Greek Family

On Tuesday, September 15, we went looking for breakfast along Politika Beach, but nothing was open.  School had just started, so the summer resort season was over.  So, we decided to go up to Politika village, the old town a twenty minute walk up from the beach.  The reason we were here was because this was where Mary Joy's maternal grandfather was born and where he had lived until leaving for America in 1910.  He died in 1940 and there had been no contact with Greek relatives since then.  We didn't even know if there was anyone left in Politika or what their names would be.  We knew the names of his parents and would look for their graves, though indications (which proved to be true) were that after a certain number of years in a grave, the bones would be dug up and moved to an ossuary, making it unlikely that there would be any gravesite to visit.  

 A friend of ours, on hearing that we were going to Greece to Mary Joy's ancestral village, offered to ask a Greek friend of hers to translate a letter of introduction.  This turned out to be a wonderful idea, because when we went up to a cafe in the village to find some breakfast and handed the letter to the cafe owner, she was able to find relatives--Mary Joy's second cousin, who didn't speak English, and her daughter-in-law, who did.  We spent much of the day with them, visiting a monastery up above the village, having lunch with the cousin and her family and, after wandering around the (unexciting) town, we had dinner with their whole family at Kyriakos, a very nice dinner with a very nice family.