From: Lynn Gazis-Sax <lgsax@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.greek
Date: 11 Nov 92 21:57 PST
Subject: Trip to Athens and Volos, 9/92
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1473100067:000:18959
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!lgsax    Nov 11 21:57:00 1992


It seems almost unnecessary for me to describe Greece, since so
many people have been there already.  I am one of the last of our
family to make the journey back, and to meet our relatives in
Greece; six of my eight brothers and sisters had already been.
But I will describe the journey anyway, if not for the Gazises who
have already gone, then for the Gazis children yet to be, who may
want to learn about the country my father came from and about his
family.

We nearly missed the train to Greece.  The ticket office would
take neither Visa, nor American Express, nor traveller's checks.
Leaving behind the women of the Women's Organization of Skopje,
who had accompanied us to help us find the ticket office, we raced
from bank to bank, only to hear at each that they did not change
travellers' checks.  Two banks, and one tourist agency had refused
us.  "How are we supposed to get out of this country?" Joel
exclaimed.  Visions ran through my mind of uncle Takis (how much
had Dad told him about our itinerary?) worrying about his niece
who had been unaccountably detained in Skopje.  Joel sent me back
to the ticket office to alert the women, while he rushed off to
find a bank on the other side of the Turkish bridge.  As he
arrived with the checks, Vlada arrived with the bags and offered
to take us to the station.  On the train we had another brief
worry when we learned that the conductor would not take Macedonian
dinars for the couchette.  Frantically, we searched for an
adequate amount of another currency, and came up with Hungarian
forints (illegal, incidentally, since Hungarian law forbids
importing and exporting large amounts of their currency); these
were acceptable.

Finally we sat stopped at the Greek border, facing the last
obstacle to our entry into Greece: a simple form.  Name, father's
name, citizenship.  Country of departure.  Country of departure?
This was a tricky one; the name of the country we had just left is
in dispute.  Fortunately, the Greek official gestured that we did
not need to fill that part out.  We returned the forms, our
passports were stamped, and we were on our way into Greece.

We rode down to Athens through steep mountains and ravines, past
white-washed houses with tile roofs (the tiles more rounded than
those in the roofs of houses in former Yugoslavia), marble
quarries, fields, and little boxes with crosses which Joel said
mark where someone has died.   The climate and vegetation appeared
similar to my native California (when we got to Athens, I learned
that the similarity extends to the little signs urging water
conservation, seen everywhere). We passed many small fields of
crops: cotton quickly followed by grapes quickly followed by
melons. At one point, we saw a stretch of land where all the
vegetation has been burned in a fire. The train was the slowest
express train I have ever ridden on.  Several hours after we are
due to arrive in Athens, we woke up when the train stops.  Athens?
No, Lamia.  Athens was still a long way away. We arrived in Athens
seven hours late.  Joel remarked that Communism would have
improved Greek trains (which are not electrified).

Athens.  Marble curbs to sidewalks, street vendors selling the
worry beads and tasseled hats which Dad once brought home to us
from his trips to Greece, a woman at a cafe selling flowers
(reminding me of the children circulating in cafes in Zagreb),
nondescript apartment buildings, more marble.  I had been warned
to be disappointed in Athens, that it was a gray, smoggy city,
with ugly buildings.  But I could not be disappointed to be there,
in Greece.

Something else, though, did disappoint me: I found that I did not
speak Greek.  I could, it is true, recall the phrases to ask for
directions.  But I could not understand the replies.  I could
converse with the shopkeepers for a short while, but I mangled the
simplest words.  The sad thing about this is the amount of effort
I have put into this feeble knowledge of Greek.  Since we did not
speak Greek at home, I found a Greek-American guidance counselor
at my high school who gave me lessons in Greek for four years.  I
wrote letters to my father and to a cousin in Greek.  When, after
graduating from college, I found that my Greek had grown rusty, I
purchased a set of twelve tapes, produced to train US Foreign
Service people, and studied them.  I put myself on a Greek
speaking computer mailing list (until I changed jobs).  And I
reviewed the set of tapes again this summer.  Now I asked for
directions and was completely baffled by the response.  It seemed
a metaphor for my experience of Greece - much read about, but
little understood.  The one positive note was that however badly I
spoke Greek, all the Greeks were delighted to hear me try.

Coming from former Yugoslavia, I was of course on the lookout for
the signs about Macedonia.  After the articles I had read, I was
at first surprised
*not* to see much in the way of posters or graffiti about
Macedonia.  The graffiti we most noticed on the train down was
simply the name PASOK (and, more rarely, Nea Demokratia).  In
Athens, I first noticed the signs about water conservation, then
many handmade banners which appeared to say something about social
security.  I looked a little closer, though, and the signs were
there.  Little stickers on windows, and flags in stores, saying
"Macedonia is Greece."  (There was one in the hostel where we
stayed.)  T-shirts saying "Macedonia: 3000 years of Greek
history."  The amount of nationalist paraphernalia does not
compare with that in Zagreb, but it may surpass that in Beograd
(where the war is now unpopular and peace posters compete with
nationalist graffiti).

There are some divisions in Greek opinion about Macedonia which I
had not picked up from the American media, but I did not manage to
learn fully what they are and how far they extend.  The September
11-17 edition of Greek News, an English language newspaper in
Athens describes an interview with Virginia Tsouderou, Greece's
Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, represented as a moderating
influence, as opposed to the "flag-waving" approach of people like
Antonis Samaras.  Unfortunately, the article did not go into much
detail about the differences between the views of these two
groups.

Certainly the arrest of the five socialists for distributing
leaflets in central Athens opposing Greece's policy toward
Macedonia aroused much criticism in Greece as well as abroad.
Virginia Tsouderou is quoted as saying, "I strongly hope for an
acquittal," and ascribing the arrest to "a narrow-minded policeman
who thought he was doing his duty."

We were shocked to notice many military trucks in the streets of
Athens.  What was happening?  The soldiers were beginning to
remind Joel uncomfortably of Zagreb.  It turned out, though, that
they had a more benign purpose: there was a bus strike, and the
trucks were replacing buses.

It was not only the buses which are on strike.  It appeared that
half the nation was on strike: banks, post offices, gas stations.
And so it happened that, having passed through one nation, Serbia,
where it was hard to get gas due to an international embargo, and
another, Macedonia, where it was hard to get gas because the gas
was being help up in Thessaloniki, we reached yet another nation,
with yet another obstacle in the way of getting gas.  The strikes,
it turned out, were opposing Mitsotakis's policies regarding
social security and privatization.  They were nationwide, but not
continuous; rather, they went on and off.

Sunday was free admission at all archeological sites, and we set
out for the Acropolis.  The largest crowd I had ever seen at any
tourist attraction was here, on the stairs to the Acropolis.  A
huge traffic jam of people moved slowly up the broad steps.  I
overheard voices in English, German, French, Russian.  Slowly,
very slowly we moved.  But the sky was blue, as in the postcards
(and not gray as in the slides Dad once brought home), and the
beauty and simplicity of the ruin were still striking among the
crowd.  We visited the Temple of Hephaistus, and the Museum of the
Agora, which contains jewelry, coins, pottery, a child's potty.

Emerging from the Agora, we came upon a modern Greek street
market.  People sold beads, books, tapes, hats, and an odd
assortment of old appliances: a manual typewriter, a reel tape
recorder.  I was reminded of the Turkish market in Skopje.

Sunday night, we were in the youth hostel in Athens.  We had seen
the National Archeological Museum, the Areopagus, the Parthenon,
and the Agora, but we hadn't seen a single relative yet.  A knock
on our door announced the telephone.  Presumably, it was Uncle
Takis or Uncle Alekos, who both live around Athens, and both of
whom I had called a little earlier.  I ran down.  It was my cousin
Lila, "I have a hotel in Volos.  Uncle Denos was supposed to tell
you that you can come up and stay with me for as long as you
like."  We told her we needed to check train and bus schedules and
would call back.

Another knock announced another call.  Uncle Takis or Uncle
Alekos?  No, this time it was Aunt Yvonni, "I am at Kalanera, near
Lila.  I am lonely.  Come up and visit me and Lila."  I explained
that we had to check bus and train schedules.  She asked if I have
a car.  Here I hazarded my first sentence of Greek to a relative,
"Then exome autokinito.  Prepei na taksithepsoume me to leoforio i
me to traino."  "Bravo!" said my Aunt Lila, "Milas arketa
ellinika."  And, as was practical, continued the conversation in
English.  She suggested that she would call her brother George,
and have him drive us up.

The next phone call was from Uncle George, the one adult Greek
relative who does not speak English better than I speak Greek, so
the desk clerk, after listening to my mangled Greek, offered to
interpret.  We arranged for Uncle George to fetch us on Monday
morning.  By this point Joel, who had been planning to take me to
Delphi on Monday, was disappointed.  "We have been offered a free
vacation in scenic Volos?  Next to the cement factory?" Evidently,
he had not heard great things about the beauty of the city of
Volos.

Next day, at 10, Uncle George arrived.  Short, stout, and
gray-haired, he looks like an older version of Dad.  Looking at
him, I had trouble imagining the young soldier who once fought in
the Greek Civil War.  But he still carries the mark of that war;
his right hand is missing, and so he keeps it constantly in his
pocket, except when he drives.

We ran poor Uncle George around Athens for an hour, getting our
bus tickets for Budapest from Larissa (an act made difficult by
the fact that the travel agency didn't take travellers' checks or
credit cards and the fact that the banks were on strike).
Finally, we were on the road.  After we had driven for some time,
Joel pointed out Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans held off the
Persian army.  (I interpreted this information to Uncle George and
got the answer, "What war?" - obviously my Greek had failed the
challenge.  After I explained that we are talking about ancient
Greece, I got another account of the battle, this time in Greek.)
We stopped at a restaurant and selected food from the kitchen.

Finally, we arrived at Lila's hotel.  Lila's two children, "and
the big baby," her husband, were all asleep.  It turned out (to
Joel's relief), that Lila's hotel is not in Volos itself, but
rather in the small neighboring town of Plantanidia, a lovely
village which is right on the beach. After a brief conversation
with Lila, we continued to Aunt Yvonni's house in Kalanera.

"My niece Lynn!" Aunt Yvonni hugged me and kissed me on both
cheeks.  "I have your picture from five years ago.  You haven't
changed a bit!  You look like a princess, with a crown."  (It must
be my wedding picture, with the flowers in my hair.)  Those of my
siblings who have already visited Greece will know that it is good
to be hungry when you visit Aunt Yvonni.  "I have fixed a little
something for you to eat, with no meat."  This little something
was a large pan of cooked vegetables.  It was accompanied by the
little bit of bread, the little bit of feta cheese, the little bit
of salad, and the little bit of wine.  The Greek word which is
useful at this point is "arketa."  The next day, Aunt Yvonni gave
me two presents: a travelling combination brush and hand mirror,
and a sweater, "made in Greece by Aunt Yvonni."

Back at Lila's hotel, we were given a room and met Lila's husband,
a quite good backgammon player, and her two sons, Vassilis, 5, and
Giorgos, 3.  Vassilis and Giorgos were shy at first, but warmed up
to Joel after he presented them with coins from various countries
(leaving out the Macedonian money, since the hotel window had a
"Macedonia is Greece" sticker). Later, when Joel imitated a
mosquito, Vassilis and Giorgos asked for him to imitate it again
and again.  And again.  And again.

Lila showed me the family photographs.  Grandfather Gazis appears
in many, always young and always in uniform.  An officer in the
Greek Army Corps of Engineers, he died in World War II, so there
will be no photographs of him in his old age.  Grandmother Gazis
appears, young, with long hair and that distinctive angular nose
which she has passed on to so many of her children and
grandchildren.  Lila, her namesake, has it, as do her sister
Phrini, Aunt Yvonni, Uncle George, my father, and myself.  Here in
Plantanidia, I see more Gazis noses than I have ever seen, and for
the first time see another woman with my nose (as my sister Carey
did not inherit that trait).  Grandmother Gazis appears again,
old.  "She was an unusual woman, like a man," Lila said, "When few
women smoked, she smoked.  She raised five children alone during
the war after Grandfather disappeared."  Grandmother appears
again, surrounded by beer bottles, "She liked her beer."

The family, as a military family, moved around a lot.  A photo
from 1936 shows them in Florina.  I know from Dad that they were
in Ioannina at the time of the Italian invasion, and that they
spent much of the war in Volos.  Pictures appear of the children.
Uncle George, as a young man, very thin.  One of the brothers
jokingly wrote, "1943. Buchenwald." on this photograph, and Uncle
George indeed looks quite emaciated.  Aunt Yvonni, young and
beautiful.  Aunt Yvonni is fair for a Greek, with her medium brown
hair and green eyes.  Her hair color nearly matches mine. Dad, as
a young child.  The boys' hair was cut in a girlish page boy cut
until they reached a certain age, so Dad in some of these pictures
looks like me as a child, in others like Carey.  All five children
on the day of their baptism.  Many of Lila and Phrini as girls.
Yvonni, George, and Dad, all dressed up in costumes (Dad dressed
as a girl).

I had Lila interview Aunt Yvonni on the family history, in Greek
(Aunt Yvonni's preference), while I recorded.  "The Gazis family
comes from Kozani.  Your grandfather, Evangelos Gazis, had a very
sharp mathematical mind.  When his teachers would explain how to
do a problem, he would say, but you could also do it this way.
Denos takes after him.  Your grandmother spoke a little of many
languages.  Her father was a merchant, with a business which sold
clothes - fezzes and other Turkish clothes and European clothes."

Here in Plantanidia, I learned another thing about Greek strikes.
One evening the lights were out.  "I wonder when they will come
on," says Joel.  "They will be on at 9pm," my Greek relatives
assured us.  Sure enough, promptly at 9pm, the lights came on.
"Christos anesti," said Aunt Yvonni, repeating the words of the
Greek Orthodox Easter service at the point when they light the
candles, "Christ is risen."  It turned out that it was a scheduled
strike.  What is more, the strikers announced the schedule ahead
of time.  The next day, I saw an article in the paper announcing
the times of the scheduled blackouts in each town.

One day, we went up to the village where Anthimos Gazis once
lived.  Anthimos Gazis (no relative, as far as we know) was a hero
of the Greek revolution.  His village is up the side of Mount
Pelios, among trees and steep drops.  There is a cafe, and an old
narrow gauge railway, no longer in use.  We walked along the
railway and came to a bridge.  By its side was a table with some
graffiti on it - a poem about the heartbreak of love and another
poem about the beauty of the spot.  Lila and I climbed down the
side of the stream; Joel and her husband went ahead over the
bridge.  Lila and I followed along a cliff and across two bridges
(one over a precipice), and we talked about having cousins at a
distance while growing up, about Grandfather and Grandmother.

Later, Lila took Joel and me into Volos.  I saw Anthimos Gazis
street, and Lila took me by the corner where the Gazis's used to
live.  The streets were dirt then, but are paved now.  An
apartment building stands where their house once stood.

At the Volos harbor stands a modern monument to those who died in
Greece's War of Independence.  We strolled through a park filled
with works of modern art, past a train ride for children which
reminds me of a similar one, called the Bambi Express, in Skopje.
It may be because I was so recently in ex- Yugoslavia, but my
memories of Volos were all of war.  Here were once German
soldiers.  Somewhere in the surrounding area were the guerrillas,
and somewhere were hidden the Jews of Volos.  (According to Marvin
Gilbert in
_The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second
World War_, "In the Volos region, another Greek rabbi, Rabbi
Pessah, through his contact with the resistance, obtained shelter
for more than 752 fellow Jews of Volos.  When the Germans came to
deport the Jews of Volos, only 130 were found.") As we walked
along the harbor, I thought of the Allied bombing.  Alekos was
near the harbor that day, Dad once said, and saw a German soldier,
terrified.

Lila brought up a more peaceful memory.  "This is where the young
men and women would walk in the evening."  Yes, Dad had talked
about that, too.  Instead of dating, the young men and women would
meet when they all came out to walk during the evening.

The time came for us to go, and we rode out on a bus headed for
Budapest.  But not without getting another taste of Balkan
politics.  At the Macedonian border, the customs agents passed
through the train, checking passports.  Australia? Fine.
Hungarian? Fine. Ireland? The passport is a little shabby, and the
owner is admonished to take care of it, but all is well.  America?
Dobro! (More Macedonian enthusiasm for America.)  Greek? 40 marks,
please.  All Greek passports were taken off the bus.  When they
were returned, a Greek in front of us showed us hers.  A visa,
saying Republic of Macedonia. A stamp, also saying Republic of
Macedonia. Two stickers, just for good measure, both saying
Republic of Macedonia.  Macedonia, reminding the Greeks of what
its name is.