This past weekend was Easter weekend, as I’m sure you know, but you may or may not have known that this year is one of those rare years when the Gregorian and Julian calendars align, meaning that all christians celebrate Easter on the same Sunday. Easter is big in Greece and is often focused (beyond the religious significance) on a family gathering featuring a roasted lamb or goat.
Christina’s family resides in a small village (χωριό) called Fourzi between the city of Kalamata and the coastal town of Pylos. Christina’s mother came to Greece for the long holiday weekend, and we all drove from Athens to Fourzi (in some truly horrendous but mostly well-behaved traffic) for a three-day visit with family.
We met the family at the farm, gathered around the table, and did a passable job (if I do say so) of alternating between English and Greek as necessary to keep as many folks in the conversation as possible from one moment to the next.
The meal was excellent and the company warm. It was a table full of roasted goat and chicken, beets and beet greens, potatoes, bread, and home-made wine.
We’ve been very lucky in that we have had the opportunity to see Christina’s family several times in the past couple of years, and we are grateful for each and everyone one of those chances.
The village has a lot of familial connection and personal memory associated with it, but I have to say that Pylos grows on you pretty quickly, too. I thought it might feel empty after the hustle and bustle of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey movie shoot in March, but the influx of family for so many households meant that the town square was overflowing all weekend long. It was nice to see and hear, even though the church bells for the holy weekend were right outside of our bedroom window.
Back in Athens after the holiday, we started the final week of the program with a visit to a honeybee farm!
Greece is a major producer of honey, and this farm did a spectacular job of making us feel at home, teaching us about bees and honey in Greece, and then letting as have some first-hand experience with a tasting of a variety of local honeys.
All of this took place in a suburban and yet still secluded bee farm filled with bee boxes and wild flowers.
We even got the chance to suit up and see what life is like inside a bee box on the farm. I was impressed that no one in our group was overcome with anxiety or trepidation getting that close to a thousands of bees. They didn’t have us do a swarm transfer or anything like that, but we were still staring at frames covered in hundreds of bees. And when we were done with that, the bee farmers served us an amazing “light lunch” on their back porch, a lunch that I am still musing about.
Our time is winding down here in Athens, and Christina and I are trying to pack as many social engagements as we can into this final week. It will be emotional and wonderful and exhausting, I’m sure. I’m not sure if I will be able to post before we get back home, but I will write a wrap-up post, and you can stay tuned to the blog over the summer to hear more about how the film project is coming along.