This photo is of a taverna that we’ve often walked past during the winter months, as the sea front here is good for a walk in the winter sunshine. It’s called the ‘Σχεδία’, which translates literally as ‘The Raft,’ which just goes to show how important the ‘tonos’ is on the ‘i.’ The ‘tonos’ is the little accent that you see over vowels in Greek words and, unlike in French, for example, where the acute or grave accents dictate whether a vowel is either ‘short’ or ‘long,’ the ‘tonos’ is there simply to tell you which syllable to stress when pronouncing the word. In Greek there are virtually no ‘long’ vowels. For example, in the word ‘cake,’ the ‘a’ is long, whereas in the word ‘that’ it’s short. In Greek you never see a ‘long’ ‘α’ at all. The word that’s spelt in Greek ‘σχεδια’ can mean entirely different things if a different syllable is stressed. If you stress the ‘e,’ then it means ‘plans,’ whereas if you stress the ‘i’ then it becomes ‘raft.’

This principle applies to a lot of words. Another example is the word that’s spelt ‘ποτε.‘ In the Roman alphabet, which is used for the latin languages and English, that would be ‘pote.‘ If you write it ‘πότε’ it means ‘when’ when used as part of a question, like ‘when are you coming?‘ If you write it ‘ποτέ’ then it means ‘never.‘ Good eh? Incidentally, if you use the word ‘when‘ in a statement, like – say – “I was there when it happened,” the word for ‘when’ is completely different, it would be ‘όταν,’ which is pronounced ‘oh-tan.’ Greek is a very expressive language and has lots more words than we have in English for almost the same thing.

Anyway, having walked past the ‘Σχεδία’ again last Friday, we resolved to try and correct the oversight of never yet having eaten there as soon as we can. The annoying thing about their sign, when you turn from the road and approach the path that leads along the beach to the restaurant itself, is that it’s spelt in a confusing way…

Can you spot the mistake? They’ve signwritten it using the Roman alphabet, which makes it near impossible to pronounce. In the Roman alphabet, it would be much better spelt ‘Schedia‘, since the Greek ‘χ’ is not an ‘x’ at all, but rather more like a gutteral ‘h.’ Had they done the sign in the Greek alphabet, then it ought to look like this:

Ταβέρνα Εστιατόριο Σχεδία

The funny thing is that on their Facebook page they’ve spelt it correctly in the Roman alphabet (Schedia). Still, perhaps we should celebrate the fact that it’s pretty much par for the course for the quirky way that Greek signs tend to work, right? If we discover that they’re open on weekends during the winter months, then we’ll give it a try, since the write-ups on Tripadvisor indicate that it’s good for vegetarians and vegans too. By far the majority of the reviews there are very positive, so it goes on our ‘to do’ list as of today.

Not a lot else to report on right now, so I’ll just close with a few photos…

Above: I’ve photographed this house before, but the work that the owners put in to making it a joy to walk past when you’re on the edge of town made it a must to whip out the phone and take this one last Saturday. It just makes me happy when I walk past it, that’s all.

Above: I was sitting on a bench last Saturday when I snapped this one. It’s just lovely to see outdoor cafés doing a brisk trade as we approach the back-end of November, isn’t it? It’s just a small corner of the town thats not amazingly pretty, but in the bright sunshine, doesn’t everything look good? How can we complain when we’ve had no rain to speak of since the middle of October and it’s been shirtsleeve weather too. This next few days we might see some rain though, and it is much needed by now, have to admit. Plus temperatures are looking like dropping into the upper teens, whereas the’ve been consistently in the lower-to-mid twenties for weeks.

Just one more, which I took as I was walking through the old part of Kavousi village last Sunday morning. Kavousi boasts that it has the oldest olive tree in Greece (some say the world), but then, so does a village near Chania too, and doubtless numerous other villages throughout the Mediterranean area I shouldn’t wonder…

As you can see, the sky was a rare grey colour last Sunday morning, although by mid-afternoon it had cleared again. Sorry about that.

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