After days of lazy idleness, we continue our journey. Koroni and above all Mohrle, the kitten to be cared for along with the house by the sea, are waiting for us and we still have many kilometres to go. Kilometres that we ourselves will drag out, because we are the slowest travellers of all.
We pull the door of our Felixo shut one last time, rumble off our dream spot and roll across the island, the whole 5 kilometres, back to the harbour.
In the harbour we see the ferry from behind. She will leave the island without us. Let her! We sit in one of the three harbour cafés, drink a Helliniko Metréo and watch the ferry sail back and forth. 10 minutes there, 10 minutes back, 40 minutes break. What a stress for the captain. And that five to six times a day.
The sun warms our skin, the sea laps turquoise blue and on my smartphone, Google tells me on the home screen that today is National Day. What would we do without Google?
In the long years from 1453 to 1821, when Greece suffered under Ottoman rule, the Greek soul resisted the loss of its identity. It was the Greek Orthodox Church that shone like a beacon in the darkness of that time. Bishop Germanos of Patras, a shadow of ancient Greece as it were, raised the flag in the monastery of Agia Lavras and called the Peloponnesian people to revolt against the shackles of oppression. Thus 25 March, the day of the Annunciation, became a festival of liberation and rebirth.
Here I would like to make a small correction or hint: Those who study Greek history will find controversially documented facts. I do research, but not in the style of a historian. Since, in my opinion, Wikipedia is not always close to the truth, especially when it comes to historical facts, please forgive me for any mistakes. Regarding the liberation struggle, one could also Laskarina Bouboulina add. Furthermore, there were still Petrobey Mavromichalis and Theodoros Kolokotronis in the game. And most likely, depending on the source, one or two other people.
Hallelujah, many thanks to all readers for the correction notes, not so easy with the ancient Greeks.
"That, where our calculations fail, we call coincidence." Heinrich Heine
The ferry has long since docked again, and loud Greek music is blaring from the buzzing but all the louder loudspeaker, half-heartedly installed above the only ATM on the island. The island meeting place, apparently. People start moving, we frantically down our coffee and hurry the 20 steps to the market place, the double car park at the ATM.
The music accompanies the procession. Probably all the children on the island, between 15 and 20 in number, form up in age groups. Their clothes seem to be handed down from generation to generation, the Greek national pride is not directly visible to each of the children, yet they wave the white-blue flag and march past parents and grandparents, aunts, uncles and the two tourists Heike and Gerd.
Once up the 80-metre-long (short?) harbour road, once down again. The group regroups, now in a circle. The loudspeaker crackles as it used to when we let go of the record button on the radio too soon, and another song, unknown to us, plays. The music teacher gives instructions, the dancers follow a choreography we don't know. Highly concentrated, they dance, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and two tourists pull out their mobile phones and cameras to capture the performance for eternity.
At some point, the dancers find their own rhythm, they start to smile and a kind of joy in the tradition seems to develop. There is singing, clapping, the older ones in the audience know the lyrics by heart. To our ears, all the songs sound the same, but after each song change we suspect that they must be different folk songs. We sing along loudly. We sway along with enthusiasm.
So the next ferry also leaves without us, heading for the mainland. We hope that a later one will take us off the island. And if it does not appear? Well, we remain serene, because in our hearts we carry the knowledge of that place where there is the most beautiful sunset to watch. And tomorrow? Tomorrow is still a day.
Merci for "travelling with us
We are thinking about taking another break from travelling in the summer and visiting our families in Germany and Switzerland. One of the ideas is to organise a Lecture about our long journey to the Persian Gulf to prepare. If you would like to, what would interest you the most? We will also tell stories here that don't find a place here on the blog. We're thinking of the Bern and Berlin area - simply because we have family there. But other places are also conceivable. Feel free to write to us.
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