Milan-Cortina: the Olympic flame defies the bad weather in the mountains of inland Greece
The torch tackles rain, landslides and rough hairpin bends, passing through symbolic places such as Kalavrita, Patras and Karpenisi, amidst traditions and millenary history
KARPENISIS - It was sunny in Olympia last Wednesday, disproving those catastrophic forecasts that predicted bad weather conditions and that had advised the organisers of the Milan-Cortina torch lighting ceremony to move the event inside the archaeological museum. But heavy rain and even a few landslides on the steep slopes of Mount Chelmos and yesterday on the slopes of Evritania put a strain on the machine of the Greek journey of the Flame. At dawn yesterday, the Fiamma, housed in a special vehicle with a tripod on the boot fuelled by a few gas cylinders inside (which is strictly forbidden in Italy), set off on the real first leg of the 2000-kilometre Greek tour from the mountain village of Kalavrita where it rested for the night, leaving the Chelmos peaks behind and heading for the coast.
It descended towards the sea, the Flame, reaching Patras, gateway for all those tourists who embark from Puglia during the summer and who perhaps do not linger so much on a city shaped by centuries of cultural exchange, limiting themselves to the port area. A much-needed stop with a musical interlude at the house-museum of Kostis Palamas, the Greek poet of the late 19th century who is the author of the Olympic anthem.
From Patras, the torch crossed the Rio-Antirrio bridge (officially the Charilaos Trikoupis bridge), a marvel of modern engineering connecting the Peloponnese with mainland Greece, to head towards Agrinio, a town framed by lakes and mountains. It also skimmed westwards to the town of Missolonghi, where in the Garden of Heroes the heart of Lord Byron (who was so close to Venice and Porto Venere) rests. He played a decisive role in the Greek War of Independence in 1824 for having financed and led the uprising against the Ottoman siege of the town.
Having climbed the not at all easy hairpin bends of the mountains of Evritania, the Flame, with a considerable delay (due to bad weather), was greeted in Karpenisi by the local band of youngsters, who performed the Italian and Greek anthems. That is the heart of Evritania, an area rich in deep-rooted traditions, where it rested for the night, waiting to attack the mountains of Epirus and reach Metsovo today.
