Ο Κίτσος Λούης και η Άννα μας στέλνουν κάθε χρονο τις ευχές τους. Αυτήν τη φορά και με τον εγγονό του Φίλιππο και με ένα μακροσκελέστατο γράμμα και πολλές άλλες φωοτογραφίες.

Dear friends, dear family,

Twelve months and three C19 vaccinations later, time has come again to send you our brief report for the past year. It comes a few days earlier than previously, since we are about to fly to Switzerland in a couple of days: given Alexandros’ work schedule the only way to have an all-family X’mas was for us four to meet in… Solothurn (he’s booked us in “his” hotel)! So, here it is:

I realized a few days ago that I should substantially edit my CV and, from now on call myself a “writer” in addition to a “biologist/medic”. The reason is that a few weeks ago Crete University Press published my second book that I wrote after retiring. It is, again, in Greek, it is called “Picture Exhibition in Biology” and it contains an analysis of big (well…) problems that biological research has not yet fully understood or, at least, has not provided explanations satisfying everybody. For example why did donkeys almost disappear in Greece; or who are the meanest murderers in the animal kingdom; or microbes, our most-trusted friends; and so on. I hope that the Greek public will like it as it did my previous book which, by the way, was awarded a honorary “year’s end” award by the Academy of Athens. I therefore decided to write a “continuation” of that second book and once I’m through collecting all necessary data that I’ll need in a couple of months, Annoula, our dogs and myself will move to an Ionian island for a month or so. Annoula will simply enjoy hikes and swimming while I’ll be writing (and occasionally fishing). We were first thinking of either Othonoi or Erikoussa (two very small islands northwest of Corfu) but we finally decided to do that in Ithaca with PAxoi as an alternative if we don’t find something a house of our liking (e.g. dog-safe). Which brings me to our Covid-dictated travel of last summer.

You may remember that the first wave of the recent pandemic put a halt to our plans to take a two-month long trip to the West of Greece on our boat in May 2020. Well, this year the pandemic did not bother us much (both of us got the first two shots in April and our third, booster one in early November) but the enemy, this time, came from within: last October I was diagnosed with a probable benign lipoma in the pylorus (i.e. exit of the stomach/entry to the gut) that, by the way, was not bothering me at all. It took a total of three gastroscopic interventions to get rid of it! Why it took so long was due to a a combibation of reasons: Too big to be removed endoscopically, some semi-strange pathology findings of the biopsy that could not rule out malignancy, the wish to avoid a laparotomy, at any rate,the bottom line is that the tumour was finally removed in the very beginning of June (100% benign), late enough to take advantage of the windless season. In addition, sciatic attacks of both of us made us realize that two months on a small boat may be too much for two old people like us. Yet, on June 12 we had the 50th anniversary of our getting together and I also got a phone call from the gastroenterologist telling me about the final, completely clean biopsy report of now the fully excised tumour. As a result, we had a great idea: as a “gift” to ourselves for our anniversary we decided to take our car and use the very good ferryboat system (a total of 12 passages) to visit a total of 6.1 Ionian islands in three weeks. We were back to places like, among others, Ithaca that we last visited (and fell in love with) 49 years ago, Cephalonia (last time there in 1992), and Erikoussa for the first time. The 0.1 island was tiny Mongonissi (reachable via a tiny bridge from Paxoi) where the Agnelli family has a biiiig house and where, three years ago, we had the best pizza of our life when we moored our rental boat at a restaurant located right at the edge of the dock (the taste of the pizza was irrelevant, the setting was amazing). We also got a small share of culture such as the visit of the ruins and the museum of Nicopolis, a few kilometres from where the battle of Actium took place (where Octavian (Roddy McDowall) beat the hell out of Cleopatra and Marc Anthony (Liz Taylor and Richard Burton). I will not describe anything else, suffice to say that we did enjoy everything tremendously, in spite of some minor health-related events. Great places for swimming, fantastic nature, real forests of pine trees and cypresses all the way down to the beaches (and, naturally, olive trees), I think that whoever has not yet visited the Ionian islands really misses a part of Greece that is simply absolutely amazing and completely different from whatever you’ve seen before in our country! As an “amuse-gueule” for your future trip there I attach a few pictures from that trip below in addition to the one of ourselves! {I hope they show at a decent size, my mailer is f…ed up!}

Both kids are fine, both are still single and both of them were promoted this year in their respective jobs. Alexandros is now the Asst. front desk Manager at his hotel in Solothurn (he translated this as same job but higher salary) and Philippos is now an Assistant Prof. at the Department of Economics at the U of Cyprus (I use Alexandros’ words to translate this for him: same job but higher salary!). The dogs are also fine, they behaved very well throughout the whole trip and enjoyed being with us 24 hours a day (Liu’s behaviour often reminds me now of that of a very sweet old lady). Health-wise, as I said, there were small annoying problems for both of us (mostly of orthopedic nature, other than the afore-mentioned lipoma) the only really bad thing about them was that they led ultimately to the decision to sell our boat. If one of you is interested, let me know (https://www.car.gr/classifieds/boats/view/316248871-beneteau)!

All in all, nothing really exiting. Annoula went to Germany for a couple of weeks to visit her family, but other than that and the Ionian islands, we did not leave our house. Thus, let’s bring this now to a close.

To all of you, we send you our best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy 2022!

Anna and Kitsos