August 20 Goldfish,Cards and Kittens

We returned from Rafina in late evening on Friday. On Saturday, Theodosia, Christos and Nikos all took the boat for Aegina to join Sophia and her family. Kathy and I spent the weekend with Christos' brother, Vasilios, his wife, Dina, their son, Andreas, and their daughter, Maria and her fiance, Diamondis, in Athens. On Saturday we had a wonderful meal including a souffle that Maria had made. Then they took us to an overlook of the Pireas harbor with a beautiful view. It was actually a large bowling center with bowling lanes downstairs and a restaurant on the upper level. Since this is traditional vacation time for Athens, and a weekend to boot, (everyone who can flees the heat of the city on weekends) traffic was minimal and the restaurant had only a few patrons. We relaxed with (what else?) pagoto, and took pictures of the view. Maria and Andreas translated for us as neither Vasilios or Dina speak English.

While there my minor headache began to pound big time so we returned to their house and I took some pain reliever and laid down for an hour. Who knows what caused the headache. I've only had one other since I've been here. After an hour it had disappeared and I came out of the bedroom to find Kathy playing cards with the family. They taught us a card game called "Kseree" and another card game called "Agonie"and we played until 11:30 when they brought out all the leftovers and we ate again. They took us back to Christos' house to sleep as they did not have room in their apartment for us and came back for us Sunday morning.

On Sunday we ate a little earlier around 1:00 and had "goldfish", a good sized fish, (not the pet variety) and roasted potatoes, salad, tzatziki, leftover souffle, horta and I forget what all else. At 3:00 we took two cars to travel about an hour to Halkuda and Eretria. Eretria is a beautiful resort area on the coast of Evia Island which lies just east of mainland Greece. Actually Evia was once a part of the mainland which accounts for the fact that it is the largest island in Greece. The channel that runs between island and mainland is quite wide in places and ferries ply it at frequent intervals. Eretria had an unending beach and many swam there. There were open showers set up near the beach. Changing rooms are not available at most beaches. An interesting aspect of this beach was the area directly behind a small building, open to the beach and the cafe, where the matrons changed from their swim suits using their cover-ups as a privacy shield, pulling off their swim suits and putting on their clothes under their cover-up. Obviously an acceptable practice.

We stopped briefly in Halkuda to see the place where water runs under the bridge in one direction for six hours, and then changes direction and runs the other way for the next six hours. A mystery. It was not an allusion; you could clearly see the water flowing strongly against the rocks at the bridge abutment. Kathy proposed a theory that since the sea is close at hand and may in fact circle the area, it could have generated a reciprocal motion where the water flows one way until an equilibrium is passed and then it changes and flows the other way. She consulted Maria, who has a mechanical engineering degree, as to her idea, but Maria did not seem interested in positing a theory. In essence her reply was "Pios nakseri" (who knows). Some mysteries are best enjoyed and not explained.

The demise of two kittens was wrong. Only one died. Amazingly the other nine are alive and their eyes are open and it won't be long before they will be wandering from their bed. Already one has fallen over the side and as we watched, she worked and worked to get back into the bed and finally made it unaided. We have been supplementing mother's milk with milk from a syringe and many of the kittens are getting the hang of taking milk from the syringe. It is so much fun just to watch them pile on top of each other to find a comfortable place to sleep. They are working to get their legs to obey them but they are already surprisingly strong and by instinct stretch and curl up like any older cat.