Easter is the most important event in the Greek year. After the 40 day long great Lent the Easter holiday usually comes with several celebrations and ceromonies. It is the time of family barbecues and traditional dances connected with a wenton mood and happiness. All of us were excited to become a part of this very special time of the Greek year as volunteers in the local community. But the COVID-19 virus had a great impact on our holiday.
We had the plan to use our two week long holiday to travel around the Peloponnese and check out some Greek island but with the travel restrictions and the high risk of getting an infection this was clearly impossible. As in every European country the Greek government also locked down the social activities to protect the people and to prevent a catastrophe. In fact that meant that we were not allowed to leave our house without a comprehensible reason like emergency shoppings or pharmacy visits. So we basically had to stay home. Of course all of us had a completely different expectation of what our holidays would look like but what could we do? We all knew that the lockdown was the only right way to get along with the virus and the best chane to get over it. So there was no point of feeling upset about the circumstances. Instead we tried to make the best of it and still enjoy our holiday and here is what we did.
Since there was not much to do the holiday was the perfect chance to sleep long and have a relaxed morning.The lockdown brought a very calming atmosphere into the village. Espacially in the mornings you could enjoy the birds twittering because it was so silent. Life in general just felt slower and more relaxed. Often we took our dog for a walk during these calm morning hours and felt pleased for leaving the house and seeing all the new flowers the spring brought. Generally I feel like the virus shifted our attention. Away from phones and laptops who only brought new case counts and bad news back to nature and the people around us. Also the virus gave us an opportunity to rediscover or discover completely new interests. Suddenly there was time to work on personal projects and challenges. We started doing Yoga everyday in the garden and we planted seeds in the garden, hoping to grow our own vegtables. Everyone had his own little personal project but we also spent a lot of the time together as a group watching movies, cooking nice dishes or just having nice conversations. And if there is one thing that will always remind me of my Easter holiday in Greece it is defenetivly the sound of dice falling on the wooden board of the backgammon game.
Although all the puplic Easter celebrations were cancelled including the famous rocket war of Vrontados we still wanted to celebrate the regious event a bit. We stayed up till midnight ,the beginning of Easter Sunday, to see if there still would be some fireworks. We were surprised by the amount of rockets and fireworks that lit up the sky. It was amazing to see that the people instead of feeling sad because of the virus still followed their tradtions as good as possible and fired their rockets. Inspired by the spirit we still played the easteregg cracking game and baked a tradtional german “Hefekranz” for a nice Sunday brunch. We also did a little easterhunt with chochlate eggs in the house which was a lot of fun. Although we sadly could not be part of the celebrations we could still smell families having barbecues in smaller circles and hear some traditional dance music. So of course it was not the same as usual but it still was a nice weekend.
In generall I think that the virus let all of us appreciate our surroundings including our fellow human beings and the beautiful nature of the island more. We still had a great time and the most important thing during these times is that everyone stayed healthy. Being not busy and having too much time actually was a challenging experience which taught us a lot about ourselfs. So let`s hope that everyone stays healthy and that we will be able to visit Greece at some other point.
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