Easter Celebrations Begin

Good Friday we followed our now standard routine of a walk into Koutouloufari village for a coffee, a stroll around, lunch for the kids, Sophia to bed.  We all had an afternoon sleep ahead of the Good Friday church service. 

Yianni and Maria collected us at 8.30pm – Manny, Cassie and I (Bapou, Yia Yia and Sophia stayed at home as it’s still very cold at night here) and we went to their beautiful church at Piskipiano – the next village along the mountainside.  It is such a glorious sight – the church and church courtyard packed with hundreds of families, inside the Epitafio is decorated with white and purple flowers- the church filled with a heady perfume of incense and flowers.  Again, we were ushered to the front and joined the throng, somehow standing right beside the priest.  Six local young men dressed in traditional Cretan costumes stood before the Epitafio waiting for the moment to lift it onto their shoulders for the procession through the village.  Two young women, also dressed into traditional costume waited with a basket of rose petals to follow.  The priest blessed the congregation, the usual chaos ensued as the Epitafio was hoisted into the air (glad to see some things are universal!) and the strapping young men were away and into the courtyard.  We watched the procession until it headed into the village.  

Afterwards, Yianni and Maria drove us to a taverna in a nearby village where we joined their daughter Sophia and husband Arris and their friends and children.  Yianni and Maria convinced us to take Cassiana and let her stay up late for a change.  The taverna was in a small village not frequented by tourists and along a dirt road. The room was no bigger than our living room - all good signs that the food would be excellent home style fare!

Our tradition in Australia is to go to Church on Good Friday and then straight home, given the solemnity of the occasion. No here!  We were told it would be only small plates of meze (starters), not a big dinner.  But it was far from a small meal.  Plates of fasting food flowed from the tiny kitchen – fava bean dip, cooked fava beans in garlic, slow roasted red capisicums, tender deep fried calamari, prawns, snails (which Cassie devoured!), chips, dried bread with roasted tomatoes (a local delicacy) – we ate until we could eat no more, and then the dessert arrived – more spoon sweets of figs and grapes, served with a plate of almonds and walnuts drizzled with warm honey.  The raki also came out then, along with giant fresh fava beans straight from the garden of the taverna. It is tradition to serve fresh beans at the end of the meal, which we peeled and ate – Cassie loved them.  By this time it was close to midnight and we could not eat another thing – finally I realised the food continued to flow because we continued to eat – the more we ate, the more arrived.  I nudged Manny and told him to stop being polite and eating, and then the food would stop!

Cassiana was still playing happily with the other children – Sophia’s daughter Maria who is 3, another girl Marula, and two boys.  The language barrier is proving not so difficult for Cassie to overcome with the children.  Yianni’s son Nicko taught Cassie to say “I saw a black cat” in Greek “Etha mis mavri guata” and then taught the Greek children the same in English.   We got home at midnight, collapsed into bed, knowing it would soon be time to get up and go to Church in the morning for communion...