1 November 1989
Mr Seymour S. Sisskind
1456 Ocean A venue
Santa Monica, CA 90401
Dear Mr Sisskind, We are receiving your letter of 15 October and we are joyous that you are scheming to come to Friki for Christmas this year. Oppositely, we are sorry that your vacation in the Caraibic was devastated by the typhoon of Victor Hugo which is making everybody like Les Miserables!! (I am making the joke.)
If you are confiding in me when I am writing to you last April that you must not fear political upheavals , riots, civil disturbances and acts of God in Greece after the elections of June and coming to Friki for your summer vacation instead of the Caraibic, you and the graceful Mrs Sisskind would be avoiding the many frights of the typhoon like the eradication from the ground of the phoenician trees, the elevating of the roofs of the houses and the transportation of boats from the sea to the land that we saw on the television.
Here all is resting in peace during the summer season and the political climate is so harmonic that when the President is giving the command to the leaders of the political parties to formulate a government and they cannot, Mr Mitsotakis is saying it is all right for Mr Tzannetakis to make a government and Mr Florakis is consenting. Perhaps I must be explaining to you here, dear Mr Sisskind, that Mr Mitsotakis is right and Mr Florakis is very left ( communist) and this is the first time in the history of Greece that a right man is collaborating with the communists and not putting them in envelopes and sending them to Yiaros and Makronissos. Indeed, the government of Mr Tzannetakis is burning in public all the envelopes that Mr Papandreou is saying he is burning but which he is keeping and listening secretly to their telephones also which is not allowed. The Tzannetakis government has one apostolic only, to make catharsis which means to find which ministers of the Papandreou government are stealing money and making other illegal things and then send them to sit on the bench of the accused to be judged.
All this is finished now and we are having a new election next Sunday but you must not be anxious because again everything will be resting in peace with no riots, civil disturbances and acts of God. And if by chance you are reading in your newspapers that there is a terrorist organization here called 17th of November (their birthday is two weeks from now) you will be comfortable to know that they are only shooting Americans who are of the CIA or military followers of the embassy, so you are safe.
Dear Mr Sisskind, because the line from Piraeus to Friki is an unfertile one, the boat comes only every two weeks. So you must arrange to arrive from Los Angeles to Athens on 14 December and take the boat from Piraeus on the fifteenth and it will arrive in Friki at three in the morning on the sixteenth. I shall wait for you with my Toyota – the red one with the broken prophylactic in front- to drive you to the hotel where your room will be ready because it is the off season and we are not full. We are also preparing a special lunch for you at Christmas with a little French bird and cranberry sauce that my daughter is saying the Americans are eating.
In your letter you are asking me what kind of weather it is at Friki in the winter because it is the first time you are coming to Greece in December. My daughter, Aspasia, who knows everything, is telling me that Friki is on the same platypus as Santa Monica so the winter is exactly the same, sometimes sunny, sometimes raining, sometimes cold, sometimes not. Also, you are asking if there is a socket near the bed of Mrs Sisskind for the plug of her electric blanket. We have a socket near all the beds but Aspasia is telling me to preadvise you that the current here is 220 volts and if you do not bring a transformer with you the blanket will inflame and maybe cause a disaster that is worse than the Caraibic typhoon.
Finally, Mr Sisskind, you are asking me what is the entertainment in winter on Friki and you can rest assured there is video in the hotel, a cinema that changes every two days in the town and a Calypso discotheque. This is not like the calypso of the Caraibic but the name of the owner’s wife, who is also my cousin. We are organizing Christmas eve and New Year’s eve balls at the hotel with cotillons and table d’hote menu, 2500 drachmas per person except wine which is separated on the bill. Please let me know if you wish to be attending and I will make the reservations because the tables are greatly demanded with people coming from the other islands near us that have no balls.
Once again, Mr Sisskind, I must tell you how joyous we are to see you and the graceful Mrs Sisskind again next month and we are looking forward with great eagerness to hospitalize you once more.
Yours most friendly,
Xenophon Kalosorides,
Manager-Proprietor
