Let’s Meet
My great grandfather, George Poulos, traveled for the first time from Poulia (Apoulia) of Italy to Corfu in 1912 at the age of fifteen. There he met and married Anastasia, a young girl from the village of Loutses in the north of Corfu. Together they created a large family consisting of 2 boys and 7 girls!
My grandfather Efthimios, one of the two sons of that family, together with his brother Kostas both firstly made sure that their sisters had substantial dowries and were married and then created their own families.
At that time, the way for a young man to be wedded to a woman was through an arranged marriage. Romances rarely flourished unless the couple chose to “elope” or in other words to run away together.
This was the case with my grandfather and my nanny (grandmother). Thimios (short for Efthimios) and Antigoni fell madly in love at a festival that took place in the village and because my grandmother’s father did not approve of my grandfather as a son in-law, they decided to elope and live together.
In 1965 they gave birth to a boy, Stavro and decided to buy their own house. The building that “Poulia” is housed in was purchased by my grandfather in 1970 from the teacher of the village at that time. It was originally used as a barn for the animals and a storage place for the olive oil that was produced by the family. The building is made solely of rock and is dated back to 1812. In 1995, my grandfather decided to renovate the building and establish it as the family’s main place of residence.
