Samos is one of the Greek islands close to the coast of Turkey.
So in this sketch, made on the ship taking me away from it at sunrise, the foreground is in Europe and the background in Asia, a mountain range echoed by a cloud above it.
In ancient times, “Flowery Samos” was famous for Samian wine, in vessels of fine red Samian pottery. Among the Argonauts, who sailed to Colchis (now Georgia) in quest of the Golden Fleece was “Little” Ancaeus of Samos (as distinct from “Great” Ancaeus of Arcadia). Later, Samos had as ruler a “tyrant” of the enlightened kind, Polycrates, who suffered a ghastly death when the Persian empire invaded. Samos was the birthplace of great thinkers, Pythagoras and Epicurus. And Aristarchus of Samos, 18 centuries before Copernicus, proposed that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
I cycled around Samos after coming over from Turkey, where I had cycled to Troy, and then I caught a ferry for the longer crossing of the Aegean Sea to Athens.
Nowadays, this route is one that refugees from wars and persecution try to use. They manage the short crossing from Turkey to Samos, but are detained in the Samos Closed Controlled Access Centre (CCAC), illegally and under such dire conditions that Amnesty International has had to urge the European Commission to intervene
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