Road Trip to Katerini

Kind of a quiet couple of weeks here at home in Thessaloniki, which has been a nice change of pace considering all the traveling we did in August and early September. We’ve spent lots of time with family, like going shopping with Runia and the kids and attending a modern dance production that was part of the City of Thessaloniki’s 3-month-long Ma Dimitra celebration. We were also able to meet up with our friend Sofia when she came up from Athens for a couple days on a business trip.

Bill also plays soccer games once a week with Aki’s league team and joins him and his friends for pick-up basketball on Friday evenings, and Amanda loves hitting the outdoor farmers’ markets during the day and then cooking at home at night (and we occasionally take Thia Eugenia and Thio Manoli up on the offers for dinner at their house…). It’s been nice settling into a routine and living like Thessalonians.

The latest highlight, though, was our little excursion with Aki and Maria last weekend to the area around Katerini, the town where Maria’s mother grew up. We first went to Pallios Pantelimonas, a small village about an hour southwest of Thessaloniki. Maria explained to us how Pantelimonas was completely destroyed by fire many years ago, forcing several hundred residents to relocate. Years later, younger generations of Pantelimonans returned and rebuilt the town in nearly the exact likeness of the home of their ancestors; for example, homes have no modern conveniences and no automobiles are allowed on the narrow, cobblestone streets. It was chilly and a bit rainy when we arrived, so everywhere you could smell the traditional wood-burning stoves that heat the homes in the village. We sat in a taverna that overlooked the town and had a nice lunch.

That night we drove to the small town of Aeginio to have dinner with Bill’s cousin Kostas and his wife Nitsa. Nitsa put out an unbelievable spread and we talked and ate and drank until the late hours. It was so nice to have three of the four male first cousins on Bill’s mother’s side all together again (we missed you, Steve!) At about 2 in the morning, it seemed Kostas was just getting warmed up. He wanted to show us Aeginio’s “nightlife” and took us to a night club that was still open (actually, the only one that was still open…come to think of it, it may have been Aeginio’s only night club, period) and we drank and danced until the sun came up. Literally. We did not get back to Maria’s family’s home in Katerini until 6:30 a.m.

We woke up a few hours later and had lunch with Maria’s grandmother, aunt, uncle, her three cousins and their spouses and all of their children (Amanda said it felt like being home in Ohio with all the little kids running around!). We then drove to Litochoro, the small town at the base of Mount Olympus. From there, we took the winding road up the side of the mountain as far as we could, where it ended at a restaurant overlooking Mt. Olympus National Park and the Thermaikos Gulf. There we sat and sipped hot chocolate, breathing in the fresh mountain air and recovering from Aeginio’s “nightlife.”

OK, enough for now. Hope all is well back home…sad to see the Cardinals slumping, but glad the Cowboys thumped the ‘Skins and may get T.O. back in time for the Tennessee game on Sunday…

Miss you all!

Love, Bill & Amanda