When schools were closing in the summer, there were two kinds of excitements. The first had to do with the ability to play all day, without having any other obligations. The other was related to the possible places we would visit, and they usually involved with the beach.
In our family that was partially true. According to our parents, during the summer we would have to review the material we did in the past year, and if possible, start working on the material of the next class. As far as vacation was concerned, the only known fact was that we would go to Makrinitsa, a village in the mountains where my dad had been born.
Makrinitsa is a small village founded and built by repatriated Greeks that came as refugees from Pontos after the Turkish army chased them away. My grandfather was a young man when they settled in Greece and he was one of the leaders that was tasked to find the right place for their settlement. They chose the slopes of mount Kerkini, which separates Greece, Skopje, and Bulgaria. The area is filled with running waters and enormous plane trees, just like the lost country they left behind. The scenery is magnificent, the nature relaxing and soothing. The only problem is that the ground is filled with rocks and it is very hard to cultivate.
My grandfather’s nickname was Zeus. He was strong minded, stern, and had a very strong and explosive personality. His father was a priest and that kept him close to the church where he would chant on Sundays. During the civil war at 1945, the rebels sought shelter in the mountains and they would rai the village for supplies. Some incidents included death and rapes and all kinds of violence, so grandad took the family and moved to Thessaloniki, where they lived for the rest of their lives.
In the early 80s, my father and us, we took a trip to Makrinitsa for the first time in over 35 years. It was raining all the time and some roads were closed, so after we got lost countless of times, we found is where is should be on the side of the mountains. We found the old house that had been deserted, and we visited relatives that I had no idea existed.
Shortly, my dad decided that we would rebuild the old house. Rather we would build a new house on top of the old house’s foundation, and the imperative word here is “we”. After hiring a contractor to build the concrete frame of the house, he started working on the house himself. He did the brick work along with the plaster on the walls, did the plumbing, put in all the cabling for electricity, build the roof and tiles along with the floor tiles, and of course all the outside work that included the vegetable garden. Every weekend or holiday periods we would go to the village and work on the house. I must admit, I didn’t really enjoy it because did never let me do anything except hold the ladder, or hand him a screwdriver, or carry stuff from the yard upstairs.
But I really loved being in the village. I had made friends there, I was free to roam around in the nature, hike to the mountain, explore the small creeks, build things for fun, and even help out in the church during Sunday’s mass.
My grandparents were living there half of the year. Every March they would start the negotiations with my dad and aunt about when they were going to move to the village, which usually happened early in April. They would stay there all summer, work on their garden, see their friends and relatives, and towards the end of October they would return to the city to spend the winter. Grandpa and grandma loved me and my sister very much but they were not very affectionate people. They grew up in the midst of wars and displacements, and their primary goal was to survive, and their parents taught them that in order to survive you must eat well and don’t catch a cold.
Our visits to see them were filled with questions like “Have you eaten? You look skinny…” or “put a jacket on, you will catch pneumonia “, or “Are you hungry? Let me get you something to eat.” Grandma’s cooking was a little different from what we were used to at home. It was all traditional from where they came from, with a lot of fermented meat and dairy, soups of various unfamiliar flavours, and of course pies. Being the considerate grandma that she was and afraid that we may vanish from starvation, she would prepare for us fried potatoes, with or without eggs, with or without green beans. That was our favourite, a real treat especially for my sister that was a really fussy eater.
In the summer of 1988, just like the last few summers, we were bound to spend a couple of weeks at the village with grandma and grandpa. I made arrangements with some of my friends and there would be some of us there at the same time, so we would hang out, play, and have fun. My sister wasn’t a big fan of that idea. She had just finished high-school and had her exam for university qualification, and although she didn’t do as well as she wanted, the effort preparing for these exams was brutal and span across three years. She preferred to go on vacation with her friends, girls or boys I don’t remember and I don’t think I tried to find out - and left me to go alone.
That summer was the one before my last year in school. I had tutoring classes starting and also had basketball conditioning starting mid-August. My United States university applications and brochures were still coming in and I had to make a decision to present to my parents. Nothing had been agreed yet, except the fact that I will do my research and then we will talk. With all this work to be done before the end of summer, all I was missing was a vacation plan.
Mike and I were planning to spend a few weekends, and possibly a bit more, at his summer house at Zografou. He had passed his driving test over the winter and he was now the official driver of the group. His brother was serving in the Greek army and it was between him and his dad who would take the family car. That was a daily drama for their family. His dad was working on a rotation shift which meant that he was working a different time each day, and Mike was working mornings which meant that he wanted the car in the evenings. The old Opel Kaddett was no head-turner and it had no luxuries, but it was more than a means of transportation and at the age of 21 that had great privileges.
So the coordination between Mike, his dad, the car, and their jobs left me with a couple of weeks that I could either spend at home in the city, or I could find some more independence at the village with my grandparents. I chose the later. I always loved staying there, I could see some friends, I could study at my own pace, I could spend time outdoors, and get a few nights of good rest in the cold mountain air, under the warm duvet, away from mosquitoes, heat, and motorcycle-exhaust noise.
My grandparents loved having me over. I was old enough not to be their responsibility, they were enjoying seeing me grown up, they were glad that I was choosing to spend time with them, and I was able to help them with chores in the garden or around the house. More importantly for grandma, I would eat anything she cooked, and would not cause any trouble.
So I went and very quickly I made my own comfortable routine. Waking up was not a problem because sleeping there was so restful. I only needed eight or so hours and given that we would never stay out later than eleven, there was more that enough time to fill up on sleep. Of course, after a good night sleep and all that excess oxygen, the first thing I would look for would be breakfast. There was always something prepared on the kitchen table, simple but meaningful and effective: Bread, butter and honey, or homemade jam from the local trees, sometimes there would be a pie or their version of a french toast, or even their version of a donut smothered with honey. Grandma would always offer milk, but she knew that I could not drink the fresh cow’s milk that they were drinking. At that age, I was not drinking coffee yet, so water was more that enough.
After breakfast, we would discuss the chores that they had for me. Most of the times it had to do with picking green beans off their poles, or carrying potatoes from the field to the basement of the house. Small stuff like that. Depending on how early I finished, sometimes I would sit on the balcony and either read, study, or just daydream. The summer day on the mountain is very hot, and the sun seems very unforgiving. The balcony had a really thick shade in the morning, and most of the days was visited by a gentle, cool breeze. Sitting on the balcony, in a semi-comfortable armchair, I could see the whole valley below and the Kerkini lake. I could hear the trains that were approaching the nearest station, and even the cars that were trying to climb the steep uphill road into the village. I would mostly daydream about studying in the United States, where would I go, how would it be, who will I meet, what will I learn, will it be like the movies?
Eventually, someone would pass from the street in front of our house and we would get together trying to figure out the best way to Pass the morning. The school was always a good choice. It was next to the village square and it had grass in the yard. It was not operational but still had a really big set of double-stairs that were ideal to sit and chat. Also, it was great to play football. We would gather at the school and depending on how many we were, we would organise the most suitable game. That was always fun. We would talk about our favourite teams, we would include the necessary banter, and we would try to defend our team’s honour and reputation in our own game.
The game ended around lunchtime. We would all have to go home to our grandparents and have lunch with them, without having them come looking for us or worry about us. A couple of times, I would meet my grandpa at the “kafeneio” (coffee shop) at the village square, and we would walk back to the house together. Grandma would have prepared a meal, and have the table set for all of us to have our meal. But the first thing that my grandad did when he got home would be to go wash his hands and make sure he wore a dry undershirt, just in case he broke a sweat walking home from the square.
Eventually we would sit at the table and eat. The meal would be based on vegetables, rarely meat, almost never fish. Potatoes, beans, aubergines, carrots, rice, pasta, and of course salad and bread. The salad would be tomatoes from the garden, of freshly collected greens. For desert, there would be either watermelon, which was my favourite, or grapes which was my grandad’s favourite. At the table we would talk about what I did and where I have been, and we would also discuss what they did or if any new chores came up. My grandad liked to tell stories from his youth and he also liked to discuss things he read. He would read anything that he came across, especially when history books, although I don’t think he realised how much history he has made himself.
One of the best practices in life, I witnessed at my grandparents’ house at the village: take a nap. For two hours nobody was supposed to make any noise and everyone had the right to fall asleep and rest. That was the time of the day when I would retire in my room, put on my headphones, grab a book or magazine, put a cassette in the cassette player and listen to the songs that I recorded from the radio at home in the city. I would also have my enhanced desert, which was spoon-sweet sour cherry, made by my mum.
The tape would start with Everything She Wants from Wham!, a song that I knew the lyrics and liked the tune. I was not a big fan of Wham!, I believed they were addressing their female fan-base, but the I-had-enough-lyrics stuck with me, and maybe the not so impressive set of other songs on that tape. I go in that room every time I hear that song, and every time I think about sour cherry, I also hear the song and feel good in that room, in the village, in the summer.
The afternoon was easy from a chores perspective. I would go and get fresh cows milk from a nearby farmer, I would go and buy bread from the village dealer, and anything similar that may come up. If the bread was fresh, I would make a snack that my grandma taught me. Mixed cocoa and sugar, sprinkled over moist fresh bread. It must have been the bread or the water because no matter how much I tried, I could never reproduce the taste and the joy of a slice like the ones I had as a snack every afternoon during my vacation in the village.
The evening was usually eventful. The whole gang would gather in the playground, where all kinds of flirting took place between the boys and the girls. We would play games like the children that we were and then we would try and act like the adults that we wanted to be. Usually the end of the evening found everyone at the village square where the tavern would be preparing souvlakia, and occasionally an impromptu band would be setup for everyone there to dance and sing. The square was just big enough for people to eat and dance at the same time, and it had four enormous plane trees that covered the sun in the day and the moon at night. These socials would not last that long because the night breeze would start rolling from the mountain and would bring chills to the people. Slowly, loudly and with a sense of achievement, everyone goes home leaving the rest for the next day.
I repeated that routine for two weeks that summer. Two weeks were more than enough for these sensations to become engraved in my heart and in my soul and in my mind. The simplicity of my grandparents life in the village, the joy they received from that life, the joy that they gave me by sharing it with me, are all part of me. And just like a well-trained dog, I associated a great song with that period of my life, with that place, with that moment. Everything I wanted!