The Sunday Getaway - 27 10 2024 - Doing properly
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Today’s instalment is about caring selflessly, seeing clearly and doing properly. It’s about the scarcity of resources that make you focus on the important stuff. We start in Syros, where we left off last week on a long 24hrs combo of work and pleasure.?
It’s Sunday afternoon as I arrive in Ermoupoli and it’s grandiose Venetian buildings and old mansions. I’m here for work and a festival of food that celebrates traditional cooking and the faces behind it in the Cyclades. The mammas and the grandmas that forcefully keep up with their tradition in the kitchen, the grandpas that run their food shops and the sons that still cultivate the Cycladic land. We’re at the Apollon Theatre, a splendid design influenced by Italian examples like the La Scala, which was built between 1862 and 1864, when it was launched with a production of the opera “Rigoletto” by Guiseppe Verdi. And despite the extraordinary feeling of the loges and the gallery, it all boils down to basics. With the people being awarded talking about the hardships of the desolated islands in the winter, the droughts that devastate the land and the over-tourism that rather than helping their work, it probably deters it.
The morning after, I’m sitting with a colleague that has now moved back to the island with her family. She’s all joyful, committed and always available to help. One of those people you get to meet and are taken by their sheer energy. You wonder whether there’s any personal life behind the scenes. And as we enjoy a morning Monday coffee by the sea talking about transportation to the islands, she talks about her mother and the therapy she’s getting in Athens every Wednesday for a few hours. Every week, they get on the 4hr boat to Piraeus, drive to the hospital, stay there for a few hours and make their way back in the afternoon. And still, she has all the clarity in the world to do more good and achieve more.?
Fast forward to today and a gorgeous Sunday morning gazing to the yellow mountainous terrain of Pelion. I pour some coffee and scroll through today’s news. A friend from Veroia, a small town in the north of Greece, talks about his father that just passed. A man that never left town and decided to give all it takes to his homeland, creating a media empire out of nothing. A man I’d always remember laughing, welcoming and helping others - expecting nothing in return. And instead of being sad, his son is rather happy for the life fully lived. In a place where means were not abundant and resources were scarce, he had the clarity to create, to give and to live life to the fullest.
Cheers to you Christos and your beauty!?
Travel On.
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