9. Friday the 13th
I guess everyone can think of something that didn’t go quite right whenever a Friday the 13th comes along. Most of us probably take the superstition with a pinch of salt, but fear of the date’s been around for a while. There’s even a word for it, paraskevidekatriaphobia, which comes from ancient Greek (friday + thirteen + fear).
Some say its origins go back 2,000 years to the last supper when Judas Iscariot, who later betrayed Jesus, was the 13th guest at the table. Others say that in many cultures twelve is seen as a ‘complete’ or ‘perfect’ number e.g. 12 months, 12 zodiac signs, 12 apostles, 12 gods of Olympus etc.
Wherever it comes from some still take the superstition seriously. Many high-rise buildings skip the 13th floor, with lifts jumping from 12 to 14, and in some hospitals and hotels they don’t have room number 13s, or rooms ending in 13 (e.g. room 213).
I’m on the pinch of salt side of things and chose today to walk to the bus station in the old town to find out about services around the Peloponnese. In fact, I’d tried a few days before, but it was so clothes drenchingly hot that I gave up. Deciding that this was my lucky day because it was marginally less hot probably wasn’t such a good idea because it still hit 34, but I thought I’d give it a go and set off early while it was still in the mid 20s, although it didn’t last long.
I’d just bought a banana and had it in my hand as I set off. Coming alongside a rather frail looking older man who’d been shuffling along at a snail’s pace ahead of me, he’d turned and said something that I couldn’t make out. Asking him to repeat it he pointed at my banana and asked me if I was taking it home for my wife. It was such an odd question I was stunned into silence for a moment. As far as I’m aware it’s not a Greek custom and then I wondered if he was making some sort of crude allusion to its shape. Not wanting to go there I just said, “my wife’s dead”, a well-practised line because in Greece I’ve often been asked where my wife is, even before I had one. At that he whispered, “mine’s dead too” and lifted his arms and eyebrows in a kind of ‘what can you do?’ gesture and wished me a good day. It was an odd start, although unusual rather than unlucky.
With a rough idea of where the bus station was I’d not used Google maps to get me straight there, preferring instead to wander. I’m glad I did because, by chance, I passed the sawmill come carpenters’ workshop I wrote about in an earlier post. I hadn’t taken any pictures when I’d been shown around because it hadn’t felt quite right at the time, so I took the one below.
Wandering on I then came across another gem and stood across the street looking at the wonderfully shabby little cobblers shop in the picture below, Heels Express. It was doing a roaring trade with customers coming and going, despite its tattered old sign, also pictured below, over which a load of old shoes were draped. The yellow heading says, ‘HEELS EXPRESS’ and the bit below “COLOR CHANGES, CHAMOMILE CLEANINGS (not sure what they are), ALL COLORS, ORDERS ARE ALSO BEING MADE’.
After a while the owner, who’d clocked me loitering across the street, called out “Germanós?” Replying that I was English he called me over and told me that he’d once been to Southhampton as a seaman but that he’d been a cobbler for 40 years. His shop wasn’t much bigger than a cupboard and absolutely rammed with clutter. He showed me an ancient hand cranked machine he used for stitching and then along came another customer clutching some boots with flapping soles and I went on my way. How he managed to work in such a tiny, clutter filled mess, I’ve absolutely no idea, but he obviously did.
Nearing the bus station I’d then stumbled upon something on the other end of the scale, the Victoria G Karelias exhibition of Greek traditional costumes. For context, as well as being famous for something decidedly healthy, its olives, Kalamata’s also home to something darker, which is the Karelia Tobacco Company, Greece’s largest cigarette manufacturer and exporter. Established in 1888 by George and Efstathios Karelias, and still family owned, it’s no doubt played a part in Greece having lung cancer incidence and mortality rates among the highest in Europe.
Producing around 15 billion cigarettes annually and with revenue last year of over €1.50 billion, like big tobacco everywhere, they engage in corporate social responsibility initiatives, some might say guilt washing, and the exhibition was a prime example. The restoration and fitting out of the historic neoclassical building in which the collection’s displayed, loaned by the municipality, was financed in full by the Karelias Foundation, and the collection itself, built up over 45 years, was donated by Victoria Karelias.
Having known about the Karelia Company’s presence in the city before entering, although not of the extent of their involvement in the exhibition (honest), it looked quite interesting and, if nothing else, had air conditioning, so I paid my €3 euro pensioner’s rate and ventured in. It was stunning. I took a few pictures, which I’ve added below, although none do it justice. A visit to the exhibition’s website probably gives a better idea: https://www.vgkareliascollection.com/en/.
The exhibition also includes some paintings by Yiannis Moralis, one of Greece’s most significant 20th century artists. He’s a revered figure in Greek culture, celebrated for synthesizing modernist art with Greek tradition. Images of some of his work appear below the costume and jewellery immediately below. I loved them.
Paintings by Yiannis Moralis
By the time I emerged about 40 minutes later the mercury had risen and I trudged my way to the bus station, which was bound to be a come down on the experience I’d just had. Even as I’d left the suited young man who’d greeted me on arrival, who spoke perfect English, had thanked me for coming and wished me a pleasant day.
Come down it was. The bus station was a grim concrete area of outstanding dullness that stunk of diesel oil and, in a baking hot ticket office full of flies, an expressionless man sat behind a glass screen looking almost dead. I didn’t envy him. It must have been the job from hell to be stuck in there, so I approached him gently, asking him politely in Greek if I could have a timetable, to which he just said no. He then pointed to the mountains in the distance, to which I turned. Exasperated by my stupidity, he tapped on the glass between us pointing to the bus operator’s website, written with a marker pen and probably by him so he didn’t have to speak. The website had been the very reason I’d come there, so impossible it is to make sense of, even though there’s a version in English.
That was my Friday the 13th.
Someone’s just asked me who the violin player is. I don’t know but he was sat on the steps of a church I passed on the way home playing upbeat tap your feet kind of stuff. I thought he was a nice antidote to the miserable half dead bloke trapped in the bus station ticket office