Evia


Evia is the second-largest island in Greece, after Crete. It's ignored by some tourists in favor of more remote vacation spots, perhaps because it's only eighty kilometers (fifty miles) from Athens. On a map, it tracks the mainland so closely in places that it barely appears to be an island. The main town is called Chalkida, and it spans a section of the mainland as well as the island. At the place where the island is the closest to the mainland, it's only 39.3 meters (129 feet) across. There has been one bridge or another since the fifth century BC. The present bridge was built in 1962. The current changes direction about half a dozen times each day.

This bridge in Chalkida doesn't look like much, but it was in the center of planning our voyage. Because of the strong currents and, to a lesser degree, the traffic across the town, the bridge opens only once a day, generally sometime around midnight. On the day we went through, the bridge opened only at three-thirty in the morning. We waited up, listening to the VHF radio in anticipation of the opening announcement, and were anchored on the other side by four AM.

	We aren't the only ones who have thought about this part of the Evia channel between the island and the mainland. For millennia, scientists have studied the six- or seven-knot currents under the bridge. (Most boats like ours only travel about six or seven knots under power, so that's a fast current, especially when it's against you.) The current occurs because the width of the channel at the bridge is so narrow compared to the large bays on both sides of the constriction. Any water traveling one direction or the other speeds up to go through, and it slows down again when it has more room to spread out on either side. This is Aristotle, who became so frustrated trying to figure out the currents that he just jumped into the water. Since the Mediterranean doesn't really have tides, he wasn't prepared to see the churning, rushing waters and couldn't figure out what was causing them. Apparently he died trying to resolve it, in Chalkida, in 322 BC.

Chalkida's old neighborhood is called the Kastro, and it's filled with old Venetian and Ottoman houses. Historically, it's been the home of the minorities. There's a mosque from the time of the Turkish conquest in the fifteenth century, and a nineteenth-century synagogue that serves the oldest Jewish community in Greece. The church at right is called Agia Paraskevi, a thirteenth-century basilica built upon an early Byzantine church. The building was modified to meet the requirements of whoever was in leadership at the time, including the Ottomans and the Venetians. The Ottomans, whose religion objected to painted images, plastered over frescoes on the stone walls, but some icon miniatures and paintings have survived the structure's various uses.

	While we visited, Chalkida hosted its first International Folk Festival, with music and dancing from a variety of nearby cultures. Here is an example of Greek folk dancing. This was followed by dances from Turkey, Italy, and Romania on one of the nights we attended. A Romanian woman played a huge instrument, a horn about fifteen feet long that looked like a brown tusk that had been straightened out. It was hard to hear when she faced a different direction, but loud and thundering. Even from a distance, it was obvious that this instrument was difficult to play, and her face turned bright red with the strain. Romanians sitting by us watching the performance told us that the instrument was for use in the mountains, where the booming sound would echo.