After all

Outside the walls of Great Lavra, the main monastery on Mount Athos, a row of solar panels were staring up at the deep-blue Hellenic sky. The panels appeared alien against the backdrop of the medieval monastery walls, like bikini-clad models at a black-tie dinner. I felt like pinching myself to make sure I was indeed in Mount Athos, the 1,000-year-old all-male Orthodox monastic republic in the north of Greece, notorious for its stubborn resistance to any whiff of modernity.