In the run- up to Christmas, Athina, the school director, invited me to a village dance.

This was taking place just outside Kastoria, on the opposite shores of the lake, in a hotel. It resembled a village dance in every respect except the hotel. A band of clarinet, violin, bouzouki and other folk instruments weeped, wailed, spooked and spectred, as they conjured ghosts of Anatolia. We danced around the floor. Or, rather, I tried to dance, the others knew the steps. I got the hang of one dance by watching their foot movements. No sooner had I begun to understand one, the rhythm changed, they moved into another syrtaki or Hasapiko, and I was wrong footed and felt like a fool until I got the new twist. Sometimes it was right at the end of the number that I finally clicked as to what was happening, and as my feet understood, so the dance changed yet again.
One dance was 'follow my leader'. Everyone just followed what the leader did for a few bars, then the leader would break away and do a little solo turn, before joining the end of the semicircle. Then it would be the turn of the next 'leader' to do the same. Soon I found myself as the 'leader'. First of all I faked some kind of morris-meets-chicken dance, and then I found myself out on the floor doing a solo improvisation while others clapped in time around me. Whereas others had done splendid imitation of storks, leaning Dervishes, belly dancers, zorba beach dances, I just looked like an Englishman who didn't know what he was doing and waving his arms about frantically.
Never mind; the important thing was to partake. At this do, I met Despina, a pretty girl with a calm demeanour and a fine line in black humour, and she asked me if I would like to dance with her at the Rembetika joint some time. I said I would probably rather talk at the Rembetika joint some time and leave the footwork to the others. In spite of the jokiness, we left a tentative arrangement in the air for after the New Year.
On the morning of Christmas Eve I was awoken in my flat by the Kastoria Carol being sung outside my window. In clear, bell-like voices, almost harsh against the gently-falling snow, some of my students, their friends and parents were chanting this unique song. Tradition states that you give sweets to the singers; I happened to have some chocolates, so, bleary-eyed and dishevelled, I passed the chocolates through the window.
"Merry Christmas, Mr. Daniel!" called my students. Though I didn't like being awoken at the crack of dawn, I was touched that they had made a special point of coming to my basement door, when they could have avoided it simply by singing to the block of flats above.
I spent Christmas Eve with Yianna and Nikos, and we walked along the lakeline. Snow was starting to fall in flurries, and the lake looked grey and unsettled. We wandered to a Byzantine church, looked at the frescoes on the outside, changed course, and went back to their flat.
On Boxing Day I was due to fly to Athens and then go to Andros for a while until after the New Year, thence to return (by bus) in time for the Kastoria Carnival.
Kastoria airport is not designed for the winter. The building is all glass-and steel, and freezing cold. When I got there, I sat huddled near a feeble heater and tried to keep warm. Near the airport building, a pack of wild dogs emerged out of a forest, paced onto the road, and slobbering and yowling, started to chase after a lone car, before giving up their effort and slinking back into the forest. It was not a good omen.
The light aircraft arrived, and we passengers got on board. The snow was falling even thicker now, but this did not seem to faze the pilot. We took off and immediately the wind and a storm ripped into the aircraft, making it bounce and judder. I am not frightened of flying, and have travelled in many aircraft, but this was different. For one and a half hours the aircraft's propellers strained against the weather as we whooped and whapped and plummeted into huge air pockets. It felt sometimes as if my stomach was hitting the roof of the fuselage. The plane doggedly fought on, and we jabbered all the way to Athens.
Worse, a strong Northerly wind was blowing down past the runway. Just when we thought the bumping and diving had stopped, we then felt the full force of this wind as it threatened to blow us into the sea or against the buildings. The pilot, his cockit door open, twiddled with some controls above his head in alarm, and it was clear that this was not normal. To everyone's relief, the plane landed safely. Some people crossed themselves, others clapped the pilot.
The bus journey on the way back, through sleepy parts of snow-bound Greece at night, was gentle and reassuring.
It was four in the morning and I walked up the street of Mitropoleos, its fairy lights still hanging and twinkling above it. Some bakers were already starting work: one threw a few drops of water into the other's face before returning to kneading the dough. Otherwise the place was quiet. Tomorrow the Carnival was about to begin.
A friend of mine from the Proficiency class, Tassos, explained to me about the Carnival.
Games, quizzes and puppet shows took up the first afternoon and evening. The middle evening was when you got dressed up in carnival clothes of your choice and you took to the streets. Gispy musicians rolled in from villages and settlements in the hills and played the same three tunes again and again. The original lyrics to this tunes were obscene, but they were supposed to be obscene. Maybe that's why the musicians didn't sing them but just played them. In their fancy dress, the Kastoriani and their guests tagged on to any band that happened to be wandering around at the time. Many of the dancers held bottles for rapid consumption of alcohol. Others groups joined in, yet more peeled off and joined a different band of revellers. The Kastoriani shoved drachma notes into the hands of the leader of the band, and the musicians went and went and went. One of the features of the Carnival then was its spontanaiety, its drunkeness and its dancing to only three pieces of music, repeated again and again in slight variations. This was no modern ritual, this was a truly Dionysian celebration, and had all its roots in Dionysian festivals of the past, a way of escaping from the hardships of winter for three days.
The final part of the carnival was the third day and afternoon; the parade. Like other carnivals, the musicians, throughly exhausted and absolutely pissed, still somehow managed to play on. The people who the previous night had been dancing till dawn had now changed into their parade clothes.
The parade was the least spontaneous part of the carnival: groups had been planning the clothes and the style of parade for months. As with other parades, you got all types of ideas emerging. There was the usual Alexander the Great at the beginning, for some reason pulling a cart, (or was it a chariot?) followed by flamenco dancers, weird cigarette people from Mars, clowns, picadors, Rubik Cubes etc. They all paraded past the 'mayor' of the parade, a man wearing a very silly hat with feathers sticking out of it, who stood on a podium and smiled.
And so it was that year. On the second evening, dressed as Einstein, I danced in the street with my students, with Despina, and with another teacher who had joined the group I was tagging along with. In the day, I managed to squeeze in a visit to one of the Byzantine churches with remarkable frescoes on the inside, because two friends of the mother of one of my students was staying with her and as the only other outsiders, they wanted to join in the carnival with me.
I don't know what the carnival is like now. Then it was a single blur of drink, warmth ( in spite of the cold), three strange tunes whirling round and round and round, and reeling about with beautiful strangers and friends, on the second night especially.