Friday 6th May 2022 - Paralia Akrata, Greece

 

There is a famous railway just a few kilometres from Akrata. The Odontotos Rack Railway is part conventional and part rack railway and it climbs through a beautiful gorge from Diakopto, through tunnels and crossing the mountain stream on bridges until it arrives at Kalavrita. The journey is very memorable and well worth the visit if you are holidaying in the Peloponnese. However, it is very popular with Greeks and tourists and gets booked up very quickly. We knew this and therefore I decided to attempt to book it online a few days ago. That was a frustrating experience as the official Greek railway company, TrainOSE, has a terrible website. It failed completely on me once and I had to start again. Then it refuse to let me pay by Paypal, despite having the option to do so, and paying by debit card gave me four ‘Communication error’ messages and one ‘Duplicate payment’ message. I really didn’t expect it to work but I received an email confirmation with tickets and, much to my surprise, I had only been charged once on the card.
We drove to Diakopto, found somewhere to park by the station and headed for the train. In our carriage there was a heated argument going on with a German man, sat in a window seat, repeating over and over in a very loud voice “This is my seat” and “I am not going to move”. Fortunately our seats were not in dispute and we sat in them whilst a very pleasant lady guard sorted out the problem. Needless to say, the German man was not in his seat and he did have to move. He should have felt guilty for the rest of the journey, sat next to the person that he had refused to move for, but arrogant people like that rarely feel guilt. The journey was beautiful and I strongly recommend it to you.
Kalavrita is a skiing resort in the winter and a very popular summer resort when the Greeks look to escape the heat at lower altitudes. However, the village has a dark history as, on the 13^th December 1943, the Nazis massacred every male in the village over 12 years old - 465 people. When we first visited the village, the road up to the site of the massacre had ‘Peace’ painted in many languages on the asphalt. We walked up to the large white cross above the village and down to the memorial at the site just below. On the upper edge of village, just below the site, is the cemetery and it is a very sobering experience walking around it with many of the graves showing the date of 13^th December 1943 and, in Greek, ‘Executed by the Germans’. In one cast the grave named a farther and his three sons. When the men were taken away. The women and children were kept in the school that was then set on fire. The women and children were able to escape but the village had been burned and their houses destroyed. We visited the museum in the village that is dedicated to the tragedy and it is a very harrowing experience. I cannot understand how human beings could do this to other human beings and it is all happening again in Ukraine now.

Photos: A view from the train; Passing an old bridge on the railway; Our train at Kalavrita station; Looking down from the cross to the memorial at the site of the massacre; One of the many graves in the cemetery – the simple gravestone in the centre lists the father and his three sons ‘executed by the Germans’.