Moscow - Athos. Preface by the author

My way to Mount Athos started after the death of my mother, when I was 12 years old (my father died when I was 4 years old). I was sent to study at a church school, I sang in the children’s church choir under Patriarch Alexy II at the Epiphany Cathedral in Moscow (Elokhovka) and wrote a lot of poetry and prose.

Once, at the age of 13 (1989-1990), I clearly saw myself surrounded by rocks that looked like frozen people in a mysterious bay near some Heavenly City. I wrote “The Girl and the Sea” miniature, although I had never been to the sea. The vision didn’t let me go, constantly repeating, and in 1992 I wrote “The Girl and the Sea” poem.

I first found myself on Athos in Greece in May 2002. Traveling by ship from the Kassandra peninsula to the Holy Mountain, I learned that Athos is a peninsula where ordinary people, not monks, live too. On the way back, our ship made a stop in the village of Ouranoupolis on the border with Orthodox Athos (“City of Heaven” / “Heavenly City”, since Uranus means Heaven in Greek), and I wanted to return to Greece, specifically to the Athos peninsula, in Ouranoupolis.

In 2010, I came to Athos with my son, we acquired our first Athos handpainted icons, met wonderful people, local residents who later became my friends, because since then I have come to Ouranoupolis every summer.

In January 2015, I found myself in Ouranoupolis at Christmas. Sofia, the daughter of my Greek friend Dimitra, gave me a tour of the ruins of the Zygou monastery and showed me a bay right on the border with Mount Athos, hidden from prying eyes by rocks that looked like frozen people. Yes, that was exactly what I had seen at the age of 13!

Everyone has one’s own path and mission on Earth. My earthly path was dedicated to creativity in the sphere of literature. God gave me the opportunity to conquer the Literary Olympus and travel around more than 50 countries, but in the end he brought me to Athos in Ouranoupolis, where my heart will remain forever.

This book is my way from Moscow to Athos, woven from fragments of poems and photos, as a memory of me for my relatives and friends in Moscow and Ouranoupolis.

With love and gratitude,

Alexandra Kryuchkova,

Honored Writer of the Union of Writers of Russia,
laureate of international awards,
nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature

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