Greek Cafe

Back in the 1970s, in days of the “Regime of the Colonels”, and before the beginnings of mass tourism, not many foreigners passed through north western Greece, especially in winter; not much has changed on that score. The politics are different now and there’s a bit more money about, but winter in those hills and valleys and coastal lands will always be a cold, wet, muddy affair with villages wrapped in dank, grey mist for weeks on end, and poverty in weather as miserable as that must be the worst kind of poverty.

I got to Igoumenitsa early on a morning in December, making the short crossing from Corfu on a small boat carrying just me and a tractor. Corfu town had been all but silent when we left with only a small cafe open, but the sun was shining in a gloriously blue, optimistic sky. Fortified by a glass of incredibly potent coffee I stood at the front of the boat scanning the sea for traces of the mainland where I had hoped to rest up and recuperate after a long, hard summer’s work in the vineyards of France and Italy, but soon we chugged straight into a white bank of mist and that was the last I saw of the sun for several weeks.

Igoumenitsa was a miserable affair. It was sheltered from the wind from lying at the head of a small inlet where boats from Italy called on their way down to Corinth and Patras and Piraeus and beyond but not many travellers ever got off. The boat I got in on stopped beside some sort of concrete ramp and I walked into the mist towards the town along a muddy track. Rain was starting to fall and it was still not lunch time.

There was a cafe. Always look for a cafe when you get into town and spend a while there getting your bearings, collecting your thoughts and seeing if you can meet anyone who might invite a poor, cold stranger home, or even who might buy him a cup of coffee – that was always my strategy and it usually worked. It didn’t work this time. Not straight off.

The windows looking out over the small harbour were misted up and the rain began to fall heavily against them. Out through the mist, when I rubbed a bit of the window clear, I could see the sea starting to swell and the two small fishing boats in the harbour were thrashing about. As the door of the cafe opened and closed I felt the cold wind that was starting to rise, but the room started to heat when it filled with half a dozen fishermen who couldn’t go out that day. They sat and smoked and drank coffee and talked loudly at each other.

I began to feel unsure. There was a familiarity about the scene I was part of but I couldn’t put my finger on what I was being reminded of. I certainly hadn’t been in Igoumenitsa before – if I had I wouldn’t have come back for a return visit for sure. It was my first time in Greece. That kind of déja vu makes me feel nauseated, and with the strong smells and the hunger in my belly I was sure I was going to pass out. I breathed deeply for a while and settled my stomach and it soon came to me. Zorba. It had been a few years, but I had once read Kazantzakis’ “Zorba the Greek” and this cafe and all that went with it was strongly reminiscent of the opening scene in the cafe in Piraeus during a storm that was stopping sailors from leaving port. Coffee, oil skins, bavardage, the storm, the foreigner, yes, this was the cafe in Piraeus all right.

The storm lasted forever but I didn’t have forever to sit through it. I had to get to Athens.