Monday, May 6, 2013

Easter in Greece - The Third Day

In the evening of the first day, we went to an Easter service at the tiny San Andreas church.  It was a very beautiful and quite moving service and I posted on it yesterday (Ostern in Griechenland).

After the service we went back to Harry's home and ate.  He said some Greeks don't eat meat for a month before Easter while others don't eat it for a week but all break the fast after the Easter service and I'm not even sure what we ate but it sure was delicious.  Greeks don't 'eat and run' so do plan on spending a few hours if you will be sitting down to a meal.

We have talked about a great many things in this time even though much of what they say I don't understand at all.  They were curious about my religion and I told them I don't have one but I'm not an atheist.  It seems obvious to me that powers vastly greater than we understand created everything around us.  This was a good answer to them as, like Lotho, they aren't trying to push anything on you.

For the second day, Harry invited me to come back for barbecue and he was laughing while we ate.  He said we cannot eat meat in Greece because of the economic crisis.  I told him I felt his pain as I reached for more from the barbecue plate.

There is a charming tradition with hard-boiled eggs as each person around the table takes one egg, all of which have been dyed red for this.  One by one, you tap the eggs together, first the pointy end and then the rounder end, to see which cracks first.  Whichever egg does not crack is the strongest and so it moves on to the next contest until finally there is a clear winner showing the strongest egg.  The one holding this egg will have good luck during the following year!

It's now Monday, the third day of Easter, and Harry again invited me back to eat with them.  It's a lovely time and of course I will go but they will start later today.

Special for Lotho:  I don't know where you could find one but Harry has a device that looks like a tennis racket.  It's battery-powered and one swats flies with it.  I didn't realise what it was doing at first but it turns out to be a tennis racket / bug zapper!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So like he likes a workout. I prefer the stationary zappers using a UV light as the lure

Unknown said...

It wasn't taking too much work and seemed quite effective. I told him about the homemade mosquito trap and he was most interested in that as skeeters are already starting to come around. I'm most curious to how well such a trap will work!