Day 29 - Saturday 1 June - Kalavryta

We headed off to the station by taxi, and got a train to Kiato, which is currently the end of the line.  Europe have funded a new rail extension to Patras, and this appears almost finished except for electrification, but there are political problems at the far end, and it might be 2020 before it's done.  So at Kiato we got a bus to Diakofto.

Here in 1889 they started to build a cog railway along the river gorge and up into the high hinterland.  It has been running ever since, first with a steam loco, and now a diesel.  The trip is 22 km, the tracks rise 750m, and it takes 1 hour.  Lots of twists and turns, tunnels and bridges, the river on one side then the other, the gorge steep or land-slidey, tiny stations and farm and little shrines.

 

 At Kalavryta we walked through to town plaza which has a train track embedded into the pavers.  Lots of cafes and souvenir shops.  We had lunch at one, then went to the Holocaust museum. 

 

 In 1943, the Germans determined to punish the area for the resistance that they had provided, and the deaths of some German soldiers.  Many villages were looted and torched.  In December they came to Kalavryta, and after a few days of tension, rounded up the population into the school building, separating them as they came through.  The men were taken out and shot, the women, children and elderly locked in and the building set on fire.  Almost 1200 died that day, and about 2000 in all.  The museum is in that reconstructed school, and there is a memorial on the site of the men's massacre.

This memorial at the museum depicts a woman using a blanket to drag her husband's body away from the massacre site.

We retraced our way back to Corinth,

 Just after the passing loop, the other train heading up.

 Some choose to walk, rather than ride.

 The big rock overhang, and what it looks like from above, by Google.

Going back on the bus
 

Strange bare hills along the way.
and squatters camps, with houses made of corrugated iron, or chipboard covered with sheet plastic.

 

and got a taxi again.  We had decided that a hire car might be the way to go tomorrow, but the group of drivers at the station discussed our situation, made a phone call, and then decided that we would get nothing because of the election tomorrow.  So one enterprising guy offered to be our driver for the day.  We will see how things go.