Kalimera!
I know I promised my Thessaloniki food tour next, but I had a thought that I wanted to share with you all…
Almost every morning I wake up and go for a stroll around Victoria Gardens here in Melbourne. Watching all the doggos run free from their leads was the highlight of my morning until I came across what I now call - the Prahran Yiayiades Club (PYC).
It was 8am a few weeks back, when I overhead a bunch of rowdy Yiayiades gossiping at the top of their lungs in Greek. I couldn’t wait to say “kalimera” to this girl gang and ever since we met that morning, I look forward to the mornings where we get to meet again.
I’ve worked out that the gang start their walk around 7:45am and go round and round the gardens, with a new Yiayia joining the pack lap by lap, until the last sleepy head comes to complete the PYC. I only get to ‘bump into’ them on my days off but in order to do so, I have to impeccably time our 2 laps around the gardens so that we actually cross paths. To cut a long story short, today was one of those days and I just wish I could have captured how their faces lit up when a young koritsaki (little girl) spoke one word of Greek - “kalimera”.
This small encounter took me back to my week in Amorgos where I was reunited with my friend Eleni after four months of living my best village life. Eleni and I were weaving our way through the uneven cobbled streets of Amorgos, passing Papoudes playing backgammon, Yiayiades manning the ‘neighbourhood watch chairs’ out the front of their houses, and of course all the staring locals. “Kalispera” to you, and you, and you, is how I went, not thinking anything of it until Eleni started giggling at me as I said hello to every single human I walked past. “What’s so funny?” I asked.
It wasn’t until I was back in Melbourne when I realised how such a small, simple (and easy to say!) “hello” brought so much joy to my day.
Picture me - fresh off the plane after 6 months in Europe, zipped up like a marshmallow in my puffer jacket, ready for my morning walk. All bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I was in auto-pilot greeting my fellow neighbours with a “good morning” as I strolled past. But very few of them wanted a bar of me. I could count on one hand how many reciprocated the “good morning” or even just cracked a smile (thank you to all the oldies who acknowledged me <3). The vast majority (mostly a younger demographic) would look down or pull their phones out as they walked past.
Day after day, the same thing happened and I started to become fascinated by how all these people were actively trying to avoid even the slightest connection with other humans. We all do it, but when you really think about it, isn’t it so strange that we’re crossing paths within 30 centimetres of another human yet we’re pretending like they don’t even exist? Baffling! It got to the point where I started joking with Justin about a ‘hello challenge’ to see how many people we could crack to get a “hello” out of them.
After all, if I didn’t say “kalimera” to Yiayia Eleni in Alonnisos I wouldn’t have spent the afternoon harvesting grapes with her and then making wine the next day with her extended family.




If I didn’t say “ti kanete” to Spiro while he was sun drying his plums in Skopelos, he wouldn’t have knocked on our door to give us his homemade plum marmalade.


And a little closer to home, if I didn’t start chatting to John at the Prahran Market, I wouldn’t have ventured to the wholesale markets with him at 4am to meet his suppliers like Emilio here. And end up on Emilio’s tomato farm the following week.


Is it that the bigger the city, the more distant we become from others? The joy on the Yiayiades’ faces as I said “kalimera” got me thinking how we can all learn a little from how villagers live their lives in their small community.
Maybe the wholesale markets at 4am aren’t your thing, but all I’m saying is look up, crack a smile and maybe even say hey to strangers because you never know what it could spur.
Gee x
A famous Greek writer once said, never before have people's homes been so close and people's hearts so far......
The title of the book was "in search of hope""
Love your passion for life and people Gee x