Traditions

 

Photo taken in the village square of Vourliotes, 1917

Emmanuel Lagos

The photograph at the top of this page was taken in the town square of Vourliotes, 1917.  It is difficult to see, but directly behind the flag of Greece in that picture, there is a building that has been owned by the Lagos Family for 4 generations (since 1886).  There has also been a family operated café at that same location since about 1912.  It is a place where Kathy and I always enjoy having dinner.

As authentic Old World charm gets harder to find in urban settings or at busy tourist destinations, many Europeans have made Samos Island their favorite holiday spot to relax and reconnect with their Old World roots.  We are lucky to encounter in it at every turn here, from the hand forged hinges and hasps on the shutters and doors, to the families that have been living and working in this village for generations.  The food here is another part of that living tradition.  Much of it is grown and picked within walking distance of the restaurants it is served in.  Some of the restaurants here serve food that is grown in their family owned fields or gardens.

 

Eleni and Diamantis Café, in Vourliotes Square, 2017
(taken from the same spot 100-yr. later)



Eleni and Diamantis Lagos' Café is about 50 steps from our door.  There is are printed menus for the table and chalkboard menu out front with specials dishes that change as different vegetables come into season.  While the ingredients are fresh, some of the dishes are prepared from recipes have been in the family for generations.  There is a simple and delicious elegance about the food at Eleni & Diamantis Café that is as rich and unpretentious as the local soil from which it is harvested.  Eleni also makes great special desserts that change with the season.

 

Diamantis and Eleni

For a video with more background and old pictures see:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyfDdmpwqbw

Longevity
 

 

 

 

 

The cemetery in Vourliotes is very small.  I think I counted only about 50 marked graves in it last year.  The custom here is to bury the dead under a small marble crypt.  After 5 years the body is exhumed by the family, the bones are carefully washed and transferred to a small box then stored in an ossuary for as long as there are family members around to care for them.

 

I started looking at the dates on those crypts and noticed that there were 3 women in the cemetery whose average age  was 100.  If half the people in the cemetery were women, then 3 in 25 of the women in the cemetery, or 12% of the women buried in that cemetery in the past five years, lived to be 100.  My math skills aren't the best, but that is an astonishing number.



Touching Down on Samos June 1, 2017
 




Kathy surprised Giannis with a few of these patches

  she'd made for him on her new sewing machine, just

 a day or two before leaving the States for Samos.

Landing on Samos this year was sweet indeed after more than 24 hours of travel time since leaving Mayport.  Giannis was waiting at the airport for us with a rental car, and all was right with the world again.

  

I've become more eager to get back to Samos every year, but have also come to dread the process of getting there.  This year we flew Delta.  They had oversold several seats on the flight from Jacksonville to Kennedy flight, and had oversold the flight from Kennedy to Athens by 6 seats.  Travelers can forget their manners in boarding lines, even with sequenced boarding sections, but waiting in the boarding line for Athens, felt like waiting to board the last American helicopter to leave Saigon.

One year we got back to find that the water had been shut off.  This year the electricity was off, but the thick stone walls had insulated the house which felt like an air conditioner had been on while we'd been gone.  A couple of cold showers, a change into a clean set of clothes, and we walked up to the Blue Chairs Restaurant for a Greek salad and a couple bottles of cold beer.

Coffee with Neighbors

 

For past five seasons, we have been having evening conversations with a couple in the neighborhood who speak no English.  Whenever we are out in the alley grilling, eating or playing cards, they always stop and make polite chit-chat about food, the weather, or invite us to upcoming religious celebrations and events in the neighborhood.  They will often drop off a plastic bag full of produce from their garden, or sometimes they bring by a bottle of their homemade wine.  I have also encountered them further up the mountain gathering fresh herbs for making tea or cooking.  Until today we didn't even know their names.
 

The couple invited us to their house for coffee this morning, and to help with the language, Susan Trovas (a seasonal neighbor) came along as an interpreter.  In the shade of an orange tree above their stone grotto, we were treated to traditional small cups of dense Greek coffee, bakery cookies, and small cheese pastries our hostess had just baked.

Rena and Zephonos are a retired couple from Athens.  Zephonos grew up in Vourliotes, and Rena is from near Corfu.  They are seasonal residents of the village now, with a large garden/orchard behind their small stone home, and a vineyard up by the monastery from which Rena makes her wine.  Zephonos was an actor and chorus singer in outdoor theater productions, and owned a magic shop in Athens.  During coffee, Zephonos entertained us with an impromptu magic show and gave us a tour of the house and garden.  The house faces the village but the garden is a big agricultural plot with airy and unobstructed view of the Aegean Sea, below.  What an unexpectedly great morning!



Zephanos, Kathy, Susan, and Rena

*I just found this post, in draft form, as scheduled to have been posted exactly a year ago today (5/15/2016).  So better late than never, here it is.