The church in Gavrion where I saw the fireworks and was in the congregation of for one service at Easter is not from the Byzantine era. Kastoria is famous throughout Greece not only for its eighteenth-century mansions, but also for its Byzantine churches, some so small you can only fit in a family, others a little larger, each a gem of the craftsmen and builders who inhabited the town during the Byzantine period.
The first time I saw Kastoria in September 1992 as I approached it by bus, I caught a glimpse of only one church. The sun lay low in the rich hours of the afternoon, and painted deepening colours on the town as it twined down towards a gentle lake. A peninsula, jumbled with houses, stuck out into the water, and the azure of the sky promised daydreams of flying as you gazed at it. Quite simply, the view was magnificent.

The bus station, however, was like any other, with its dishevelled concrete and dust flying up in the breeze, even if it did have the lake nearby and a mountain whose craggy wildness was only tamed by a sentry box about half way up it nearby. Athina Kostara, the school director, a good-looking middle-aged woman with dark hair and crisp, professional suit, in cotrast to my faded T-shirt and jeans, was there to greet me. I had met her already in Thessaloniki, and she had told me what, as a teacher, I needed to know.
While the breeze flapped around, she ordered a taxi, and I took my luggage out of the hold. The computer/wordprocessor was there in its box, and the taxi driver immediately objected to us putting it in the boot of his car.
"Why not?" asked Athina.
"It's too big, look you can't close the boot properly."
"What are octopuses for?"
"No, I won't put it there."
"All right, so on the back seat?"
"It'll make the back seat dirty."
"Look, do you want our business or not, or is your car so precious that it can't put up with a little dust from the hold of a bus?"
Eventually, the taxi driver gave in, and put the box in the boot. He did have to attach the lid with the help of an 'octopus', but it all seemed very safe as we slid into town.
Kastoria is a mishmash of narrow streets, steep alleyways, and views of the lake. A young woman beat a carpet that lay over the railings of a balcony; children played with a football in a quiet corner of a street; a pair of young lovers flirted in the entance of a shop; and the leaves quivered in the trees that stretched along the lakefront.
My flat was up the hill and situated next to the language school, and had all the basics, including a very basic two-ring stove, one a big ring, the other a tiny one for making Greek coffee. Since I was an old hand at camping gaz, the terrors of cooking using only one ring were not a problem, but I knew I would miss an oven.
Once I had settled in, Athina promised me she would take me on a little tour of the town. This never materialised; she was too busy. So, I set out myself for my first walk about a town whose nooks and crannies I would get to know very well.
As I wandered around, looking a little lost as I reached my first open-air view of the lake down below, someone called me in English.
"Hey! Are you a tourist?"
I turned. A big man with a ruddy complexion, brown to red hair, and dark glasses was standing there.
"Hey listen, I know you're a foreigner," he continued. "Know how I tell? It's that 'I'm lost' look. I reckon you're British. You don't walk like an American, but you understand me! I'm from Kastoria, and I'm Jim."
"Hello, Jim," I said, and I shook hands with him. "I'm a tourist now, but soon I'll be teaching English here."
"Welcome to Kastoria!" he said. "Teaching English, well, I think that's great. I was in the States for a few years, and when I came back that's what I wanted to do, but no damn qualifications to do that. So I rejoined my family business. And what do you think of Kastoria so far?"
"I've only been here a couple of hours, but so far, it's ... awesome."
"Tell you something, it's a beautiful place, but sometimes the beauty is deceptive. Look at that lake. It's the sort of lake that from this distance makes you want to just go and jump in and swim, right? When I was a child I swam there, the water was so clear. Then things started to get bad. Until they started cleaning it up, you could see a dirty line of detergent bobbing along the lake, and the lake stank in August."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Too damn right you are! I still wouldn't recommend swimming in it. Maybe in a few years time they'll have cleaned it up enough to make it safe for everyone again. In the meantime, all you can do is take a boat out or fish. "
'Do the fish have five tails?"
"Ha, ha! No sir, the fish are still thriving and relatively normal, but who knows what might happen to human stomachs when they eat them. I've never had any problems, but the main fish in that lake is very bony, anyway, so I don't eat much of it."
"Is it true that Kastoria gets very cold in the winter?"
"Of course, You're really high up here, right up in the Macedonian mountains. It snows like crazy sometimes, and the lake freezes over. When I was a kid, people from the surrounding villages who commuted into Kastoria skated across the lake to work. Now they drive cars, sometimes with chains on the tyres, or catch the bus."
"Well, it looks like I've got a lot to look forward to, Jim." It was absolutely impossible to imagine the place covered in snow on a glorious day at this time of the year, so I decided to forget my imagination and leave snowing to when it happened.