Page:The nomads of the Balkans, an account of life and customs among the Vlachs of Northern Pindus (1914).djvu/51

 also the one primitive inn where the stranger may stay if he wishes. But Samarina is so hospitable that it considers it disgraceful that any respectable stranger should be forced to lodge at the inn and not be invited to stay in a private house. In front of each food shop is a long wooden trough on four legs about three feet high. This is lined with tin and filled with glowing charcoal over which lambs are roasted whole on a wooden spit. The roast meat is afterwards cut up and sold in joints. Muleteers when they return to Samarina often collect in the evening at one of these shops and discuss together two or three pounds of roast meat and as much wine as they please. On the other smaller spits of iron the lamb’s fry will be roasted and sold as a kind of hors d'œuvre to be consumed with a glass or two of raki. If it be evening we may find K'ibăk'i also roasting on an iron spit. Should any one wish to celebrate some occurrence he will invite his friends to join in K'ibăk'i one evening. K'ibăk'i are small portions of meat, and are made by hacking up two or three pounds of mutton with a baltaki. When they are ready roasted the party will take them to the back room of the shop and make merry with meat, bread and wine, finishing the evening with dancing. This is the usual way of spending any penitadha left by departing friends. The custom is that any one on his departure from Samarina should leave behind with the friends who come to see him off, a sum of money called penitadha, which may vary from a humble five piastres to one or two pounds, for them to make merry with as they please after his departure. Some will betake themselves to a sweet shop and consume a pound or two of Bâklâvâ, a favourite Turkish sweetmeat made of thin pastry strewTi with almonds or walnuts and drenched with honey. Others will make a night of it in La Hani with K'ibăk'i, with music and with dancing. Between the food shops there are also several wooden cobbler’s booths with a kind of veranda outside where the apprentices sit and work. Practically every young muleteer learns a trade, and often in the summer instead of going about with his father and the mules will sit at his trade in Samarina, cobbling, tailoring or carpentering as the case may be. La Hani as