‘I fell in love with a Greek god – and then the country!’
Carol Bairactaris, 59, was working in Athens when a gorgeous waiter brought her Champagne and cake. She never could have predicted what happened next.
‘In my experience, the Greeks have two passions: food and family. They’re my passions, too, and when I’m sitting up in the mountains, at a table groaning with delicious fresh seafood, surrounded by friends and family, I know I can never leave Greece.
It still amuses me that I ended up here by chance. In 1982 I applied to be a holiday rep and hoped to go to Spain or France, but was offered a job in Greece. I spent six months there and enjoyed it, but for my next stint abroad I still wanted to go to Spain. To my disbelief, I was posted to Athens again! Yet it was on this visit that I met Nikos. A colleague was throwing me a birthday party and Nikos was the waiter who brought out the Champagne and cake.
It was a physical attraction at first. He was gorgeous, with dark hair and enormous brown eyes – a Greek god! And it can only have been physical because there was a language barrier. Our dates were conducted with dictionaries in hand.
We soon became inseparable. I would rep in Greece for six months, we would both work in the winter sunshine – somewhere like the Caribbean – for three months, and then we’d have three months off to travel around the rest of the world.
We moved in together and seven years later, when I was seven months pregnant, Nikos and I married in a Greek ceremony. I knew we’d settle in Greece. Nikos was the only child of a single mother and they were very close. And while I fell in love with Nikos first, in time, I fell in love with the country, too. Nikos and I went on to have two children – Daniel, now 27 and Victoria, 24 – and his mum also became part of our family. Sadly, she passed away 11 years ago.
Nikos and I have been living in Zakynthos for 29 years. I’ve adapted to Greek life completely and speak the language more readily than English. We built and now run our own hotel, the Garden Village Hotel in Kalamaki. Many of our guests come back again and again and the Mamma Mia! movie has helped our trade. We hold weddings and couples like to recreate that authentic Greek feel. They also love playing Abba songs and everyone parties at sunset to Dancing Queen. It couldn’t be more magical.’