Report: Ancient rhythms of Greek mountain village remain unchanged

ANALIPSI, Greece – Life starts early and ends late – very late – for many in this verdant mountain village in the west of the Greece, each hour of the day marked by the ringing of a church bell and on Sundays and during memorials by the loudly broadcast early morning sounds of services from another under a sloping cemetery where the ages of the interred – 91, 92, 94, 98 – offer testimony to a way of life that got them that far.

And the village’s dilemma too: with many in that age-group and other elderly standing out as Analipsi ages without most of its young, who’ve moved 15 miles down the mountain to the bigger town of Thermo or Agrinion, or onto Patra, Greece’s third-largest city, 45 minutes away.

In the 1950s, there was a population of around 2,000, with 252 students in the school on the side of a hill, a buzz at night in warm weather with people converging to talk because there was no electricity, or running water and almost all worked at farming.

Today there are about 784 people, but the town’s President for 28 years, Kostas Glavas, said it’s really only about 380 or so permanent residents, more than 60 percent over the age of 55, although the numbers swell in the summer when former residents return from around Greece, the United States, Australia and other countries.

Zephyrs cool the night even during heat waves of 110 degrees that blister Athens. The sounds are eternal – when there are any through the general serenity and silence that sits over the village like a bubble – chickens, goats, the tinkling of bells on goat herds, the rustling of leaves on forests of trees providing a green mantle everywhere.

It’s remote enough that during World War II even the Nazis, occupying villages and terrorizing Greece’s populace – didn’t get this far.