Oneiromazemata (Dreamgatherings)

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The word Oneiromazemata doesn’t exist in the Greek language. It’s a word we created to describe a celebration organized by our café, To Oneirologio (The Dream Log), in Ano Doliana.

From 2010 to 2014, on the last Saturday of September, we invited our friends to a festival under the motto: “No one pays, no one gets paid.”
Anyone who wished to participate could contribute in kind — at the very least, we asked them to bring along their good mood. We provided the tsipouro and meze at first, but over time, more and more people brought their own food and appetizers to share at the communal table.

Musician friends would bring their instruments and we would start the dance. We organized gift-based bazaars with clothes, toys, and books, and held open-air photography and painting exhibitions. We also put on theatrical performances. And finally, we had the only raffle in the world where the tickets were given away for free to all participants.

We stopped organizing Oneiromazemata in 2014, to protect the spirit of the event from fading — we didn’t want it to turn into just another gathering offering free food and drink.