THE MANY FACES OF THE RIVER GOD

We set off on the road to Stavroupolis, which is about some 27 km north west from the city of Xanthi, after a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, one we would indulge in only on holidays… eggs sunny side up, cheese, bacon and toast, nice and buttery and dripping with honey…and a pancake. We were on an adventure to seek out the River Nestos. Getting out of the town was made a little difficult with the GPS on Yiannis’ mobile stopping and starting every now and then. We found out that it was much easier to follow the signboards. As we drove through the countryside, fields of tobacco and sunflowers, heads dried and drooping, ready for harvest, whipped past. In smaller squares and niches on uneven land, there were pockets of yet more tobacco plants…` Hey, why are they growing them in such small random patches,’ I asked…` Ah, because that’s the basma,’ said Yiannis, smiling with some happy recollection of his past with his undergraduate mates, all bravado … in black leather jackets, sitting in smoky taverns, pulling on cigarettes with a pinch of this aromatic tobacco. When he slipped out of his reverie, he explained that the basma is grown in limited amounts because just a pinch is added to ordinary blends to give them an exotic spiciness … utterly delectable to the smoker’s palate and deliciously fragrant to the nose of passive smokers.

 Once we reached Stavroupolis, we had to find the way that led down to the river. From the road above I peered down and saw a bit of the river glinting in the afternoon sun in between the foliage of the trees. I pointed out of the window excitedly…` Hey! We just passed the river!’ But we had no idea how to get down there as the signs were misleading or we couldn’t find any that pointed to Nestos. The GPS was making inarticulate sounds and giving contradictory directions. We were getting hot and flustered and always coming up to some narrow forked road that waited silently for us to take the wrong turn. Then we spied a little wooden brown sign that said something about a municipal park…` That may be it,’ said Yiannis, turning into a bumpy dirt road with shady trees on either side. There were a couple of cars parked under them. Further down on the right were some old wooden railway wagons, painted red and grey, which we found out later, was a canteen and on the left were handcrafted wooden tables and benches, under the shade of tall pine and alder trees and a little beyond was…OUR RIVER.

The River Nestos was a scintillating silver under the open noon sky but in shaded areas of bushes and deciduous trees with branches dipping into the water, it was a mustard yellow, rippling gently in the breeze. We ventured on a trail into a wooded area to meet the river on the other side but… oops… there were people on horseback coming our way. So we retraced our steps and took the trail on the right. The further we walked, the more isolated it got… scrubland with clumps of long grass, yellowing in the late summer sun and more trees and bushes and the river humming past. But there was not a soul in sight. We looked at each other, with words unspoken. He went behind a tree at the river’s edge and I crouched behind some pine bushes with a slightly beating heart, lest a careless rider chose to amble that way…  `Honestly, in a municipal park and they don’t have facilities,’ we mumbled as we made our way back towards the car…and oops …there before us, on the side of the antique wagons, were two blue booths with WC painted bold on them. Oh well, we didn’t see them…we didn’t desecrate nature or anything like that…we just…communed with it…and the sense of freedom… I can’t begin to describe.

Further north there is another point of entry to the river where there is an adventure park where you can go kayaking or rafting and pull up by the sandy banks and have a picnic. But we were heading in a different direction, up a dizzy winding mountain road, to the Nestos Gorge Observatory. When we reached the top, some 811 metres high, it was blowing a gust and the car doors swung open as we stepped out. From that distance the river appeared like a silver ribbon, unspooling in the wind through the Xanthi valley and foothills, with the forested mountains appearing blue in the summer haze. It was a spectacular sight, the stuff of story books… but we wanted a better view. There was an observatory post down a trail through some shrubs; a circular enclosure that would fit in only two people. A young girl with long flowing hair whipping about in the wind was sitting like a forest nymph on the low wall, drinking in the sight while her young man was taking pictures. They were clearly in no hurry to vacate the place.

We trod carefully around the wall and gazed down. It was a view that took our breath away. The river, which seemed friendly and domesticated in the lowlands, now appeared wild and free, striking out on a timeless and solitary journey. I zoomed in with my camera and saw the River Nestos, like a great big brown serpent with a golden sheen, twisting and turning through the rugged gorge with mountains sloping into it and cliffs with sheer vertical faces rising above it. The water appeared like strong milky tea, flowing thickly, coiling in on itself around boulders and wooded islets and braiding around alluvial sandbanks. This is a mostly inaccessible part of the gorge with scrubland and forests of oak, alders, pine, cedar and poplars reaching for the sky, where brown bears lumber and gray wolves, foxes and wildcats hunt at night. It is a magical place where…I imagined… Nestos, the river god of Thrace, of ancient mythology, sleeping in the water in the summer heat. But come winter when the water heaves out of the Rila mountains of Bulgaria and thunders down its canyons and its torrents sweep through the gorge, I’m certain, the river god would awaken and his deafening roar would be heard from the mountain tops. Yiannis and I, a pair of old romantics said we’d come back in winter to witness the scene.

That evening was our last in Xanthi, so we decided to have a night out in the city. Before we left the hotel, I saw Yiannis grabbing his summer jacket…` But it’s so warm outside,’ I snorted out in disbelief …` You’d better take something as well because the weather can change,’ he insisted. I stuffed a cardigan into my bag and off we went. We had hardly taken a few paces from the car park when a wind with a cool bite swirled in and laughed at me in the face. I wrapped the cardigan tight around my body and we quickened our pace. Walking into the city we heard a buzz, like that of a thousand bees. On the right on an embankment, there was a row of restaurants and outside, under the dim lights, were patrons, mostly young people, crushed around tables, eating and talking and throwing their heads back in laughter…` What happened to social distancing?’ we wondered.

We walked up a steep flight of steps and entered small paved streets and alleys, where tables and chairs spilled out of even more restaurants, with people sitting around eating and drinking and waiters whizzing around tables, holding platters of food high above their shoulders amidst the hum of voices and the clinking of cutlery. We weaved in and out of the streets in between tables and found a restaurant where they had a place vacant in a tented pavilion, normally reserved for wedding parties, I imagined. We were happy with it because it wasn’t so crowded up there and the tent kept the wind out and we could do a little people watching, peering through the leaves of bushy potted plants.

The items on the menu had Turkish sounding names that my tongue couldn’t get itself around. It was `politiki kouzina’… the cuisine of old Constantinople… where Greek and Turkish cuisine blended, whipping out spicy hot dishes. We had a starter called ` bouyourdi’… feta cheese cooked in tomato sauce and chopped green chillies, which stung the sides of our tongue. We tore huge pieces of pita bread and scooped up the sauce and reached out for our cold crisp white wine with every mouthful … to douse the flames in our mouth. Then came the meatballs cooked in a delicious thick dark sauce with pureed aubergines and we scooped some more and I could feel my saliva dribbling down my chin. The last dish came on a wooden board which the waiter slid on our table, grilled and sizzling kebabs spiced with cumin and served with wedges of fried potatoes with a sprinkling of herbs. We finished our meal with large dollops of ice cream and… we could neither move nor talk after that.

We finally laboured our way back to the car park. The buzz from the embankment had crescendoed into a roar and now there were multitudes up there chewing and guzzling and shouting into the night. Masks and social distancing were tucked away safely at home and the virus swept under the carpet. This was a Saturday night in the last month of summer and the crowds had come out to celebrate… and tomorrow… well, tomorrow… would take care of itself.

The next day we left this vibrant city to head north to Oreistiada to seek out the River Evros. So don’t forget to come back and journey with us. Cheers.