Days Gone By: Finding My Childhood Again in Palaio Faliro

by Tony Matarrese

Tony Matarrese

I recently fulfilled a lifelong promise to myself and began spending the summer in Greece. Not as a tourist, traveling to a different ancient site every few days, throughout the homeland of my γιαγιά και παππού…but renting a home, and focusing on blending into the local community.

After only a week in Palaio Faliro, as I was returning from an evening walk (βόλτα) down to the waterfront Promenade, it hit me! All at once, I realized what I was seeing!

Not a busy city, with cars speeding down the street, and stores displaying one national chain store after another. Instead, I was passing by the neighborhood περίπτερο, and just watched for a few minutes, as the owner and one of his “regulars” sat and talked. As I continued, I walked past an optical store, with big letters above the huge glass display windows, spelling out the name of the owner “Karvelas.”

Across the street was a chocolate shop, “Leonidas” – Est. 1913. A great Greek name, I thought to myself…but why the 1913? I did a little research and quickly learned that Leonidas Kestekides was a Greek from Cappadocia (in what is now Turkey). He had emigrated to the US as a young man, and learned about confections, like chocolate. After moving to Belgium and winning awards at international exhibitions, he opened his first shop in 1913. What began as a family shop, over the years, grew to over 1,000 stores and is now recognized as one of the premiere chocolates in the world.

Instead of Starbucks everywhere, there is a local coffee shop called μέντα, where the outdoor tables were filled with young people, enjoying an evening καφές …and a few doors down was another καφενείο, where the older folks sat, enjoying their ελληνικός καφές, along with a little sweet, talking and laughing with the company at their table, or a few tables away!

From there, I found myself walking past the ψαροπούλα, where on several mornings, I had observed the local fish monger, setting up his display of the daily catch. Not on Styrofoam trays covered in cellophane but displayed openly on beds of ice. Octopus, shrimp, calamari and all sorts and sizes of Greek fish… propped up on the ice beds, so fresh, I could swear I saw some of them moving!

And then there was the local λαϊκή αγορά last Friday, stretching for blocks, table after table overflowing with the freshest fruits, vegetables, nuts, local honey, eggs and even household goods and clothing. Each vendor “singing the praises” of why their produce was the best and why you should buy from them. Listening to the banter between vendors and residents and watching shoppers return to their favorite merchant to bargain for the best price, was as entertaining as the market itself.

All this brought back memories of my neighborhood, on the far west side of Chicago.

Of course, when one thinks of Chicago, New York or any other big city in the US, you think of big grocery stores and cars speeding everywhere. But in our little neighborhood, known as “The Island,” we had a slower pace with our local bakery, butcher shop and fruit store…and at the Italian deli, when you walked in, you could smell the fresh cold cuts from behind the meat case and the cheeses hanging from the ceiling hooks: the box of salted “baccala” and the barrels of different olives that they would spoon out for your order and put in a cardboard container (no plastic!)

And besides the trays of fresh ricotta and mozzarella cheese, they also had a few trays of Greek feta and Kalamata olives, for the smattering of Greek households that were scattered amongst the other families on “The Island”.

Sure, we had a Jewel grocery store for eggs and milk and an ACE hardware, but for “the good stuff,” the freshest bread and produce, we went to the local merchants who knew your name and knew exactly what olives or cheese to put in your order, making sure to not make a mistake and risk having your mother come back to ask Joe or Dominic “why her son came home with ‘last week’s cheese’?”

Now, mind you, my walk in Palaio Faliro was all going on at 9:00pm…and the walkways were full of people. EVERYBODY is out for their evening βόλτα, from the teenagers walking and joking with each other to little 3 and 5 year old παιδιά, walking with their parents and γιαγιά και παππού, not at the end of a harness for their safety, but freely, within earshot, so if they hear, “έλα εδώ αγάπη μου”, they come running back, laughing all the way.

Again, my mind drifted back to my childhood, when our mothers sat on the back porches talking with the other mothers, while we were playing in the courtyard with our friends, a few flights below. No one worried if a stranger was going to suddenly show up to cause some harm…but when we heard those magic words from mom, or we heard “that special whistle” when our dad returned home from work, we knew the night play time was over, so up the back flights of stairs we ran…right into the strong arms of dad.

And as I grew into a teenager and was allowed to hang out at the schoolyard during summer nights…we’d have a game of “clincher” softball or sometimes pitch pennies…but everybody got along with each other…and when it started getting dark and the streetlights went on, that was the signal to head home.

So, here I am, 60 years later, walking down the sidewalks in Palaio Faliro…its own “little Island”, far from the hustle and rush of Athens. Perhaps that is why Greece feels so familiar to me…not because I had been here before, but because it reminds me of my neighborhood, where people still knew one another.

I’ll keep observing and begin to be a part of this community and lifestyle in Greece…a community that reminds me of those beautiful “days gone by.”