A Dinner to Remember

Tags

cultural differences, dinnertime, family, Greece, memory

I am traveling this week between my old and new homes, so I will be lazy and recycle a story of a dinner I will never forget for this week’s photo challenge.

***

My first real connection with the wider world started with a little goat, a katsikaki, as it was called in the tiny arid villages of central Greece. I was a teenager at the time, on my first trip out of the United States. I had just spent a few weeks at a Greek Orthodox camp on the western shores of the country, and now I was traveling into the heart of the Peloponnese with my yiayia and papou to spend a week at Papou’s childhood home.

A distant relative was driving, and as we crawled along the rutted and twisted roads of Arcadia, my grandmother told me stories and taught me Greek in the back seat while the men sat up front, smoking silently as we rode. The road dipped and curled, backtracking endlessly upon itself as we climbed and descended the mountains and valleys. Although the windows were down, it felt as though we were looking through dirty glass as the dust swirled around us and the brown scrubgrass, muted green olive trees, and hazy summer sky melted together in a miasma of July heat. The car seemed to float across the landscape, its progress slow but steady in the oppressive warmth and constant thrum of cicadas and other chirping insects.

When she was young, Yiayia said, she had been rich and pretty and courted by many wealthy Greek suitors. She talked of trips on the Orient Express and her engagement to a young shipping magnate who had given her a silver ring encrusted with diamonds to herald the connection between the two aristocratic families. But that union was not meant to be, as my headstrong grandmother threw over the young scion for a dashing and hardworking immigrant new to America – my Papou.

It was his village we were riding to – a remote enclave of some 100 people, isolated and poor, deep in the heart of the mainland. Even the name conjured up images of ancient, black-garbed peasants, gnarled olive trees, mangy scrounging dogs, and mule paths that were now used as roads. Thoughts of the Orient Express, or even Athens, lay irretrievably far away as we pulled into the town square, a tiny area in front of the church. Old women emerged from the tiny stucco houses to wrap themselves around Papou’s neck – the long-lost son of the village. The widows keened over my grandfather’s arrival, but the children and young adults turned their attention to me – a blonde, green-eyed teenager in a jean skirt.

The week passed in slow motion, with morning trips up the hill to fresh water wells and afternoon gatherings in the tiny square for coffee and too-sweet pastries. Knots of old men and widows clustered in the streets, and farm animals emerged from under the houses to roam the village by day. The goats were the ring leaders, the billies bullying and the ewes taking up camp where they wished. Their babies, the katsikakia, were still innocent and irresistibly darling. The little one that lived under our house was my favorite, with its narrow head and silky ears. It scampered on the slender legs of a fawn and craved affection like a puppy as it moved its soft body into my legs. I spent hours with the tiny kid, hiding in the cool stone pen under the house, traipsing along with him to the well, and feeding him extra morsels of food away from the watchful eyes of Aunt S and Uncle T, my elderly hosts.

Finally, it was time to leave the village and return to Athens. Our bags were packed, the car was checked for the return drive, and goodbyes were said throughout the village. Sweet little Aunt S set the table with her finest belongings and spent the afternoon cooking a farewell feast for my grandparents and me. The house was festive; delicious aromas filled the air and the adults were cheerful as they sipped their retsina and smoked companionably on the grapevine-draped porch.

We took our seats at the table and were touched at the time and expense our poor relatives had invested in this meal. It might be years before American visitors came again, and S threw everything into making our last night special. The wine continued to flow, the small plates were passed, and S left to bring in the main course. She walked through the blue-painted door with a huge platter in her hands and a look of pure pride and happiness on her face. She came straight toward me. Puzzled, I glanced at my yiayia; the adults were always served first here. Aunt S beamed; “To katsikaki sou! …your little goat!” Stunned, horrified, nearly hysterical, I looked back at my grandmother. “Smile,” she hissed. “Say thank you … and eat it.”

I grew up that day, choking down this token of my relatives’ love and respect for me and my grandparents. They had given to me what I loved most in that tiny village and, as wrong as it all seemed to me at the time, it remains a hauntingly strong memory of that first trip away from home.

The Village Revisited, or Back to the Beginning at the End of the Year

Tags

family history, Greece, Vasta

As the year comes to a close, the blogging trend seems to be to post an all-inclusive 2014 roundup, but I want to return instead to the beginnings of One Foot Out the Door this year. My inaugural (and still my favorite, so go read it!) post on this blog was called “It Started with a Little Goat.” It told the story of my first real experience with a culture totally unlike my own, a trip that was to be the impetus for a lifetime of curiosity about the world. If you really want to make sense of today’s post, take a trip back in time with me and read that post first. If you are in a hurry to get to this century’s story, plunge in below. (And if a roundup is really all you want, head over to An Eye on the World for a monthly line-up of photos from a few 2014 trips.)

—————

The Village Revisited

When I left my grandfather’s tiny village in Greece, and my relative, Aunt S, decades ago, I had no inkling that I would sit with her on that porch and in that kitchen with my husband, my children, and my parents nearly thirty years later. She seemed elderly when I first met her; would she even be alive when I went back? A few years ago, our family decided to take a trip to Greece to see the country and meet a few distant relatives. At a holiday meal sometime before that, my father and I, over a few glasses of wine, prattled on about how wonderful it would be to go as an extended family, neither really thinking anything would come of this sentimental plan. Pondering it more seriously a few weeks later, I remembered my trip with my own grandparents (the theme of my original post) and realized this was an opportunity for my children and my parents that they might never have again. I broached the idea to my husband and kids and, with their blessing, invited my parents to join us on a vacation to Greece and a pilgrimage to my grandfather’s village.

The village is not an easy place to visit or even find, as I discovered when it fell to me to plan the trip and do the driving. Only some 200 kilometers southwest of Athens and a two-hour drive from Nafplion, where we started our stay, Papou’s village nevertheless feels as remote as a town in the Outback, a tiny village literally at the end of the road in the central Peloponnese. The maps I consulted and printed out before the trip showed a reasonable road up to Megalopolis, a “big city” of 15,000 or so people, then a thinner, but still solid, line off the main route, then a faint, dotted line that inched and curled past another small town to an end in our village.

The Greek that I started learning with Yiayia in the back seat of a car threading its way through the mountains years ago had developed some serious rust, scrubbed away and polished up every so often with a college course here, a Berlitz tutoring session there, some stubborn self-study, and even a little speaking practice with the dog over the years. It was enough to allow me to read the signs and ask directions, although we found in the course of several weeks that the Greeks are not particularly good with directions, a problem that is compounded when the listener catches only a third of the directions each time they are given.

Wedged into a stick-shift van (which only I could drive) with seven people, seven large suitcases, seven day bags, and a few stray purses and bags of snacks, we bounced and wove through the same shimmering Grecian landscape I remembered. Waves of heat lent a blur to the fields of olive trees and mid-summer-brown grasses, while a few wispy white clouds scuttled across a Mediterranean blue sky. An old R.E.M. CD was our soundtrack as we climbed and plunged, curved and skidded on the narrow, gravel-covered roads. Terrifying drop-offs beckoned on one side and then the other as we hairpin-turned our way toward the village.

The road finally came to a T and a small sign pointed to the right. Now we were truly on that dotted line, no more than a dirt path, and we slowly crept the last few minutes into town. My heart beat in my throat as I thought about Yiayia and Papou, now gone almost 20 years, and my days in this place out of time so many years ago. My mother, too, had made a previous visit to the village with her parents in the late 70s; she was feeling, as I was, a mixture of excitement, sadness, apprehension, and nostalgia as we passed the first houses outside the main village. Suddenly, we cried out together as we spotted the big black door closing the family home off from the road.

After an initial certainty that this was the place, we questioned ourselves and continued a few hundred feet farther into the village where we passed the main square and the church. Thinking we might have been mistaken, we started to climb past newer houses on a hill leading deeper into the village. Our progress was immediately halted, however, when the over-sized van could not squeeze between the buildings on either side of the road. We inched backward down a steep hill, tried to back between two other buildings to turn the vehicle around, and listed so far to one side that the far-back-row passengers were sure we were going to tip over.

Descending one by one from the van to the incredulous eyes of a few old men sitting outside a little store, we asked for the house where we had last seen Uncle T and Aunt S. A cheerfully energetic woman emerged from the store and eagerly responded. Yes, she said, S still lived in the house! She would call her right now and tell her we were going to stop by in a few minutes.

To give her a little time before seven American strangers descended upon her, we took a quick detour up the hill to the elementary school that Papou had attended before emigrating to the U.S. Our children seemed slightly more interested in the small school building than they had in any family stories or reminiscences so far, but their pre-adolescent indifference remained frustratingly hard to break through.

A little hot and cranky, we descended to the store and confirmed that S was home and waiting for us. We walked back down the hill and as we approached the gate, tiny Aunt S inched toward us, a huge smile on her radiant face. Clutching my mother and then me, and smiling shyly at the rest of the group, she led us up the crumbled concrete steps to the same grape-covered porch I had sat on for my last meal there years before.

As we entered the kitchen, my family’s mouths dropped open to see photos of my mother, their great-grandfather, and me on the walls. Whatever apathy they had been feeling melted away as they spied the jarring existence of their mother’s face – my own teenage face – on the walls of this worn little house in the middle of nowhere. That afternoon was a turning point in our trip. They had made a human connection to this beautiful land and its ancient people, and there was not a dry eye as we bade S farewell that afternoon. The trip ended up being one of our children’s most powerful family memories, and forged a bond with their grandparents that lives on today.

Friday Photos: Is it Summer Yet?

Tags

Australia, Boston, Cinque Terre, Croatia, Door County, Glacier National Park, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Santorini, summer

It’s only November, and already a deep chill has settled into my bones. A dose of summer memories from this country and others seems like just the ticket today. Let’s pretend we’re warm …

Door County, Wisconsin

Dublin, Ireland

Buza Bar, Dubrovnik, Croatia

Farmers Market, Boston, Massachusetts

Adare, Ireland

Gruz Harbor, Dubrovnik, Croatia

Vernazza, Cinque Terre, Italy

Glacier National Park, Montana

Vernazza, Cinque Terre, Italy

Mykonos, Greece

Late summer, North Dakota plains

Christmas Day lorakeets in Wahroonga, Australia

A Grave Situation

Tags

Buenos Aires, Cemeteries, Greece, Kazimierz, Krakow, La Recoleta, Paris, Pere-Lachaise, Sarajevo

What is it about cemeteries that attracts visitors and photographers? Some find it morbid and bizarre to walk around among gravestones and the dead, but I find most cemeteries to be peaceful and hauntingly beautiful places to spend an hour or two.

A rainy morning in Père-Lachaise Cemetery is one of my favorite memories of Paris. The weak morning sun seeping through the mist and illuminating the cobblestone walkways was the perfect backdrop for the mossy headstones engraved with famous names. Any reader, musician, artist, or just plain citizen of the world can appreciate a reflective stroll by the resting places of Proust, Molière, Chopin, Jim Morrison, and Seurat, among many others.

  An Ottoman-era cemetery high above Sarajevo is an incredible vantage point for seeing the valley in which this embattled Balkan city lies. The stories of snipers shooting down from these hills during the Seige of Sarajevo come frightening alive with this view, and the 15th century setting adds to the drama of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s tangled history.

Eva Perón’s grave is but one small reason to venture into La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires. As in Paris, the architecture of the tombs is spectacular in itself, and the narrow lanes arranged in a grid pattern evoke almost a neighborhood feeling among the tiny buildings. An abundance of cats and cobwebs adds to the mysterious allure here.

 

In Krakow, there are two fascinating cemeteries in the Kazimierz neighborhood, the “New” (1800s) and “Old” (1500s) Jewish Cemeteries. Oddly, the “new” one feels more ancient than the older one (also known as Remuh), perhaps because so many of the headstones are aslant and covered with moss. The older-growth trees half block the sun, dappling the toppling graves with light and shadow.

When I thought back on a number of trips, I was astonished to realize just how many other cemeteries I had visited, from the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer, France, to Arlington National in Washington, D.C., Montparnasse in Paris, and St. Louis in New Orleans.

Among all these monuments to mortality, perhaps the most emotional was an overgrown plot in Vasta, Greece, where I located the rough stone under which my great-grandfather lies. Grand or humble, cemeteries can be a quiet step back in time and a surprisingly serene way to spend a few hours outside on my travels.

It Started with a Little Goat …

Tags

family, goat, Greece, Peloponnese, Vasta

My first real connection with the wider world started with a little goat, a katsikaki, as it was called in the tiny arid villages of central Greece. I was a teenager at the time, on my first trip out of the United States. I had just spent a few weeks at a Greek Orthodox camp on the western shores of the country, and now I was traveling into the heart of the Peloponnese with my yiayia and papou to spend a week at Papou’s childhood home.

A distant relative was driving and as we crawled along the rutted and twisted roads of Arcadia, my grandmother told me stories and taught me Greek in the back seat while the men sat up front, smoking silently as we rode. The road dipped and curled, backtracking endlessly upon itself as we climbed and descended the mountains and valleys. Although the windows were down, it felt as though we were looking through dirty glass as the dust swirled around us and the brown scrubgrass, muted green olive trees, and hazy summer sky melted together in a miasma of July heat. The car seemed to float across the landscape, its progress slow but steady in the oppressive warmth and constant thrum of cicadas and other chirping insects.

When she was young, Yiayia said, she had been rich and pretty and courted by many wealthy Greek suitors. She talked of trips on the Orient Express and her engagement to a young shipping magnate who had given her a silver ring encrusted with diamonds to herald the connection between the two aristocratic families. But that union was not meant to be, as my headstrong grandmother threw over the young scion for a dashing and hardworking immigrant new to America – my Papou.

It was his village we were riding to – a remote enclave of some 100 people, isolated and poor, deep in the heart of the mainland. Even the name conjured up images of ancient, black-garbed peasants, gnarled olive trees, mangy scrounging dogs, and mule paths that were now used as roads. Thoughts of the Orient Express, or even Athens, lay irretrievably far away as we pulled into the town square, a tiny area in front of the church. Old women emerged from the tiny stucco houses to wrap themselves around Papou’s neck – the long-lost son of the village. The widows fairly keened over my grandfather’s arrival, but the children and young adults turned their attention to me – a blonde, green-eyed teenager in a jean skirt.

The week passed in slow motion, with morning trips up the hill to fresh water wells and afternoon gatherings in the tiny square for coffee and too-sweet pastries. Knots of old men and widows clustered in the streets, and farm animals emerged from under the houses to roam the village by day. The goats were the ring leaders, the billies bullying and the ewes taking up camp where they wished. Their babies, the katsikakia, were still innocent and irresistibly darling. The little one that lived under our house was my favorite, with its narrow head and silky ears. It scampered on the slender legs of a fawn and craved affection like a puppy as it moved its soft body into my legs. I spent hours with the tiny kid, hiding in the cool stone pen under the house, traipsing along with him to the well, and feeding him extra morsels of food away from the watchful eyes of Aunt S and Uncle T, my elderly hosts.

Finally, it was time to leave the village and return to Athens. Our bags were packed, the car was checked for the return drive, and goodbyes were said throughout the village. Sweet little Aunt S set the table with her finest belongings and spent the afternoon cooking a farewell feast for my grandparents and me. The house was festive; delicious aromas filled the air and the adults were cheerful as they sipped their retsina and smoked companionably on the grapevine-draped porch.

We took our seats at the table and were touched at the time and expense our poor relatives had invested in this meal. It might be years before American visitors came again, and S threw everything into making our last night special. The wine continued to flow, the small plates were passed, and S left to bring in the main course. She walked through the blue-painted door with a huge platter in her hands and a look of pure pride and happiness on her face. She came straight toward me. Puzzled, I glanced at my yiayia; the adults were always served first here. Aunt S beamed; “To katsikaki sou! …your little goat!” Stunned, horrified, nearly hysterical, I looked back at my grandmother. “Smile,” she hissed. “Say thank you … and eat it.”

I grew up that day, choking down this token of my relatives’ love and respect for me and my grandparents. They had given to me what I loved most in that tiny village and, as wrong as it all seemed to me at the time, it remains a hauntingly strong memory of that first trip away from home.