School-Teacher-Electra to Pop-Star-George

After spending almost 3 weeks on a remote Greek island without doing anything musical (besides singing arbitrary funny sounding Greek words and drumming on my body), suddenly, despite being told numerous times by the locals that there was definitely no piano on the island, I found out that there was in fact a piano on the island. It was apparently inside the school, and a very nice woman named Electra, one of the teachers at the school, told me that I could come and play it when she was there.

Electra had told me everything I needed to know--how beautiful the piano was, when she would be at the school so that I could come and play it, and just how happy she would be to have me play while she was working (very!)--but what she didn't tell me was that there were two schools, and that the school I passed every day on my way into town was not the one she was talking about.

So this morning, my last morning on Folegandros, after going down to the post office to send various greek novelties back to the states (including numerous 2-liter bottles of Nikolas' father's homemade raki, and a rechargeable battery powered cheese grater), I went to the wrong school and waited around for my date with Electra. It was the one opportunity I had to play, and she wasn't there. Luckily, I saw her much later as my family and I were leaving for the boat, and she explained to me that I had been waiting at the elementary school (duh!), and that the high school was, in fact, over by the post office.

Now I'm back in Athens, sitting in my room at the Plaza Hotel, not playing the beautiful grand piano which sits lonely in the bar downstairs (which is nearly empty), because when I asked the bar tender if I could play it, he said, "No, the piano is off. We have piano players."

But my quest for a piano doesn't end here. Fortunately, during tonight's dinner at a very beautiful restaurant called Millioni, I was introduced to the owner, George, a very nice young DJ who said that his friend, George, who was a very popular pop star in Greece when he was young, had a piano in his studio that I could play. DJ-George (who's forearm was freshly tattooed with the name of his dog) called up Pop-Star-George on his cell phone, and within 30 seconds, DJ-George handed me the phone, and I was talking to Pop-Star-George, arranging a time to meet. Tomorrow at noon, I will call him, and we will meet at his studio, where he will play me tracks from his latest album. Perhaps I will get to play piano tomorrow, perhaps not. I think my meeting with Pop-Star-George will be more of a social thing than an opportunity to spend some time by myself at a piano, but it still sounds interesting. He also invited me to come to his concert the following night, but I will be getting on a train to Sofia, Bulgaria.