Reunion achieved on Sunday afternoon, hugs exchanged, european style now as we are in a country where it is ok for guys to actually touch occasionally. Sav, Effie and I climbed into the back of their suitably dark coloured car and whisked ourselves off to a bar. And yes, I will say, a very nice bar, and not too far from aforementioned prison, but local knowledge wasnt within my possession, anyway, greatful to receive sea breezes comfy chairs and the posibility of receiving vodka the way i like it… orally… the afternoon and tales of travels washed over us.

We were joined by effies cousin marina and hubby angele and wined and dined the evening away, they took us to a just right fair dinkum turkish restaurant in the burbs between central toilet athens and glyfada and a smashing night was had by all.

The following morning i sat in the bar of my prison drinking 4 euro espressos watching a german lady move into and out of the pool glancing occasionally at my phone to see if my friends had bothered to get off their asses. Note to self, dont wait in future, call em and wake the f**kers up.

Afternoon drive to poseidonas in souli, fairly impressive cliff face relics but the walk through its centre which we had all hoped to see was no longer possible, we returned for frappe and club santouits in glyfada and headed off for more drinks and merriment.

The vodka was flowing freely, we were in a second storey bar looking over the impressive beach at vouluagmeni and I looked at my cardiac friend savva and for the first time really, being in the company of friends i know from back home, fully realised that it took time, effort and planning to be happy, even if there were points of bitterness studding that happiness. I raised my glass and not for the last time utterred “aint life shit”… all agreed and drank along for the ride.

Tuesday 8th July saw me on an 9:30 am flight from athens to thesalloniki, the trip to the airport being dogged by amazing single lane traffic, Athens is as i mentioned a toilet.

Bid farewell to sav and effie at the terminal and headed off towards the olympic terminal which for romantic poetic licence purposes i will refer to as the gateway to my parents village, ampeolikipi kastoria, a place which i have large slabs of memory dedicated to all dated and wide lapelled as the last time i walked its streets was in june 1978.

I boarded the former crop duster which was to ferry me to salonica, watched the entire passenger corpus cross themselves and even saw somebody with a small single use parachute on her lap. I wasnt as well prepared, my bag contained a well thumbed but not finished copy of Italo Calvino “If on a winter’s night a traveller” my camera and the paraphernalea you end up with when trying to get on a plane, i chose not to cross myself, realising that if we crash it would be me who would carry the bulk of the blame.

Despite these massive odds, we landed in salonica safely, the wait for the luggage to appear took almost as long as the flight itself. I burst out of the ever not so bustling salonica international airport to Macedonian soil and sunshine.

 

I made my way to the city’s bus terminal via cab, a drive straight down the main street of a town that even though it is largely comprised of multi storey apartment buidlings still manages to maintain a cosmopolitan flavour that many larger European cities lose behind their smog coated mayhem. The cab driver made several attempts to convince me that his kind offer of 110 euro to drive me to Kastoria personally was my best option, I disagreed very politely which made it very clear to him that I wasn’t actually Greek,.. This meant that the remainder of the ride revolved around him giving me a long list of relatives he has living in Melbourne, pausing briefly after each name to look at me in case I happened to know any of them. I did.

The bus terminal was a refreshing surprise compared to the shambles of a shed that purports to perform the same function in Athens. A short wait and I was on the bus to Kastoria. The bus sped through the plains to the west of Salonica and then headed for the mountains through Veria and Kozani, as we approached the Kastoria border the town names and road signs brought back more and more memories.

During my family’s trip to the village in 1978 my uncle who ran the only tavern in the village (at the time) would take us on day trips each Monday, he had a massive blue Opel station wagon and we would pile into it together and head off to one of the nearby highlights. As I get closer I wondered why i let such a long time pass before returning, and despite years of denying or rebeling against the notion of heritage, here it was staring me in the face.

I wasn’t sure what to expect in the village, my father had told me that my grandmother (his mother) seemed ok and had been anticipating my arrival with great excitement, this seemed to make my father happy as well, an emotion I’m not used to receiving from him. The bus moved through the villages near Kastoria and I heard people on the bus talk about them using the old slavic or maco town names, a few people boarded the bus at koustarazi and an older man recognised me as ”tou tsakou” (my grandfather’s nickname) an expression I would have to start getting used to.

We passed the town of Dispilio and i got my first glimpses of the city of kastoria itself. Perhaps I am biased coming from there, but there are a whole host of reasons why I believe that Kastoria is one of mainland greece’s most beautiful cities. Ii say “one of the most beautiful” not knowing of a city more beautiful but in polite realisation that there is a chance that one exists.

As you approach the city from the east you see if resting along the side of a lake, lake Orestias, From this angle the city seems to occupy a hill facing due east and to its noth lies a large green mount beyond which the lake takes a run west.. however once you get into the town and climb some of those steep slopes… the true beauty of the location becomes (slowly) apparent.

Lake orestias is a large basically round lake with a keyhole shaped peninsula piering into it from the western shore, the city of Kastoria straddles this peninsula at its lower part with large green knob of a mountain extending some way into the lake immediately next to it. Very hard to describe, but have a look at some of the pics and get your hands on a map, and if you are heading to Greece, go have a look.

The city looks like an italian seaside or lake town, and building a town on such a peninsula obviously made practical sense in times when people rode around with spears and shields, a natural barrier to the marauding herds that have visited the area over the centuries. The green mount immediately next to the city is totally undeveloped and houses many byzantine churches. The fact that it hasn’t been developed i think has more to do with Greek laziness rather than an example of sound planning, it is quite steep and rugged and anybody who lived there would have to backtrack through the main part of the city to go anywhere anyway… but to be fair the locals pooh pooh this idea saying that the area is sacred and even building the road along the waters edge to allow people to more easily visit the churches was an enormously controversial move.

My bus journey ended at a large carpark at the city’s edge, the view of the city and the surrounding mountains from here hadn’t changed and I immediately remembered the many trips into kastoria i took with my older cousin Diamandis, with him holding my hand as we moved through the crowds of people at the bus station.

A short cab ride into Ambelokipi was the last leg, the cabbie turned off the main road and down the main drag of the village, we passed my uncle’s taverna, now surrounded by other copy cats, turning the village into a bit of an evening hotspot, continued down the road to the main square and my family house which overlooks it… in fact in the years that have passed the square has been rather neglected so it would be wise if the house was able to overlook it all together. But as I expected the layout of the streets hadn’t changed, the main road had come a lot closer to the village, the roads were now paved, the tree lined street on the outskirts of the village was gone but it was still immediately recognisable. My grandmothers simple 3 roomed house invited me in, the high roof, the overhanging eaves, complete with the older style shingles, the basement and the double slanted doors that lead down into it, the old house in the property to the right which used to house my uncle’s pigs and other livestock when I was here last still standing but now not holding life of any kind, waiting for its time to return to the dirt which it has stood upon for almost a century.

I climbed the stairs and entered the house, calling my grandmother’s name, I was a little earlier than I had expected, she may have been asleep. I pushed past the butcher shop style fly screen door as if i had just returned from a trip to the shops letting the plastic slap against the steel door, I walked into her kitchen, saw the daybed which she now preferred to sleep in, a wood stove, tv, small plastic outdoor table, dozens of photographs of me and my first cousins at various stages of our lives adorned most of the flat surfaces and walls, some kitschy Australian souvenirs including a coat of arms thermometer and 2 melbourne arts centre wall hangings.

I poked my head into the other rooms but couldn’t find my grandmother. I dropped my bags and sat on her bed to wait, her glasses, medication, salt and pepper shaker lay on the table in front of me, on a scrap of paper she had written my mobile phone number and the word ”Hristaki” which is of course the way she would always remember me, her little Chris.

A few moments later i heard some shuffling at the back door and my grandmother clear her throat, a habit she passed on to her son and he in turn passed on to me. I stood up walked slowly towards the door calling yiayia … yiayia, this was home.