Carefree Days and Nights on Spetses
By Helen Grubner. Filed in Uncategorized |
Helen, Costas and Panayiotes in “Boggi”
A week today since I arrived back on Spetses and life is a very happy and relaxed one. We are blessed with continuing unseasonably warm weather. Some days we meet at Filippos for coffee after Costas has finished his daily chores. Other days eating lunch out at Spetsiotiko or Bouboulina overlooking the sea … enjoying Horta (edible wild greens) and/or Pantzara Salata (beetroot salad), both of which go down a treat with Barbounakia (small red mullet). At home we have made two meze, to be enjoyed with fresh crusty bread … Tsatsiki – yogurt with cucumber and heaps of garlic (rather hot) and Fava, a puree made from yellow split peas. The orange tree in our garden is laden, the fruits providing us with wonderful freshly squeezed juice everyday. The garden and courtyard have also had a tidy up thanks to yours truly … something I like to do when I am here in my second home.
As tempting as it is to take myself off to Bar Spetsa every night of the week, good sense sometimes prevails and I enjoy a quiet night at home with the four cats keeping me company. On the nights when I do go in, we generally end up moving on to Balkoni or Boggi, sometimes just the two of us, other nights with our friends Ray and Heather, Roland and Panayiotes. On Saturday night, we went first to Balkoni, then on to Boggi where the Square was filled with motorbikes and scooters … Boggi was pumping, the young ones were dancing and generally having a ball. I recognised many of them as guests at a wedding we had made an appearance at earlier in the evening. Costas likes to request they play “Itane Mia Fora”, a song from Nikolaos Xylouris, a singer and Cretan lyra player. Costas sings along very loudly in my ear, then we make the short walk home, from where we can still hear the music continuing into the wee small hours of the morning.
Yesterday was Oxi Day, a national holiday in Greece, commemorating the rejection by Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas of the ultimatum made by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini on 28 October 1940. Every year this day is marked with street parades and seemingly the entire community are out and about.
Many years ago I read “Attic in Greece” by Austen Kark, a book about his love affair with Greece and the Greek people and his ultimate retirement with his wife Nina to Navplion, where they purchased an almost derelict house and faced the Greek bureaucracy. The other day I came across a copy of the book amongst Costas library … shortly I will retire to bed and read a few more pages.