“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”.
"I used to think I would never stop playing football. Even as a player for Panathinaikos I used to play in the streets every morning and in the championship court in the evenings. My mind used to get more tired than my feet did. I had to be skilful, pass to Antoniadis, and avoid the strikes. When I returned home after the match I had to be left alone for about an hour, so that my mind could get some rest".
"We're talking about poverty here. Do you think that horses don't eat much? How am I supposed to feed them? Each one of them eats a tone of barley per year, not to mention the hay. Three thousand euros isn't enough for me to buy a horse, plus five hundred for the saddle and the leads. The cheapest chainsaw reached the price of a thousand euros. All these years, I only have a tyrannical life to remember, and nothing else".
"As a young man I worked at a traditional woodcarving laboratory in Athens with a good salary of 20,000 drachmas per week, but I stayed there less than a year, because they didn't care much about the details. I got a job at another lab for 6,000 per week, where they didn't like mindless working. I preferred earning less money and learning more about the job. Today's young people make something and want to immediately make money out of it; they don't care about learning by other people's experience".
"The houses here are in competition about which one of them has the most beautiful paintings on its frontage. We make them by scratching the wall, that's why we call them scratches. There are special plasterers who do this job and there is some kind of rivalry among them. They don't all have the same talent, but they do share love for their craft".
"Some time ago I was introduced to a 70year-old woman. When she held my hand she said: What is this ring that you're wearing? I like it very much. Would you wear a ring like that? I asked her. Definitely yes, she answered. Old women usually wear brilliants and golden jewels, but she had a strong personality and was attracted by the titanium ring".
If you stop to ask for directions formation when passing through a village of Amari, you will definitely be invited to drink a glass of "raki" (local strong alcoholic drink). Georgis Sarris, from Kouroutes village, is a blacksmith. His shop is on the public road and when a traveler stops to ask him something, Georgis always insists of treating him to something from the nearby coffeehouse. The café owner has placed a bench on the sidewalk, where the blacksmith and his friends sit and gaze at the tops of Ida mountain, which is there, right in front of them.
His Albanian name is Ali, but the Greeks call him Alexis. He comes from Librazhd of Albania and has been living in Greece for 18 years, most of which at the estuary of the Aliakmonas river, where he grazes sheep. He works in the heart of a biotope under conditions of absolute wilderness and solitude, away from people but close to birds and other wildlife.
"I asked which the most southern place in Europe is and they told me about south Crete. I was looking for a nice place to live, where it would be warm and sunny all year. I was dreaming of a home away from the city, which would be near a natural spring and surrounded by trees. The first house I found had no electricity, only a fireplace in the corner. I had to light a fire every morning in order to make a coffee, but later I bought a camping gaz from the village's store".
"I make raki* of 19 degrees by boiling it twice. It is strong and doesn't get white like ouzo when you mix it with water. Raki with anise is also very tasty. I serve these drinks to my few customers along with roasted chickpeas, boiled cabbage and canned fish".
" 'Why are you crying father,' my children once asked me when we had gone to Athens. 'It's not that is crying, it's my eyes because of the dust and the gas', I answered. I stayed in the hospital for 40 days and I couldn't even drink water. I don't like water from tanks and in nylon bottles. I couldn't wait; I wanted to go home beside the river as soon as possible. When I first came to live here I was bothered by the sound of water, but then I got used to it. My grandchildren don't like it here because they feel lonely. They don't even ask how the watermill works. They only care about the dogs; they are constantly gathering bones to feed them".
"We used to stay at home all the time, we didn't know any cafés or other places to go out to. We've only finished primary school, but we often talk to well-educated people at work. We learned to cook from our grandmothers and mothers. Important people come here to eat. A convention took place in our village a few years ago and we made a buffet for about a thousand persons. We used to be 130 of us women in the association, but only eight of us remain".
Director Dimos Avdeliodis, creator of unique movies about life in the mastic villages of Chios, amongst which “The tree we used to hurt” is a sensitive and modest artist. He believes that the beauty of his homeland is not only hidden in images and photographs, but in the relationship between people and nature as well.
"There were some other ouzo taverns (ouzeri) at Missolonghi, but not very big or fancy. All kinds of people have visited it since 1901 when it first opened. Lawyers, doctors, merchants, fishermen, farmers and labourers, all meld together in the same place. It was a place where class did not matter, it used to connect people and bring them close".
"Back then there were no boots and raincoats; we used to wear an old woollen garment and go fishing. How the hell did we manage not to get rheumatism from the damp, I'll never know. You can't imagine how cold it was, we were using the oars to break the ice in the lake in order to pull the fish nets out. Nowadays there are icebreaking machines for this purpose".
