by Millie Stavidou
Evros tends to be somewhat off the beaten track for the average visitor to Greece. It is in the northeast of the country, and borders with Turkey and Bulgaria. The people living here count themselves as the descendants of the ancient Thracian people and have a long and proud history.
As with many places, some customs have been lost or changed over time, especially with the relentless march of the modern world and its media. But Evros during the festive season is still a magical place.
In years gone by, a special Christmas meal would have been held in a family group. Known as Ta Ennia Fayia, or the Nine Dishes, this was once a chance for the whole family to get together and celebrate with a full table. These days, although some families in villages scattered through the region do still keep to this, in the town you are more likely to attend such an event hosted at a community centre of some kind. I was invited to Ta Ennia Fayia at the Kappadokiki Estia in Alexandroupolis, a cultural centre.
Evergreen boughs and wreaths decorated the walls, and the long table was covered with a festive cloth. As people came in, many of them brought prepared food from home to place on the table and share with everyone, and there was a hidden meaning to these dishes. Tradition dictates that a particular list of nine ingredients must be included somehow:
one – pie for the wheat, to make it shine
two – honey, so they may carry many things like the bees
three – wine to let them multiply like bunches of grapes
four – saragli, [a syrupy sweet], to make them sweet-natured
five – watermelon to sweeten the year’s produce with many seeds
six – melon for their tongues so they may speak sweet words
seven – apple for the women to make their cheeks red with health
eight – garlic to offer protection from insect bites and the evil eye
nine – onion to give new mothers plenty of milk
These are remembered in the form of a little poem that is chanted at the beginning of the dinner, and there was a lot of good-natured teasing and joking about the forms each ingredient would take and the creativity of the cooks.
Before the meal can start, the Christopsomo, or ‘Christ-bread’ must be broken and offered round. There is a small ceremony, where the eldest member of the gathering places a towel on the head, with the bread on it, and a young child breaks it in half. It is put straight into a basket and offered round. This is the signal that two things can begin: the meal and the dancing. Greek folk dancing can be very energetic, and I was glad that I was prepared. As a visitor, I did not know all the steps, but the local people were happy to see me join in and very welcoming. Nobody minded the odd mis-step.
The Nine Dishes is of course not the only feature of the season. There is a local myth about kalikantzari or goblins that live in the centre of the world, sawing away at the roots of the Tree of the World that supports us all. At Christmas, they are able to visit the world above and they come up to harangue us and cause mischief wherever they go. A broken glass, spilled oil, a burnt loaf: all can be blamed on the kalikantzari. Children often perform little plays telling the tale of the kalikantzari and how people ward them off using sprigs of holy basil until 6th Janary and the Blessing of the Waters when they are sent back underground, to find that in their absence the damage they had done to the Tree has healed itself. These plays are great fun for both the children and the visitors and make a nice counterpoint to the traditional nativity plays that are also performed.
Christmas Eve is the day for carols. Groups of schoolchildren go from door to door with little metal triangles, and occasionally other instruments, playing music and singing. When they knock, they usually ask: “Shall we say them?” There is a local traditional carol that is still very popular, that starts like this:
From a mansion we come,
and to a mansion we go
We will go to our Lord
May he live long
(English translation)
The children may instead choose to sing a modern song – a Greek translation of Jingle Bells or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Whatever they sing, they are rewarded with coins and Christmas sweets for their efforts.
Santa Claus in Greece is known as Ai Vasilis,or St Basil, and he comes at the New Year. In Alexandroupolis, his coming is heralded on New Year’s Eve by a wonderful street pantomime involving two people dressed as a camel, complete with hump, and a third person who wears a strange sheepskin suit that tapers to an almost triangular point above the head. This is the camel driver, and he chases the camel around, mock threatening it with a stick, to great hilarity from the spectators. While this is going on, a group of people dressed in traditional costumes and with traditional instruments put on a display of folk dancing. The camel and companion go around the dancers, sometimes directly in their path, but somehow it all works out and no one falls over. Some years, Ai Vasilis will put in an appearance and march through the town, followed by the camel and driver as he leads them away at the end.
All this takes place in the town centre and is free for everyone to go and watch and join in. Lots of people bring their children, and not only for the show. Barbecues are put out on the central street and the air is full of the smell of meat roasting. It could be chops or sausages, or souvlaki; little wooden skewers with cubes of meat on. Just the thing to warm you in the chilly December air. One thing is definitely clear: Greeks do not worry about providing a vegetarian option.
The festive season is brought to an end on January 6th, with what is known as the Blessing of the Waters. People gather at the local harbor to watch. Prayers are said, and a priest throws a crucifix into the sea as part of the blessing. A group of young men are ready and waiting. Despite the cold, they dive straight into the water to retrieve the crucifix, with honours and blessings going to the lucky one whose hand closes on it first.
Evros is a special place in Greece, and Alexandroupolis is its largest town. As such, people from all over the region have now settled there, bringing their customs with them, meaning that this is a great place to experience Evritika, or traditions of Evros all in one place.
If You Go:
♦ www.visitgreece.gr/en/mainland/alexandroupolis
♦ www.virtualtourist.com/hotels/Europe/Greece/Prefecture_of_Evros/Alexandroupolis-427719/Hotels_and_Accommodations-Alexandroupolis-TG-C-1.html
♦ There are some fascinating museums in Alexandroupolis, such as the Ecclesiastical Museum, not far from the town centre, and the Ethnological Museum, which, among other things, houses some early printed texts in Greek and displays of costumes through the ages.
♦ There are a number of hotels in the town centre, and a lot of places to eat. Seafood restaurants abound on the seafront, and there are also traditional tavernas and other eateries in the town centre, all very easy to find.
♦ In the evening, you can find bars with live music, as well as the quieter kind.
About the author:
Millie Slavidou is a writer and a translator. As well as being a frequent contributor to Jump Mag, she is the author of the InstaExplorer series for pre-teens, which takes young readers on a journey round the world, experiencing local cultures, traditions and languages along the way. jumpbooks.co.uk/category/millie-slavidou
Photo credits:
Thanks to:
♦ alexandroupolisnews.blogspot.gralexandroupolisnews.blogspot.gr – for the new year camel and theofaneia
♦ C. Williams – for the children in traditional costumes getting ready to dance
It became a key Protestant city-state during the Reformation in the mid-1500s, when French theologian John Calvin was the dominant figure. Geneva offered safe haven to Protestants persecuted in Catholic countries. French Huguenots, including prosperous professionals and craftsmen, poured in. Ursula points out medieval buildings with arched Gothic windows on the lower floors, but a simpler and contrasting style above. To make room for all the newcomers, Ursula tells us, extra stories were hastily added to many houses, hence the quirky architecture.
We come to a park on the grounds of the university fringed by a long, high rampart of stone. Formerly a section of the medieval city wall, this is now known as the Reformation Wall. Inaugurated in 1909 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Calvin’s birth, it is the backdrop to ten giant statues of key Europeans from Reformation times, including Calvin himself. There is also the Scottish Presbyterian, John Knox, who sought refuge in Geneva when Mary Tudor (“Bloody Mary”) ascended the English throne and restored Roman Catholicism in Britain. Some of the figures, including Oliver Cromwell and Roger Williams, never set foot in Geneva itself. Born and raised in England, Williams studied theology, became a Puritan, and rejected the Church of England. He sailed to Boston a decade after the first Pilgrims arrived in Salem and shortly after the Massachussetts Bay colony was founded.
Ursula tells us how his ideas eventually had impact in the Old World as well, especially influencing the constitution of Geneva. During the era of Calvin, the city was entirely Protestant. No Catholic churches were allowed. But by 1847, times had changed. Geneva’s leading statesman, James Fazy, was drafting a new constitution. Years earlier, in Paris, Fazy had been friendly with the French General Lafayette, who had fought the British alongside George Washington and admired the American political system. Fazy incorporated many principles derived from the U.S. Constitution. Church and state were separated, and religious freedom guaranteed. Catholicism was again tolerated in Geneva. Protestantism lost its exclusive status.
About the author:
The town doesn’t have any notable architectural structure. The buildings are mostly in a style of socrelism, which are legacy of the communist architectonic style. There are some old buildings and homes in the centre of city from Austro-Hungarian (19th century) time or even earlier from Ottoman Empire period. The rest of the city looks like a small village with modest homes, often with huge gardens with vegetables, fruits and animals.
The food is a mix of Turkish with Serbian traditional food. The most popular meal is pork or lamb called cevapi. I had chance to visit all the ex-Yugoslavia countries and found that Bosnia is the cheapest. An order of five huge portions of cevapi and one medium portion of cevapi, lots of drinks (beers, coffees, waters, juices…) and the whole bill was less than 25€. Visit the restaurant Mujo’s. This restaurant has a long tradition since 1924 and the famous and traditional recipe of Banya Luka’s cevap began from this place. The owners suggest taking yogurt with cevaps, Order a salad and try kaymak (a type of salty cream cheese). After this huge portion of meat you will pass the dessert, but leave space for one Turkish coffee at the end. If you are vegetarian you may have a problem to find something to eat. Even at the bakery the products are mostly with meat, but you can find some nice pies with cheese. They have also very famous pie with meat called burek.
In the Bosnian region of the Republica Srpska, the food is very healthy. You can find organic food here because it is a culture of growing fruits and vegetables. Almost every family has some space out of town or on the edge of city for a garden.
About the author:
The landscape here is flat, and has been farmed – and fought over – for centuries. Tilled land spreads in all directions, dotted by the occasional stone farmhouse, a church spire, a copse of trees. Shrapnel from the war still surfaces each season as the fields are farmed. The heavy soil stuck to my shoes, and all too easily turns to mud. A confusion of back roads loop and intersect through small villages, where horse-drawn carts are still in use.
Beneath the Hôtel de Ville is an entrance to the Boves, or medieval tunnels. The origin of the name is uncertain; however, from the 10th century limestone was quarried here, until the practice was moved outside the city amidst fears the town would collapse. The tunnels run along five different levels, at times up to twenty meters deep. Most of the buildings on Le Place des Héros have their own entrance, now used mainly as cellars or for storage (and an exquisite restaurant, La Faisanderie, perfect after a day touring the battlefields).
Although nearly a century has passed, pictures of kangaroos and slouched hats fill the town, and there is even a Restaurant le Kangarou. The main road is Rue de Melbourne, and the Australian flag flies atop the Australian National Memorial, which lists the 10,982 Australian soldiers with no known grave. ANZAC Day is celebrated here every year. The first floor of the school (a gift in the 1920’s from the school children of Victoria to the children of the town) houses the Franco-Australia Museum. Above every blackboard are the words N’oublions jamais l’Australie – Never forget Australia.
The Canadian National Vimy Memorial encompasses a 250 acre battlefield park, which includes the area of the Battle of Vimy Ridge (9th April, 1917). Both Allied and German trenches have been preserved, and it is still possible to walk along them. The trenches never ran in a straight line, and had alcoves at regular intervals for shelter from bombs and snipers. Some barbed-wire stakes remain; earlier ones with only one hole, and a later design which could hold three stands of barbed wire. These also had the advantage of having a screw on the base, allowing them to be silently screwed into the heavy soil, and not hammered.
Emerge from the crypt, and the buttresses of Notre-Dame soar to the sky. This area had long been sacred; the Romans built a temple to Jupiter here (perhaps replacing a site of worship used by the Parisii), which in turn was replaced around 528 CE by the first Notre-Dame (built with stones from the Roman arena on the Left Bank).
At 1 Parvis Notre-Dame stands the Hôtel-Hospitel Dieu. The first hospital in Paris, it was founded by Saint Landry in 651 CE, and still cares for ill Parisians. The ghosts of some 1300 years of medical history glide the marble corridors, whispering in consultation outside the wards before passing into the old-fashioned lifts to visit the fourteen quiet hotel rooms hidden on the sixth floor.
Under a burgeoning population the Île de la Cité had become a place where ‘plants shrivel and perish, and where, of seven small infants, four die during the course of the year’. (Victor Considerant, 1845). Diseases such as cholera proved epidemic. Authorities viewed the island as a cradle of discontent and revolution, where narrow streets were easily barricaded by paving stones – with the widest street measuring only 5m, the army had difficulty dislodging rioters.
On the nearby Rue Chanoinesse, a 14th C baker was renown for his pâtés – until it was discovered they were made from murdered foreign students. Both No. 22 and 24 are 16th C gabled canonical houses, while at No. 26 the entry is paved with tombstones. No.10 is reputed to be the house of Héloďse’s uncle, where she and Abélard fell in love.
A short stroll but an ethereal world away is the Sainte-Chapelle. Often called “The Gateway To Heaven,” it was built by Louis IX between 1246-48 to house a piece of the True Cross and the Crown of Thorns. The upper chapel is considered one of the highest achievements of Gothic art. Many of the windows date from the 13th C, depicting Biblical scenes beginning with Adam and Eve and ending with the Apocalypse of the great Rose Window.
At the end of Le Quai de l’Horloge stand the Tour de César, Tour d’Argent, Tour de l’Horloge and the Tour de Bonbecis, all built between 1250 and 1300 as part of the now vanished Capetian palace. On the Tour de l’Horloge is Paris’ first clock, built in 1371. Along with parts of the Conciergerie, these towers and Saint Chapelle are all of this area to escape Hausmann.
