The first time I visited Hydra, back in 1992, for a four-day stay with a friend, I felt captured as if by a spell; it was love at first sight. If we assume that one can develop a lifelong romantic affair with a place, well, in my life I have done so twice; with Hydra and Paris.
So, the following year, the summer I was officially immersed in professional journalism by collaborating with Kathimerini newspaper for a feature on Hydra, I was assigned with an interview with the Hydriot painter Nikos Hadjikyriakos Gikas. I experienced the island at the cusp of a new era; one chapter was ending, another was beginning. This was when the writer Margarita Lymperaki offered me the whole world in a manuscript written on old yellowed newsprint. “Margarita is asleep, I’ll write for her,” I remember, she had whispered to me about her daughter and namesake Margarita Karapanou one warm afternoon at her house in Mount Lycabettus, where she had been waiting for me with a pot of steaming hot coffee and a blue packet of unfiltered Gauloises.
The painter Panagiotis Tetsis, had a wonderful house, near the legendary grocery store “Four Corners”, as the foreigners used to call it, right next to Leonard Cohen’s. By chance, Tetsis’ house became mine for a whole summer, since he was away and had given it to his dearest student, Magda Siamkouri. So, with his consent, I stayed there for three whole months. I will never forget one big brunch we had once with numerous friends, Adam Cohen and his mother Barbara, Leonard’s second wife. Leonard had left Hydra at that time. Adam would play for us songs of his and his father’s on the piano, something he would repeat at a party held one of the following evenings on the terrace of Tetsis’ house, whose ground floor used to be a grocery store, owned by Tetsis’ grandmother, who used to exhibit her grandson’s early works, long before his talent was acknowledged by anyone else.
The best memories of Hydra are the parties – mostly those hosted by the island’s international visitors- on roof terraces, with incredible views of the whole world. This artistic multiculturalism was perfectly normal, since the most important powerful people on the planet and the greatest artists have always coexisted in Hydra.
A table by the pool, on the pergola of Bratsera Hotel, was transformed into an office: tape recorder, papers and pencils, this is how I spent lunchtimes· people for interviews and small chats, a cool juice, a fresh salad or cold pasta, and then a dip in the pool. Christina Nefrou, the hotel owner, had also given a small shop to her close friend Faini Xydis, a unique personality, where she would sell furniture, carpets, saris, bags, shoes from India.
It is common knowledge that in Research one person introduces you to the next; hence, a friend introduced me to the architect Christos Papoulias, who was meant to become my mentor, friend and advisor; he was the one to put me in touch with the most important people in Hydra, both Greek and international – let’s not forget all those Flower Children still dwelling on Greek territory like Bill, Karen, Don, that other Bill along with Francesca; writers, musicians, artists who took all kinds of jobs in order to survive throughout the years; let’s not also forget that legendary Argentinian figure, Enrique, and his bar called “Loulaki” or his little store under the same name, established thereafter, selling goods from Latin America· parties, maracas, nachos and guacamole. Yet, Papoulias’ international friends were of a different type; from the well-known minimalist American painter Brice Marden -who had bought and owned five houses and lived in the island with his wife and two daughters- to the renowned Greek artist Yannis Kounellis, the leading art theorist Christos Ioakimidis and the famous curator Adelina Von Fürstenberg.
Like a coin, Hydra has two sides and I have always been lucky enough to experience both
Efi Michalarou
I still remember making the latter’s acquaintance in “The Pirate Bar”; Christos introduced us in English, I replied in Greek, while she replied in Italian. This was probably one of the most beautiful moments in my life, as in such moments lies the very definition of universality. We became deeply connected from then on and she was the one to first show me the way to the beach and village of Vlychos.
She wore her big straw hat and along with her husband, Egon von Fürstenberg, and other artist friends, we would set off early in the morning from the harbour and, a forty-minute walk later, we would reach a mull, which would eventually become my personal refuge. In the evenings, she would lure us to the open-air cinema, a courtyard full of jasmine and loads of roasted pumpkin seeds. We would spend our afternoons in similar manner; on our way back from the beach, we would sit in Tassos’ café for Greek coffee and more roasted pumpkin seeds, before renewing our rendezvous for later in the evening. Adelina is a woman who has personally experienced the East-West nexus and lives at the interface of two cultures. Born in Istanbul to Armenian parents, Adelina went to school in Italy and studied Political Science in Geneva. She fell in love with Egon and soon after they got married. Her relationship with Greece begins while she was studying at the university; one summer, Adelina’s fellow student and friend Faini Xydis invited her at her home in Hydra. Ever since that first visit, Adelina returns to Hydra every summer. “Hydra is my Ithaca”, she would confess to me during our second interview, years later· the woman who would organize performances by Andy Warhol, Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson on a rooftop in 1980s Geneva; who would be the first to introduce young artists, such as the Indian Anish Kapoor, the South African William Kentridge and the Greek Yannis Kounellis, who, in the years to come, would prove to be among the greatest visual artists of their time. “I can exhibit everywhere; in an underground bar, at the Guggenheim Museum, in a monastery or any other place you can imagine”, she, herself, would tell me.
The time gap between me and the golden decades of the 1960s and 1970s on Hydra is great. I did not witness the legendary parties at Lagoudera Club -established by Babis Mores in 1959- where Margaret and Andreas Papandreou would dance to Jacques Menachem’s Latin tunes, and Melina Merkouri would play backgammon with Raf Vallone. But, I did meet Alexis Mardas -manager of the Beatles and also known as “Magic Alex” (a nickname given to him by John Lennon) – along with his second wife and their newly born baby, back in 1995, while working at a festival dedicated to Jules Dassin’s filmography, which was organized by the director -and very close friend of mine- Gaia Angelis and -her husband at the time- the filmmaker Thanasis Redzis.
Like a coin, Hydra has two sides and I have always been lucky enough to experience both, like living in two parallel worlds that coexist in a car-free place as special as Venice· a place as stark as its rocks and stone-made houses, and as mystically bright as the sun falling on the Peloponnesian coasts, dragging you into an eternal dance of myths and legends, gods and humans.
Over these twenty-eight years much has changed and much has remained the same. People, places, smells, tastes. You will always find the best fried meatballs in Krifo Limani, a family-run restaurant; the best grilled salmon, topped with lime and served with basmati rice, at the restaurant at the ground floor of Hotel Bratsera; the best breakfast and fresh squeezed juices at Papagalos All Day Bar. You can go swimming at Hydra’s beautiful, pebbled beaches, such as Vlycos or Plakes, or take a cool deep at Spilia, while enjoying a cold beer or a glass of homemade lemonade. If you wish to feel the aura of another era, you can enjoy a glass of chilled white wine or a glass of Prosecco to the sound of the waves at Omilos. The balcony with the most beautiful view of the island is undoubtedly that of the School of Fine Arts (housed in the four-storey mansion of Emmanuel Tombazis); a bustling hub for art and culture, where art students have always come to seek inspiration and get their creative juices flowing.
Summers in Hydra are full of art. The collector Dakis Joannou organizes, in the old Slaughterhouses of the island, one of the most interesting exhibitions of the year, inviting the international jet set. In recent years, the Historical Archaeological Museum of Hydra often hosts contemporary art exhibitions, always in creative discourse with the museum’s permanent collection. Dimitris Antonitsis, Alexis Veroukas, and many more -both young and old- artists and curators (me included, of course) organize exhibitions.
Every September, while returning to Athens, I always look ahead. I keep Hydra on the right side of my heart, where there is room only for the true loves of my life and my unspoken desires, which grow stronger as the hours spent in the bars of the island shorten, until the first dive at sunrise; until I come back next year, exclaiming “first we take Hydra” after Leonard Cohen’s “first we take Manhattan”.
*Efi Michalarou is a Journalist, Art Critic & Ιndependent Αrt Curator and Director of the online art magazine www.dreamideamchine.com. She is working on her second book “In first and second plural part two”, (dreamideamachine.publication), with interviews of artists, architects and people in the art world, which will be published in July 2021. She also curates solo and group exhibitions; the exhibition “Weaving the Future” will be inaugurated on June 24th, with the participation of 29 artists. The exhibition opened in Athens in 2019 and will be transferred to the Municipal Gallery of Larissa – G.I. Katsigra Museum, afterwards to the Municipal Gallery of the city of Skodra in Albania and then to Paris, where Efi has been living and working for the last few years. In addition, she recently participated in the exhibition ”Back to Athens 8” 2021, with 16 artists (1-4/7/21) in Athens and in the Isternia Zig-Zag Festival 2021! in Tinos with 6 artists (19-25/7/21), both successfully organized by CHEAPART.
