HOMEWARD BOUND…

Wring out every drop … not really my guiding principle in life… but on the last day of our trip, we wanted to see whatever Alexandroupoli could offer us, winkle out all her hidden secrets. Mid-morning saw us driving out of the city towards the east. All along on the A road we saw nests of the white stork, like huge straw baskets atop electrical poles. To safeguard these protected species from electrocution, artificial nesting platforms were placed on top of the pillars, for the stork to build its home. We were just cruising along when we saw a sign pointing right which said ` European Stork Village ‘. It was the village of Poros, on the edge of the Evros delta on the border with Turkey. I imagined a settlement with a muster of those long-legged feathered creatures…clattering their bills and wading around in pools, fishing for frogs and fish and picking around for insects and tugging out earthworms… before taking flight and streaking the sky in a phalanx… towards migration grounds. We kept our eyes peeled, looking out for signs of bird life until we reached the village square. There were a couple of tourists under some trees with cameras… `Must have come to the right place,’ we nodded to each other. An elderly man was about to enter the village café when we stopped him … …` This is the stork village, isn’t it?’…` Yes’… `And…er… where are they?’ we asked somewhat stupidly. By this time a crowd of elderly male faces were peering through the cloudy glass window of the café…` Just drive along,’ said the man, pointing towards that one road in the village. We rumbled down the road and saw a couple of pillars with more stork nests on the top… no different from the A road… and so we turned back.

We then struck out north towards Lefkimi for the Petrified Forest. It is one of the oldest fossil forests dating back 40 million years. After driving for about 52 km, we turned off on the right on a narrow road leading to this prehistoric patch of land. Towards the end of it, the land dipped on the right, and four pretty little houses with stone chimneys, squatted in an idyllic setting on the edge of the woods… like a page torn off a fairy tale book. We parked the car under some trees and a woman appeared from behind the houses and waved at us. She and her husband ran the place. They had a museum on the property and would also take us on a tour and show us the remnants of this ancient forest. Her husband in red gardening overalls, came out to greet us…  `But before anything else, we’ll show you around the museum,’ he said brimming with enthusiasm.

He took us to the far end of the room where there was a thick fossil trunk standing upright about a metre high… striated and chalky like a block of limestone with dark lines in its grooves. There were two rows of chairs and he motioned for us to sit down. He wiped his hands on his stained overalls and stood behind the prehistoric trunk, using it as a lectern… ` What do you know about fossil forests?’… He threw the question open, as if to a class…to Yiannis and myself. We were taken aback…it was so sudden. I felt I was back at school again and hadn’t studied for the lesson. He looked at us intently and we looked back dumbly. His wife, who was standing by his side seemed a little petrified because she could no doubt, see the glint developing in his eye.

 The lecturer seemed pleased when no answer was forthcoming and decided to make no assumptions about any prior knowledge on our part. He dug his heels in deep and went into geology… the geotectonic evolution in the Aegean leading to the manifestation of volcanic activity in the area and then without a pause he threw another question at us…` Do you know the difference between petrification from lava and that from volcanic ashes?’…No answer…He offered us some clues to elicit some form of brain activity…` Have you seen the bodies preserved in Pompeii?’… I was tempted to put up my hand meekly and utter a small little…`yes’… just to show that I’d been there, but decided against it because then he might ask me to stand up and even come up to the lectern and draw conclusions about my observations on petrification… No, no I wasn’t going down that road… had been there before at school and failed miserably on simpler subjects. He then went on about how organic material transformed into inorganic through mineralization…and thus finally arrived at his fossils… throwing his palm out to indicate the exhibits in the museum. This is when the wife stepped in deftly and cut him short…` You go back to your work [ presumably the many chores around the property ] I’ll take over from here. ‘  As he walked out, he picked up a slab of petrified wood and thrust it into our hands…`Heavy? ‘…` Yes! Yes! Very heavy! ‘ He was intent on sneaking in the final touches in our education. But the wife pulled us away and was brisk and to the point, showing us fossilized seashells and even fish, turned into stone with the sudden eruption of a volcano and thick volcanic ash piling down upon them, layer upon layer and encrusting them in their very act of swimming… millions of years ago when the land we were standing on was the seabed, several fathoms under the water.

We came out of the classroom…oops…I mean the museum in the bright afternoon glare, a little dizzy because of all this new learning that had led to some form of neural overload. We were soon to discover that the Petrified Forest was off bounds because of the recent spate of forest fires around Greece. But the wife did give us a preamble of what we might have seen. She took us up a hilly path and as we entered a forest of pine trees, we saw a little brook and on its right bank which rose sharply, we could see some fossilized trunks embedded in the red earth and rocks.

Our next stop was a visit to the Dadia-Lefkimi-Soufli National Park Forest. It is otherwise known as the Land Of The Birds Of Prey. It’s perched on the hilly fringes of the Rodopi mountain range, a land of rocks and pine forests where rare species of raptors are protected and even fed by the park authorities. At certain times of the day, they soar like kites above the hills…the European and Egyptian vultures, the Eurasian griffon vulture… and eagles, the White-Tailed and the Spotted and even the Golden Eagle. At the observatory, high up in the woods, we looked through powerful telescopes and watched a vulture, on a plateau in the hills, tear its prey and then turn to look our way through narrowed eyes… perhaps sensing that it was being watched.

After the tour, just as we were about to board the mini-bus, back to the information centre, Yiannis stopped short, looked at his hand and then at me… with a distraught expression on his face… …`What’s wrong? ‘ I asked…` My ring’s gone, ‘ he replied, showing me the little finger where the ring used to sit for more than 30 years. We retraced our steps back to the observatory with the guide and scanned the forest floor and searched inside the building.  We somehow knew it wasn’t there because that ring… with a smooth oval pigeon’s blood ruby, mounted on a thick rounded band of old gold …was worn tight around his finger and couldn’t have slipped off just like that.

We rode back on the mini bus in silence. The ring meant something to us. It was given to my mum by my dad’s brother. It was more a man’s ring but mum wore it for many years until the first time she visited Greece and presented it to Yiannis. It was the time when he had set up his business and the ring, with all mum’s blessings ushered in such good luck. But then where were we to start looking for it? The only thing I could think of was the hotel room. He only takes it off, together with his watch when he has his shower and he puts them on together, like a ritual. He had his watch on…so where was the ring?…` When was the last time you saw it? ‘ I asked, playing detective. But it just drew another blank. I remember once telling my sisters that Yiannis was becoming more of a church-goer as he grew older…almost like mum in her Catholic ways. They laughed and said…..` It must be mum’s ring sending him to church.’ And now the ring was lost… and on the brighter side… maybe he wouldn’t drag me along anymore to the Easter services… just like mum used to when we were kids. Lately he even tried to coax me into going for Sunday services, expressing great magnanimity by suggesting that we could go to the Catholic church instead of the Orthodox one…My sisters could have been right about the ring.

We got back to the information centre and got into the car for the long drive back to Alexandroupoli. It was late in the afternoon and a warm wind blew into the car and we sat like two puppets …drained out and limp with no prospect of finding the ring. Then suddenly we looked at each other. It was as if a light bulb was turned on in our brains. At the Petrified Forest, we had stopped to go to the toilet, which was set up under the pine trees. There was a cement wash basin outside and when we turned on the tap, the water spurted on us like one of those automatic irrigation sprays… gone mad. I jumped away but Yiannis continued soaping and washing his hands and finished with his T-shirt all wet…` Do you think it slipped off there? ‘ I asked.

We turned on the GPS and our back seat driver took us right back to the forest. When we arrived there, it was silent… there was not a soul in sight and the sun was dipping behind the trees and gilding the pine needles in gold. Yiannis sprinted up the hill, forgetting that slopes were difficult for us to clamber at this age. I trotted behind, my heart pumping hard with the excitement, not to mention the exercise. He had reached the top…and there was silence…Isn’t it there?’ I shouted out, my voice edged with anxiety. But before I could reach the summit, he appeared with a great big smile on his face, holding up the ring. The washbasin, he told me, had a huge drain hole …but the ring was sitting in a bed of pine needles…and couldn’t clatter down the hole.

That evening, we celebrated at an Armenian restaurant in the port. We sat outside and ordered our food and wine and watched the crowds promenading towards the lighthouse. After a while we noticed a whisper of a wind picking up steadily and bringing along a fine drizzle. Then before we knew it people were rushing helter skelter and dragging their children along. The sky had cracked open and a deluge came down, fast and strong like a tropical rainstorm. We gathered our things and ran into the restaurant. It was dry and comfortable inside. Even a big dog had rushed in and sat by our feet, to wait out the rain. By the time we finished our last kebab dipped in a chilly paste called `achika’ and relished the last glass of wine…the dog had gone and the rain had stopped. We zipped up our jackets and stepped out into the glistening street, avoiding the puddles and breathing in the fresh air, washed clean by the first autumn rain.

The next day we flew back to Chania and that concludes our holidays in Thrace. Oh yes, I may not be posting every week… because I haven’t shaken off the holiday yet and I’d like to savour the little joys of my life…which sometimes includes doing… absolutely nothing. So be on the lookout for the next post, when it comes and cheers for now.