The Love Drama
The Love Drama that haunts Damouchari.
The great grandfather of our family, Apostolos Vainopoulos, originally from Mouresi and Damouchari, used to be captain of english merchant ships. Sometime in the second decade of the 20th century, he decides to change profession, return to his homeland in East Pelion and start a local trading business merchandising goods, supplies and food to local retailers. The base of his business would be the natural harbor of Damouchari, where he specially constructs a big two-floor storehouse.
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Apostolos Vainopoulos, as a genuine cosmopolitan, used to travel a lot. In one of his travels and specifically in Bucharest, he meets a greek-romanian entrepreneur who owned flour mills in Romania and who was originally coming from East Pelion too. The entrepreneur introduces Apostolos to his young daughter, called Cleopatra. Cleopatra and Apostolos are getting married and they move to Damouchari for continuing Apostolos'es plan to start the trading business here.
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Apostolos builds a mansion for her and dedicates the village to her... to Cleopatra Miramare as he used to call her. But that was not enough to make Cleopatra Miramare happy. Imagine the change and the shock for that aristocrat young lady to abandon her busy and lively life in Bucharest for the deserted and very remote Damouchari. Although, Apostolos tries to enrich her social life by organizing trips for her to cosmopolitan destinations of that era, she falls in depression and homesickness. Cleopatra, though, stays pregnant, but, unfortunately, she dies during the birth. The baby boy lives, but not for long neither. He also dies from an unknown disease in the age of 9yo. So Cleopatra Miramare leaves no ancestors.
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After the death of his son with Cleopatra, Apostolos gets married again. This time he marries Victoria, the housekeeper of his mansion. Victoria, although poor and uneducated, was local and well-adapted to Damouchari lifestyle. Business is flourishing and Apostolos and Victoria start making one child after the other... Cleopatra (he named his first daughter after his first wife), Electra, Jason, Nikitas, Klearchos. In the 1930's, Apostolos in the age of 45yo, while being very productive and serving as Mayor of the local community, dies of hyperthermia after a large wildfire in Damouchari.
Victoria is left alone with five young kids, but the story is not finishing here. Victoria inherits Apostolos'es big fortune and land, but she doesnt know how to run the business. In the meantime, second world war is changing rapidly the trading conditions and devaluating the money she inherited. Victoria, having no cash to grow up her kids, sends them as live-in servants to various aristocrat families of the area, while she is exchanging land for food.
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When war finishes, Victoria is still relatively young, beautiful and with lots of land in her possession. Therefore, she becomes a target of various suitors and prospective husbands, looking for a piece of her fortune. Victoria feels charmed by the attention of younger men and enjoys. Finally, she starts a relationship with Stergios. Stergios, who was much younger than Victoria, has a young sister of the same more or less age with Victoria's son Jason. Stergios'es sister and Jason fall in love and decide to get married and start a family together. When Jason announces that decision to his mother, Victoria feels very upset. She knows that, according to the law of those times, if her son marries the sister of Stergios, she would not be allowed to marry Stergios, because they would be considered as first degree relatives and marriage between first degree relatives was forbidden. Victoria did not back out for her son, as someone would have expected. She married Stergios secretely, leaving everyone in surprise. Although times were very conservative, the young couple did not have to separate. They lived together, without being officially married, they were fully accepted by the community and they raised a child, who is still living in Damouchari, and everyone lived happily ever after.
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Victoria died in old age the year 1978. Throughout her life, she may have sold much of Vainopoulos'es land but she was clever enough to keep the seaside territory within the family possession and pass it over to her children. And all that in the period before tourism, when it was not easy to predict the elevated value of the seaside properties. Nowadays, all businesses (restaurants, hotels, shops) inside the core settlement of Damouchari are still owned by the direct grandkids of Victoria and all locals there are related to each other.