The wood stove in the middle of the room has been burning since six. The smell of beechwood fills the place long before the sun climbs over the fir-covered peaks. Kyr-Antonis’ kafeneio, on the paved square of a stone village in the mountains of Arcadia, is always the first thing to wake up. A morning like this happens, give or take a detail, in dozens of Arcadian villages.
On the walls: black-and-white photographs of old festivals, framed newspaper cuttings, calendars faded by the years. The brass grinder breaks the silence of dawn; then the briki sinks into the hot sand, and the smell of fresh coffee mixes with the damp mountain air slipping in through the cracks of the window.
The first regulars take their usual seats by the window: retired men in flat caps and thick wool sweaters. Amber worry beads click and set the rhythm of the day. Words are few and short — the weather, this year’s walnuts, the chestnuts that are late to fall. In the kafeneio, time is not measured by the clock but by sips of Greek coffee and hands of prefa.
Around ten, the heavy wooden door opens slowly. A small group of hikers comes in, muddy boots and backpacks, just down from a stretch of the trail and looking for somewhere warm. They glance around, unsure where to sit.
Kyr-Antonis doesn’t just ask what they’ll have. He points them to the table by the stove. With the coffee and the mountain tea he sets down a small plate: fir honey, village bread, a piece of graviera. “To get your strength back after the walk,” he says, with a faint smile under his thick moustache.
The old men put the backgammon on hold. Where are you from? How was the path? Did you see the gorge? For an hour, the little kafeneio is not a shop at all. It is what it has always been — the room where the village receives its guests.
When the hikers finally get up to leave, warmed through and full of pictures, the smell of the embers follows them to the edge of the village, like a quiet wish for a good road.
Every Arcadian village has its kafeneio. Read more about the kafeneio, the heart of the village, and find a network host who will point you to the right one.
