There was a hand-lettered sign in the bathroom: No Laundry. Needing some clean clothes and not knowing where to wash them, I went looking for the landlady.
A friend and I were staying in her living room, well actually just half of it. There was a set of frosted-glass doors that divided it in two and on the other side there were guests also. Greeks often take in roomers during the summer and our landlady had solicited us when we got off the ferry from Piraeus. We had followed her up through narrow streets and past whitewashed buildings to her house. There were a couple of single beds in our half and not much else but the price was right. We all shared the same bathroom.
After I made my needs know to the landlady - she didn't speak any English - she handed me a bucket made from a one-liter olive oil can. It was covered with pictures of olives and had a makeshift wire handle with a rope attached. I wasn't sure that she understood what I wanted - was I suppose to wash in that? Then she walked us down the hill where we found a set of concrete troughs and a couple of Greek ladies doing their laundry. There was also a large stone cistern that held rainwater. The Greek ladies laughed to see us and offered to show me how it was done - I guess they thought a man would need some training and they were right.
So here's the scoop: first you drop the bucket down the cistern, haul it up by the rope and use the results to fill the trough. It takes a few trips to get enough water to fill it up. Next soap and clothes are added. Knowing that rinsing the soap out would be as hard to getting them clean, I only added a small amount. This didn't suit my teacher and she threw another hand-full of detergent in - she wasn't going to let me off that easy.
Next was the hard work: pushing and pulling, I kneaded the clothes to work the soap in. Then there were the three rinses, between each I had to ring all the water out. Wow, I was glad I didn't have many clothes to wash - this was hard work. My mentor smiled at my weak attempts. I noticed she had much larger arms than I did - no wonder. I managed to do a shirt and few changes of underwear in about the same time she had done a huge load.
Now it was my friend's turn. She dropped the bucket in the cistern, we heard the splash as it hit the water but when she went to pull it up she realized she had forgotten to hold on to the rope. We peered into the dark hole and could just make out the bucket down there in the gloom. Not just one bucket either: there were a couple bobbing along with some soap bottles. I guess my friend wasn't the only one to lose something down the cistern. Maybe this is what every first-time visitor to Mykonos did - a kind of right of passage.
Anyway this caused more laughter from the Greek ladies who now had to loan us their buckets in addition to giving advice. From then on my friend hung tightly to the rope: she didn't want to loose another. It wasn't long before she too was done but there was still one thing to do before we could continue our sight seeing - my friend had to break the bad news about the lost bucket to our landlady. I wasn't party to that conversation but my friend said that the landlady just shrugged her shoulders. I guess I was right: we weren't the first to loose a bucket.
Doug Burnett
Read more of my travelogues
Send your comments to:
Ann Arbor, Michigan
November, 1998
