SUSIE ARRIVES
Susie arrived at midnight on Thursday, exhausted after and overnight flight to Athens, then a tour of Athens during the day and then the long Blue Star Ferry ride across the Aegean most of which she sat outside on the deck.
But during the day the high point for me was meeting a cousin of Efi’s who stopped by to get a bag of his sewn up. He had gone to San Francisco at the age of 15 and stayed for 17 years with an uncle. When he heard that I had toured the United States on Amtrak a year ago he said his dream was to drive all the way around the United States on either a Cadillac convertible or a Harley Davidson. He had learned to fly and had flown with a friend in the friend’s plane around the western United States for 12 days. He has been back to the United States a couple of times. When he moved back to Paros he owned a bar for a number of years. But now he has sold the bar and works in a high end restaurant for the six month summer season. He also has a small farm.
He brought Susie and me a bottle of his homemade Souma with a huge amount of ginger in it to bring back to the USA but we are guessing we couldn’t get it past security. And it turns out that he was the one who when it rained a few days ago collected the snails which come out after a rain and brought them to Efi in a basket filled with snails and rosemary. It turns out that before boiling snails you have to feed the snails rosemary to clear their gut of whatever nasty stuff they were eating. So the snails are in the basket eating rosemary and waiting for the moment that Efi and I boil and eat them. Susie doesn’t eat snails for some reason.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 