had a normal life.
The only difference was it was like a prison.
If someone was inside, he was not allowed to go out.
The doctors and nurses, they lived here or they came across? Yes, yes, they was here.
Lived with the sick people, together.
I don't know much about leprosy, do you catch it? How do you get it? The truth is, nobody knows yet how you can get leprosy.
They found the medicine, everybody's OK, but they can't find how How it started? Yes.
In the 1940s an effective treatment for leprosy was discovered and Spinalonga was finally abandoned in 1957.
Just over here is the main gate.
The people from here, when they past this gate, was only lepers.
Nobody else except the lepers.
It must have been frightening to come here as a leper and make your entrance through Yes, the first feeling when you come on this island - Big, iron gates.
In 1904, 251 patients were settled on the island.
And during its 50 years as a leper colony, more than 1,000 people passed through its gates.
Once on the island the patients received food, water and social security as well as medical treatment.
Eurus's great grandmother was a nurse here.
The way to the hospital.
And here's the hospital.
The doctors, the nurses, all these people who was here, every day, they care.
The people, life was really hard.
I know stories from my grandmother.
It was difficult for these people.
People thought it was a disease you could catch.
If you want to go in, maybe we can do it.
It says, "No entry.
" OK.
You want to try? Yeah, I do.
Big windows.
High ceilings.
Yes.
Windows with bars on them.
Look, this must have been some sort of sick bay with such high windows with the old shutters.
You know, they have so big windows and so high because the air have to pass because the smell, it was really bad.
It smelt? Yes, the people, the sick people had the very, very bad smell.
Imagine here, all sick people with, in the beds, to see the village and all the area outside.
They not have the chance to go from here.
And if they were in this hospital, they knew they were gonna die.
Yes.
Just as Scotland produces the finest whisky in the world, the area to the east of Spinalonga reportedly produces the finest raki on the island of Crete.
The favourite drink in Greece is raki.
They drink ouzo and Metaxa brandy, but raki is what everybody drinks.
It's a sort of local moonshine, local hooch.
I imagine it differs from area to area.
I thought it might be made, like all white spirits, from, I don't know, potatoes or celery choppings.
But it's not, it's made from grape skins.
I love it, I think it's delicious.
You don't drink lots of it, you just have small amounts.
but today I'm going to a little village called Siteia and I'm gonna meet somebody who'll show me how he makes it.
Apparently, each family makes its own.
I never really thought of that.
Stelios Petrakis has the biggest raki-making still allowed for personal consumption in the region.
Thank you.
Smells beautiful.
Wonderful.
It's wonderful.
I can't think how to say, "Wonderful.
" (TRANSLATES) The grapes are mulched down in water then heated over an open fire.
Steam rises through the teapot-shaped kazani and then cooled in a tank of cold water.
As it cools, it turns back into liquid.
And the liquid is pure alcohol and the first which comes from the woody stem of the grape is lethal, it's 98 percent proof.
The old women here use it for medical purposes.
They use it for cleaning, back rubs, alcohol rubs.
You've heard of this.
But the second is this unbelievably pure, clean, clean liquid.
You don't get hangovers from this because it's completely pure.
Once the first woody alcohol is taken off, you've just got this extraordinarily clean pure stuff.
It just takes two hours to make this dancing mixture.
It's unbelievable and quite a large quantity of it, too.
I'll just taste it again to make sure, you know It tastes better with every sip.
You become less articulate but more appreciative with every sip.
Several times a year, family and friends get together for prolonged raki-making sessions.
Tastings are an excuse for a huge feast.
Lovely little olives.
Mmm! The cooking is overseen by Stelios's wife.
This is extraordinary.
It's a wonderful way of eating globe artichokes.
In the northern countries we tend to boil them entirely until the leaves become loose enough to drop off then you scrape the leaf, cut the choke out and just eat the heart.
Here they cut them and eat them raw.
It's just the same, you eat as much and sometimes you can scrape it with your teeth.
Then you eat these crunchy bits but these bits, which usually are cooked, .
.
they eat raw with lemon juice on.
It's wonderful.
We can try that at home.
The traditional music played in part on a Greek lyre, is accompanied by equally traditional Greek dancing.
Under the influence of the raki and against my better judgment, I'm persuaded by Stelios's friends to take part.
My idea of utter hell is being made to do dancing without any tuition.
And pretending that it's completely normal.
(SINGING IN GREEK) I've got a lunatic on my right who thinks he's leading the dance.
Far across the Aegean Sea is an island which played a significant part in the lives of the ancient Greeks.
Kos was a destination for the sick who wanted to be healed.
What began here thousands of years ago continues to play a significant part in our lives today.
For this is the birthplace of Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine.
He believed in clinical observation, logical analysis and the healing power of nature.
He believed in putting the patient at the centre of the diagnosis.
He believed in diet, a healthy environment and, above all, he managed to tell people that it wasn't their fault they were ill.
It wasn't a punishment from the gods, it was simply that the body was sick.
He managed to separate completely, religion and medicine for the first time ever.
To this day many doctors still take the Hippocratic oath before they practice medicine.
They say, Hippocrates, though mortal, is descended from the god of healing, Asclepius.
Manolis, a local historian, is taking me to the Asclepion, a sort of health spa and healing sanctuary.
Some scholars say that, in fact, Asclepius we the first real doctor.
He was human.
And after being so good and so perfect in medicine, after he died, they made him a God.
I see.
And they invented the myth.
That's very rare, to be made a god.
Yes, it's very rare.
And Hippocrates is a descendant from Asclepius, he's the eighteenth descendant of the god himself, of Asclepius.
Medicine running in the family? Yes, that was the way.
There were hundreds of Asclepions in ancient Greece.
But now, looking at these abandoned ruins, it's quite difficult to imagine them buzzing with life.
They should be more than one terraces.
In most cases there'd be three.
Is this the first terrace here? Yes, this was devoted to the body.
The second one would be devoted to the soul.
And the third one, to the spirit.
Body, soul, spirit.
Here we would have the rooms for the patients, all surrounding the first terrace.
So, like a great, sort of, hospital laid out? Yes.
Exactly.
Exactly.
They've chosen the most beautiful position.
It was a prerequisite to have a unique location.
And a prerequisite to have water? Yes.
Exactly.
Very interesting statue at the top.
It looks like Pan.
Exactly.
Small god of the woods.
Half goat, half human.
He's playing a pipe.
The pan pipe.
The pan pipe.
We have the Green Man in England who's very like Pan.
He lived in the woods.
He had no morals as we have them.
Everything was fine.
All right.
The animals were good, all this was good.
You take that, it's yours, I'll have it.
I love you, I leave you.
He had no morals.
Like the 70s? (BOTH LAUGH) Something like the 70s, with pan pipes and letting the hair go.
Having fun.
Celebrating.
Above the hospital stood the temples so that patients could worship their gods and show their gratitude.
People came here with a sense of absolute purpose.
They came because they wanted to get well but they had the faith already, they knew their god was here.
Yes.
They would bring what to offer? They would expect you to bring something.
For example, an animal.
If you had no money, you could always find some nuts.
Some milk.
In most cases the animal would be killed, cut.
The intestines would be burned so the smoke would go up to the gods and they would be pleased that you're remembering them.
But the rest of the animal would be eating.
The ancient Greeks realised they couldn't be healed through worship alone so, through incredible foresight, they also built a medical school inside the grounds of the temple to teach the science of Hippocrates.
Here it would be like a podium, the teacher would be here teaching them the lesson.
Hippocrates was the first one to cry out and say, "There is never an illness without a natural cause.
" Before him they believed very much that the gods were giving the illnesses.
Hippocrates said, "I respect the gods but I'm sorry, there is never an illness without a natural cause.
" He went so far that until the 19th century his books were still studied worldwide.
Here we are at the third terrace.
Just like today, sadly, not all illnesses could be healed.
So, on the third terrace was a temple where those about to die could give their soul and spirit to the gods.
What did it look like? Like something you wouldn't want to miss and would make you feel so humble, so small.
That by giving your soul to the god, you were sure that you would be healed.
This was majestic.
Enormous.
Exactly.
Dominating the hillside.
Exactly.
Sunrise on Kos.
Manolis has arranged a trip to the neighbouring island of Nisyros which is home to an active volcano.
Kos and Nisyros are part of a chain of volcanic islands which stretches across the Aegean.
In Greek mythology, Poseidon is the tempestuous god of the sea who was seen to throw a huge rock at an escaping Titan.
As it crashed into the water that rock became the volcanic island of Nisyros.
And every time the volcano erupts, people believe it it the pinned-down Titan trying to escape.
The last eruption was in 1888.
Nisyros is a tiny island and one of its few vehicles is the school bus, which we commandeer for the day.
The volcano, with its five craters, covers almost half the surface area of the entire island.
Stefanos is the biggest of the five craters.
The smell, it's sort of sulphurous but it's got another smell on the back of it as well.
Yes, and one that is really unique.
He's alive, he's changing all the time.
Depending on the weather, depending on the wind.
It's never the same.
And the fumaroles, how close to them can we get? Not really close.
As close as we get, the crust is thinner.
The steam that comes out from the fumaroles is up to 100 Celsius.
Look at these fantastic colours.
The sour yellow and baked.
This must have been from rain then drying out? Exactly.
If you listen, you can hear it bubbling.
Yes.
(DEEP RUMBLING) This is not good to touch, is it? Not good to touch.
One of the nicknames is (INDISTINCT) (INDISTINCT) is Bum.
Exactly.
Bumless.
So, if you sit, it will burn.
(GASPS) It's acid.
I'm quite enchanted that in such a place of desolation and, sort of, absence of life, there are such stunning patterns.
You couldn't find an art designer to make you lovelier, more beautiful arrangements of how it dries.
It's like nature doesn't have to bother to be ugly or horrible.
Nature is an artist itself.
It's just beautiful.
They don't suddenly just go, "blip", like that, do they? Sometimes.
Oh, well Sometimes.
That's why you should never go I'm honestly not gonna do that.
I think I'll just not do that.
This feels as though we're on another planet here.
Some say it resembles the moon.
How the moon would be looking like.
That's why Moonraker was shot here.
Moonraker? yes.
The Bond film? Yes.
Roger Moore? Exactly.
Some shots of the moon were exactly where we are right now.
How extraordinary.
We're catching the ferry to Patmos.
We've got ten minutes.
I can't tell you how much we travel with.
I haven't got a ticket.
Over there.
I've got a ten.
Thank you very much.
It's rather hairy.
There's a sense that they stop, they're not concerned.
They just say, "We're stopping ten minutes.
" It goes up, gone.
The ferry from Kos to Patmos takes an hour and a half, stopping equally briefly at Kalymnos, Leros and Leipsoi.
Try to get your head round that this is all one country.
It's customary to travel by boat all the time.
because everywhere feels like little, different nations, almost.
They're all different little islands.
And they're all Greece.
It's wonderful.
This is Turkey, just there.
But in the old days it was ancient Greece.
Just down the coast is a place that used to be called Halicarnassus, now Bodrum.
You can take a ferry from Kos to Bodrum, takes 19-20 minutes.
Over there.
That's where the first man to write history in a way that made it a story that people could understand.
He wasn't always dead accurate but he was considered to be the very, very first great historian.
His name was Herodotus.
A magical man.
Fantastical.
I love people when they can't get all the facts, just make it up.
I think we do the same today, actually.
Patmos is dominated by an 11th century monastery, dedicated to St John the Divine, who was exiled to this island by the Romans in the first century AD.
It was while living here in isolation in a cave that he dictated the last book of the New Testament, Revelations, to his faithful assistant.
This is extraordinary.
This must have been the entrance to the cave.
This is the cleft in the rock through which he heard, apparently, the voice of God speaking.
Just through here.
Now we're inside the cave.
He would have looked out, down over the hills, to the sea.
He'd been exiled.
Maybe because he was a troublemaker or maybe ancient Rome had sent him away, but he stayed here two years in this cave.
The cave is dappled with these dints and he found a dint here and, apparently, this is where he lay and slept.
They've made a crown over that holy place.
Because he was quite an old man, when he got up he'd find a notch in the wall which he'd put his hand in and pull himself up through that.
Here we see John resting, receiving the wisdom.
Here, supported by angels, are the seven churches of Asia minor.
And the stories he was receiving in this period of intense meditation, were absolutely phenomenal.
I don't think it matters which religion you are, to read the book of Revelations is, in itself, a revelation.
So many of the words we know and so many of the things we say like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Fire and Brimstone, a bottomless pit, ruling with a rod of iron.
All these phrases come from the book of Revelations.
What an extraordinary place.
It's always very strange to know that where you are is exactly where people from Biblical times or history books or legends were.
Here.
It was here.
It's evening now and we're heading towards Athens.
It's the end of this extraordinary journey around these islands in Greece.
It has been eye-opening.
I don't think I ever realised how different every single island was.
Each one seems to have its own character, sometimes its own customs.
Its own particular pride in its own olives or wine or cheese making skills.
Or its own history.
But the thing that's impressed me most is how far-flung Greece is, through her 1,400 islands.
How do you make a country like that work? It's only recently that it has been Greece as we know it.
Before it was the Hellenic people, the Hellenes who spread all over these lands.
With their own particular customs between each other, all uniting against the countless empires which seemed to have trodden all over them.
And yet, at the end, they spring back again.
Absolutely amazing.
And still the Greeks are grounded, if that's not the wrong word, in the sea and I think that's what's made it so thrilling.
In the last episode of my odyssey I shall travel to the fiery heart of Greece.
Whoa, little boys! It's just strangely scary.
Climb halfway to heaven to visit the gods on Mount Olympus.
And see monasteries suspended in the air.