Ιερός Ναός Αγίας Παρασκευής - Ιερός Ναός Αγίας Παρασκευής

This is not a review of the church, I simply wanted to record the hospitality received here in July of 1995. I was between jobs and on a break from grad school in the US and joined my sister and her Greek boyfriend for a summer in Greece. We had passed Gravia, heading south in the late afternoon and it was getting late and we needed to find a campsite. We were young and did not have a lot of money, hence all the camping. Coming to what appeared a nice paved road off the highway I told George to turn and check it out. Climbing the twisting road we soon came to a nearly abandoned village---Vargiani. Coming into the main square two yia yia's came out of a house and George started a conversation with them in Greek. Soon he was carrying on in his charming and charismatic way and I asked him to inquire about camping spots. They thought he meant places to stay, as in a hotel, and they said "no," but as we were leaving I asked him to ask them about camping in the backyard of an abandoned home down the road, which he did. They said "sure, only about five people live here anymore---who would care?" They invited us back for coffee in the morning and off we went thanking them. As I was reconnoitering a place to pitch our tents in a nearby field a little white sedan that had passed us in the square came back down and stopped to speak to George. Soon he was yelling over to me from across the field "come on Dave, we've got to go," repeating it several times. At first I worried we were being accused of trespassing but instead found the car was conveying a message: the ladies had found us a place to stay. We were soon sitting inside around a little table drinking retsina, eating home-grown olives and homemade feta and sharing fresh bread we had bought earlier that day. Asteria and Maria and presently we were in Asteria's home. Being a journalist, I began to ask about their lives here. Maria was 18 when the Germans came during World War II. They had killed her brother she said. Times were so hard then they had been forced to eat mice to survive. "You don't know how much you can suffer until you have to," she said. A monument at the bottom of the mountain they explained was dedicated to the five people who had died at the hands of German troops. Maria looked sad and distant as she talked about it. For every German the Greek resistance killed, they would kill several men or all the men from a village. Once, though, she said the village gave a German who had been killed a proper Greek burial with flowers and the women mourned and because of this she said the men were spared. Later, Maria showed us across the way to her house where there were three beds waiting. It was a wonderful night's sleep after many spent on the hard ground in a tent. She had even lit a little olive oil lamp as a night light and showed us how the bathroom worked. We had also startled her donkey as we came in. The next morning we were up by 7 drinking Greek coffee around the table. Asteria milked some sheep and goats so my sister could see (we had spent summers on the farm of our grandparents in the States and had seen cows milked but never goats or sheep). From their home they told us to go to the seven springs above the village where we could fresh water (I see there are many photos of them in some of the other reviews). I've always been sad that my camera had broken the day before, a spring from the film advance lever had popped out but because of it my memories have remained more vivid I think. After the springs we walked up the gravel road a little farther and met Zaxos, who also invited us up for coffee. He grew up in the village and in fact had been born in that very house, which had been destroyed during the war and he had rebuilt it himself over the years. The wood paneling, beams, stone walls, and brick fireplace had all been done by him. He said he worked two jobs, one tending his sheep and goats and the second as a heavy machine operator. He told us about his grown son and daughter and then served us Chipura...