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LUMLEY: 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.
[ Birds chirping ]
I'll be meeting Greeks from all walks of life
and learning about their traditions
and the way they live.
You think that's the jumper, then you think this one isn't.
But it is. [ Laughs ]
Greece is also the birthplace of European history.
This is where western civilization 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 program,
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 that 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.
[ Speaking Greek ]
I shall ignore health and safety at my peril.
They don't suddenly just go "blip!" -- like that, do they?
-Sometimes. -Oh. Well, okay.
Sometimes.
LUMLEY: 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.
[ Birds squawking ]
[ Helicopter blades whirring ]
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 going to meet a Greek shipping magnate,
you kind of hope that the boat will look like this.
[ Exhales deeply ]
Fabulous!
-Kalimera. -Kalimera.
WOMAN: Mrs. Lumley, Captain Sarcos.
Captain Sarcos, how lovely to meet you.
Lovely to meet you, too. Lovely to have you on board.
LUMLEY: Captain Sarcos is a self-made man
with the sea in his blood.
[ Horn blares ]
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 catch,
the Christianne B, which he bought from the Bulgari family.
The success of Captain Sarcos' 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.
And 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' 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.
[ Whirring ]
I had no idea that you could set a sail by pressing just a lever
and that beautiful sail unrolls.
A musician, a piano player has his keyboard.
-Yeah. [ Laughs ] -This is my keyboard.
It's fantastic.
Is that a Union Jack we're flying?
-Pardon me? -What is this red flag?
This is the English flag.
-It's the English flag? -English ***'s flag.
And why have we got the English flag up?
-Because we have you on board. -English guest?
-Is that true? -Yes.
Well, that's fantastic.
Can't do the Poros Canal. [ Laughs ]
Well, the way you're going, we wouldn't be surprised.
LUMLEY: 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 sharing a flat in London,
and we decided to save up our money and come to Greece.
This was 1966.
And I had been told to go to an island
which I thought was Poros.
We bought our tickets.
And we came,
and we were brought by a ferry to this enchanting little town.
We found two rooms in villagers' 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 Páros and Naxos.
Páros -- another, 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.
[ Birds squawking ]
Over the centuries,
Greece's islands have attracted the attention
of many invading forces.
Perhaps most famous of these is the Ottoman Empire.
Between the 15th and 19th centuries,
the Ottomans from Turkey
dominated 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 recognized 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, actually, inside a prison in Konstantinoúpoli.
She grew up here on Spetses.
She married twice.
Both her husbands died at sea
with sea battles with the Barbary pirates.
Did they have their own ships?
Their own ships, yes.
And they used to take her on with the ships --
you know, something unheard in those days, for a woman to sail.
And she inherited a very large fortune,
which she spent it in the first three years
of the Greek War of Independence.
She gave all her fortune for our freedom.
LUMLEY: In 1820, Bouboulina used the wealth
she inherited from her two seafaring 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.
DEMERTZIS-BOUBOULIS: This is a very famous painting in Greece.
This is the original, and it shows Bouboulina
attacking the castles of Nafplion.
Look at the way the painter has made the men inside the boat.
Look at their faces. All of them -- they are scared.
In comparison to the way he has made Bouboulina --
you know, standing up, fearless.
She's the only woman in world naval history
that she's got the title of an admiral.
-An honorary title. -She's an admiral?
An honorary title given to her after her death.
But I think that must be a first in the whole world, isn't it?
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.
DEMERTZIS-BOUBOULIS: She had a very unfortunate end, of course.
She was killed here on Spetses
in a family argument, believe it or not.
-After all that? -After all that.
So it was very tragic and inglorious, if you like, end
for this woman that did so much for her country.
LUMLEY: Bouboulina may have had an inglorious end.
But like our Boadicea, she's one of Europe's greatest heroines.
Homer 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.
But this island that we're coming into is Crete,
the largest of all the Greek islands.
This is its capital, Heraklion.
Now, it was incredibly important both to the ancient Greeks
and the Minoans and all the people before that
because of its position.
It was sitting *** 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, god of gods.
[ Birds squawking ]
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, realizing 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' birthplace.
In its shadow lies a village called Anogia.
Eleni Fanariotou, my translator,
has brought me to this small town
which was at the center of the Cretan resistance
during the German occupation.
Many of the townspeople here lost their lives as a result.
During the occupation,
Nikos Fassoulas, a boot maker in the village,
narrowly escaped execution by the Nazis.
[ Speaking Greek ]
Nikolaos.
-Ah. Nikolaos. -Nikolaos.
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 Kriepe.
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 Kriepe pass through?
He saw it.
He 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?
[ Dog barking ]
[ Indistinct conversations ]
Look at this.
"Ordered by the German general commander
of the garrison of Crete.
Because the town of Anogia
is the center of the English intelligence on Crete
and because it was through Anogia
that the kidnappers with General Von Kriepe 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."
[ Exhales deeply ]
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 Kriepe,
became a household name.
His daring exploits are still told today.
There's a great story of General Von Kriepe
watching the dawn coming up one morning,
making a great quote -- and I'm ashamed to say I don't know
whether it was in Greek or ancient Greek or ancient Latin.
And Patrick Leigh Fermor completed the quote,
and they looked at each other and realized that without a war,
they would have been friends.
They were just people of 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.
[ Sheep bleating ]
The shepherds' descendants still tend their flocks
as they would have done during the war.
[ Speaking Greek ]
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.
[ Engine turns over ]
It's easy to see how the resistance fighters
could have melted away into this landscape.
[ Dog barking ]
[ Engine stops, door closes ]
[ Speaking Greek ]
Ah, thank you.
[ Speaking Greek ]
[ Bells clanging ]
This way of life hasn't changed much for centuries.
[ Whistles ]
LUMLEY: Cretan resistance fighters would have had to live
much like these shepherds do today,
on a basic diet of meat and cheese.
-Can I feel? -MAN: Yes, yes.
So it actually feels at the moment just like milk.
But presumably, with this heat underneath it,
it's thickening up like custard.
[ Both laugh ]
I see. Woman's task.
Men sitting, watching meat, and women actually stirring.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
[ Dog barks, man whistles ]
Look. Special sheep-milking trousers going on here.
When the fighters weren't disrupting the Germans,
they would have had to chip in with the work in the fields.
Well, I watch you first, I think.
[ Speaking Greek ]
LUMLEY: Dmitri, you show me. You show me.
[ Laughter ]
You show me once, you show me once,
and I'll have a go of it.
Will you forgive me for not having a go at milking?
Because the thing is is that if it was one sheep,
very tame sheep and it was very calm
and there was nothing much happening, I could have a go
and get it badly wrong, because it's quite a skill.
But with a hairy avalanche waiting,
you can certainly see there's a sort of expectation
that it's going to be done and done properly.
And I'd mess it up. You know what I mean?
[ Bells clanging ]
Oh, a lovely jumper.
You just can't tell which ones are going to jump
and which ones aren't.
You think that's the jumper, then you think this one isn't.
But it is. [ Laughs ]
[ Sheep bleats ]
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 *** colonies in Europe.
Aris, a local boatman,
has kindly agreed to take me to the island.
-Thank you. -You are welcome.
Though leprosy has been virtually eradicated in Europe,
hundreds of thousands of new cases still occur each year
in the developing world.
It's a theological place.
-That was the hospital. -This one here?
Yes. The big one in the middle was a hospital.
Spinalonga -- It was like a real town.
The people had private houses.
You can see the small buildings.
They had the café. They had a normal life.
The only difference was that it was like a prison.
If somebody was inside, he was not allowed to go out.
The doctors and nurses -- They lived here?
Yes. Yes. Yes. They were here.
Lived with the sick people together.
I don't know much about leprosy.
Do you catch leprosy? How do you get it?
The truth is that nobody knows yet how you can get leprosy.
They found the medicine. Everybody's okay.
-But they can't find how -- -How it started.
Yes.
LUMLEY: In the 1940s,
an effective treatment for leprosy was discovered,
and Spinalonga was finally abandoned in 1957.
ARIS: Just over here is the main gate.
The people from here, when they passed this gate,
was only lepers.
Nobody else except the lepers.
This must have been frightening, to come here as a ***
and to make your first entrance through a sort of --
Yes. The first feeling when you come in this island.
-Big iron gates. -Yes.
LUMLEY: In 1904, 251 patients were settled on the island.
And then, during its 50 years as a *** 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.
Aris' great-grandmother was a nurse here.
ARIS: The way to the hospital.
And here's the hospital.
ARIS: The doctors, the nurses --
All these people was here every day.
They care for the people.
Life was very hard.
I know stories from my grandmother.
It was really difficult, also, for these people.
I think people thought it was a disease you could catch.
ARIS: If you want to try to go inside, maybe we can do it.
It says "no entry." Okay.
-ARIS: You want to try? -LUMLEY: Yeah, I do.
Big windows. High ceilings.
Yes.
Windows with bars on them. Look at this.
This must have been some sort of sick bay
with such high windows with the old shutters.
You know, they're so big, windows,
and so high because the air had to pass
because the smell, it was really bad.
-It smelled? -Yes.
The people, the sick people, had the very, very bad smell.
Imagine here all sick people in the beds.
To see the village and all the area outside,
and they don't have the chance to go from here.
If they were in this hospital,
they knew they were going to die.
Yes.
[ Bird chirping, hinge creaking ]
LUMLEY: Just as Scotland produces
the finest whiskey in the world,
the area to the east of Spinalonga
reportedly produces the finest raki on the island of Crete.
The favorite drink in Greece is raki.
But they drink ouzo.
They drink Metaxa brandy and so on.
But raki is what everybody drinks.
It's this local moonshine, local ***.
I imagine it differs from area to area.
And I thought it might be made, like all white spirits,
from -- I don't know -- potatoes or sort of celery choppings.
But it's not. It's made from grape skins.
I've drunk it. I love it. I think it's delicious.
You don't drink lots of it. You just have small amounts.
Today I'm going to a town, a little village called Siteia.
I'm going to meet somebody
who's going to show me how he makes it.
Because apparently, each family makes its own.
I never really thought of that.
Stelios Petrakis has the biggest raki-making still, or kazani,
allowed for personal consumption in the region.
Thank you. [ Speaks Greek ]
Smells beautiful.
Wonderful. Mmm.
-It's wonderful. -[ Laughs ]
I can't think how to say "wonderful."
WOMAN: [ Speaking Greek ]
LUMLEY: [ Speaking Greek ]
[ Laughs ]
The grapes are mulched down in water
and then heated over an open fire.
Steam rises through the teapot-shaped kazani
and is then cooled in a tank of cold water.
And as it cools, it turns back into liquid.
And the liquid is pure alcohol.
The first, which comes from the *** stem of the grape,
is lethal.
It's 98% proof.
The old women here use it for medical purposes.
They use it for cleaning and back rubs and things.
Alcohol rubs. You've heard of this.
But the second is this unbelievably pure,
clean, clean liquid.
And you don't get hangovers from things like this
because there's nothing added.
Once the first, *** alcohol is taken off,
you've got this extraordinarily clean, pure stuff.
So 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?
You know, it tastes better with every sip.
You become slightly 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' wife.
Now, this is extraordinary,
because it's a most 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 the scrape the leaf, cut the choke out,
and just eat the artichoke heart.
Here they cut them and eat them raw.
It's just the same thing. You eat as much.
Sometimes when you take it, you can scrape it with your teeth.
Then you eat these lovely crunchy bits.
But these bits, which usually are cooked here,
they eat raw with lemon juice on.
It's wonderful.
You can try that at home.
[ Up-tempo music playing ]
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' friends to take part.
My idea of utter hell is being made to do dancing
without any tuition
but pretending that it's completely normal.
[ Men 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 center of the diagnosis.
He believed in diet.
He believed in a healthy environment.
And above all, he managed to tell people
that it wasn't their fault that they were ill.
It wasn't a punishment from the gods.
It was simply because the body was sick.
So 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 Asclepeion,
a sort of health spa and healing sanctuary.
MANOLIS: Some scholars say that, in fact,
Asclepius was the first real doctor.
He was human.
And after being so good and so perfect in medicine,
after he died, they make him a god.
-I see. -And they invented the myth.
That's very rare, isn't it, to be made a god?
Yes, it's very rare.
And Hippocrates, who is a descendant from Asclepius,
is the 18th descendant of the god himself, of Asclepius.
So medicine running in the family.
Yes. Exactly. That was the way.
LUMLEY: There were hundreds of Asclepeions in ancient Greece.
But now, looking at these abandoned ruins,
it's quite difficult to imagine them buzzing with life.
There should be more than one terraces.
In most cases, there would be three.
Is this the first terrace here?
Yes, this is the first terrace, which 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 here.
MANOLIS: Yes. Exactly. Exactly.
Also, they've chosen the most beautiful position.
It was a prerequisite to have a unique location.
And presumably a prerequisite to have water.
MANOLIS: Yes. Exactly.
Very interesting statue up at the top.
-It looks like Pan or something. -Exactly.
The small god of the woods, half a goat, half a human.
I think he's playing a pipe.
-Exactly. The panpipe. -The panpipe.
He's like the Green Man.
We have the Green Man in England, who's very like Pan.
He lived in the woods.
He had no sort of morals as we have them.
-Everything was fine. -All right.
All animals were good. All this was good.
You take that. It's yours. It doesn't matter. I have it.
I'll leave you. I love you, I leave you.
-He had no morals. -Something like the '70s.
[ Both laugh ]
Something like the '70s, actually,
with panpipes and letting the hair go.
Having fun, celebrating.
LUMLEY: Above the hospital stood the temples
so that patients could worship their gods
and show their gratitude.
People therefore came here with a sense of absolute purpose.
They came because they were ill or they wanted to get well.
But they knew. They had the faith already.
-They knew their god was here. -Yes.
They would bring what? What would they offer?
They would expect you to bring something --
for example, an animal.
If you didn't have any 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 will go up to the gods from Olympus
and they would be pleased that you're remembering them.
But the rest of the animal would be eaten.
LUMLEY: The ancient Greeks realized 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.
MANOLIS: Here, it would be something like a podium.
The teacher would be here, teaching them the lesson.
Hippocrates was the first one to cry out
and say that 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 being studied worldwide.
So here we are at the third terrace.
LUMLEY: 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.
And what did it look like?
MANOLIS: It looked like something
that you wouldn't want to miss
and something that 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, dominating this hillside.
Exactly.
Sunrise on Kos.
Manolis has arranged a trip
to the neighboring 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 is 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 sulfurous.
But it's got even another smell on the back of it as well.
MANOLIS: Yes.
And what is really unique is that he's alive.
He's changing all the time, depending on the weather,
depending on the wind, if it is rain.
It's never the same.
LUMLEY: And the fumaroles -- How close to them can we get?
MANOLIS: Not really close, because as close as we get,
the crust is thinner,
because the steam that comes out from the fumaroles
is up to 100 degrees Celsius.
LUMLEY: Look at these fantastic colors,
this sour yellow and baked.
This must have been from rain and then drying up.
Exactly.
If you listen, you can actually hear it bubbling.
[ Bubbling ]
This is not good to touch, is it?
MANOLIS: Not good to touch.
One of the nicknames is akolos.
Akolos.
-"Kolos" is... -Bum. Exactly.
Akolos -- "bumless."
So if you sit, you're going to burn.
Phew!
MANOLIS: It's acid.
LUMLEY: 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 as if nature
just 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, okay.
Sometimes.
That's why you should never go over one.
I'm honestly not going to do that.
[ Laughs ]
-I think I'll just not do that. -[ Laughs ]
This feels almost as though we're on another planet here.
MANOLIS: Yeah.
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,
they were just exactly where we are right now.
LUMLEY: How extraordinary.
[ Birds squawking ]
We're catching the ferry to Patmos.
We've got about 10 minutes to get all this stuff on.
I can't tell you how much stuff we travel with.
[ Shouting in Greek ]
I haven't got a ticket.
I've got a 10.
-Thank you. Thank you very much. -Thank you.
Rather hairy.
There's a sense that these really only stop,
that they're not really concerned.
They just say, "We're stopping. Ten minutes."
It goes up. Gone.
[ Horn blares ]
The ferry from Kos to Patmos takes just an hour and a half,
stopping equally briefly
at the islands of Kalymnos, Leros, and Leipsoi.
It's trying to get your head around the idea
that this is all one country,
that it's absolutely customary to travel by boat all the time.
Because everywhere feels like little, different...
nations, almost, zipping around like this.
And they're all different little islands.
And they're all Greece. It's wonderful.
This, however, is not Greece. This is Turkey just there.
But in the old days, of course, it was ancient Greece.
Just down the coast
is a place which used to be called Halicarnassus,
and it's now called Bodrum.
You can take a ferry from Kos to Bodrum.
It only takes 19, 20 minutes. Over there.
And that's where the master of history,
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.
And his name was Herodotus.
Magical man. Fantastical.
I love people who, when they can't really get all the facts,
just make it up.
I think we do probably the same today, actually.
[ Horn blares ]
[ Birds squawking ]
Patmos is dominated by an 11th-century monastery
dedicated to St. John the Divine,
who was exiled to this small island by the Romans
in the first century A.D.
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 just 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.
And now we're inside the cave.
We would have looked straight out,
down over the hills to the sea.
He'd been exiled.
Now, maybe just because he was a troublemaker
or maybe ancient Rome had sent him away.
But anyway, he stayed here for about 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,
so they've made a little crown over that holy place.
And because he was quite an old man,
when he got up, he'd found a little notch in the wall
which he used to put his hand in
and pull himself up through that.
Here we see John resting, receiving the wisdom.
And here, supported by angels,
are the seven churches of Asia Minor.
And the stories he was receiving
in this sort of 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 --
that's from Revelations.
"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 the evening now, and we're just heading towards Athens.
And it's the end of this extraordinary journey
around some of these islands in Greece.
It has been eye-opening.
I don't think I ever realized
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 particular cheese-making skills or its own history.
But the thing that has impressed me most
is that how far-flung Greece is, through her 1,400 islands --
How do you make a country like that work?
Of course, it's only quite recently
that it has been Greece as we know it as a country.
Before it, it was the Hellenic people,
the Hellenes, who spread all over these lands,
with their own particular customs
and enmities between each other,
all uniting against the yokes of countless empires
which seem to have trodden all over them.
And yet at the end, they spring back again.
Absolutely amazing.
And still the Greeks are grounded, as it were --
if that's not the wrong word -- in the sea.
And I think that's what's made it so thrilling.
Subtitling made possible by RLJ Entertainment