SNAILS, CELEBRATION AND COVID
Two things I learned last night, how your prepare and eat snails for dinner and how having a good time and drinking beer is when Covid is most a risk.
I was invited to dinner at 7 p.m. by Efi. Medora, medora or something like that she said with great emphasis. And sure enough it was snails dipped in garlic potato purée, with Greek salad, boiled potatoes in hot butter and drizzled with lemon, bread and cold beer. I took along five beers, not cold, as my contribution and Wolfgang said that the only function of warm beer was as a medicine when you have a bad cold and are under five blankets and he wasn‘t sure it would help then.
It rained a week ago. The next day Efi and Wolfgang headed for the mountains and in an hour and a half found maybe 100 snails which come out from under rocks when it rains, which it rarely does this time of year. Then the snails have to be fed something appetizing to clear their systems, in this case thyme, although macaroni might do. And then they are boiled and pried out of their shell with a toothpick. I thought snails would be a slimy goo that you would slurp,
but they are little purple nuggets that you pry loose with a toothpick and then dip in the garlic potato purée and pop in your mouth. They are chewy, not slimy, and delicious especially when eaten with Greek salad (no lettuce) and boiled potatoes and bread and cold beer.
Half way through our meal Efi‘s brother and his new wife of one year burst loudly through the front door into Efi‘s kitchen/dining room, bringing two large boiled fish and a great deal of energy.
From then on I didn‘t understand a word as the brother and sister got louder and louder with affectionate banter and Wolfgang tried to have a discussion with Maria, the new wife, who is Ukrainian.
He tested her professed German and professed English and finding she could speak neither (she can speak Ukrainian and Russian) tried Greek. It turns out that she also understands very little Greek after a year of marriage with a husband who can only speak Greek. Efi says their relationship is rocky, Wolfgang wonders if it will be better when she learns Greek and they are able to get to know each other.
The brother had a small fishing boat, did well, bought a bigger boat, then a bigger boat, then a bigger boat and now has a huge trawler and is a very rich man, which might explain something. He is a sweet and charming man who is also very tough with his all Egyptian crew. (Why is it that hard up foreigners are exploited world wide, Mexicans in Western North Carolina, Turks in Germany, Indians in Sri Lanka, Paskistanis and Sri Lankan’s in Dubai, Africans everywhere but particularly in the United States.) Wolfgang said that if I ever crossed Efi that the brother would break my legs and drop me in the sea. But at dinner he popped snail after snail into his mouth and was sweet as could be.
I was reminded of a movie that I think I never saw about a great Greek wedding. The room pulsated with energy and then suddenly they were gone and it was quiet again.
It was only lying in bed last night that I realized that having a good time with people you know or half know, maskless, is when you are going to expose yourself to Covid. That was true at a marvelous birthday party I attended two weeks before leaving Swannanoa, true for my niece Tina’s brother Martin at christening party a few weeks ago for a grandson in which the mother of the child and two children came down with Covid afterward. I am safe in Greece as long as I don’t know anyone and sit on my roof or in Swannanoa for a whole year when I and Kathe hunkered down. The threat is not out there somewhere, it is right at home with people you care about. I am as safe in Greece as in Swannanoa, but Germany is next, and I know and care for people there who also drink beer, so I’d better keep my mask handy.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 