Radovan's last day in Greece

We all left Corfu early one morning to arrive by sunset in Kalambaka, a small town on the plain of Thessaly. This area is known as Meteora, or "suspended rocks," for here on top of sandstone pinnacles, some of which rise 1800 feet (550 meters), are the remaining six Greek Orthodox monasteries, built from the 11th to 14th centuries. At the end of the 12th century, an asetic community of monks flocked to Meteora, and at the end of the 14th century, the Byzantine Empire's 800-year reign over northern Greece was being increasingly threatened by Turkish raiders who wanted control over the fertile plain of Thessaly. Building the monasteries required great skill to say the least, for the stones had to be hoisted up the steep walls by rope baskets...in fact, that's the way the monks were pulled up, too. I can only wonder who the first brave monk was, since he had no one to pull him up... For more info, please refer to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteora Early the next morning before starting back to Serbia, we took Radovan's photo in front of some of the pinnacles. By the way, five of the remaining monasteries are inhabited by monks, and the other by nuns.
Finally we made it back to Serbia, and here is Radovan with his daughter and son-in-law in their village in Šumadija. Radovan had many tales to tell.... (By the way, the background here as well as the one where Radovan was photographed on his first day with us are from a collection of Serbian naive paintings that my husband and I have. "Naive" artists are those who have had no formal schooling.) Check out this site for photos of some Serbian naive paintings: http://homepage.mac.com/melissaenderle/Serbia/Kovacia/kovacia.html