It's raining in Athens today, as we hold our collective breaths...

Winding our way along the highway to Sparti, where we change buses for Molaos before the last hairpin stretch to Kyparissi, Lakonias, where my Papou George Sarris was born. ‎My niece Rachel and friend Wendy are with me on a fact-finding, 5-day vacation stay in the beautiful, somewhat isolated seaside village. 

It was raining in Athens when we drove away -- weather I wasn't really expecting after 3 gorgeous days in the capital city. Maybe that was the calm before the storm, as today is June 5th, the next date on the Greek ‎debt payment calendar. It had seemed that all of Greece was holding it's collective  breath. No one pretends to know what is really happening during the current high-stakes negotiations or what the outcome will be. Our taxi driver on the way from the airport said: "I don't know what will happen. I'm not saying anything." (Another taxi driver said yesterday that Greeks don't take taxis anymore, just tourists. You get the picture.)

Last night we met up with my Aunt Soula Chrysopoulou, my father's first cousin from Naousa. I wanted Rachel to meet her and her archaeologist niece Maria -- who actually took a vacation in Kyparissi a few years ago! -- just like we met Alkinoy Lala the night before. She is the daughter of my second cousin Manolis Lalas, whose family in Naousa I was close to when living in Thessaloniki way back then. Maria brought old pictures to dinner, ‎having gotten into the family history swing of things.  She has a 3-month-old baby girl now to pass that heritage on to. 

Meanwhile, we wait for the proverbial political/economic shoe to drop. My aunt said that the outcome (or current status) would be announced today at 6:30 pm in Parliament. We will be watching from Kyparissi like everyone else -- witnesses to another critical slice of Greek history and hoping that Greeks get the break they deserve without further ado. 

To be continued, either way!

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network.