Paradise of Samos

As with every holiday that comes each year, I did expect some luxury of time spent in relaxing way and it didn´t matter to me very much, how or where will I spend it. Sometimes you just crave any sort of relaxation and change of surroundings and almost anything is better then staying stuck in your rut back at home. 
Me and my colleague from work, Sylva, decided on Kokkari in Samos, not only because Greece is beautiful nearly everywhere, but we both agreed that Greece is somehow close to our heart, much closer then Italy, Turkey or Egypt, where the rest of tourists usually go to. 
We were both so enthrilled to begin with, that the very start of our journey turned into little adventure shortly after our plane landed. The plane was rather shaky and we thought that we might crash on the runway as we approached the island´s airport surrounded by vast Aegean blue sea. Sylva has bought a bottle of 5 star Metaxa in Prague, and when we were waiting in the luggage hall, she realized that she forgot it in the cabin on the plane. I could see her rushing through the glass door of the airport, where she wildly gesticulated something to few Greek airport crew members. It seemed rather comic to watch them talking to her, jumping on the small airport transporter and taking off to retrieve our Metaxa before the plane took off.  Our bottle returned to us after all. Then our delegate Klara took us over and we continued our journey to the resort. Klara informed us on the way there, that the runway we just landed on is the shortest one in whole Greece and that pilots have to hold a special licence, as they normally discharge every pilot who doesn´t manage to land properly three times in a row. What a huge relieve to be alive after this experience knowing what we knew! 
There was also this funny moment when our Greek driver tried to load our suticases onto his bus. He asked us which hotel we go to, so we said "Christina". There was this youngish guy with his girlfriend, and after hearing what sounded like name introduction, he turned on the driver, reached out his hand and said "I´m Jan...." The driver didn´t get it. The sweat was pouring down his face and dripping from his nose, as he tried to carry the heavy loads, so I turned to the guy and explained to him that all the driver needs to know is the name of their hotel. The young guy seemed quite confused and again, insistantly kept introducing himself by his name. What a crank, we thought, and couldn´t stop laughing at the situation when nobody watched. Klara slightly freaked me out at one moment, when she said that Samos and Kokkari in particular are expecting huge invasion of Turks in following days. For some reason I suddenly recalled last year´s Moroccan invasion of Ramadan attendees spreaded all across the lenght of the beach in Agadir. I was resolved to leave Greece immediately at the thought of having the repetition. 

It took only about 15 minutes to drive through the countryside and mountain resort, right down into the valley and our Kokkari village. It all looked amazing from distance, but what we didn´t anticipate was that it will be ten times more wonderful from the close up. The village itself seemed to look very rich in style. Colourful, happy and relaxed. Then the bus stopped in front of our Christina villa. You could see through the gaps in between individual hotels and houses, and the view was breathtaking. The sea was so unrealistically close to the hotels that I had a feeling I will be soon swept in. I have never seen anything like it, apart from one of my dreams, which looked very similar to this. Sort of a Deja Vous.

Kokkari beach front

The first person we encountered after the arrival was our landlady, who we simply nicknamed Christina, eventhough her name was Maria Zafiris. She was small and chubby lady in her late fifties, with thick black hair and pretty face. She welcomed us with big smile on her face, and asked us what time do we want our breakfast at. 
It was brilliant to watch the sea right from our tiny balcony, and hear the mighty waves giving us goosebumps. It was rather windy here though, and the wind kept tangling our hair all the time. As we found out later, that was quite regular occurance in this resort. They even had a chart for the various strenghts of winds, as Klara informed us. Wind condition level 12 blew away the houses. We wondered what level are we on at that very moment, with little apprehension. 

Our first evening was spent quietly, in the meeting downtown inside a local tavern called Kokkoras, where we ate our first delicious Mousakka and tried Ouzo and homemade wine, while Klara spoke about all the trips that were on the plan and other details. After we parted and prepaid our tour of island for 40 EU on following Thursday, we went to discover the charms of our beach, where we sat, chatted, watched the stars (could indentify Big Dipper clearly) and drank our lost-and-found Metaxa. It was hillarious feeling to stare into the night sky, having different thoughts and completely relaxed mind. I felt content and happy as never before. And I saw two falling stars that night too! Then we visited the nearby Cafe del Mar, that had a very strong touch of medditeranean style, with all these hay umbrellas on the beach, sunbeds and comfortable sofas you could lie on, while being served your coctails accompanied by nuts, free of charge. It was so liberating to be able to get up from your drink and walk into the waves to cool down your feet. 

the best Mousakka ever!

The day two, on the 7.8., we woke up slightly crushed after waking up with notion of having had too much of Metaxa, but the breakfast on the outside terrace revived us a little. It was also the first time when a strong wind dared to blow a slice of salami off my bread when carrying a tray with breakfast to the front terrace. Thankfully, no pedestrians were attacked or injured. We done some sunbathing in front of Christina, looked around shops and had a light lunch at home, and then we stayed on the beach until 6 p.m. After that we took a short walk into the harbour where we sat in one of the promenade bars and had Sangria. I even learnt few new words. Kalimera is for good day, Kalispera good evening! (I practiced on a waiter who kept greeting us regularly, when he saw us twice a day walking around his restaurant, looking confused and lost)
After that we returned to Cafe del Mar to have some green tea, just to stay off the drink for few minutes....

Next morning we walked across the town to discover new beach, where it was meant to be less windy and almost waveless. The beach was crescent shape and hidden from the rest of Kokkari, protected from winds by a small island on the left and some cliffs on the right. There was also a hill above our heads, at the top of which was a long wooden bar with restaurant called Nireas. We sunbathed and swam until lunch time and after that we climbed up the stairs to Nireas, where we ate some salad with feta and baguette, just to make sure we don´t starve too much. The waiter in pink t-shirt came over to our table after while and put two glasses of white wine in front of our gobsmacked faces. "These are from George overthere (we turned in his direction to see a young Greek neighbour next door sitting on his terrace), as he thought you were too sweet", and with that he walked away. George was sitting at the table with some other members of his family, so we raised our glasses and thanked him, literally over the fence of our restaurant. Then we watched him working, as he crushed some tomatoes in a a huge machine, with the help of his grey haired father. After this new experience of having the luxury of being spoiled rotten, we decided to go home and get some postcards in the market place. We found a shop that belonged to this old Greek, who had to look at the stamps with a magnifying glass to be able to see their value. He smelled like old people do, so any prolonged stay in his shop was rather difficult to endure. He immediately got earned himself a nickname. We practically never called him anything else but SMELLY after that. He was our identification mark on the map of the island. We bought few postcards to make his living better at least. And then we went to have some more Metaxa at the rooftop of Christina, with the view of the high street, and there we chatted away till the night grew tired of us.  Except, that it took us about half an hour to take a courage and ask someone for a bottle opener, which we didn´t intend to buy. At first we considered asking a lady in a shop, and then rejected the idea, as Sylva thought that a woman would look at us with suspicion. Then we walked up and down the street with bottle of wine in a hand (which didn´t go unnoticed by certain Greek who proclaimed "Nice, girls"). And finally, after we exhausted all possible options, we decided to plunge right into the bar with a young bar tender, who served us willingly and without any odd remarks...really hard earned bottle of wine!

nearby island 

wine from George

The next day we decided just to relax a lot, which meant pretty much just lie on the beach, sunbathe, swim and go for an expensive dinner to Meltemi restaurant, where the life buzzed and tables poured over with customers. It was a good place to eat in, and very famous for brilliant seafood. On the way to Meltemi, and basically every evening at around the same time, a small group of about 5 local pensioners sat at the bench facing the street and discussed things together. I wouldn´t be surprised if they sat in the same order every night. We were lucky enough to grab a table by the door leading out to the beach side, as there were queues soon after. Some people took a chair and sat next to the restaurant, and waited for some free space. The waiters were running around like crazy, it felt like a marathon. One of them managed to slip on the stones and sweep down the Menu lists from the ledge, then catch them frantically in the process of flying. We had loads of sympathy for these guys, as they seriously worked their arses off to satisfy the customers. We ordered a huge plate of Tiger prawns with some side salad, rice and chips, and of course drank some wine to establish better taste. We were still looking out for the Turks and kept wondering, where did they get stuck. We saw a guy paddling his board on the sea from time to time, and we started inventing new legends about him soon. He was one of the Turks who kept coming every morning from 1,5km distant Turkey shore to have an egg omellete in one of our beach restaurants. There was just no sign of them anywhere, which was a great relief. Greece belonged to us with all the shrimps in it!!!!

prawns like tiger!

On the 10.8. we took our all day trip around island with Klara as our guide. There was a small group of other Czechs that travelled with us, also our beloved Christina partners in crime, oldish lady with her grandson Jan, very funny couple, whom we sometimes chatted to on the beach or at the breakfast. Jan was about nine years old, but above average his age. He often made us laugh, as he always enlisted his many adventures. He hit his head a lot, for example over a screw-propeller when diving and also over a telephone booth when getting up from his seat. He also walked on the beach covered in a towel from head to toe, putting on sun lotion level 50 (which is equivalent of never being on the sun) and ate little sardines with their heads, crunching them like crisps. 
Before I start talking all that travel tour gibberish, let me shed a light on what we were told by Klara. She mentioned that Greeks have this quite routine game that´s been played among them since 70´s. It´s called Kamaki. The main concept of it lays in the simple rule. Man who is married or has a girlfriend, often finds a tourist to cheat with and after the holidays is over, each of the man counts up who got more. Kamaki means "Harpoon", so the guys literally harpoon their catch. But back to the tourist gibberish....

We first drove to the famous tunnel of Eupalinos from the 6th century BC, the times of tyrant ruler Polycrates. It served as a secret water supply for whole island. 
The diggers were enslaved at the time and were given a freedom if they survived ten years in the tunnel. They had to live in the catacombs by the lantern lights and many of them died from health complications. When I climbed down there, I wasn´t surprised how come they didn´t make it till next day. It felt like being locked in a shallow grave, squeezed between narrow corridors with barely any light or fresh air. My first claustrophobic experience. Sylva didn´t even dare to step inside or underground, because she knew it would freak her out. 

catacombs of Eupalinos

After this we sped off towards the Heraion of Samos which was a large sanctuary to the goddess Hera. The core myth at the heart of the cult of Hera at Samos is that of her birth. According to the local tradition, the goddess was born under a lygos tree. The place was built on the swamps and it served to people as a sacred place where they could pray to her. From all the palaces were left only few remnants of stone columns and perhaps few broken statues. 

Heraion

After here we went deep into the mountains to visit Pottery workshop in Koumaradei, herb shop and then a Monastery of Holly Cross ( Timios Stavros from 1854), that stood on a hilltop, overlooking beautiful wide range of mountains and sea in the distance. We had to put on a cloth to cover our shoulders, and when I walked through the square of the monastery, a monk in his black outfit who looked like some Jewish Rabbi shouted at me from the balcony, probably telling me to cover myself properly. The inside of the church itself was like something out of this world. It breathed certain mysticism. The room was quite small, dark and covered with various religious icons and beautiful hanging frankincenses. The prevailing colour here was gold of course, it was a Russian orthodox church after all. 

the Potter 

Holly Cross monastery

Then we went to a tinny place on the hillside, where they bred their own bees and produced own olive oil. The beehives were funilly enough leading through a narrow opening at the back of the house, and once inside the shop, you could see them gathered on a honey comb through the glass screen. Bees making honey in front of their customers. Very original, I think. 

beehives 

After that we visited a mountain village of Platanos, it was very beautiful place. We ate some food at Leon´s bistro. For example, I had Psari (little grilled fish) and Sylva had Sutzukakia, which were meat balls with cummin and garlic. Leon, the owner of the place, was happy to see any new customer, and as he welcomed us in, he took each lady´s hand and kissed it. He also loved to take photos of tourists. We found out later on, why did he take pictures of them so eagerly. He always had a name of his bistro in each shot to promote it worldwide, I assumed. 

lunch at Leon´s 

After having a quick lunch, we took off to another touristic treasure, which was down in Karlovassi. Wine tasting in cellars. 

Karlovassi´s wine cellars

And then right off to the beach, to have some cooling down, before we drove back to Kokkari. We had coctails later on in the bar (fantastic Screw driver made of local wine, mango and orange juice). They tend to serve bowl of peanuts or crisps and fruit with each drink as a compliment, which never happens in Prague. I found it an extremely lovely gesture from the Greeks, they surely know how to make customers happy and willing to come back. Being that in Prague, not only wouldn´t they offer you anything, they would also let you pay for it. 
Let´s not forget to mention the all- taste-buds-melting pistachio ice cream, that we had as a dessert on our way back to town. I asked Sylva to take photo of me while each of us holding a cone, but the camera kept messing up for so long, that we unintentionally attracted the attention of another tourist, who run into the picture to be photographed with me. 
Then he run off behind Sylva and kept making faces, while she concentrated on pushing a trigger, which was rather difficult with one hand juggling an ice cream. She finally made a picture during that quarter an hour long public performance, however, her pistachio ice cream melted away like an iceberg and she was close to crying....but it didn´t matter to me as long as I had my photo taken! muhaha...

screw driver by the sea

On the next day of 11.8., we sunbathed again, fought the waves and struggled to swim through them, and then took a walk through town by ending it with grilled calamari and salad in a good company of lady and the grandson. They all already knew us in Kokkoras and even greated us in Czech. When walking back home each night, we passed a shop with this statue of female torso. I didn´t mention yet that me and Sylva had something great in common....we were both admirers of movie series "Angelique". Whoever knows the scene of Jeoffrey de Peyrac touching sensually the statue torso in front of Angelique who thinks she despises him, he must know what will come. Yes, each time we walked by it, we joked about making a scene with Sylva playing Jeoffrey. But as nice as that idea seemed at first, it was way too risky even for hardened women like us...so we just went for the safe bet. Of course, having a bottle of white Samos wine on the rooftop of Christina was just that...

Next day we swam again, sunbathed again....and strolled down the city in the evening to have a dinner in Kokkari restaurant, where I ordered some Giouvetsi (pasta rice in sauce with beef meat) and Sylva had stuffed tomatoes and pepper with spiced rice (as she ate full box of chocolate tubes before that) and wasn´t hungry anymore. 

my Giouvetsi 

We encountered all sorts of people that night. It was as if we suddenly stepped into some kind of underworld, the proper Greek life that only insiders can see. As we sat by our table, some old Sailor with white beard ordered us a jar of wine. We thanked him with cheers several times, before he left the place, without as much as saying anything more. Just a nice welcome gesture to two foreign girls, or....was that attempt at Kamaki?? Oh well, never mind. We sat all evening next to the table with a darkish guy who reminded me of several characters. It was either Kalybos (the scary moster from Clash of Titans), Al Pacino (in some sense he did appear to be rough like him, even good- looking- when- he- was- 20- years- old sort of thing), and because Sylva couldn´t remember nickname Kalybos, she kept calling him Syphillos (as he really gave an impression of being a walking disease on legs). His table started to crowd up with women, which he noisily greeted, hugged and kissed. It took about ten minutes and there was nearly 5 women sitting around him. Usually foreign females in their fifties, whom we established a legend about in a constant. We imagined that they come each summer from England to see their Kalybos, have some fun and pay him drinks in return for his special treatment. That´s how it all looked like anyway. 
But back to the rest of the amazing evening in the busy square packed with various sounds, smells, and colours. The three street gypsy singers came to our table and played us some music (that sounded like some Indian prelude). One of the guys kept shaking his money basket in front of our faces, so Sylva threw him few coins in. There were many Greeks who held a small bracelet chain made of beads, sometimes even a rosary, which they kept playing with and tossing with their fingers. One of them explained to us, they do it to get off cigarettes, with one hand tossing the beads and the other hand sticking a cigarette into his mouth. Very interesting way of atempting to quit. Let´s just say that Greeks play with their beads to stay calm.....

Our Landlady became a constant theme for talks between us. We weren´t the only ones who were thinking of her in detail. She was like this mythical creature. Nobody knew much about her. We often discussed her with our neighbours, trying to find out where her husband is, has she got any children, why does she keep folding our pyjamas into a weird butterfly shape and removing our personal things all the time, shifting them around the room. We discussed why does she give us such poor breakfast, and what else does she do during a day. We started inventing these funny legends about her too, soon enough. It was quite amazing to watch her day routine. She always waited for us in the morning, in what I called ( a submarine base), which was the underground kitchen she seemed to live in. She had our trays ready each morning, with coffee and tea jars, bread, butter and some other things. And after breakfast, while we loaded out onto the beach, she run upstairs to empty our bins, put our pyjamas into odd butterflies (she seemed to have them as a decoration almost everywhere), and she always went to the beach at around 4 pm, to have a swim. She was plum lady with full breasts and chunky small figure, but she carried herself like a lady. It was funny to watch her each time when she slipped her body into sea, carefully and slowly, and then she started to paddle around with her tiny hands, making only few tempos and then staying in one spot for the rest of the time. She had her unique gestures, and it was fascinating to watch her. We sort of tried to avoid her, as she put on impression of quite strict woman. That sort of a honey-sweet-smile female, who carries a gun under her belt, and is prepared to shoot if you stain her beautifully white bed sheets. We nearly tiptoed around her the whole time. But saying that, she was a great source of our talks and the legends about her made us cry with laughter many times. Also, I think she should reconsider the door knobs on her doors, they turned out to be a brain teaser for me, as I could never work it and always left hard work of locking it to Sylva. 

On the 13.8. we went to the beach as usual, and then down to the city to do some errands in shops. We noticed a smallish town house by the beach that was on sale, and it really made us think of buying it and  plot a plan of what would be good to build there. First we planned to sell Sylva´s flat in Prague. We would turn it into a holiday house for all our friends and family (of course not free of charge), and then we started toying with running a small restaurant. Klara told us once, that many Greeks were smart foxes. When the economic crisis hit the Greece, many of them established a museum, the city council then put some money towards the project and kept paying them regular fees for simply having touristic attraction. All they needed to do was to bring few old photographs and some old items and put them on a display in the groundfloor of their house. That was all it took to run a museum. How fascinatingly easy and clever! So there we were, right on the beach. In front of the museum. Sailor´s musem. The old man who looked like a cross between Hemingway and Einstein (he deserved the nickname "Seawolf") welcomed us inside his secret shrimp world. The walls of the room were decorated with dusted wooden mini boats that he created. He had several old photographs from 1961, the best time of his youth spent as a sailor. He knew some English, so when Sylva bought one of his boats, he started asking her where we are from. When hearing the answer, he mumbled...."Oh, President Vaclav Havel! he is a good man. How is he?!" We were dissapointed to inform him that Havel died two years ago. But thinking of it now, it was amazing to see that even this old, rough Greek sailor, who has lived in the wild waters fishing all his life, had come to know our President Havel. Extremely uplifting thought. 
After we gave our farewells to Seawolf, we went for some yogurt and honey ice cream and then decided to get a present for our landlady, for all her patience and care. We got her a small pack with sorted chocolate pralines in the sweet shop with a very sweet shopkeeper, who always served us with a shy smile on his face, attentive and helpful. 
After that we went into the city, the night was still young, they all say. We sat at Manos bar right in the middle of the busy square (that we avoided most of the time for different reasons), and we finally made a connection with the owner of the bar, a young guy called Manolis. He reminded me a little of a less hairy version of Edward Norton. Sylva didn´t know who Edward Norton was, so she kept asking me "you mean Edward the Scissor hands?" Well, not exactly. 

Manolis, the man!

The bar looked very nice. It had a climbing green plants instead of the roof, wooden chairs and little tables facing towards the square, so you often had a feeling you are sitting there like in a theatre, enabled or forced to watch the life in front of you, starring at people walking by or eating in the opposite restaurants. All the chairs faced the sea view, as if drawn by the power of it, maybe trying to catch a glimpse of the sunrise. The atmosphere was always great here, rich and merry. People drinking their ouzos or old Greeks playing Tavli together (something like bacgammon), chatting, hugging each other or kissing someone on the cheek when meeting them after long time. That night we met with Dimitris and his Albanian friend, we had few drinks with them, and visited one more bar and a local night club La Costa, which was sort of other side of the coin. Not exactly our style, but we were glad to see all the sides of the life here if only for the experience itself. 

On the 14.8. we had some chicken and pork Gyros downtown, mainly to cheer up our stomachs and followed it with hot creamy Musaka in the evening in Kokkoras. We sat down in the Sport´s bar where a waiter who looked like Antonio Banderas (Sylva thought he looked like Clooney), served us and made us feel extremely nervous, as his first words when coming to serve us were "where are you from", while looking down at us, not giving us a chance to escape his rather inquisitive look and dark smirk in his eyes. Sylva appeared to be scared of him a little, I thought he was sligthly out of balance. He had big screens with footbal match on at the time. We sat there and consumed our drinks. There was also a concert in Stathis, the next door restaurant. That´s when Banderas came closer to the head waiter from Stathis and started wild gesturing and shouting at him something in Greek gibberish, looking like some hot blooded, tempered Italian. The waiter at the other side of the fence said something back to him, and immediately turned his attention to us, as we in most likelihood starred at them with nearly half open jaws. He smiled at us and started mimicking Banderas by pulling faces, lifting his shoulders in attempt to lighten the thick atmospehere and constantly clowning around while looking at us. Trying to explain that Banderas was an asshole. He came over later to tell us that the argument was over a bit louder concert music that disturbed all the footbal match watchers including Banderas. We gave him a nickname "Clown", as he was a very sweet soul, a nice gentleman with great sense of humour, someone you just love to talk to and feel safe around with. He had to serve his customers, but whenever there was a chance, he raised his glass of wine towards us and made us take our glasses and cheer to each other. When Banderas came to ask us if everything´s fine, Sylva said "yes, we are watching your match", which wasn´t true at all, as we had our heads turned the other direction, watching Clown, non-stop. After that we moved to Manos bar to say hi to Manolis, who already knew us. As we sat there quietly, listening to live music and watched the kids dance in the rhytm of Abba, a bottle of wine landed on our table. Manolis turned over his shoulder to show us where did it come from. The two guys who sat just across the lane, one younger, one older. The younger one, who introduced himself as Georgios, but we called him George, asked to join us for a company, and he brought his older cousin Theo with him. Theo didn´t speak a word of English. He looked like a copy of Karel Schwarzenberg from the front and like Robert de Niro from the profile, according to my observations. They were friendly enough but not obnoxious as Dimitris nor scary as Banderas. We talked for a long time, and  we made two more friends in the meantime. An Indian guy whom Sylva called a Horse and a guy that got nickname Mickey mouse by some funny accident. There was a big dancing in the square, little kids and also grown ups dancing like mad to the famous tunes of Elvis Presley, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Jackson or Abba. When we finished our drinks, the next door night club opened, with people pushing in, even the single woman with glasses who looked like a teacher of English whom we simply called "British-one". She wasn´t afraid to jump right into the mad crowds of Greeks dancing for their lives. We waited until the room was bit more empty, and then I asked George to come and dance with us, as Theo was already long gone home. So the five of us went to dance to have some fun on the dancefloor. I really enjoyed everyone´s company. When we finished in early morning hours, there was a daylight outside already. George, me and Sylva went to sit down by the harbour and watched newly born sunrise, then he walked us close to home and hugged us to say bye. It was really amazing night spent with great people who did enjoy life. 

George and Theo

Mickey Mouse with Sylva

our whole gang

The next day we went to spend some time on the beach sunbathing and then took a slow walk towards hotel and restaurant that belonged to George (according to his directions drawn on a little paper the previous night). He was serving us, as we ordered the best egg omelletes in the world! Then we went for some more pistachio ice cream and in the evening hours we packed our belongings to be able to go and have last dinner together. We found a lovely sea shore restaurant Basilico, with boats harboured few metres from us. I had linguine con funghi,and we drank some Retsina, which is white wine little enriched by resin flavour. We ate our last Greek meal recalling all the good times we´ve had there, recounting them one by one, laughing at the folly of it all, and the amazing charm of this place, including the friendly people who took us under their wings quite ingenuously. We said goodbye to Manolis on our way home, having a decent glass of Amstel radler, himself giving us a proper handshake and huge hug, and telling us to return, that we were the best. We will think of him fondly, as of everyone who passed through our life in that moment in time.....

Nikos alias Kalybos

Andreas Diakogiannis alias Banderas

and some songs I remember playing those nights: