2 days... long days in the studio (any of you who have worked in a studio for a 10 hour stretch will know how knackering that can be), 3 gigs, 3 translations and a load of teaching... and still no-one has paid my bills... aaaaarrrrgghhhhh!
Time, I think, to drift back to my HH (for newcomers: Hypothetical Holiday)...
Ho hum...where were we? Up getting vertigo in the Grand Canyon of Greece I think.
Well, another one of the beauties of a hypothetical holiday is that you can jump from one place to another - so let's go here...near the walls around the old town...
And you can also jump from one time to another...so, it can now be evening, say around 8.30.
Up in the main street right now there will be a vólta which is where you could meet your friends in the days before mobile phones. The vólta is a strange phenomenon when you first experience it. Over a stretch of about 200 yards on the main street (always the same 200 yards, too) the Ianniots congregate and just stroll up and down numerous times, passing each other, saying hello and so on until they have met whomever they wish to meet and then they go off and do whatever might have taken their fancy... cinema, a meal, listening to music...etc...
Down by the lake near the old walls is one of my favourite places - a small run-down restaurant called the Iví. When I lived in Ioannina I often used to go there whenever I had more or less run out of money. In the Ivi you could get yemistá - stuffed green peppers and tomatoes, angourisaláta - a cucumber salad and a bottle of retsína for about 20 drachmas - which in today's terms is approximately nothing.
Ahhh...sitting at a rickety table on a wobbly chair in front of the Iví, mopping up the rich green olive oil with white bread, sipping on the smooth pale yellow retsina and watching and listening (Greece is LOUD!) to the hustle and bustle of the world going by as dusk gradually deepens... that's better!
In the next HH report I think I may have to travel back in time to revisit the one and only time I conquered a mountain peak... Mitsikeli...
No comments:
Post a Comment