Storry telling at Karditsa (1st EPAL Karditsas) Near Plastira’s Lake, 32 km from the town of Karditsa on the “Agrafa” mountain, at an altitude of 1200 meters, there is the picturesque village of Fylakti. The inhabitants of Fylakti in the winter are mostly elderly people who, despite their everyday adversities, choose to stay in their birthplace. One of them is Mr. Vassilis (a well-known storyteller of the region), an emblematic figure of a man who lived all his life in the mountain, rearing animals and merchandising their products. The hard life in nature sculptured a tough face and formed a mild character at the same time. With his endless narrations, using idioms and humor, he has a unique ability to capture his audience.
One of the few young residents of the village is Vassilis, a student of the1st EPAL of Karditsa. On the occasion of the current Erasmus program, accompanied by a teacher of the school, he met Mr. Vasilis in order to listen and write down stories of the village. He narrated stories about “good luck”, beautiful female figures -sometimes dangerous- who used to appear in the woods, rivers and pasture lands only at nights, singing and playing the violin. He told the story of the forest his village shares with the neighboring village called Petrillo, when its inhabitants paid the ransom for a murder that took place in this forest. He narrated the story of his own village as it has been orally transmitted, for its first position in the “Great Puliana” and the destructive epidemic that led the inhabitants to choose another position to move in and settle down. Other stories were about the “Paliokazarma”, the “Voutsikaki” mountain and the “Gavel” position, a blind passage on the mountain… It was a wonderful meeting with a master of narrative, in the shadow of snowy “Agrafa”.