March 13, 2020 by Effrosyni Moschoudi

Old village-life photos #Moraitika #Corfu

The writing says: Cultural center of Moraitika, a calendar of memories from our village. 2020 wishes for health, love and progress.

Late last year, I was contacted on Facebook by Mrs Aglaia Anthi, President of the cultural center of Moraitika, Corfu. She said she’d seen some old photos on my website and asked for permission to use them for the 2020 calendar of the cultural center. I was thrilled and, of course, I said yes.

Last January, she sent me a copy of this beautiful calendar which I am thrilled to share today. I meant to do it back then but, sadly, I was in a bad place at the time, caught up in my late mother’s daily cancer fight. When I received the calendar, I took it to her bed to leaf through, and she cried to see the photo on the first sheet, which depicted her grandparents, Stefanos and Olga Vassilakis. She kissed their faces on the photograph whispering, ‘i nouna mou, o nounos mou…’ (the Corfiot words for ‘my granny, my granddad). The memory still causes my heart to twinge with feeling. My mother passed away on February 12, and I am comforted to think she is in her grandparents’ and her parents’ arms right now.

Without further ado, here is the calendar, sheet by sheet. I hope you will enjoy it.

January-February. Caption: The first priest of Moraitika and his wife (Stefanos and Olga Vassilakis).

My great-grandfather was also a teacher of Moraitika. The house he built for his family still stands on the hill near the church. Part of it was used as the village school at some point. He is buried in the church yard. For more photos and information, see my post about the two churches of Moraitika on the hill.

March-April. Caption: Kato Vrysi.

Or how the locals pronounce it, ‘Katou Vrysi.’ Loosely translated, it means, ‘The tap downhill’. It is situated on the side of the main road outside the dilapidated estate behind the Coop supermarket. There is also an ‘uphill tap’ called ‘Panou Vrysi’ which is at the edge of the village on the hill under a big plane tree. This is why the locals also call it ‘O Platanos’ (The plane tree). For detailed directions to Panou Vrysi, see my guide to Moraitika.

May-June. Caption: Old estate houses of the village.

The building on the left is the Papadatos estate house. This family also owns the little church of Agios Dimitris nearby (my great-grandfather is buried outside the main door of this church). The building on the right is the Koukouzelis estate house. Today, the grounds are used by the council for cultural events (concerts mainly). For more info and photos, see the same post about the churches.

July-August. Caption: Moraitika wedding of Kostas and Eleni Vlachos.

My uncle Kostas passed away a couple of years ago, but Aunt Leni remains active at her old age (born 1933), and still helps out at her seaside apartments of ‘Nea Zoi’ (beside Caldera on the beach). See my guide to Moraitika for these establishments. Here, below, follows an excellent commentary about this photo by my Aunt Leni as relayed by her daughter-in-law, Spyridoula Vlachos:

‘The wedding took place in 1953 in the village of Episkopiana. This picture was taken at the look out near the St Nikolaos church in Episkopiana that no longer stands. This is the area of the old estate home of Patsos that is now inhabited by the Tata family. After the wedding took place, everyone set off to Moraitika on foot, where the reception party would take place on the village square. On the front, walked the organ players and the priest who held the bible, then followed the bride and the groom, with everyone else behind walking them. Back then, the way to Moraitika was via the estate of the Kapodistrias family. In this photo, Stamatis Vassilakis’s daughter, Marika, is pictured beside the bride dressed in white. She had got married just a week earlier and was pregnant with her first child.’

Re my Aunt Marika (daughter of Great-Uncle Stamatis Vassilakis): She was one of my favourite relatives of the Vassilakis family. She had the heart and the soul of a child. I still recall so vividly the last time I saw her, visiting her in her house after a long while during my short stay in the village. It was a couple of years earlier, just months before she died. She was confused with dementia and didn’t recognize me when I approached her. Still, her good heart must have done, because she kept holding me, her eyes sparkling with love and delight while saying, ‘I love you! I love you!’ I’ll never forget her face that day; so innocent, so loving. Somehow, she is the only one whose name I didn’t have the heart to change in my largely autobiographical novel set in Moraitika, The Ebb.

Back to the wedding photo: Great-Uncle Lilis, a teacher, stands behind Aunt Marika. Behind Aunt Leni, the bride, on the right, is the groom, Uncle Kostas. To his right, stand Aunt Olga, and Great-Uncle Kotsos with Great-Aunt Rini Tsatsanis from Messonghi. The girl with the frizzy hair beside them is Maria, Lefteris Kosmas’s sister (he runs Leftis Romantica). My mother, Ioanna, is pictured further right as a little girl with her hands on her waist.

September-October. Caption: Group photo of members of the Vlachos and Vassilakis family.

My great-grandmother’s maiden name was Vlachos, and her wedding to Stefanos Vassilakis bound the two families together as one with great relations. This photograph was taken outside the Vassilakis house (late 40s to early 50s). She sits at the center dressed in black, as befitted a widow at the time. My great-grandfather passed away in 1944, and she did in 1953. The building shown in the background is the Koukouzelis estate house as mentioned earlier. The mulberry tree they’re sitting under still stands today and so does the olive tree on the right.

Pictured from left to right: Back row: Great-Uncle Antonis Vassilakis, Aunt Olga (Lilis’s daughter), Great-Aunt Irini, Aunt Dina (or Beba, Lilis’s daughter), Christos Vlachos, Tsantis Vlachos. Middle row: Great-Uncle Kotsoris (Kotsos) Tsatsanis, Great-Grandmother Olga Vlachos, Angelina Vlachos, Great-Uncle Lilis Vassilakis and his wife, Great-Aunt Fotoula. Front row: Great-Uncle Stamatis Vassilakis. Behind them, the children Petros and Sofia Vlachos. Petros used to run The Crabs restaurant on the beach (now Caldera, run by his son Christos). On the right of my great-grandmother, you can see Evgenia Vassilakis (wife of Stamatis) and her grandchildren, Vasso and Stefanos Moraitis (both, Marika’s children).

November-December. Caption: Washing in the ‘mastello (old Venetian word for ‘wooden tub’).

If my memory serves me well, ‘Forena’ is a nickname for the woman pictured here. I think she lived or had a shop in the old days on the upper square of Moraitika where the Village Taverna is. This square was always referred to by my grandparents as ‘Foros’ (a Venetian word meaning market or square, in my understanding).

The rest of the caption reads: ‘Open-air barber shop (Pippis, Kapouas, Tatsos, Lopi, Sofia).

For more photos and info on the Vassilakis family and my old summers in Corfu, see this post. To follow my blog and be notified of my new posts, go here.

This is it for now, everyone. I wish you a wonderful summer, and hope you’ll get to make lots of new and exciting memories – be it in Corfu, or your own corner of heaven 🙂

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February 26, 2019 by Effrosyni Moschoudi

The old church of Moraitika, Corfu and some village history

On the hill in Moraitika, at the center of the old village, there is a small church that I used to visit occasionally for Sunday mass during my long summers in Corfu in the 1980s.

This old church — Agios Dimitris — was still in operation back then, and it was the only one in the village at the time. It was erected by the Papadatos family, whose (now derelict) estate house is situated behind it.

One of its early priests was my great-grandfather, Stefanos Vassilakis. He and his wife Olga built a house for their big family a stone’s throw away from the church. Part of their house was used as the school of the village. Other than his two main professions, my busy great-grandfather also worked his own land (situated in two different parts around Moraitika: behind the Coop supermarket, and on the side of the mountain over Miramare Hotel).

Many of the elderly locals still remember him working his land. Apparently, he did this wearing his priest’s robe!

During the German occupation, he was in his bedroom on the upper floor one night when he heard the unmistakable heavy footfalls of military boots echoing from outside. It sounded like a band of soldiers rushing down the lane. This was a scary time for the locals so, unsettled, he hurried down the internal staircase so he could peek through the front door. In the commotion he missed his step and fell down the stairs, breaking his leg. Sadly, he suffered complications from the fall which led to his death at the age of 70.

This is a picture of my great-grandmother, Olga Vassilakis (nee Vlachos), with other family members. Being a widow at the time, she was wearing black and the traditional headscarf. She is pictured with her son-in-law (left) and two of her children at the doorstep of the house in the 1950s. The locals referred to her as the ‘Presvytera’ or the ‘Pappadia’ – both names meaning ‘wife of the priest’, with the latter title being less formal.

This photo was taken in the 1970s on the same doorstep. Sadly, I never met either of my great-grandparents, but it’s a consolation to know I have lived all my life treading their footsteps. In this photo, I am photographed with my sister and a few members of the Vassilakis family.

Interesting tidbit: According to my grandmother, the name Vassilakis originates from Crete. Other than Moraitika, the name is also met in the villages of Zygos, Valanio and Sinarades. The Vassilakis of Moraitika originate from Sinarades where there’s a legend about the family name! According to Granny’s story, at some point the Vassilakis were split into the ‘rich’ ones and the ‘poor’ ones (our family came from the latter sadly 😛 )

So how did some of the Vassilakis got rich? Well, legend has it that a man from the family once found pirate treasure in a chest on Agios Gordis beach and took it home! The pirates came back to get it and searched high and low but never found it…

Here, my great-grandmother is pictured with family (both Vassilakis and Vlachos) before the Koukouzelis estate. Again, sometime in the 1950s. Would you believe, the mulberry tree on the left and the olive tree on the right still stand today. This yard has been both my ‘dining room’ and playground as a child for many blissful summers, more often than not, under the generous shade of the mulberry tree from the 70s onwards.

Interesting tidbit: If you’ve visited Moraitika in the 80s-90s, you may be able to identify in the above photo the late Petros Vlachos who ran The Crabs (Kavouria) on the beach at the time. He’s a little boy in this picture (front row, crouched on the left of my great-grandmother.

Visitors to the hill in Moraitika today may recognize the Koukouzelis Estate House in this photo. The whole property was acquired by the council in the recent years to be used for cultural events. It is situated very near the church.

Interesting tidbit: The name ‘Moraitika’ is derived from the word ‘Morias’ which is another name for the Peloponnese (the part of Greece that looks like an inverted hand). The first inhabitants of Moraitika were emigrants from Morias, and the people were referred to as ‘Moraites’, hence the name.

This picture was taken in the lane that leads from the old church to the Koukouzelis Estate.

The derelict stone wall with the window is part of the estate. According to one of my cousins who ventured inside once as a child, there was a large library behind this wall. Now, with the overgrowth of bushes and creeping vines that have accumulated over the years it is impossible to decipher anything when peeking through the window.

This is the same lane looking towards the old church (yellow wall). You can also see the belfry of the current church of Moraitika that stands beyond it. This one was under construction for at least one year back in the 1980s, something that used to worry my grandmother a great deal… You see, she was convinced that it attracted all sorts of evil spirits while it stood as a building site.

Oftentimes, we’d hear the shrill cry of a certain kind of owl at night that Granny called a ‘strigglopouli’ (screeching bird). She’d always say it was a bad omen as, apparently, it signified an impending death in the village. She’d also say the sound was coming from the church building, which made sense as its roof was incomplete and thus open to the elements at the time, making it easy for all sorts of night birds to nest there.

The church of Moraitika is called “I Koimisi tis Theotokou” (The Dormition of Mary)

When the church was sanctified and began operating, Granny said she never heard those birds’ bloodcurdling cries echo from the church again. I never really believed any of that, but Granny had a way to tell these things and they always had my vivid imagination going!

This is a photo of my grandparents, Spyros and Antigoni Vassilakis. Granddad was a proper ‘papadopaidi’, i.e. the son of a priest, meaning he was an avid churchgoer and loved to chant at the church given half the chance. Throughout my childhood in Athens I remember him chanting on Sunday mornings as he listened to mass on his portable little radio. My grandparents lived in the city at the time but once they relocated to Moraitika in the late 1970s, Granddad became a regular visitor and an occasional ‘psaltis’ (church singer that chants the gospel) at the old church of the village and, later, at the new one as well.

The private church of Agios Dimitris opens only once a year these days – on its festival day on October 26.

This is the belfry of the old church. The year of its erection is 1905 according to the plaque you can see here. I find it a real pity that it was left to deteriorate in this manner – same goes for the old estate houses (Koukouzelis and Papadatos) beside it that barely stand. At least, the facade of the old church is kept tidy and freshly painted, and the tourists seem to be interested in my great-grandfather’s grave a lot…

I often see people taking pictures of it when I pass it by. Other times, I find flowers on there, and in the recent years, oddly enough, even scattered coins! I can only assume it is customary in a country somewhere to throw coins on graves. In any case, it’s a nice gesture and always makes me smile.

If you ever visit Moraitika, make sure to venture uphill to see the church yard and do take a walk towards the Koukouzelis Estate as well, if only to enjoy the sea view. The sunrise is always a good time!

Many thanks to my cousins Evgenia Vassilakis and Sofia Tsatsanis who provided the old family photos!

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NEW RELEASE BESTSELLER! 370 pages of Corfu summer bliss! This beach romance will make you fall in love… Choose between the paperback or 4 kindle episodes!Did you enjoy this post? GO HERE to follow this blog and get to see all our future posts! To grab “Facets of Love” for FREE, go here! Planning to visit Greece? Check out our FREE guide to Corfu! For delicious Greek recipes, go here. Are you an author? Check out our FREE promo tips & resources here.