I first became aware of the Balkan Heritage Society and their archaeological field schools several years ago, when I was browsing various listings of volunteer and field school opportunities on-line and saw a workshop they were offering on photographing Roman mosaics. I didn’t do anything about it at the time since I couldn’t have made it fit my schedule. But I would continue to browse their offerings every few years.

Being retired helps a lot with schedule flexibility and this time I saw they were offering a workshop on textile conservation, which would fit in nicely with my crafts interests. I was all set to register for that, but then I got invited to do my travel talk at my MIT reunion and - poof! My life is a schedule conflict! But I noticed that there was also a workshop on paper conservation that was a couple of weeks later. Since: a) that would fit my schedule and b) I do play with paper crafts (particularly bookbinding, but I’ve also made paper and done plenty of surface design, e.g. marbling, over the years), I thought that would be worth doing. So I signed up, and began devoting some time to figuring out how to get to Zakynthos, Greece, where the workshop would be held. I also tried to make a dent in the somewhat intimidating reading list they provided.

For those who don’t know (which is the vast majority of Americans), Zakynthos is in the Ionian Islands, off the west coast of Greece. There are flights there from a number of European cities and the least expensive route I could find involved flying to Athens and then going there by bus / ferry. Since I’d been to Athens before (way back in 2004, for the Olympics), I just spent a night there. I flew over via FRA, which is one of my least favorite airports, but it worked okay. I spent one night at the Hotel Mirabello, which is conveniently located near Omonia Square. The staff was friendly and helpful and there were plenty of reasonably priced restaurants nearby. I didn’t write down the name of the place I ate at, but I had a reasonably good moussaka. In the morning, the hotel had a particularly good breakfast buffet, by the way, with hot options that even included spanakopita. I would consider staying there again if I had some reason to be in Athens.

In the morning, I took a taxi to the Kifissos bus station, which is large and chaotic. By the way, buying my ticket on-line had been a bit stressful, because KTEL (the major bus company) apparently sells tickets on the route I needed only a couple of weeks in advance. Still, I had been able to get a ticket to Nea Manolada, which proved to take about an hour longer than Rome 2 Rio had claimed it would. It turned out that this was just a stop on the side of a road, not an actual bus terminal. There was a South African woman who was also heading to Kyllini Port for a ferry (in her case, to Kefalinia, which is the next island north) and we walked across the street to a kiosk where the proprietor called us a cab. I stayed overnight at the Glarentza Hotel, which was a short walk to the port and was reasonably nice. I had time to walk around the port a bit both that afternoon and the next morning, before boarding the 1 p.m. ferry to Zakynthos.

Our accommodations were at the Hotel Yria, which is decently central. However, the rooms are on the small side and the breakfast is just adequate. I was sharing a room with a young woman from France, by the way. This is probably a good place to note that most of the group were 20ish, i.e. young enough to be my grandchildren. Only four of us where there just for the paper conservation program, while the majority had been doing a three week program that included one week each of textiles, metal, and paper. Despite the age gap, I found them generally thoughtful and interesting people. (There were a couple of other older people, but I’m reasonably sure I was the oldest. Well, someone has to be.)

Anyway, the program started on a Monday morning and I’d arrived on Sunday. That evening I went with a couple of the other people to Solomos Square (the central square of Zante Town) to see an event called Giostra of Zakynthos, which was a sort of medieval parade, followed by a jousting tournament. It was colorful and interesting, but uncomfortably crowded. Note that there were groups from several countries - including Scotland!









I wasn’t able to get close enough to the jousting to get any pictures worth sharing of the horses and the riders, who included a young boy. Eventually, I decided I should go find something to eat. There is no shortage of restaurants in the area and I got a tasty supper before returning to the hotel and going to bed.

The workshop itself began on Monday after breakfast. We met our instructor, Dr. Nikolas Sarris (and his dog, Jimmy) and were transported in a minibus to Ionian University. The first day started with a couple of lectures (history of paper, causes of deterioration of paper) and a presentation about documentation of paper objects, before we set out to document the paper objects that had been distributed for us to work on. I had a 12-page set of what were essentially census records from 1959. There were extensive tears and cuts on the front cover, and folded edges and stains on every page, as well as rusted staples (which later on proved to be small nails / pins, not staples) and writing on the front and back covers.

We started out with a few conservation treatments and I brushed and vacuumed it. Later on, I would spend time cleaning with various tools, e.g. vulcanized latex sponges and patching with hollytex, which is a sort of paper made of non woven polyester. One of the other people in the workshop referred to it as “magic paper.” Here is a picture of the document with the pins removed and some cleaning done.



The edges of the front cover were patched but you can still see a lot of writing and stains.



Anyway, we continued to work on our documents during the subsequent days. There were some other types of (mostly Japanese) paper used in patching paper. We also spent time on humidifying and flattening paper. Our lab work was mixed in with lectures. We did have morning and afternoon coffee breaks and a lunch hour, where we ate at the student canteen, which was okay. I’d estimate that we were doing lab work maybe 6 hours a day. By the way, we had been told to bring lab coats, which gave me an excuse to dig out this personalized one, which I’d been given several years ago when I went to an event at the United Airlines catering facility in Denver.



On Thursday morning we had a field trip to the General Archives and the Historic Public Library of Zakynthos. There were lots of historic photos, many of them related to the 1953 magnitude 7.2 earthquake, which caused extensive damage throughout the southern Ionian islands. (By the way, there were a couple of smaller earthquakes at the end of my time on Zakynthos, the larger of which was magnitude 4.1. Having lived in California for 22 years, that didn’t even wake me up.)



There were also a couple of cases of dolls.



And, of course, there were shelves and shelves of books, many of which had significant damage, including tunnels from being insect eaten. Nikolas also talked about storage of books / documents. The next day, we made the most basic storage enclosures, essentially just folders.



Friday night, most of us went out to a fancy dinner at a restaurant called Manoo. You can get surprisingly good sushi in Greece (and, less surprisingly, a good gin and tonic). We bade goodbye to the people who were leaving on Saturday. The four of us who were left had the weekend free. I was fairly lazy, with some reading and puzzles to catch up on, but I did spend some time at the Byzantine Museum, which has a lovely collection. Here are a few examples.











On Monday, we were back to lectures and workshops. By the way, since we were down to 4 people, we went to and from the University in Nikolas’s car. We started learning about wet cleaning techniques and stain removal, including the use of suction tables. The rest of the week continued with paper deacification, paper sizing, removal of adhesive tape, and more advanced paper repair techniques. I’ll spare you the pictures of paper immersed in various chemical solutions. A local man had heard that there was a book conservator teaching our class and brought Nikolas some documents to look at and he had us work on them, too. I spent a fair amount of time cleaning and repairing this, for example.



On Thursday morning we went to see the Church of Agios Dionysios, followed by the Ecclesiastical Museum of the Holy Monastery of St. Dionysios. The church was elaborately decorated outside.



Inside, the architecture felt typical of Orthodox Christian churches I’ve seen, with an ornate iconostasis.



The museum had a lot of books on display, including some very old ones.



The workshop finished on Friday, which we spent making boxes to protect books. We also visited another room at the University, which had a nitrogen hypoxia chamber for killing insects. We also got our certificates for completing the course.

While I’d taken bus and ferry to Zakynthos from mainland Greece, I had opted to fly back to Athens. Sky Express was a new airline for me and I found their service reasonably good. Here’s an aerial photo of Zakynthos.




I stayed at the convenient but very pricy Sofitel Athens Airport overnight before my flights home on Swiss (via Zurich), which went smoothly. Airport hotels are always a good idea when you have an early morning (6:55 a.m.) flight.


Overall, I think the workshop was interesting and worth my time. I don’t expect to do much with what I learned, though you never know what may come in handy. I also enjoyed getting to know the other students, who generally made me feel more optimistic about young people nowadays. What more could I ask for?