A Day In Katerini

Saturday, May 09, 2009

Today was the “rain date” for Christos’ “party” in Katerini, and we had a splendid time.

Katerini is about an hour’s drive from Thessaloniki, and Christos drove us there in his car, together with our mutual friends Paul and Chara. Paul spent many years in America, mostly in New York City, where he managed perhaps the most exclusive hotel there. He married Chara after he had returned to Greece, I believe. Chara’s hair is the same color as Lucille Ball’s, except brighter. She has large, brown, laughing eyes and a kindly expression that makes you love her right away.

It was a glorious day, with bright sunshine, blue, blue skies, and a very few fluffy, white clouds to add a festive touch. I was admiring those bright clouds on the way to Katerini. I couldn’t see them very well because I was sitting in the back of the car and looking out the front window, but at one point, it seemed to me that there was something wrong with the cloud straight ahead. Its lines were straight instead of puffy; its angles were sharp instead of curved; and the contrasts in it of white and blue were too stark. I was just leaning forward to see if perhaps it was really a snow-capped mountain or something, when somebody said, “Olympos.”

“Yes,” said Christos, “It is Olympos.”

Now I’ve been to Myrta and Elias’ house many times, which is straight across a bay from Mt. Olympus, but I’ve always been at night, except once during the daytime, but it was foggy. So I can explain why I never saw Mt. Olympus from there. We’ve driven past it before, too, but at such close range you couldn’t see the mountain for the trees. What I can’t fathom is why I never before noticed it going to or coming from Katerini. Mount Olympus! You’d think a person would do more than just notice that! But I’m sure this is the first time I’ve ever actually beheld it. The home of the gods! And right there at the highest peak was Zeus’ throne!

Yikes. I wouldn’t want to live in that rocky, snowbound place. Why would the gods choose it, other than for its inaccessibility? They tell me the mountain below the snow is absolutely beautiful, that’s why. But the gods lived on the top, didn’t they? I say they had poor judgment. The seaside is so close by!

Mt. Olympus is also the highest spot in Greece, and very impressive on that account, too. Christos says (again) he will take us there sometime. I think during Sylvia’s and Dwight’s visit should be that time and will ask him.

For the rest of the day, I was aware of that mountain’s looming presence, like somebody standing behind your shoulder.

The first thing we did was go to a taverna in Christos’ little village, which is actually just outside Katerini. We sat outdoors, on a wooden platform, beneath an orange canopy. We enjoyed chicken, kokoretsi (sheep gut), beet salad, romaine salad, and French fries. I tasted the kokoretsi this time. It wasn’t bad, at least the bite I had wasn’t. I admit, though, that the bite I took was too tiny to be able to tell much and I wasn’t interested in further investigation.

Paul is an extremely interesting man, having led a most colorful life. He recounted the story he had told me a couple of years ago, about a time Aristotle Onassis showed up at his hotel with Jackie. Now it happened that Maria Callas was on the 20th floor, the former Mrs. Onassis was on the 17th, and Onassis’ daughter and her aunt were on the 14th.

Paul first seated Jackie comfortably in his office, then brought Aristotle into the lobby and said, “Now, then, which floor will you be visiting today?”

Onassis smiled and said, the fourteenth.

Paul also worked as a bank manager in the Sudan once upon a time. One day, he said, an employee walked by Paul’s desk, and Paul heard a metallic sound: click, click, click. It wasn’t the man’s shoes, he said, because all the Sudanese employees went about barefoot, since the climate was just too hot to wear shoes (about 110 Fahrenheit, he said). The second time the same man passed Paul’s desk, he again heard tap, tap, tap. This time he called the man over and asked him, “What’s that sound?” The man examined both his feet and discovered a thumbtack stuck into one of them! “That’s how thick their calluses are on their feet,” Paul said. “The man never even felt the thumbtack!” He pulled it out of his foot with a smile and deposited it on Paul’s desk.

Paul himself bought a pair of shoes in the Sudan. He was walking home from the shoe store along an asphalt road when he noticed the going became harder and harder, and finally, the crepe soles of his shoes stuck in the asphalt altogether, so that he couldn’t move. Now he had a problem, because walking on that road without shoes would burn his feet. So after a few moments’ thought, he hailed a cab. Then he fell sideways onto the sand, removed his feet from his shoes, and, in his bare feet, took the cab home, leaving his ruined new shoes stuck in the road.

When we had finished a leisurely meal and paid the bill, we drove to the beach and went to the Hotel Panorama, Christos’ favorite sitting place. We sat in the back, a few yards from the sea, on wooden folding chairs with blue fabric backs and seats, right on the sand. The tourist season in Katerini is already underway, and half a dozen people were in the sea. So were several sailboats, further out, and three ski-dos streaked by. The sun was warm and the breeze was cool, so the setting was perfect for sipping cold drinks and continuing with the stories. (It wasn’t, in my opinion , perfect for swimming, however; not yet.)

Paul told about the time Ava Gardner arrived at the hotel drunk. Two men in a garbage truck had given her a ride, and brought her into the hotel. Somehow, the garbage truck remained outside the front of the hotel for a long time; the night manager wasn’t sure how to deal with the situation. Finally, he asked his famous visitor would she please ask her chauffeur to park her limousine elsewhere. She did.

Then there was the time the Israeli consulate called Paul and said 14 members of the Knesset (Israeli parliament) would be staying at the hotel for two months. For security purposes, would Paul provide a list of all employees, so background checks could be done? Paul did, and a few days later, the consulate called back telling him to fire a certain assistant manager who was from Lebanon.

Paul telephoned his boss, the hotel’s owner, and protested, saying this was a valuable employee and he couldn’t just fire him because the Israeli consulate wanted him to. The boss, who was a Jew, agreed, adding, “Those _____s at the consulate want me to give them a million dollars – every year! – to be donated to Israel. Now they want to tell me who to fire? You tell them no.”

So Paul gleefully did. The Knesset members ended up staying at the hotel anyway. “And I made them remove their security guards, too,” he added. “I went up to the floor where they were all staying, stepped off the elevator, and found a bazooka stuck in my belly, and a soldier said, “Who are you?” and I said, “Who are YOU?” and told the consulate to get rid of these guys immediately. And they did.”

“Fourteen members of the Knesset, staying in New York two months?” I asked. “Didn’t they have to go back to Israel in all that time to conduct their business?”

“No. Their business was in New York.”

Now that, in my opinion, is worth pondering.

When the sun began to sink so low we were becoming chilly, we drove to a coffee shop and ordered desserts. Christos and I each had a chocolate mousse cake; Chara had some sort of a crème-filled pastry, and Paul and Demetrios had ice cream. We again sat outside, watching the magpies in the distance.

I tried to tell the story about the time my mother got lost in Rome. She didn’t speak Italian, but she did speak Spanish, so she thought maybe if she said, “I’m lost” in Spanish, an Italian might understand. So she approached a policeman and said, “Perdito.”

She asked directions of the policeman and when she followed them, she ended up in a public restroom – but I never got that far in the story, because immediately, Paul said, “Oh, no. She wanted to say, perduto, not perdito. Perdito is fine in Spanish, but in Italian…”

Yeah, I know; that was going to be the punch line. In Italian, it means “I am leaking.”

How many languages does this man speak? Seven: Arabic (because he was born in Egypt and grew up there), Greek (because his parents were Greek), English (from his time in America), French, Italian, and Spanish, from I don’t know where; probably, he is time in Monaco.

“You really must write a book about your life,” I said. “Actually, just put your stories on an audiotape whenever you remember one, and then give the whole collection to a writer.”

“I know I should,” he said. “In fact, I’ve even got a title for the book: It Was Fun.”

Chara’s cell phone rang, and she learned that one of her best friends had just been hospitalized, so as it was about time to leave anyway, we headed for home, passing plane trees (at least that’s what I call the Platonos trees) and palm trees and, Chara pointed out, a few banana trees.

We dropped Chara off at the hospital. For those who want to pray for her friend, her name is Evangelia.

Home again, I sat out on the balcony to watch the twilight arrive and deepen, and to see if I could see any ravens. I saw something fly by that probably was a raven, but I couldn’t be sure. In the fall, at dusk, they congregate on television antennas nearby before flying together to wherever they roost at night. (Some roost in one of our trees.) But this time of year, their behavior is different. I’ve only seen one raven for sure, so far.

We watched “Biography” on television, with Greek subtitles, and now we are getting ready for bed.