Our Hearts are in Arachova

Here in Greece they have a special word to mean loving strangers; philoxenia. We have been fortunate to experience much of this sentiment on this trip everyday and is something unique to this place. The Greeks sense of hospitality is something we have never experienced before. Everyday, we run into strangers who simply want to talk to us and make us feel welcome in their country.
Today we had much bus time to contemplate a special occurrence which we had the previous night. Last night was a prime example of philoxenia, and an experience we will never forget. In Arachova as a group, we all went out for dinner at a restaurant called Taverna Karathanasi. As all 18 of us took our seats, we realized that we were seated next to a large gathering of Greek women, old and young who were clearly celebrating something. Halfway through the meal, they began to make conversation with us after making sure we had everything we needed first. After conversation began, the women began to serenade us with old Greek songs, soon followed by dancing around the table. The women continued, sharing their food and cake with our group. The celebration grew as one women found out of her grandson’s birth. The women touched many of us with their generosity, kindness and love which resulted in much emotion from the entire group. This experience was especially poignant for us, as it showed us excellent examples of strong women for which we should aspire. Before leaving, the women we had just met told us how much they loved us and the singing continued as we left. We also exchanged addresses and promised to write and send pictures of the spectacular night.
It became obvious how much our cultures differed as the night went on. The women could sing different songs to us for three hours and taught us their cultural dances all night. However, while we desperately racked our brains we could not think of a song that we could collectively sing to them. While many crossed our mind, “All You Need is Love,” “Leaving on a Jet plane” and even the Hollins school song, but none seemed appropriate nor could match their singing talents. Instead we sang the “We Love you Hollins,” school spirit song, with Hollins replaced with Arachova. It saddened us to think that our culture had no traditions to match theirs with and to give them a sense of what American customs are like. We saw how their culture was passed through the generations, as there were women of different ages and even a young grandson who all participated. This was our first personal experience with an aged, and slowly dying Greek culture which is being overshadowed by modern tourism.
When we arrived at our destination of Olympia, we noticed its differences from Arakova were obvious. Instead of what seemed like a small, homelike town, we were immediately struck by how tourism affects Greece. Even seemingly insignificant details like staying in a small, family run hotel as opposed to an American-owned Best Western. And even though Arakova has a large tourism influx of skiers, it still has retained its “crazy village” feel. We had a discussion about this topic when we arrived at the hotel, discussing how tourism can shape the old Greek way of life which we experienced the night before. When going to different places before this, most of us were not interested in looking for distinctive culture of the areas, but instead a relaxing vacation. With last night in our minds forever, we believe that from now on we will begin to look more closely at places we go. Have a “Greece” day!
Laura Risley
Emily Mendelssohn