Agiannis was the capital of Greece of the Provisional Government of the Revolution, from August 15 to October 1 and the neighborhood of Soulinari was the metropolis of Agiannis. “The church of Agios Vassilios was a large church which was located at the bottom of the village and specifically at the place of Matthew and near the source of Soulinari. The church, which was the metropolis of the church, was completely destroyed in 1826 and in its place today a simple shrine has been erected. many mansions of important Agiannites (such as Perros, Sarigiannis, Matthew etc. (of the Zafeiropoula brothers)) and various churches (Agios Efstratios and Agios Petros) ”, by our fellow citizen Giannis D. Kourbelis
In the summers when the village was “full”, many residents came for holidays, in Soulinari we had a festival every day. It was very crowded with about 20-30 people, who waited 2-3 hours sometimes for their turn to get water with the linens, the tessas and the barrels loaded on the donkeys. It was a pleasant social event and the gossip from the women “go cloud”, who looked at who and the like. Many went more for the gossip and supposedly for water with a small pitcher. Sometimes my grandfather would send me to the tap for “some cool water” and I would go with a very small pitcher, a clever trick, and the women who were waiting to fill their barrels would leave me first, since “I had a small pitcher”…, but most likely and for not listening to gossip.
The young men and women of the village also went to Soulinari for strange hours for a bridal market, to go elsewhere .., they went for water and they were very thirsty and when they were lucky and there were no people, they felt the first heartbeats. The young people then always made the first move, indicatively with the following ..
From Smaragdi Arvaniti.
“In Agiannis there is water, they call it Soulinari,
and whoever suffers from love to go and drink, to become!
My little Agiannitopoulos, you have burned my heart “.
And so that there is no doubt they continued their siege
“In Agiannis I fell in love with a partridge,
in Agiannis my sweetheart is imprisoned.
I will take Agiannitissa to fall and die! “
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The little water that ran at night, when the residents did not get it, we share with the barber Theodore Maglis, for watering our orchards and trees in front of the house. There was a small concrete ditch and our own small cistern made by my “versatile” grandfather. In the orchard we had tomatoes, zucchini, beans, cucumbers, aubergines, okra, maize, we even watered the large arbor about 30-40? meters that made beautiful grapes, heptakilia, aetonychia and the red agiodimitri, and our figs, how not to love Soulinari…
We are lucky that our house was close to Soulinari. At night, my mother, who was not very crowded, would carry water with the tassels and the tins for washing clothes and would fill the two cauldrons that were in our yard under the mulberries, when when I helped too. Once our teacher Tassos Kalfagiannis inspected us at the school for cleanliness, I would have been 7-8 years old then. Most of us went to school barefoot. When he reached me he told me to go home to wash my feet. I run to our house and dip my feet in the cauldrons that had water for washing. and on the way to school, my mother shouted from behind “Turkish boy” you ruined my water. I go to school my feet as they were wet were filled with dust, street gallows and when the teacher saw me like that he laughed non-stop, well done you washed them nicely, but next time your mother washes them
Just above Soulinari was the house of Tsaroucha who came in the summers, he was very old in the 80’s, and he played music non-stop even at noon with a musical instrument that he played on foot, a lantern? I did not know his name. On the roof of this house once around Easter, the tsarouchas had not come yet, all the children of the neighborhood <girls and boys> had a party and danced, I was very young, suddenly the dancers inadvertently pushed me under the roof in Soulinari, but hard nut I did not suffer anything, I was accustomed to the hardships. , it seems that Santa Claus saved me that time .. Once again I had straightened Sourlis’ elbow in the well with my head, I still have the marks, when the oss of our donkey was cut or my echo
Someone called me and knocked me down. the cork, or both together, I do not remember what we called them.
Since we are talking about caravan and cork, the best was when I was carrying the bundles from our fields to the “kakoleo” with our mules. russia and cobra. My father would load them for me and wait for me in our fields, and I would manage to get rid of them and put them hard on our lawn. On the way back I was enjoying the carriage, as if once the cobra loaded with limbs in the xerokambi turned me over and I cut the ingla with rags and I came back empty-handed and scared, but my father welcomed me with a smile, as I always did.
We had our policies even then. Once my mother, above our oven in the fig tree, was caught by the hair with her neighbor with a lot of French… because the neighbor wanted us to let old Kapyla, my grandfather’s brother, vote for her party. When I was very young I was sitting with the old man Kapyla, barba Costa Kourogiorga, on our porch, he could not move because he was crippled, he had fallen from his arbor on the terrace with the stones behind our house, and we were enjoying the spectacle, it was nothing Dozens of women and men who were trying to separate them, but were holding their hair tightly .. Natos and the barba Giannis Stathogiannis, almost squealing, were very old, over our cistern on the side of the road to Soulinari he was coming with his big mustache and his white hair with a curl up and he was shouting loudly \
Fortunately, at that time, Pagios came again, he was coming from Soulinari, he would be in Xerokambi, riding a horse with also a big mustache and white hair, with the tsemberi tied like a fez and his dark fustanelles and behind him with many mules loaded on foot about a dozen servants of Agiopetrites. Do you want out of respect for Pagios to pass or did they get bored of the debauchery, the battle stopped, and those involved withdrew, continuing their French, and Barba Kapylas made his cross ..\
The former house of Panagiotis Giannoukos (Pagiou), benefactor of the community of Astros. This mansion belonged to Agiannitis, a friendly and friendly Panos Sarigiannis. Panos Sarigiannis was one of the most important personalities that Agios Ioannis has highlighted. He was the son-in-law of the also prominent Anagnostis Papazoglou, the protagonist of the struggle, with active participation in the It is located at the bottom of the village, between the Old School and the Soulinari spring. A few meters lower were the ruins of St. Basil, once the metropolis of St. John, which was completely destroyed by Ibrahim in 1826. This building has a large size and impressive dome. Next to this house there are the mansions of Perros and Matthew “, by our fellow citizen Giannis D. Kourbelis
“The mansion of the Kourogiorgas – Fourliga family in Agios Ioannis. It is located in the place “Elagos – Agios Vassilios”, near the source Soulinari. A lower school of the village was housed here during the Turkish occupation “
When Ibrahim in the revolution in 1826 burned down our homeland and the school of Karytsiotis in Koutri in Agiannis, also then there was no state and our politicians were forced to run to the mountains to be saved. Our ancestors, the people of toil and everyday life, did not bend or surrender. They did what they could in the ashes to say in their own way the state is here, as they still offered their homes to be used for schools, after the school in its place had burned down.
Our house was relatively large, had a large loggia in front and a wooden balcony downstairs where our threshing floor was located on the border with the area of Santa Claus. It had a large linen of about 25 sq.m. My grandfather Michalis Stravosogias was always in front of such people, he was always in front of them for such things, singing them with his stories. Knowing the place, I guess linen was the school room in 18 they were finished with the sea bream we were looking forward to playing with the sea bream, we are leaning and belly up to the threshing floor. It also had the basement, about 20 sq.m. under the winter house, which was something like a hiding place since there was a waterfall with a vertical staircase from the winter house, and the stones from the wall that were built quickly in an emergency or in possession of the small inner door so that nothing but a wall could be seen, is still inside our homes. You should have known to find the one covered under the chest and a rag and shaker to enter the basement. In the 1950s we had two large wine barrels in the basement, for about twelve barrels of wine, two meters long and almost two meters high, which I stepped in to clean in the fall. one still exists today. In the neighboring house of Kapylas, old of Matthew, there was a similar hiding place that some said reached the hiding place of the forerunner ???. Before the harvesters came, our threshing floor was used by many neighbors for threshing, I remember 20? piles around. The good thing was for fun we slept on the lawns and at night we listened to the stories about ghosts and fairies from the older neighbors. We were fed up with threshing when we were threshing, with mules and horses crawling around, and many times we crawled behind the haystack in the straw, but you had to be very fast if you fell because the mules would step on you, that’s why my uncle Costas Kourogiorgas the joke, leather strap. saying “sputum” you will leave as if the mules are pressing. In front of our house was Soulinari, below the border with the threshing floor is the area of Agios Vassilis, behind the mansions of Matthew, Barleika, Pagios, Perros, then two houses, after the old primary school and more beyond the neighborhood of Prodromos, other houses and Prodromos. This was the Soulinari neighborhood.
The mansion of Matthew with its peculiar big chimney, which had the underground large crypt, today owned by Kapyla (descendants of Kostas Kourogiorgas).
In the 1950s it was beautiful in the village. There was excellent social contact and mutual respect with everyone and everything, at festivals, in churches, in daily life in the precincts of the precursor and in Soulinari, in joys and sorrows. We respect the elders, they were all barbarians and aunts (uncles) and aunts).
During the holidays we wore our “goodies”, we went to the church and to the dances, which everyone danced in the square, if we had any drachma we drank an orange juice. We are happy and happy for what we had and we did not know better, nor did we want to know. We had it all and it was enough, they just did not have money but we do not need it… ..
Personally, I did not feel comfortable during the festivities and the big riots with my ornaments and my “good”. I felt better and I preferred to go to the “tsoulaftra” for watering and to play with the neighbors with the tsipoura, the letharia and the soil in Soulinari.
astrosgr.com/en / John Koutogiorgas
astrosgr.com 