It was an offer nobody in his right mind could have refused - an invitation to take part in an eight-day environmental symposium cruising around the Black Sea aboard the Venizelos, a luxurious Greek ferry. Call it a junket if you will, but this was serious stuff, with Jacques Santer, president of the European Commission, and His All Holiness, Bartholomew I, Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, as the joint patrons.
Scientists, environmentalists and theologians were lined up for this modern-day odyssey around a sea steeped in more history and myth than anywhere else on Earth. The participants included such luminaries as Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan; EU Environment Commissioner, Ritt Bjerregaard; Canadian zoologist, David Suzuki; and Bishop Richard Chartres of London, as well as journalist Neal Acherson, author of a definitive book on the Black Sea.
Many of the 400 participants had packed Acherson's book as a primer for the voyage. In it, he describes the Black Sea as a "kidney-shaped pond connected to the outer oceans by the thread-like channel of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles". Across this body of water, Jason and the Argonauts had sought out the Golden Fleece, and the Greeks, Romans, Genoese and Venetians had established their footholds in territories controlled by an ever-changing cast of humanity.
Day 1: Trabzon, Turkey
"Welcome to Trabzon", says the notice in the arrivals area at the airport. "Have you met the tourism police? You are no longer alone. We are ready to help you with any security problem." But this turns out to be just for show, because we are held up there for almost as long as our two-hour flight from Athens. Amid chaotic scenes, the symposium organisers argue with armed immigration police, who insist on us paying up to $20 each for visas which had already been paid for. Later, we learn that the buses carrying an earlier batch of participants were stoned and spat upon at the airport by about 35 Grey Wolves, a rightwing militant group dedicated to keeping Turkey Turkish. They shouted menacing slogans and became particularly aggressive when they spotted several Orthodox priests in their black robes; one Byzantine scholar commented later that it was the "equivalent of sending three Cardinals in full regalia up the Shankill Road".
The following morning, two field trips are cancelled on the grounds that the security of participants cannot be guaranteed - and we learn that the governor of Trabzon has retaliated by ordering a group of local folk-dancers not to perform on board the Venizelos. Some of us venture into the town "at our own risk" and encounter no Grey Wolves or any other danger. But it seems that the presence of our Greek ship at Trabzon's docks is like a red rag to a bull for local Turkish officials.
Day 2: Batumi, Georgia:
Our arrival the next morning in Batumi, one of Georgia's main ports, could not have been more different. Most of us manage to leave the ship and enter what was once a part of the Soviet Union to attend an Orthodox eucharistic service without a single policeman asking to see our passports. The cathedral is crowded for the service because it is being celebrated by Georgia's Patriarch in the presence of Bartholomew I, the first Eastern Orthodox Patriarch to visit Batumi. The cathedral, once a Catholic church, is full of people with dark eyes and long, sad faces, who are constantly moving about. There is a smell of incense, burning candles and poverty. All the women are wearing head-scarves, just like Ireland in the 1950s. The chanting from the choir in the gallery is unspeakably beautiful; this is the antidote to Folk Masses with guitars.
Outside, rain is pouring out of the heavens. Batumi is one of the wettest places in the northern hemisphere, with an annual rainfall of nearly 100 inches. God help all here, we think. The people are dirt-poor - our tour guide says she earns $30 a month - and the only decent weather they get is in July. The clapped-out buses taking us all to see the botanical gardens are all leaking so badly that some symposium participants have put their umbrellas up to prevent themselves getting soaked.
Day 3: Novorossiysk, Russia
The dawn sky is fringed red this morning as the Venizelos steams into Novorossiysk, capital of the "New Russia" conquered by Catherine the Great, so it's clear we're going to see the sun again today. A large official delegation, led by the local "Mr Big", turns up later, preceded by a smiling, well-fed woman in traditional costume carrying a huge Russian brioche. She presents it to His All Holiness, who pinches off a piece, dips it in a well of sugar on top and eats it.
Later, we are taken on a tour of Novorossiysk. The people here are obviously more prosperous than the woebegone residents of Batumi. A statue of Lenin stands in the main square and we are also shown an impressive monument above the sea where the Russian navy scuttled its fleet in 1918 to prevent it falling into German hands. Another outsized monument, like a huge gantry over the main road, marks the spot where the Red Army halted the Nazis during the second World War.
A performance by two bedraggled dolphins is abruptly cancelled in deference to protests by Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, who has spent $4 million closing down similar dolphinariums elsewhere.
Day 4: Yalta, Crimea
Yalta looks magnificent in the morning sun as the Venizelos docks near the Diana Casino on its harbour front. There are trees everywhere, all over the rising ground up to the high escarpment which protects this legendary resort from the cold northerly winds sweeping in over the Steppes. Nineteenth-century villas and an unexpectedly large number of tower and slab blocks are dotted through the trees, including some particularly hideous monoliths which are still under construction.
Our laconic tour guide tells us that 70 per cent of the people here in the Crimea are really Russians, who have unwittingly ended up in Ukraine because of a diktat issued by Khrushchev in 1956. During the good old days of the Soviet Union, Yalta had 160 sanatoriums and every worker was entitled to take three weeks' holidays, with 70 per cent of the cost met by the trade unions. Now the cheapest room costs $40 per night (the dearest is $500) and the tourist industry is on its knees.
Inevitably, we are taken to the Livadia Palace where Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt carved up Europe over dinner in February 1945, before the second World War was even over. We also visit Count Vorotsov's palace, a Scots baronial pile with a Moorish front overlooking the sea; this guy had 80,000 serfs, yet he chose a gloomy north-facing room as his study! Even more depressing is our discovery that about 90 per cent of the goods now being sold in Yalta's market are imported.
Day 5: Odessa, Ukraine
One of the symposium organisers had the brilliant idea of showing Eisenstein's classic silent film, Battleship Potemkin, as we sail overnight towards Odessa. It is an excellent orientation programme, particularly the dramatic scenes on the Odessa Steps. The steps are still there, of course, though they are now unfortunately occluded by the concrete-and-glass Ocean Terminal, which was plonked right in front of them, removing their relationship with the sea.
Odessa is a great neo-classical confection, with a huge Paris-style opera house as its centrepiece. It's about the same size as Dublin, in population terms, but much more decrepit, with broken footpaths almost everywhere. However, it gets an average of 250 days of sunshine a year, which explains all the vines growing on its decaying buildings. Amazingly, we find that Odessa also has an Irish pub called Mick O'Neill's, written in Cyrillic script! We are taken to see the Tomb of the Unknown Sailor, marked by an obelisk in a large park beside the sea, where an honour guard is still provided throughout the year by a rota of high school kids in uniforms. But Alexy V, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, is coming to lunch and we rush back to witness his encounter with Bartholomew I. Alexy, with his darting eyes and sly grin, doesn't look remotely holy and even lets the Aga Khan play with the spring-loaded gold cross on his head.
Day 6: Constantza, Romania
It is cold and wet as the Venizelos comes into this vast port, with dozens of vessels moored at its quaysides. Our ship's Greek flag is wrapped around the flagpole and I take the liberty of unfurling it in the wind, in deference to the Romanians who have provided a naval band and guard of honour to greet Bartholomew I. Their own Orthodox Patriarch, all dressed in white, is also present for the ceremony; like Alexy of Moscow, he had no difficulty fraternising with tyrants.
The awful legacy of Ceaucescu is evident on an hour-long bus trip through the countryside to the Danube delta. It's a Nebraska-like landscape of endless cornfields, with suspiciously few villages along the bumpy road and, in the distance, dark satanic mills with tall chimneys belching God-knowswhat into the atmosphere. At the end of the journey, we reach Tulcea, a bleak town full of Ceaucescu-period apartment buildings. Not without reason, we dub it "Grimsville".
A flotilla of boats takes us up the Danube to see its protected wetlands, reputedly full of bird life. The trip turns out to be quite pointless, as few of us get to see any birds. Back in Constantza, we walk down streets lined with art nouveau villas; clearly this city had a golden era at the turn of the century. Shopping for vodka with such brand names as Draculina, Rasputin and Stalinskaya, we avoid any entanglement with the currency touts who operate like three-card tricksters here.
Day 7: Varna, Bulgaria
"Four Patriarchs Hit Varna", the local tabloid newspaper proclaims, as the heads of the Orthodox church from Constantinople, Georgia, Romania and Bulgaria concelebrate a eucharistic service in the dark, late 19th century cathedral.
Varna is particularly proud of its archaeological museum, which contains an impressive collection of icons as well as the world's oldest hoard of prehistoric gold. This spectacular find of grave goods, weighing 1.5 kilos (they're dab hands at statistics in these parts), is arranged around a human skeleton and even includes a gold penis sheath. In the museum's foyer, the guides run their own market stall, selling medals and trinkets to boost their meagre income.
Day 8: Istanbul, Turkey
Many of us get up before dawn as the ship sails through the Bosphorus under the huge suspension bridge linking Europe with Asia Minor.
Rahmi Koc, a Turkish shipping billionaire whose companies employ 40,000 people, quotes W.B. Yeats's poem Sailing to Byzantium before we leave the ship for a bus tour. Someone else describes Istanbul as a city of 12 million people "all furiously trying to sell things to each other". Tourists, of course, are the real targets and I find myself taken to the cleaners by a clever little street vendor who sells me a guide book for about six times its true price.
We are taken first to the Blue Mosque of 1609, one of the great triumphs of Islamic architecture. But, like Istanbul itself, nothing you have heard or read about it can prepare you for the real thing. Its interior is beautiful beyond words, a gobsmacking symphony of faience and gilded filigree, marble and stained glass. Still reeling, we walk the short distance to Haghia Sophia, built in 537 by the Emperor Justinian as a Christian church, later turned into a mosque and now a museum.
We also visit the Roman Hippodrome and underground water cistern, with its forest of classical columns, before walking through the labrynthine Covered Bazaar, with its 4,000-plus shops and more sights, sounds and smells than a body could absorb. Men are fishing from the Galata bridge over the Golden Horn as we make our way back to the Venizelos, vowing to return. Because, while every port we visited was fascinating in its own way, we had all come for old Byzantium.