There are many places on the planet that are commonly called unkind or cursed. There often “out of the blue” catastrophes with multiple victims periodically occur. Not all of these places are far from civilization. One of them is located in Greece – in the Tempi valley.
Through the molten iron of the mangled remains of trains, the broken lives of the victims and the deep inexpressible pain and sorrow of their families comes through – as it happens in all inexplicable tragedies that make a “grain of sand in the wind” out of a person – metaphysical awareness. Today we will talk about the infamous “cursed valley” Tempi.
The Tempi Valley is considered one of the most dangerous sections of the Greek road network. This is the narrowest place, the “passage”, since the time when the highway that was subsequently laid there was not yet in sight.
Since the time of the Turkish yoke, even when Tempi was called “Baba”, this was one of the places where the deadliest ambushes were arranged with many dead. The Tempi valley was characterized by dense vegetation, impenetrable forests and narrow paths that ran through the rocks. All this created excellent opportunities for robbers who lay in wait for travelers in ambush. The unfortunate were robbed, often killed. “Cursed place” has become synonymous with the “crossing of Acheron” – “the gate to the underworld.” And this passage is not mythical at all …
Due to geomorphology in the Tempi area there have been several fatal accidents.
- On 4 October 1999, a bus carrying PAOK fans collided with a small truck, killing 6 passengers and the bus driver.
- On April 13, 2003, a truck transporting timber from Provaton-Evros to Athens collided head-on with a bus at the 388th kilometer, in which there were students of the 1st secondary school from Makrichori Imathia, who were returning from a trip to Athens, as a result of which he died 21 people. This crash is also linked to the suicide of a 35-year-old crash survivor on July 4, 2022.
- On February 28, 2023 at 11:21 pm local time, a passenger train collided head-on with a commercial train traveling on the same track in the opposite direction, killing 57 people and injuring dozens. Most of the victims were students between the ages of 18 and 25. This accident is the greatest railway tragedy in the history of Greece.
Metaphysics and awareness
In one of the most famous passages in the history of philosophical thought, Blaise Pascal writes (“Thoughts on Religion and Other Subjects”):
“I see the frightening spaces of the Universe that surround me, I understand that I am in some corner of these spaces, but I don’t know why I ended up here and not in another place, nor why the short period allotted to me for life was appointed precisely at this, and not at another point in the whole eternity that was before me and will be after. Everywhere I see only infinity embracing me like an atom. I only know that I must die soon, but the most unknown to me is death, which I cannot avoid.
What is a man for infinity? Man is just a reed, the weakest in nature, but it is a thinking reed. It is not necessary to take up arms against him of the whole Universe in order to crush him; a puff of steam, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But even if the Universe crushes him, a person will always be higher than his killer, because he knows that he is dying, and knows the superiority of the Universe over him. The universe knows none of this. All our dignity lies in thought. This is our greatness, not in space and time, which we cannot fill. It is not in space that I must seek my dignity, but in the correctness of thought. In space, the Universe absorbs me like a point, I embrace it with thought.
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