OCTOBER 30, SATURDAY

LEAVING PAROS

I had a very good month in Naousa and was sad to leave. Packing was easy. I left the toiletries behind and a shirt but replaced them with a few souvenir rocks.

Last night when Efi offered to drive me to Parika and wanted to set a time I suggested going early to see the Byzantine Church and the Archeological Museum before the ferry arrived. Wolfgang suggested Efi accompany me. She was incensed. She wasn’t going to go to a museum, she had never been to a museum, why would she waste her time in a museum? She had her 95 year old mother to take care of, an airbnb to run, cooking to do, why would she want to go to a museum?

I said that I would send her some photographs of the museum so she would know what was there. She scoffed at the idea but was very warm when dropping me off and saying goodbye. I am on the ferry now, but as soon as I get to Athens and get situated I will send her some photographs.

The museum was interesting, but as with what I have seen in Athens, the ancient ruins have been so defaced by marauders and destroyed by the weather that getting a feel of Greece’s glorious past is mostly a matter of imagination.

Efi lives in the domestic present and has no patience for the past. Tourists go to Athens for the past, they come to Poros for the beaches and the food and the shopping, to whoop it up far into the night in the high season.

The Byzantine church also is from the past. But it is a living church with a few women worshippers stopping by during a long ritual of some kind with the priest in elegant white vestments chanting and being echoed by other priests.

And the the church itself is beautiful with elaborate wood carving and brass work and painting after painting of saints and Bible stories.

There seemed to be an accretion of ritual, more and more elaborate, nothing lost.

The ritual itself seemed to me, a mainline Protestant, more dedicated (in theory in my case) to doing good and helping people, as empty ritual.

In fact, the ritual chanting and waving incense and burning of candles and and elaborate vestments, seem more mumbo jumbo than worship of God. But that says something about me and nothing about the obviously deep faith of the women who approached the priest for a blessing.

As I sat there for twenty minutes until the ritual was over, the lighted candles, the chanting, the art work everywhere were actually all very beautiful. It was me who was out of step.

Then the ferry came, backed up to the pier, the cars and people shot off, Paros passengers crowded on and we were off.

The five hour ferry from Paros to Athens was windy and chilly. So I moved off the rear deck and found a comfortable seat inside. It turned out that the seats were reserved and that almost everyone sitting there were in the wrong place, we were economy class and this was some other class. So we were all evicted to either the outside deck or a less than comfortable dining area where a Greek basketball team of very tall men with piercing voices carried on a very loud and uproarious conversation that filled the whole area without my understanding a word.

When I got to the Acropolis House I was displaced from my confirmed reservation for the night and shifted to an empty house down several streets and turnings and left there for the night, the only occupant. It is a house that doesn’t look lived in with four bedrooms, living room and kitchen, but alas, no heat. All I needed last night was half of a double bed, which turned out to have no sheets but have a nice pillow and a heavy wool blanket. As it got chillier during the night I folded the blanket double but narrow and tried to stay under it and finally put my jacket on top as well. Now I am waiting for breakfast at the Acropolis House and the change back to a room there.

But as I faced the long evening, afraid that if I went out I wouldn’t be able to find my way back again I was messaged by Adrianna Ault, a former student at Warren Wilson College who went to Sri Lanka and India with Susie and me in 1996 who I had learned through Instagram was, with her partner, leading a photographic workshop in Athens this week. I had wondered earlier if we could meet for a meal. Her message was an invitation to join her and others for a meal at the Trata Fish Taverna complete with a google map. The meal was great fun. The sea food was delicious I got to learn what it is like to be a real photographer. I had to walk a mile to get there and the Trata Fish Taverna was a little hard to locate once I got there, and then had to walk a mile back, but it was fun and filled an empty evening in a sterile guest house. Adrianna has invited me to stay in an extra room of her Airbnb on Monday night, saving me $50, before flying out to Frankfurt on Tuesday morning so I’ll see her again then.

So now I am waiting for breakfast at the Acropolis House and then will start searching for the Sunday flea market.