Greek memory is long

Today we sailed into the home of the richest mythology in the world and moored on the island that is believed to have inspired Shakespeare’s TEMPEST. Already everything seems touched by prehistory story telling. Greeks decline to call this place “Corfu,” a Venetian perversion of a Byzantine word. This is Kerkyra, given by Poseidon to his beloved naiad and named for her after he abducted her from her family of river gods and made passionate love with her enveloped in Kerkyra’s lush beauty. Now she has branded a ferry line that brings visitors to her shores to marvel and romance. The island’s succession of conquering rulers have each left a stamp here, from the architecture of Matthieu de Lesseps to the British planting of the cumquat, but Kerkyra remains as she has always been: proudly and ferociously Greek and “full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs that delight and hurt not.”Weiterlesen