THE VLACHS:

They have an unwritten pact that binds them to the mountain, which keeps them closely tied to the land as a tree with its roots. With the land they live on the rugged mountains of Greece dragging its Information Help wandering, without following the peregrinations of the flock. A pact that pastoralists Epirus bring him almost like a genetic code, along with the smell that no soap can disguise. A smell of hair never washed, if not from rain, fresh milk, tobacco, sweat dried by wind, which reaffirm their pact ancestral symbiosis with the flock. And with the land, riven by deep ravines kilometers long and the wrinkles on their faces without age. Land that gave them birth 40,000 years ago - according to the student Aris Poulianos - not just homo sapiens appeared in Europe.
Faces "pote` blades' as they themselves define in their Homeric idiom that time "of again and never", So far from blurring the boundaries of any start and stop, move as the infinite repetition of gestures and seasons. A time marked by transhumance, in this corner of the world that revolves around the massive size of the Pindus and longitudinally the Greek peninsula. One area that has as its epicenter in the region of Epirus, but extends to the east Thessaly, in northern Macedonia, Thrace and certain location as Saranta, former Northern Epirus, now Albania. Location to preserve an epic dimension, equal to that of the landscape as their backdrop. Without the endless silence, broken at times by the echo of dogs trained to bite anyone who comes close to sheep, mountain peaks that pierce the clouds, the rocks alternating with dark forests and metaphysical "sins" of rock, smooth or rough, you seems sprung from the ground with the sole purpose of challenging the sky, this is a strip of land which is likely to forget to be inhabited by humans. We believe the virgin nature of the whole, were it not for the presence of the bridges that cross a donkey a multitude of rivers and streams, and betray an old the very human need for mobility.
Although the unrest has come to join in the genetic heritage of these people accartortocciata fatigue, accustomed always to consider the residents always to consider the plateaus and plains as the home to nothing but a sea level suffered exile, to suffer as soon as the winter till his skeletal hands in every fold of clothing. Even under the heavy wool coats worn by shepherds. The sad downhill run begins, according to tradition, Oct. 26, the day of Saint Demetrius, but any date is autumn advanced good to go. As long as `it is not Tuesday, weekly maleugurante anniversary of the fall of Constantinople. The happy return to pasture, back fat, the mountain coincides with the time period around April 23, the feast of St. George, patron of all the wandering souls, especially when engaged in sheep farming and thus to a life of solitude, constant vigilance. As they were until a few decades ago, many farmers also Italian, and finally converts the `permanence, and not as it will be more long even these men of Greek stock, for now among the last true nomads in the Mediterranean. A witness to their existence in the future there will be only fragments of memories collected and transcribed by Schira of anthropologists who studied them with interest the early twentieth century.

THAT BEGINNING TO SEE SOME SIGN OF MODERNITY: MANY HAVE A REAL HOME, OFTEN EVEN A PHONE, AND USE THE TRUCK AS MOBILE STALLS
Divided into ethnic groups, each of the respective closed and proud, distinct cultural identity, to the point of them so far remained almost untouched `despite the long series of diasporas who have scattered far and wide after the fall of Byzantium and the subsequent establishment of Ottoman rule, are organized in social structures governed by a patriarchal family type enlarged. Each nucleus was until recently headed by a tselingas, a sort of father-master whose word that law to the authorities which was recognized by community especially in virtue of its numerical supremacy zontanà, namely the" stuff alive ", just like the flock is called to distinguish it from "taprata", things that are the mules and dogs: one with the animals is a relationship odioamore more powerful than any relationship, when the inalienable instinct survival. Two, always main clans: that, in many ways atypical of Vlach, with still more than a million members, of which 500 thousand distributed in Greece and the other scattered between Albania, Bulgaria and Romania, and that of Sarakatzani , which currently has just under 100 thousand people. Both originating form Epirus Pindus are toghether atavistic hatred for the Turks, the most recent contempt for the Albanians, on the attitude to hard work and a tenacious faith in God Orthodox. For the rest are different as water and oil, and not just because the first speak a language derived from Latin, the result of Romanization suffered already before Christ by the legionaries who hired them as sentinels along the Egnatia highway, artery linking East and West, while the latter do not know that the greek, syncopated maybe, but when their pure breed. Some have stopped for about two thousand years of devoted exclusively to farming, to engage in, parallel activities such as handicrafts, commerce and banking, while others care only and were careful not to get fooled on the price of milk, no go to calculate the possible value added in the form of cheese, let alone bother to learn to read and write. These have always reeled to win a place in the sun, without sacrificing a sense, in many ways exaggerated, of dignity while you Vlach undermine even the ranks of the Church, realizing early enough the crucial role of the priest and archimandrites fininanziarie transactions, as well as those `in the spirit.
Sarakatsani they continued to move up and down the paths of their fathers and grandfathers, the Vlach, however, have taken to beat the streets of major world in the meantime become a powerful economic corporation (symptomatic coincidence of semantics in their vernacular, the terms "profit" and "work"). They have created a strategic stronghold, first in the Balkans, then in Asia Minor, Egypt and finally over the Black Sea, where they have settled in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Odyssey. In the opposite direction touched Venice, Livorno, Trieste and Vienna. Their reference is the port was not until 1710 Durres, their capital is Metsovo today, to 1,156 meters high on the ridge of which marks the border between the province of Epirus and Trikala, Thessaly. Holed up in the middle of populated mainly dalupi peaks, nevertheless has a very significant income. The money, however not enough to change the DNA. Even the smell of your skin Watched Greeks now be rich or poor, educated or illiterate, already owners of large parcels of land needed to feed livestock throughout the year or even forced to rent them dearly, with contracts every six months.

THE FACES WITH WRINKLES FURROW THE FACES WITHOUT AGE OF MEN AND WOMEN, FROM 40 THOUSAND YEARS OWNERS OF THE RUGGED MOUNTAINS, WHICH IN THE MOON AND STARTS READ THEIR OWN DESTINY..
A closer look, Vlach and Sarakatsani, Koutsovlachi and Karangounides, smell all the same way for the sophisticated noses citizens, accustomed as they are to different kind of stench, but are special smell of pastors unseemly or even outrageous. Perhaps because the diversity of people a people that has never stopped reading and moon and stars their own destiny. Even now almost all have made a real house somewhere, finally cement and brick, with much address and telephone number. Even now send their children to school, hoping they will one day doctors, shove or paved roads instead of the old tracks, and often rent furniture huge truck turned into stables, and when it is time to emigrate. They do more for security reasons, given the increased traffic, which for convenience, Christos Arvanitis says that this year has resisted until the first snow in its summer base on top of the tremendous gorge of Viçosa, in heart of Epirus. To assist the load of his thousand sheep on the truck to pass recitranti `there by my word. Not missing, in fact, who still prefers to avoid such an undertaking and save on transport costs: how Nikos Kouros, who heads a little bit and walk a little bit and walk a little bit riding his flock rather impressive from the heights of Delvinaki meadows on the coast near Igoumenitsa. No matter if touches to your destination to spend several nights in the open. Anyway, the smell of shepherd can not change, that he sleeps in a bed or in a makeshift bed in the middle of rocks. Remains on the pitches, as a mark, even now that someone dares to marry outside the clan, with the excuse that, after so many millennia a bit of new blood in the line we want, and do it in disapproval of the most elderly, which who knows how many times they had desired to have a girl giavani different from that given in marriage by their parents. But then there was no room for lr "trivial" matters of the heart. In their time the primary purpose of marriage was the perpetuation of the species and the role of women (which would preferably be robista constitution) was primarily to give a hand to their husbands in looking after animals.
Many men still think that love is a penalty except in pious regret it secret in the evenings where grappa goes hand in hand up the melancholy, the sound of a desperate clarinet, while females are in the company of goats and sheep they manage to communicate in a guttural language, unintelligible to the ears of the uninitiated, it seems that with the animals work wonders. It does not matter if pastors are to pronounce Vlachs or Sarakatsani.