For as long as I can remember we would come to Greece for the summer and spend half of our long vacation up at the xorio. Lampiri (close to Agrinio) to be exact. It really is a beautiful place: very quiet with a few houses stacked up on the side of the mountain, endless forest like blankets covering the mountains all around, clean air that you can almost taste the first time you get out of the car there, and ice-cold water coming down from sources in the mountain. I mean it's a wonderful place if you're looking for a place to relax, but if you were like me (a teenager coming to Greece to have fun) it got boring after the first day you spend there.
The only thing that livened up our late afternoons was a type of "storytime" with our grandparents. It was never planned. Most of the time, it was the type of conversation that started somewhere we didn't really care about and ended with what happened in the old days, when our grandparents were young. You know, I would hear about how they were dirt poor, but happy nevertheless. I would also hear about their gatherings in the village where they would help each other out with agricultural chores all the while singing and dancing. "Those were the days", my grandparents would say. "Those were the days when people were innocent, their souls were pure and that's why they would see all of those things," grandma would add. And as soon as she would say that, all of use would suddenly tune in. "What do you mean?" we would ask her.
Apparently, back in the day when people were very pious ("not the "devils" they are today," as grandma would point out) they were harassed by evil spirits known as neraides and sometimes the piso-mou-se-exo himself... (read the rest at www.allthegreeks.com)
image: www.nomad.gr
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