Pollonia 1970

In 1970 the bus took far more than half an hour to get from Adamas to Pollonia (10 km) and it rocked from pothole to pothole on the dusty, winding track. Pollonia was remote and seemed far away from civilisation to me, but that is why I fell in love with it. A small village with a few houses around the pier and the church of Ag. Paraskevi. A few white fishing boats with colourful stripes, corresponding to the shutters of the houses, were tied to the pier. The sandy beach with shady tamarisks was very inviting. And of course the Kafenion of Kiria Katina and Thodoris. Omeletta Patates and Fassolada were the specialties of the house, and there was cold Fix beer. This was unexpected in a way, since there was no electricity in Pollonia.at that time... But behind the Kafenion a noisy one-cylinder Malkotsi-diesel was driving a generator producing some current. So there were a refrigerator, a milky screen TV set plus electric light. In the evenings the men of the village gathered here after their work in the mines to play cards - Kunkan and Xeri.

On the other side of the bay, on the flat peninsula Pelekuda, one could see a few houses, there were none though on the other side towards the open sea, facing west. Someone offered me a small piece of land for very little money, 15 steps away from the sea with a small beach in front and I couldn´t resist. The people of the village could not understand (and told me so) why I had chosen a place so close to the (aggressive) sea. But their biggest question was: what does a young German want here? The "Migration" then went in the opposite direction, many Greeks going to Germany to find work.

At that time I was still a student and after a little house was built in 1971, I started to spend the summers there alone or with friends. As there was no electricity, we had kerosene lamps and a gas cooker. We slept on mattresses on the floor. Water for drinking, cooking and washing was rain water, collected in winter on the flat roof , kept cool in the cistern below the floor. From the cassette recorder, powered by an old car battery we listened to the Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin and many other beautiful music, smoking aromatic herbs that we even grew outside....