viola's people watching blog
After our friends left on 12 May we had to pack in a hurry because we were leaving for Brussels on Sunday 14 May well before sunrise, to catch the first flight to Athens. We had just one day to throw things into our luggage and it was fine by […]
There we were Yiannis and myself at the inter-city bus station at Chania, waiting for the coach to pull in from Heraklion. My old friend Kim and hubby, all the way from Malaysia, were coming to stay with us after trotting around various places in Greece. We hadn’t seen each […]
The first couple of days this week…the Holy Week of the Greek Easter.. and the weather was acting up. It was chucking it down outside and the forecast was that it was going to be sullen and grey throughout the week and our pouting friend had forced me to stay […]
The moon had been waxing and waning in nebulous March skies…sometimes a shining crescent, hanging like a pendant and other times, lying like a cradle, suspended in the darkness, only to vanish behind an inky haze. But there was this one night when Yiannis walked in after concluding his business […]
When an era passes you can’t help but sift through all the memories…our common yard with the three houses once bustling with activity has gradually become very quiet. The whole thing seems rather surreal with the passing of the last family member of a bygone era. Yiannis’ mother passed away […]
Why do I remember this old song from way back in the 1890’s by Charles K Harris before anybody I knew even existed? Well, in primary school, Sister Cecilia used to sit at the piano and plonk out this melancholic old number, drawn out and dripping with nostalgia and we, […]
On Sunday we plucked some of our winter oranges…the ones that had peeped through the thick green foliage and soaked in the rays of the autumn sun and ripened before the others. I pointed to the ripe oranges with a broomstick and Yiannis hunched under the tree, craned his neck […]
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 […]
Bright and breezy Alexandroupoli, some 114 km south of Oreistiada, bustling with honking cars, parallel roads with blocks and blocks of buildings, housing shops and apartments… with the occasional sea breezes rustling through the streets on a hot summer’s day… was a welcome sight for us, the two travellers, recently […]
Our newly acquired thirst for rivers took us right up north to Oreistiada, a town set up in 1923 by Greek refugees from Adrianople during the population exchange between Greece and Turkey. The River Evros runs some 203 km, forming a natural border between the two countries. We hit the […]