In a Heritage aproved building of the 1890's I have set up a home comprising of magnificent jwels of a refined past. After refurbishing and enforcing its robust construction I promised myself to revive the qualities of a past, full of inherited objects of art, serenity, pure Mediterranean cooking, local history and imagination.
What started as a dream, formed in my mind when I first saw deserted mansions during my first trip to the villages near the lake Garda of Italy, had to wait for an immensly long time before I had a chance of even conteplating into bringing it to life.
I am Katerina Dima and it might be somewhat interesting to have a little walk through the story of my life as in the creation of the Museum Hotel George Molfetas, I mirrored my soul.
I was born in the city of Athens and raised in a sunny suburb of Athens, Heliopolis. I believe that the fact that I had to walk about 7 km to school for 9 months of the year, must have played some role into making me a very careful spectator of all the marvels that nature offers, asking for nothing in return. One year before finishing High School, I discovered through a friend a path which led me into winning a place in an exchange student scholarship that took me to the United States: one student from the 1960’s Greece’s poverty and political instability right into the marvel of New York and into a family home in Arlington Heights, Illinois. A 16 year old Katerina among 2.000 or so of students from 62 countries of the earth. This was a paramount gift towards understanding the importance of respecting the differences between people and admiring the miracle of communication between them without second thoughts and inhibitions. As a military junda took over my country while I was in the U.S I had to be ready to come back to Greece as soon as my graduation took place. A small problem, however, turned everything into a rece to meet the target date: during a dreadfull snowstorm in the area of Chicago, I managed to break my leg tobaggoning. Rediculous as it seems to waist almost half of my precious stay in America tied up in a hospital bed for two solid months and withing a body cast for another three, this was proved not to be a waist at all. The hidden gift in this case was that at the age of 16 I already knew the importance to be alive and strong and making up for a mishap by smiling and continueing living against all odds. Having been madly in love with Sociology, a topic which I had never heard of, I promised to myself that I will come back to America as soon as trouble goes, to study my “passion”.
Alas, life had different plans for me: getting a job in I.B.M. in Athens got me to meet the father of my children, Xenophon, whom I married at the age of 21. As Xenophone was the first teacher of what was meant to be Computer Science, trainned in the States back in 1955, our lives were blessed with a lot of travelling while we were raising kids with the help of grandmothers- a typical theory and practice in the Greek family system. This is when I first came in visual contact of the great, multi colored, multi functional, almost derelict mansions spread in the magical environment of North Italy.
Almost 30 years later, after my husband became “my late husband” and I had to be something like the older sister for my two children and after bringing them to the conclusion of their education with a master’s degree both, I remembered that I was entitled to start dreaming again. With this in my mind, I thought that Kefalonia, which was the birthplace of my Mom, would be closer than anywhere else to the initial idea. With the help of a good budget that I had summed up by investing in the Greek Stock Market for about 15 years, I opened a weekly newspaper and , voila, a little add was there about a two level stone mansion, enough to get the “trip” started. The building was just as it were the days it was built; woderfully streched on two stories of straight lines of Venetian architecture. It was just 5km away from the capital of Kefalonia, Argostoli and was facing the town with the sea extension, on the west. Perfect.
Up to that point I thought that I was only dreaming of a house, where I could accomodate all the family “treasures” of books, furniture, post cards of the 1880’s, paintings, porcelain and heavy silver cutlery, chandeliers by Murano, rugs from the East and refined parafernalia. Music, literature, and Poetry were “donated” by my mom’s family, with the heaviest of the inheritances being the personality of George Molfetas, a magnificent poet and guitar virtuoso who marked his path in life with a satirical newspaper he published for 25 years, making with his poems history, that was written at the time, look like a fairytale. But there were also unending bonuses from the side of my late husband’s family: rich merchants and extemely educated, both sides of his family were forced out of their birthplace, Smyrne, a multinational commerce center in the Turkish side of the Mediterranean, when at the end of the First World War the New National Turkish army, under Kemal Attaturk, uprooted every Greek family in a most violent way and only one third of them survived and found refuge in the impoverished Greece. However, those people had managed to bring from Smyrne the wealth of civilization, culture, the multicultural environment of European air. One of the uncles, was invited by the I.B.M. “father”, Thomas Watson, to be the key man in introducing the capabilities of Computers to Europe and the Middle East. All the documents of this era are part of the thematic collections of the hotel.
At that time, however, an ex student of mine suggested that it would have been a pity if all those treasures would not be communicated to the people visiting Greece and seeking some data about the social structure of its past. Kefalonia itself, after four years of very cruel occupation from the Italians first and then the N***s, during the Second World War, had suffered, in 1953, a tremendous earthquake that demolished almost the whole island. Kefalonia, after this, had to house its people and what was built was put up in a hurry by the international military forces that came to the rescue of the people. The grandeur and civilization of the old Kefalonia was almost extinct. The need for such a hob of authentic identity of the old Kefalonia seemed essential.
With both my kids back in Athens and taking my mom with me to her birthplace, I felt strong enough and secure to start making my dream come true. The Scylla of the affair was Beuraucracy and the Charibd was the Banks. I travelled like a new age Ulysses between them for the next two years until the “go” came from the ministries of Culture, Agriculture, Public Works, Environment and the European Community funding department. The project, however was so much vivid in my soul eyes that the actual work, with me acting as a mechanic, forman, banker, accountant, intirior decorator, gardener, and cook was so precise that the full re-making of the building and the setting was finished in just 22 months. Glorious months full of energy, happiness, frustration, good friends and good workers, lots of beers and some timid explorations of the mythical Kefalonia, that led to the 2nd of June, 2007, when my first newly wedded couple entered the gate; only three days after the birth of my first grandson. One month later, I became 59 years YOUNG!
