I hired a motorbike from George, known also as Rentarek because of the quality of his motorbikes. Apart from being in a nervous state of repair, they were cheap, and so for a few days over the Christmas period, I phutted around the island, visiting windswept beaches on the Eastern side. These beaches- Vitali, Zorkos, et al - have great waves and are wonderful places to sunbathe during the summer, but they are very exposed in the winter, making the phuts of my bike strain against the lashes and gusts of the wind. And yet, Christmas Day all over the island was very calm and bright, and I decided before I set out to Alekos and Vasso to go for an icy but refreshing swim. It was easy in the shallows where the sun warmed up the sea quickly, but once you got into the deeper parts it was like a strong cup of French coffee: heart-stopping, unless you kept going.

I then hopped onto the bike and set out for Alekos and Vasso, who, like most Greeks, had already celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve - this was the equivelant of a Boxing Day lunch in England.
Roast turkey was served, with otherwise Greek dishes - melitzana salata, Greek salad, etc, and I asked Alekos about the Albanians who had settled in the Northern part of the island some centuries before. Was it tue that there were some people in those remote villages - Vourkoti, Amolohos, etc., that still spoke an Albanian dialect? Alekos seemed to think not; maybe in the 70's there were still some. Theodore Bent, a Victorian English travel writer, wrote a classic book about the Cyclades, and his colourful descriptions of Albanian gatherings and clan feuds on Andros still make a good read today.
But it goes some way to explaining place names in some parts of the North; Batsi and Gavrion are not typically Greek names, they are probably Albanian.
Two years on from my meal with Alekos, Greece was starting to experience a new wave of Albanians, 'gastarbeiter' in search of work in the orchards and groves of Northern Greece and in the building sites of the South. They were starting to reach Andros by the mid-nineties; but I had seen many of them in Kastoria, Northern Greece, in 1992 when I worked up there.
There was one Albanian in Kastoria whom everyone knew simply as 'the Albanian.' He would work in the orchards near Kastoria, and come into the town to pick up medicines and other vital things for his family on the other side of the border. He waited around to be kicked out by the police, who would politely return him to the Albanian border. He crossed the border and back many times in a year. The police always allowed him a certain time to scrape together a few drachmae, and then took him back. Drachmas, not dollars were starting to become the golden currency. Of course, the more permeable borders did not come without problems; smuggling of all kinds and the Albanian Mafia were all part of the new wave as well. But the Albanian was treated with amiable indifference by the Kastoriani, as were most of the other Albanian workers who came to work in the groves and orchards around Kastoria.
But in those days, any talk about Albanians usually centred around their settlements, or the isolation of the country they originally came from.