The village of Arnaia in the Macedonian region of Mount Athos in Greece is appears to be as a traditional Greek village might be envisaged.
Attractive and colourful houses line the main street and the little nooks and crannies of the town. Pastel blues and deep terracotta hues can be discovered without too much searching. Narrow streets, with little or no paving, often built with local stone and pockmarked with potholes, small pretty homes seem to teeter on the roadside.
Villagers go about their business probably in a similar manner in this region for generations if not centuries. Mushroom hunting and foraging for wild herbs, baking traditional tsoureki, a sweet bread and production of ‘krano’ a cranberry based liqueur have been practiced here for generations.
Beautiful backstreets
The residents meet at the local tavern for a coffee during the day or something stronger in the evening. Sometimes they don’t even get inside their conversations taking place in doorways on their way home from the bakery. It is difficult to imagine they have many concerns to discuss but this is probably flawed, even in this idyllic setting life will present many challenges.
As well as traditional festivals like Easter the village holds two local celebrations; the ‘Mushroom Festival’ in September when the fungi is used for many special dishes and the ‘Pine Tree Festival’ which provides locally grown Christmas trees for villagers and visitors alike.
These sound like good reasons to visit the pretty traditional Macedonian village after all, who doesn’t love a festival?
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