Our home in Zitsa

Spending the lockdown in the mountains of Northern Greece

By Where's Herr Gruber?

March 28^th, 2021

Hello again!

Long time no posts on our blog, we apologize! We have been enjoying some time high up in the mountains of northern Greece, in the beautiful village of Zitsa. Lots has happend ever since: some snow, some hiking, lots of bubbly wine, even more souvlaki, some work, and… a dog. So buckle up, and we will take through two months of Greek village life, which is kind of a long read: sorry!

Zitsa

The village of Zitsa is a beautiful village up in the mountains close to the city of Ioannina and the Vikos Gorge. Probably most of you haven’t hear about either of them, but that’s okay, you have now. After leaving the olive farm, we were searching for colder temperatures, mountains and some hiking. We found an AirBnB in Zitsa, and were hooked, because it was in the middle of a beautiful region with lots to explore. And that solved at least one lockdown problem: in Greece you get fined for crossing regional borders, and interregional travel is banned. We weren’t particularly looking forward to a fine of €300 per person, since well, that’s half of our monthly travel budget… So staying in a region for a month where we would ride out the lockdown and could still move around and see a lot, that was great. Spoiler: Greece is still in lockdown, but we had a great time anyway!

Work

First day in Zitsa we visited the bakery of the village, a.k.a. The Best Bakery in the World, which it really was! We met Kostas, the baker, and he told us that he and his American wife are normally hosting people from all over the world via Couchsurfing and Warm Showers. Unfortunately, in Covid-times not anymore. Soon, a friendship was made, dinners were had and wine bottles were emptied. Our new friends also included their two cute daughters of five and two years old: Kiki and Thaleai. Next you know, Emy had a job as their new babysitter, which was very fun and included lots of singing, running around and playing hide-and-seek.

As Rihanna puts it: work, work, work, work, work. To think of it, Rihanna probably had an underlying meaning for the word work and didn’t mean it that quite literally, but oh well… Babysitting was not the only thing we did. Simon did some work on the van, we now have a timer on the fridge, a water pressure regulator, an improved outdoor shower, our ‘garage’ box is smaller and went from the back to the front roof and we can smoothly open the driver’s window again (he made me write all this). Which is all very handy, but the most important thing is that he didn’t go completely insane during lockdown life.

Next to that, Emy also signed a brand partnership with www.iamfy.co, you can now buy her travel photographs as wall art! Which is pretty cool and she is really excited about it. She spend a lot of time editing, resizing and uploading her work, so that was a nice distraction as well. If your walls at home are in need of an update, please check out her collection at Fy! This includes the photographs of Zitsa and Hydra below, which are both doing very well:

We also helped at the vineyard of Tassos and Voula, our hosts, and the kindest people! In Zitsa every family has a vineyard and the village is known for its sparkly sweet rosé wine, which is delicious! We cut off the branches in order for the new ones to grow and then burned them. We have quite some experience with big fikkies from our time at the olive farm, as you can read here, so all was done very professionally…

Jenny

Aaaand, we are no longer just the two of us. We now have to share the van with another creature: Jenny our dog! For a long time we have been thinking of getting a dog, but with fulltime jobs it would just not be fair for the poor thing. After thinking about it some more, and talking with family back home (in case of back up if we ever get jobs again), we finally decided do to it. Simon posted our story on a local Facebook group and before you knew it, we had five messages all telling us to go to the municipality shelter of Ioannina. Unfortunately, the dogs there were all too big for us. We live in a campervan after all… But they said they might know a very good dog for us that was at a foster family at that moment. We went, met her and knew she was the right one.

She’s almost two, we know very little of her past and what she has been through, but she was very scared in the beginning. We named her Jenny (from the block), and her not having a tail also contributes to her street credibility ;-). She is very calm, a very sweet dog, we can teach her anything (as long as it includes cheese) and she listens so well. It is so good to see her opening up and getting her self-confidence back. So far we found out that she loves the beach, Gouda (turning into a real Dutchie) and claiming the sofa in our van… She’s still a pussy though and is only now discovering how to bark.

Wine, Raki and Souvlaki

We had such a great time in Zitsa, everyone in the village was so friendly and welcoming and we really felt as we were a part of it. Especially our hosts Tassos and Voula. First we stayed in an apartment next to their house in the village. After a while we moved to the cottage on their land a bit outside the village. Which was great for Jenny, who could run around free, and even better for Simon. Who helped Tassos with all kinds of engineery stuff, chopped fire wood and even drove Tassos’ tractor. Yeah, his live long dream came true at only 32 years old… What a life.

The best part of the day was 4pm, when the work had to wait until abrio (tomorrow) and the home made Raki and wine came out. The best part of the week was Sunday, when the bbq went on and Voula’s souvlaki came out! We had a great time with lots of laughter with Tasia, Tassos’ sister, and her husband Kostas. Which we believed to be the monk of the village for a while, because we kept running into him around the monastery when going for walks. This of course led to more laughter and more Yammas! (cheers!) with raki and wine. If you would like to also experience this special part of Greece and the cottage, the link is here. And Tassos is also building an A-frame house to host guests in, it is almost done and looks amazing! For next year his plan is to build a tree house, so obviously we have to come back to test it all out.

At one point we met two biking Belgians on their way to Mongolia. So we thought we would extend the Greek hospitality and they slept in our garden in their tent for three nights and were very happy with our warm shower. It happen to be a Greek holiday, the day before the 40 days of fasting before Easter. And obviously, before you fast you have to eat lots and lots of meat… so we did. And then the first day of fasting came along and was another holiday, on which you don’t eat meat, but fish and a special bread Lagana. However, at some point some meat was put on the table and the Greeks said with laughter: we could all eat it, as long as we didn’t tell anyone.

Exploring the Vikos Gorge and trying not to trip and fall 1.100 meters down

Living in Zitsa was a really special time, which we will never forget. All because of the wonderful people. Saying goodbye was hard and a few tears were shed… but, we are certain that we will see our friends again. And that was it, we are now back in our camper in the Peloponnese, where it is warm and we can sleep in our van again. We visited our olive farm family on our way here, it was so great to see them all again! They also provided us with paper work, so we had a valid reason to travel, which was so kind of them. We are thinking about going over to Turkey at some point, since we hear great stories from fellow travellers. The borders to Georgia and Iran are still closed at the moment, so Mongolia will have to wait a bit...