Selected text
With Leo and his friends, we went on many excursions. We had a big company. My brother and some of his friends had bought a big sailing boat. We went everywhere in the summer. We went to this beach towards Koromila innumerable times and knew it by heart. I was an excellent swimmer, I even competed with boys and won. I also ran fast.
Peraia wasn’t known then, we showed it to the world. It is not a lie; our company used to rent a boat, some 45 people shared the cost. People from Salonica didn’t know Peraia, and there was no other way to communicate with the village. In Peraia there was only a ballroom called ‘Cote d’Azur,’ where we used to dance. We stayed there for many hours and the boat would take us back in the evening. All day we ate and danced in the ‘Cote d’Azur.’
One night the boat Poseidon didn’t show up. My brother and a friend, who later became his brother-in-law, Pavlos, came back in the early hours, with a carrier filled with watermelons and notified the port authorities, and in turn notified the owner of Poseidon, who came and picked us up. For his parents it was an agonizing wait. We usually returned at midnight, one o’clock at night, but not in the morning.
We also went to the mountains, to Asvestohori, Peristera. We went on day trips.
Aunt Doudou, Leo’s aunt, had a house on Koromila Street. It was built upon a rock and one got the impression that half of it was built in the sea. The windows overlooking the sea were always closed because when the waves hit them the water would get inside the house. We had a ball there. Every summer we would gather in the house and would create a chaos. Watermelons, melons, bread and cheese. The nautical club was very near and we did whatever we wished. And my aunt was also there, where should she go? It was a small house.
When we left, her complaint was that we simply left and afterwards didn’t ask her how she was doing. Not even her nephew. Only a friend of ours, Odysseus Papadakis, who took pictures, he was the photographer of our company, but also our tyrant until he had us posing, he was the only one who went to visit her.
Peraia wasn’t known then, we showed it to the world. It is not a lie; our company used to rent a boat, some 45 people shared the cost. People from Salonica didn’t know Peraia, and there was no other way to communicate with the village. In Peraia there was only a ballroom called ‘Cote d’Azur,’ where we used to dance. We stayed there for many hours and the boat would take us back in the evening. All day we ate and danced in the ‘Cote d’Azur.’
One night the boat Poseidon didn’t show up. My brother and a friend, who later became his brother-in-law, Pavlos, came back in the early hours, with a carrier filled with watermelons and notified the port authorities, and in turn notified the owner of Poseidon, who came and picked us up. For his parents it was an agonizing wait. We usually returned at midnight, one o’clock at night, but not in the morning.
We also went to the mountains, to Asvestohori, Peristera. We went on day trips.
Aunt Doudou, Leo’s aunt, had a house on Koromila Street. It was built upon a rock and one got the impression that half of it was built in the sea. The windows overlooking the sea were always closed because when the waves hit them the water would get inside the house. We had a ball there. Every summer we would gather in the house and would create a chaos. Watermelons, melons, bread and cheese. The nautical club was very near and we did whatever we wished. And my aunt was also there, where should she go? It was a small house.
When we left, her complaint was that we simply left and afterwards didn’t ask her how she was doing. Not even her nephew. Only a friend of ours, Odysseus Papadakis, who took pictures, he was the photographer of our company, but also our tyrant until he had us posing, he was the only one who went to visit her.
Period
Interview
Eugenia Abravenel