Proud Greek flags are flying at half mast. I wonder who died and then I remember…Jesus died, it’s Good Friday. We’re busy in Greece making TV shows and I’m tossed two big curves: Orthodox Easter and bad weather. It’s cold and wet. There’s snow on the mountain tops on the south coast of Greece…not the image I expected.
People can’t understand how we could be working this weekend. “It’s Easter; absolute family time.” I try to explain that I celebrated Easter a month ago. When we film a meal, the restaurant is dotted with dark red hard-boiled eggs. Suddenly everyone is cracking their egg on their neighbors — like splitting a wishbone, only one egg gets cracked and you hope it’s not yours.
Four out of every ten Greeks live in Athens and, heading south on the freeway, it felt like they were all heading out of town the same time we were. TV crews were at the freeway tollbooths catching the pandemonium. Saturday night at 11, everyone’s out for the big Mass and then it’s firecrackers and partying into the wee hours.
Sunday the churches are empty: people sleep till noon, then it’s goat-on-a-spit time for the big family lunch. Rather than a big fat Greek wedding, we get a big fat Greek Easter family party. In the villages, it seems no one’s on the streets. Everyone’s inside enjoying traditional folk music and dance — vicariously — by watching the same TV broadcast.
In an extremely remote village on the south coast of the Peloponnese, we find a priest who lets us film the Greek Orthodox worship service. (I wanted to show and explain the differences for people not accustomed to it.) When we asked if we could observe his Mass and film him, he was as giddy as the man at the gate in Oz who said, “That’s a horse of a different color…come on in.”
The priest pulled the rope to ring the bell to call villagers to worship. He kept pulling. No one came. I lit some candles and ran to the bar and coaxed three people into the church, so he wouldn’t be saying Mass in darkness to no one. The priest welcomed our cameraman behind the iconostasis (where the religious heavy lifting goes on). He sang, chanted, swung the incense, and shared with us the glory of his religious tradition…as my three forced worshippers stood by, respectfully crossing themselves vigorously at the right moments. It’ll make a great bit on our show.
Driving out of the village the day after Easter, I thought there’ll be lots of leftover goat sandwiches today.
From our Journal in 1989. === We arrived in Greece on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, and were camped on the shore of the Gulf of Corinth near the town of GalaxÃdi. We had talked to the people camped nearby, and more people arrived later. We were surprised at the activity near midnight. People gather in the churches for the Easter services. Large white candles, lampáda, are carried by the faithful. The people light their candles from the priest’s ‘holy flame’ until everything is illuminated with flickering light. If people can get back home without their flame going out it is said they will have a good year. The people leave the churches and make their ways to homes of friends and relatives. What was so interesting was that several cars arrived, with passengers holding lit candles. They went to each camper and lit a candle for the people there. The next day, in several small towns we watched dozens of lambs being turned on spits over open fires in the middle of the street. When we stopped to watch, the friendly Greeks would come to the RV with food and bottles of wine. At one place, a man was bar-b-que’ing his own little piece of meat on a spit, on his patio. As we climbed the mountain toward Delfi, we were soon above the “Sea of Olive Trees.†And it almost looked like a sea, with olive trees from the mountain to the sea. We drove through Delfi (the ancient ruin was closed Easter Sunday), stopped to visit several towns and cities, including the monastery Ossios Loukás (Holy Luke), a few miles off the highway, then on to Athens. We turned right on the road to Kórinthos (Corinth), and found Camping Athens. Later that evening the floodlit Parthenon, gloriously displayed on the summit of the Acropolis, was visible from the campground.
Wow – I don’t know which calls to me most. The mental image of Rick lighting candles and rounding up helpful woshippers from a bar, or, as a “full-time” RVer, Jim H driving an RV on the roads around Delphi! And I can relate to the weather problem, since when we were in Delphi on a tour we experienced a genuine “frog-strangler”, Greek style! Saw lots of the museum and very little of the ruins due to the weather, so have to go back!
Great post. We spent our Easter in Sicily. Timing was unavoidable due to the dates of our kid’s school vacation. We were suprised that everything was open in Taormina on Easter Sunday. What a beautiful and historic place. We stayed at an agrotourismo on the slopes of Mt. Etna and on Easter Monday it seemed that everything within 50 kilometers was closed. Fortunately, the owner of the agrotourismo pointed us towards a village restaurant that she knew was open and called and wrangled a reservation for us. Presto! Instant great experience! Half the village was there and we were the only tourists. What a great insight into Sicilian village life. And fun too. Weather the whole week was back-and-forth. We now know that it snowed in Vienna while we were gone. Anyway, Easter was a great experience! Take care…
Excellent Blog post. Glad you could be of help to your Greek hosts. Goat meat BBQ is excellent!
Rick, We were first time attendees at your travel seminar last month in Edmonds. What a GREAT experience. My wife and I flew in from Wyoming and had a superb weekend. That is where we learned about your travel blog. We have been following you ever since and it is a blast! I think after this summer’s trip to Norway, we may need to get to Portugal. Keep up the great blogging and thanks for your work and promotion of ethical and fun travel.
Your story of goats roasting on a spit takes me back to the time my husband and Iwere visiting my sister in Greece over Easter. We were invited to the home of friends for dinner, which was interrupted frequently by the bleating of a nanny goat tethered in their yard. When my husband asked why the goat was so loud he was told, “It’s her kid you’re eating.” For my poor sensitive hubby that was the end of his dinner. I suppose if he had grown up on a farm instead of the city it wouldn’t have bothered him so much to experience the circle of life, Greek-style.
Very insightful post, Rick. I hope the filming went well in Greece. I’ve never tried goat.
Rick, really glad that you are doing DVD’s and books on Greece and I hope Turkey too! When we went a year and a half ago, I couldn’t get anything from you on those two places and had to go to another guide book which was long and harder to cut to the chase. We went the 2cd and third week of September and the weather was fantastic!
I’m amazed a travel veteran like you was caught off guard by Orthodox Easter. Bad weather, that makes sense, but Orthodox Easter is predictable. I’d like to visit Greece sometime other than summer. It would be nice to see the sights and sit in open air restaurants and not roast. We were on Corfu last Sept. 2nd, in Santorini last Sept. 4th and Athens last Sept. 6th. Prior to that, we’d spent2 1/2 weeks in Greece in 1973. I’ve seen a couple of places there that I’d love to retire to.
For every one of our 54 Wedding Anniversaries, we have eaten at a restaurant we have never patronized before. For our 38th, from our table in the Marriott Hotel in Athens we could see the Parthenon at the top of the Acropolis. It was partially covered with scaffolding, and looked as if it could be under construction, under renovation, or perhaps under demolition. We asked our waiter when he last visited the Parthenon. He laughed and said as a school child he was bussed to the Acropolis one day, the one and only time he’s been there! ===== We spent 26 nights in Greece – Agia Triada, Agios Nikolaos, Athens, Galaxidi, Giannitsochori, Githio, KalÃvia, Kavala, Kórinthos, Metsovo, N. Kios, Pori, Skarfia, Vravróna, plus we spent 11 nights on Ships, the SS Odysseus to MÃkonos, Istanbul, Yalta, Odessa, and the SS City of Rhodes to MÃkonos, Patmos, Kusadasi, Rhodes, Crete, SantorÃni. ===== We have visited Italy eight years, and used to tell our son-in-law, (whose parents were born in Italy) that the Italians are just the nicest people. Now that we have visited Greece, we say compared to the Greeks, the Italians are hostile, treacherous, antagonistic, and belligerent! Well, not quite!
Rick this was a neat post…it’s nice reading about your adventures and Jim Humberd Thanks for your last post…we have been to both Italy and Greece on various occasions and must say you “hit the nail on the head”–There is something very different about the people’s of these countries, the Greeks do tend to be “nicer”, you just have to visit the two to fully understand what you wrote……it appears that you have not gone to the Ionian Islands, they may be considered the lovliest of all….Happy travels to all
Thanks, Rick, for a great post. And yes, goat meat is delicious! For local sources of goat and other pasture-raised meats, go to http://www.eatwild.com.
Great blogs! Looking forward to reading future posts. And yes, the Greeks really know how to party.
Last year was my 4th Easter in Greece, the last 2 were the most memorable, in 2002 I moved to Greece. were I lived was a small community across from Porto Rafti, east of the airport. it over looked the Agean, that Easter we started with clean monday celebration I believe 40 days before easter, than we all, most of the neighbors went to church service all week before, than at midnight there is horns fireworks etc. you go home and eat Easter soup, called magiritsa, you don’t want to know whats in it. Than on Easter we roasted 4 lambs, loud Greek music was playing all day the lambs went around on the spit there was about 40 people in all, soooo much food Greeks don’t know how to cook a little bit, we ate and danced into the evening it was a great experience for me one I will never forget, oh also my friend broke plates, I miss my Greek home and friends, Barbara unpaid
My husband and I will be in Greece in about a week. Wish I had been at the service on Easter (Pascha)…since we are regular non-ethnic American Orthodox. We had hamburgers, cheesecake etc for our Easter feast (Orthodox faithful don’t eat meat, dairy, fish, eggs, wine for 7 weeks before Easter)…maybe goat would have been nice too. Most American cities of any size have Orthodox Churches where the service is in English. Might be nice to visit prior to visiting Orthodox countries (Greece, Romania, Russia, Ethiopia etc.). We will be using your guides for Italy on our trip also.
This post took me back three years, when I was in Corfu a few days before Greek Easter. There was a huge parade…lots of marching bands, people holding candles as big as themselves, older ladies in black, proud-looking soldiers in uniform carrying a glassed-in litter with a religious icon inside. The strong nexus between religion and the military was very powerful for me. A few days later I was in Meteora on Easter itself. Climbing the hills to mountain-top monasteries, a priest handing me a red egg, flowers everywhere, friendly cats on the trail, wreaths posted on little glass road-side icon stands. Luckily for me, the weather was gorgeous. Wish I was there!!
Hey Steve, it’s Greek lamb (a juvenile goat) served at Greek Easter. My distant Greek family and childhood friends of my father still tend goats (to provide lamb for Easter) in a beautiful mountain village in the Peleponnese. The instant I set my eyes on the verdant, cool and rocky mountains of my father’s boyhood village I felt a bond with the land I never expected – I just simply fell in love with Greece, my own special Greece. A distant cousin and childhood friend of my father called down a goat and made a gift of the bell from her scruffy experienced neck and today when I clang that little bell for dinner I am back on that lovely mountain. However, I too understand some of your “disappointments” with Greece – but as a Greek returning for a visit – I felt so welcomed by everyone! Even the Passport control officers hugged and welcomed me! I was finally in Greece – I was home!