Psarades
The village of Psarades ("Fishermen") is the only Greek village
built on the shores of Great Prespa, a lake split among Greece,
Albania and the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. One way
to reach it is by an hour and half bus trip from Florina and a
subsequent one hour hike past the isthmus that separates Great
Prespa from Little Prespa. (As I read in "Macedonian Greece" (by
John Crossland & Diana Constance), it was not possible, at least
until 1980, to go beyond the isthmus without prior permission
from the Greek military authorities; there is still a military
post there, right next to a swimming facility.) In my case the
trip took longer, as it included a stop at another village and
a "politically charged" swim: there is a strong current there,
toward a country not recognized, so far, by Greece ... (Only
later I understood that the village toward which I was drifting
was not Greek; it looked Greek, after all, and, although I was
swimming very near the border, it did not look like a border
area at all.)
The first thing that impressed me upon arriving at Psarades was
the peaceful coexistence, on its swampy shore, of cows and frogs;
those were joined next morning by donkeys who escaped from somebody's
backyard and were racing along the shore. How come were seven or so
donkeys kept together by someone? I was told that they were "community
donkeys", their primary duty being to carry firewood from the nearby
hills. Winter is always in the villagers' minds, and even an early
morning in July can be quite chilly; that place is not exactly a Greek
island village, even if it peculiarly reminded me of Lesbos' Molyvos.
After a morning walk around the village, the Macedonian architecture
of which has been left intact thanks to rather limited tourism, I was
ready for my boat trip; arrangements had been made the night before,
at a local tavern, under the sounds of rebetico music. Instead of one of
the traditional black "lake boats" (of shallow keel and with the oars
closer to the stern), it was a power boat that was waiting for me at
the dock. The trip started with a look at some religious rock paintings
near the left end of the Psarades bay, the best of them representing
the Virgin Mary; the preservation of the color, after five centuries of
such rough weather conditions, is sort of an unnoticed miracle, I think.
Straight ahead at the exit of the bay is a "Yugoslav" island, while
Albania is a couple of miles at the left; the so-called "trinational
point", where three or more nationalisms collide, is not that far.
(This setup reminded me of a visit to the Israeli port/resort of Eilat,
on the Red Sea, squeezed between Jordan and Egypt.) There is actually
a "Yugoslav" navy ship patrolling those waters, justifying, I suppose,
the fact that the chief of the defense forces of the Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia is ...an Admiral! (Well, such things can happen,
although better not near "paranoid" (?) Greece; after all, Hungary was
even ruled by an Admiral a few decades ago, wasn't it?) When I mentioned
all this to a local man, I got a sarcastic reaction: "which are their
prospects, to take over Psarades?" More realistically, the Albanians use
their navy ship to supervise the stealing of fishing nets from the
Psarades fishermen!
In contrast to the above "military considerations", Great Prespa was
exceedingly peaceful on that morning, just as it deserves to be. The
place was full of pelicans--I tried, in vain of course, to reach some of
them in an extended afternoon swim--that gradually gave way, as we were
sailing west toward Albania, to three types/colors of herons and other
birds that I do not remember. The Prespa area is a bird watcher's
paradise, especially if s/he has a permit to visit the bird sanctuary
of Little Prespa; about 80 bird species can be seen there, some of
them unique to the area.
The main attraction of the boat trip is probably the tiny chapel of
"Panagia Eleousa" ("Merciful Madonna"), built (1410) inside a small cave
and about 60 feet above water level; more precisely, it is an abandoned
hermitage, one of many built around this "holy lake", a reminder of
the days when monastic life was popular. The interior of the chapel is
fully covered by religious wall paintings, reminding me of a similar
chapel (Osia Maria) that gave its name to the famous Samaria Gorge at
the other end of Greece (island of Crete); not that I am qualified to
compare the styles of the paintings, of course--just an impression ...
There are many interesting churches, of various styles, in the villages
around Prespa; let's not forget, after all, that Prespa was a place of
exile during the iconoclastic period, as well as Tsar Samuel's capital
a couple of centuries later. (In 980, Samuel brought the remains of
Saint Achillios from Larissa to a tiny island in Little Prespa and built
a basilica there; he also settled there thousands of abducted civilians.)
Panagia Eleousa is probably the last Greek "building" before Albania,
whose waters we entered a couple of minutes after leaving the chapel,
in order to see "how these Albanian fishermen are doing". To my surprise,
there were no communication problems between the two sides, as the
conversation took place in ..."Macedonian"! (The boatman used the term
"Slavic", to be precise; in any case, his unexpected use of that dialect
(that I never heard in Psarades, where even old people had no trouble
conversing in Greek) reminded me of the story--are you reading this,
Fred?--of the Cuban-American who crossed an Eastern-Europeans-only
checkpoint by pulling out his Cuban passport!) There was a big bush on the
bow of the Albanians' shabby row boat: winter was in their minds, too.
As the boatman explained to me later, Albanians were not allowed to own a
boat or even to reach the water until a few years ago: that was considered
to be a (potentially) subversive/capitalistic activity!!
Naturally, that "Albanian encounter" was the main conversation theme on the
way back to Psarades. When I asked the boatman how many people in Psarades
speak that dialect, he smiled and said that "everybody does". I did not
feel like asking too many difficult questions, but when I asked "what if
there was going to be a plebiscite ..." he cut me off: "listen, this is
not something that we could ever accept". My interpretation: "we cannot
accept "you" questioning us on being Greek nationals OR AT LEAST citizens".
That is, after going over a number of relevant topics with him--such as
his relatives who were forced to grow up in a communist country (and learn
Greek, "Macedonian", Russian and the "host country"'s language) and the
relation between the local tongue and the Skopje dialect (my analogy to
"dimotiki" vs "kathareuousa" was gladly accepted as valid)--I reached the
conclusion that, while he definitely feels Greek, he is not that fanatic
about his "Greekness", not as much as I would probably have liked to see,
anyway. He probably was one of those who participated to that
"human-chain-around-Prespa-for-peace" event, organized later that month.
(That trinational event went completely unnoticed by the Greek press,
except for the communist paper, which I came very close to buying on
that day--for the first time in my life, that is.) In any case, who am I
to criticize the way that boatman feels? He spent his life there, he
knows better ...
Nationality in border areas can be a somewhat undecidable issue in some
cases, I guess; I felt this quite strongly when the boatman said about the
Albanian fishermen: "THEY WERE GREEKS UNTIL 1922". (For those who may not
know about this, there was a minor land exchange between Greece and Albania
in 1922, with Greece gaining some territory across the straits from Corfu
in return for Albania's increased access to Great Prespa.)
Upon returning to Psarades, I found out that it was sort of a big day
for the village: loud-speakers were calling everybody to the community's
office for a quick medical exam--a doctor was visiting! That couple of
unspecified nationality I had seen at a Florina restaurant a couple of
days ago was also there, selling all kinds of contraband out of their
van--that was the only occasion I saw policemen in the village, rather
interested, in a friendly manner, in the merchandise. Finally, an
itinerant fruit merchant was doing good business around noon; he comes
to Psarades twice per week--this is better than the bus from Florina,
which comes only on Tuesdays.
(Memories from a trip through Northwestern Greece, July 1992)
[Posted on soc.culture.greek in April 1993]
"The (Prespa) basin seems to hide in it all the events that took place
there from Samuel's times through the years of the Greek Civil War, yet
it does not easily expose them to the careless visitor, who might simply
be dazzled by the beauty of the landscape."
(From: "Prespa monuments", by D. Eugenidou, I. Kanonidis, A. Papazotos,
Greek Ministry of Civilization, 1991.)
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Greece"