"I don't even have the time to go to Ioannina for a coffee. I'm occupied with the animals 24/7; if I abandon them they will abandon me as well. I'm not a civil servant, so I have no vacation time. The prime minister has more free time than I do". 45 year-old Tolis Psochios is the last shepherd left in the historical Syrrako, which is located on the slope of Peristeri mountain in eastern Epirus, at ab altitude of 1,200 meters.
Ever since he was a child, lyre player Manolis Diamantakis, from Fourfouras village of Amari, Rethymnon, had an inclination to music. The only problem was that he had neither a lyre nor a bow. In the beginning, he made a makeshift lyre out of pear tree wood, with strings made of leather straps. He used horsetail hairs for the bow and struggled to play.
“Every night, after the sunset behind Maenalus Mountain, the wind stops blowing and extreme calm surrounds us. The only sounds that can be heard are those made by little frogs living in the lakes around. On Sunday night, the ribbiting mixes with the sounds of the cars from far away, as they return to Athens.”
Vasilis Lamprianides is lives at the Baloukli Greek nursing home in Constantinople. His room is clean as a whistle and filled with books and Greek dictionaries. He went to Greece in 1977 and returned to Constantinople in 2005 to spend the rest of his life there. He is not abandoned in the nursing home, on the contrary; he lives in a decent, well-staffed environment with the Greek hospital's doctors just a door away in case of emergency.
Theodore Kolokotronis died in Athens on February 3rd, 1843. His remains were laid out in a church in Athens, so the public could pay its respects. While the great general was on his deathbed, an unknown artist casted his face. This way, the facial characteristics of Kolokotronis, also known in Greece as the “Old Man of the Morea*”, were salvaged. This historical and valuable cast is kept at the Historical and Ethnological Museum of Athens.
“I play music many hours a day. I start in the morning with the violin and then I go on with the piano. During the summer I stop for a while to swim and then I play the violin again”. Antonis Prekas from Emporio of Santorini is the son of the famous lute player Kyriakos and the grandson of the great violinist Antonis.
"I never accepted any payment for my work from a journal or any other printed material. It is unthinkable for me to get paid for writing about Theodoros Kolokotronis”. Nick Papageorgiou spent 30 consecutive years writing about incidents from Kolokotronis's life in the local newspaper "Gortynia". Papageorgiou, a self-taught historian and journalist has written 1,200 short stories about the so called ‘Old Man of the Morea’ to date.
"We can see that Hellenism is fading out but we won't leave. It's hard to leave behind something that works for you and rebuild your life from scratch. Besides, even though we were spoilt as children, we are also taught how to stand on our feet during hardships. We are not only 'fair weather' children".
Myron Lagouvardos, from the village Apostoloi in Rethymnon, studied pharmaceutics in Trieste but preferred to permanently live there, because he was charmed by its beauty and multicultural character. He never thought he was going to like being a pharmacist. He preferred to open what was to be a marvellous Cretan restaurant. Many of his cooking ingredients come directly from Crete and they are very popular to his customers, many of whom are famous Italian politicians and artists.
After the wildfires of 2007 in the Peloponnese, Greeks anxiously awaited the forest workers who barricaded the slopes of the burnt mountains with tree trunks. They were viewed as saviours. But how many people wondered where they came from and how they learned this job?
"My great-grandfather was traveling from Crete and because of the rough sea, the ship stopped at Maleas Cape of South Peloponnese. He lived a big adventure that he used to talk about all the in the following years, he used to talk about it so often that we gave him the nickname Maleas. That is why I am also called Maleas".
"When I go fishing, pelicans are also fishing close to my boat. Once, I heard a strange noise and turned my head to see a peculiar image. A pelican was trying to swallow a fish, but it was big and the half of it was still hanging out of its beak. The tail looked about a foot long, so I deducted that it was a big fish. I jumped into the water, waded through the mud, grabbed the bird and pulled the fish out of its mouth. It was too much for the pelican, he couldn't swallow it. And I had needs... A couple of hours later, I sold the fish in the village and earned 3.500 drachmas. It was a good amount of money back then".
"In the morning, we collect oregano, wood and other materials to process in the workshop. Then someone plays the flute in the forest and we close our eyes and walk along a path between two ropes following its sound".
"I used to be naive and romantic. I thought that through music I would be able to share the pain and the joy with my friends, but I was disappointed. Some people use music as a weapon and they fight amongst themselves. We don’t want any part of this. We close our eyes and sing, not looking at the cameras when they turn towards us".
“Unfortunately my father’s name was Giannis and not Vardinogiannis (a Greek tycoon), that's why I live up here in the wilderness. I have four children, but none of them chose the cattle farmers profession, because the money we make selling one kilo of milk is not even enough for a small bottle of water. It’s not only that merchants sell the milk four times its original value, they also take the butter out of it and the only thing left is the water”.
