Reflections on the Windows of Greece

         The critical referendum vote in Greece is upon us, Greek TV is filled with frantic people shouting Yes! (Nai) and No! (Ohi).  But I'm convinced this beautiful country will survive and the resilient Greek people will prevail.  We've just come back from a month traveling around the country, and everywhere the people are as welcoming as ever, the landscape just as heartbreakingly beautiful and the food, beaches and olive trees as magnificent as ever.  So don't hesitate to go there!  We go as a family every year.

         Thinking about Greece reminded me of this blog post from three years ago, about how I'm always admiring and photographing the windows that reflect the beauty and art of the Greek people, who have suffered so many disasters in the past and have pulled through and rebuilt their unique country every time. 

         As I’ve mentioned before, when I’m traveling in Greece, I find myself often photographing windows. (In Paris it’s doors and in Nicaragua, it’s chairs!)

         Greek windows, with their pristine white lace or cut-work curtains and the inevitable pot of basil in the window, are so carefully composed and so indicative of the creativity of the homemaker within, that I think you can call them found art.

         The pot of basil, by the way, is not just for cooking.  It’s considered a holy plant, and brings good luck, so every home must have one.

         At the recent Grecian Festival in the Cathedral of Saint Spyridon, our church in Worcester, MA,  I sold out of the packets of note cards of my Greek windows.  Guess I’d better print some more.

Here are eleven of the designs and a little about where I found them.

          The window on the left, on the green island of Skopelos in the northeast, demonstrates the beautiful cutwork of the handmade curtains. The reflection shows the arched window of a church (?) next door. 

         The window on the right, of a shop in the mountains of Crete, displays the colorful local embroidery and the classic caned Greek chair found everywhere throughout the country.

         Both these windows are in the charming Hotel Kastro, in the walled city in Yannina, Greece, which looks exactly as it did when the Turks ruled the country.  Now the mosques have been turned into museums, but the city still has the exotic beauty that seduced Lord Byron when he came to visit Ali Pasha and marvel at his riches.  The window on the left shows the Greek tendency to train climbing vines everywhere.  In the photo on the right, I was remembering something my friend, award-winning photographer Mari Seder, once told me--sometimes the shadows are the most important part of the photograph.

         On the left, a window in a popular taverna on the island of Hydra echoes the blue and white of the Greek flag.  The miniature sailing boat in the window speaks of the seafaring history of the island.          The  window on the right belongs to a humble restaurant on Mykonos, tucked far, far away from the areas thronged with tourists.  The food is magnificent and so is the view.  If I could remember the name of the restaurant I wouldn't tell.  Its patrons want to keep it unspoiled.  (Here's a hint. The beach far below is called Agios Sostis.)

        The window on the left is in a very rustic eco-resort--Milia-- high in the mountains of Crete.  The views far down the mountain are to die for.  On the right, in the unique town of Pirgi, on the island of Chios, the curtain in the window echoes the geometric designs scratched into the plaster of the exterior walls on all the buildings.

         On the left, outside a taverna on Crete, is what I call the mermaid window, although it may have started life as a door before it was boarded up and turned into illustrations for the story of the Gorgona--the giant mermaid who was the sister of Alexander the Great before he cursed her.  (If you want to know the whole story of the mermaid, read it in my book "The Secret Life of Greek Cats.")

         The window on the right is in an ancient church in the beautiful town of Pirgi on the island of Chios.  Originally I posted this photo in a blog post called "The Scraped Walls of Pirgi, Chios".  I said the angel-like figure over the window was a representation of the Holy Spirit, but I was wrong.  A sharp-eyed and much better-informed reader named Matthew Kalamidas wrote: "Lastly, the angel in the wall painting is actually a six-winged seraphim. In Greek, an exapterygo. Besides the six wings, the words beside it are 'Holy, Holy, Holy Lord', which is an abbreviated form of the never-ending prayer."

That's one of the great things about writing blog posts -- you learn so much.

ALI PASHA & THE BLOODY HISTORY of IOANNINA

This is a week when we should be remembering and mourning the genocide committed by the Turks on the Armenians, which began a hundred years ago today (and  took the lives of many Anatolian Greeks as well.).  But I am reprinting here an essay I first posted in August of 2009, because some friends are visiting Greece soon and asked me about the tragic history of Ioannina, the provincial capitol of Epiros, Greece, where we stay every summer before heading up the mountains to Nick's native village of Lia on the Albanian border. 

 

Ali Pasha on the Lake of Ioannina

On our first evening back in Greece, last week, a stroll down the main street of Ioannina took us past reminders of the cataclysms that have racked this area for the past 200 years. The entire population of the city seemed to be outside, enjoying the perfect weather. Ioannina (also spelled Yannina) is the provincial capital of Epiros and the stepping-off place for my husband Nick’s village—about an hour’s drive farther north on a mountain just below the Albanian border.

I often remind myself, when I’m in Greece, that any Greek my age—old enough to remember World War II—is a survivor of the Italian and Nazi occupations, the terrible starvation that followed, and the bloody Civil War that rent the country after that. The Civil War still splits the populace along political lines when you bring up stories like that of my mother-in-law Eleni Gatzoyiannis, who was imprisoned, tortured and killed in 1948 for engineering her children’s’ escape from their occupied village. She began planning the escape when the Communist guerrillas started collecting children to send to re-education camps behind the Iron Curtain. (This was called the pedomasoma, and while many claim it never happened—like Holocaust deniers— in fact 28,000 children were taken from their parents and reared in communist countries.)

In Ioannina, as elsewhere, Greeks traditionally take an evening stroll—the peripato-- families walking together, pushing baby strollers, the youth checking each other’s fashion statements. Everyone eventually sits at an outdoor cafe to enjoy an iced coffee or a glass of wine or ouzo and watch the passing parade. (Dinner doesn’t start until ten p.m.). The peripato is especially popular in towns on the sea or on a lakeside harbor like Ioannina.

Outdoor restaurants, hammered metalwork, memorial to the Jews taken from Ioannina, the gate to the walled Turkish city

Tourists have not yet discovered this city, which is little changed from the days when Lord Byron visited the notorious tyrant Ali Pasha in the walled Turkish Kastro which still stands—its walls intact, its minarets and palaces now turned into museums.

In Ioannina we stayed in the new Grand Serai hotel, ornately decorated with marble, crystal chandeliers and copies of paintings showing Lord Byron and Ali Pasha—the Albanian vizier who tried to seize control of the area from the Turkish Sultan in Constantinople.

Ali Pasha had 300 women in his harem and 300 boys in his seraglio, so they say in Ioannina. Most of them were kidnapped from the neighboring Greek villages—pretty girls for the harem, promising boys to be trained as soldiers in the Janissary corps. Turkish rule ended in Northern Greece in 1913, but even after that, village women like Nick’s mother Eleni, warned their daughters to cover their faces with their kerchiefs to avoid being kidnapped for their beauty. Nick’s father, who was born in 1891, wasn’t sure of his exact birth date because his mother, like everyone else, lied about the age of the boys, making them younger so they wouldn’t be taken as Turkish soldiers.

Melodramatic painting of the killing of Kyria Frosini, one of Ali Pasha's most famous victims

Ali Pasha had a habit of drowning individuals who displeased him by sealing them in sacks weighted with stones and dropping them into the bottomless Lake Pamvotis below the walls of the Turkish Kastro. They say that in the morning mists over the lake you can see the ghosts of the women who died there, including Kyria Efrosini, the lover of one of Ali Pasha’s sons, who tried to sell her expensive ring in the marketplace. A famous painting portrays her and her maids, who were drowned with her, being rowed to their death by grinning evil Turks.

Taxi-boats to the island, entrance to the walled city

Today the lakefront is the scene of excellent restaurants and nightclubs which are filled to overflowing with the youth of the city, partying late into the night. Even at midnight, families are out, dining al fresco as children enjoy a Lunar Park of carnival rides and outdoor shows of traditional Greek shadow puppets. There are the gypsies, selling everything from mixed nuts to cheap Chinese electronics, and the little ferryboats, chugging to and from the island in the middle of the lake. Day or night the lakeside is a happening scene,

Ali Pasha was assassinated in 1822 in his summer home on the large island in the middle of the lake (which has many tavernas featuring freshwater fish like trout, plus eels and frogs legs.)

Ali Pasha nd his wife Kyra Vassiliki, who  facilitated his murder

Ali’s wife was Kyria Vassiliki, who was kidnapped (if I remember correctly) from her village of Plessio at the age of 15. The old man trusted the lovely Vassiliki, but she learned of his plan to torch Greek villages and she abetted assassins sent by the Sultan in Constantinople—giving a signal which allowed the killers entrance to Ali Pasha’s island home, where they shot him from the floor below.

The Turks cut off Ali Pasha’s head and carted it to the Sultan in Constantinople, along with Vassilki as a witness—to prove that the tyrant was dead. His headless body was buried under an elaborate wrought- iron cage in Ioannina, still standing near the mosque that is now a museum.

In gratitude for saving her fellow Greeks, Kyria Vassiliki was returned to her village and became the first Greek woman to receive social security.

As we walked down the main street--Averoff— toward the lake front, we passed the entrance to the Turkish Kastro, and a shrine to two local Greek warriors who were hanged by the Turks from a nearby plane tree. They are now saints.

Then we passed a monument to the Jews of Ioannina, who lived mostly within the Kastro—near the ancient synagogue which still survives (although there are rarely enough men to make a minion.) A sign says in both Greek and English, “In memory of our 1,850 Jewish cohabitants who were arrested on March 25th, 1944, and executed in the Nazi concentration camps”. That is another story in Ioannina’s bloody history and one that is still being written about.

As we approached the lake, we passed a warren of shops featuring wares of hammered copper and brass as well as silver filigree: traditional handicrafts of Ioannina. Some of the objects are made from mortar shells left from the war.

Then we reached the lakeside, where the music was blaring and the populace was eating and drinking and admiring the view. Aside from some lakeside statues of veiled women, representing the victims of Ali Pasha, there was no sign of the city’s tragic history, only merriment and music on a balmy summer night.

Found Art: Greek Windows

As I’ve mentioned before, when I’m traveling in Greece, I find myself often photographing windows. (In Paris it’s doors and in Nicaragua, it’s chairs!)

Greek windows, with their pristine white lace or cut-work curtains and the inevitable pot of basil in the window, are so carefully composed and so indicative of the creativity of the homemaker within, that I think you can call them found art.

The pot of basil, by the way, is not just for cooking.  It’s considered a holy plant, and brings good luck, so every home must have one.

At the recent Grecian Festival in the Cathedral of Saint Spyridon, our church in Worcester, MA,  I sold out of the packets of note cards of my Greek windows.  Guess I’d better print some more.

Here are eleven of the designs and a little about where I found them.

The window on the left, on the green island of Skopelos in the northeast, demonstrates the beautiful cutwork of the handmade curtains. The reflection shows the arched window of a church (?) next door. 

The window on the right, of a shop in the mountains of Crete, displays the colorful local embroidery and the classic caned Greek chair found everywhere throughout the country.

Both these windows are in the charming Hotel Kastro, in the walled city in Yannina, Greece, which looks exactly as it did when the Turks ruled the country.  Now the mosques have been turned into museums, but the city still has the exotic beauty that seduced Lord Byron when he came to visit Ali Pasha and marvel at his riches.  The window on the left shows the Greek tendency to train climbing vines everywhere.  In the photo on the right, I was remembering something my friend, award-winning photographer Mari Seder, once told me--sometimes the shadows are the most important part of the photograph.

On the left, a window in a popular taverna on the island of Hydra, echoes the blue and white of the Greek flag.  The miniature sailing boat in the window speaks of the seafaring history of the island.  The  window on the right belongs to a humble restaurant on Mykonos, tucked far, far away from the areas thronged with tourists.  The food is magnificent and so is the view.  If I could remember the name of the restaurant I wouldn't tell.  Its patrons want to keep it unspoiled.  (Here's a hint. The beach far below is called Agios Sostis.)

The window on the left is in a very rustic eco-resort--Milia-- high in the mountains of Crete.  The views far down the mountain are to die for.  On the right, in the unique town of Pirgi, on the island of Chios, the curtain in the window echoes the geometric designs scratched into the plaster of the exterior walls on all the buildings.

On the left, outside a taverna on Crete, is what I call the mermaid window, although it may have started life as a door before it was boarded up and turned into illustrations for the story of the Gorgona--the giant mermaid who was the sister of Alexander the Great before he cursed her.  (If you want to know the whole story of the mermaid, read it in my book "The Secret Life of Greek Cats.")

The window on the right is in an ancient church in the beautiful town of Pirgi on the island of Chios.  Originally I posted this photo in a blog post called "The Scraped Walls of Pirgi, Chios".  I said the angel-like figure over the window was a representation of the Holy Spirit, but I was wrong.  A sharp-eyed and much better-informed reader named Matthew Kalamidas wrote: "Lastly, the angel in the wall painting is actually a six-winged seraphim. In Greek, an exapterygo. Besides the six wings, the words beside it are 'Holy, Holy, Holy Lord', which is an abbreviated form of the never-ending prayer."

That's one of the great things about writing blog posts -- you learn so much.

A Fish Story from Greece

On Saturday, July 9, in Ioannina, the capitol of Epiros in northern Greece, we had lunch at Spuntino, an Italian restaurant set on the edge of Lake Pamvotis, a deep glacial lake surrounded by mountains.  

The lake contains an island  where Ali Pasha was executed in 1822 by assassins from Constantinople because the Sultan believed the Ottoman Albanian ruler had gained  too much power over his realm. 

Ali Pasha wowed visiting poet  Lord Byron with his luxurious lifestyle, amid his mosques, palaces, Janissary corps of soldiers, his harem of 300 women and the seraglio of young men.

Inhabitants of Ioannina believe that the mists rising over the lake in the morning are the ghosts of the many women Ali Pasha had his henchmen drown in the lake, tied in bags weighted with stones, because they had displeased him in some way.

Visitors ride to the island in small boats to see the sights and eat at the fish restaurants, featuring tanks full of live eels, frogs, trout and other fresh-water seafood. (Once in the seventies, when I visited Ali Pasha’s summer home on the island, where he was killed, I saw that Jackie Kennedy Onassis had signed the guest book at the top of the page.)

But we like to eat on the mainland lakeside,  called the Molo, usually ordering the shrimp risotto at Spuntino.

As we watched the boats sail past and the loon-like birds diving for fish, our meal was interrupted by a Greek fisherman climbing over chairs and tables while he played what was clearly a very large fish on his hook. 

He  followed it around, through the restaurant, patiently exhausting it –letting it out and then pulling it back--without breaking his line.  I couldn’t help thinking of Hemingway’s “Old Man and the Sea”.

We carried on eating and watching the lakeside drama until the fisherman managed to exhaust the fish and drag it close to the lakeside, where a friend produced a large net.

By the time the fish was landed, a crowd had gathered.

The triumphant fisherman was applauded by the crowd as his dying prey flopped on the shore, trying uselessly to get back into the vast lake of ghosts and legends.

And then Nick and I went back to our dessert of  watermelon and honeydew. 

(If anyone can tell me what kind of fish this is, I’d love to know.  I did ask the fisherman and bystanders, but got a variety of answers all of which meant nothing to me.)

P.S. An eerie coincidence. As I was typing this at noon on  Thursday June 21, the Greek TV news is announcing that a small firefighting  plane has fallen into the lake of Ioannina—but I don’t know yet if the legendary Lake Pamvotis has claimed another victim.)