It’s 21ºC outside, and it’s around 1.00pm. There’s not a single cloud in the sky and there’s no wind. Way down the valley, between the two hills that frame our view of it, the sea glistens like a thousand diamonds, in that particular way it does only at this time of the year, when the sun’s just that bit lower in the sky than it is during the high summer. It’s December 18th, and we’ve just spent a very pleasant half an hour on our sun beds on the terrace drinking our coffee, both of us gushing with appreciative comments about how our little life together had turned out.

More and more often, as we gradually get older, I find myself musing over quite what my life would have been had we not taken the plunge and relocated here to Greece in August of 2005. What would my life have been like back there in the UK? Of course, it’s an impossible task to speculate, but it’s interesting to do so all the same. I’m sure we’d have done OK, but the winters there, when we contemplate them now after twenty years here in the southern Aegean, would, I’m sure, have been really getting on my nerves by now. This past couple of years it’s been unavoidable to conclude that climate change is taking place, and that it’s affecting some places more than others.

On a daily basis, when you watch the international news, there is yet another place either ravaged by the strongest hurricane or typhoon ever recorded, or flooded, as rivers burst their banks after the region has received a month’s rainfall in just a few hours. It’s devastation on a scale we’ve definitely never seen before. Here in South East Crete, the only effect we seem to be experiencing is a distinct lack of the usual rainfall during the early winter months. OK, so it makes for a wonderful opportunity to sip iced coffee on the seafront, or eat a lunchtime meal al fresco but, like it or not, we need the rain. Here in our area it’s mainly agriculture that sustains the economy, and up until recently the inhabitants of the Ierapetra area have been doing very nicely thank you very much. That may be about to change though.

If there isn’t sufficient rain before the summer arrives next year, then we’re in serious poo. The authorities have, in the view of many, been dragging their feet about preparing for this scenario and, whereas other islands have already constructed desalination plants in quiet areas along their coastlines, nothing of the sort has yet been done here. But I didn’t want to talk about that. I wanted this post to remain upbeat.

For quite a few months now, each time I’ve logged into my Greek bank’s internet banking site, once I’ve reached the home page (after having tapped my phone’s screen while using the bank’s app in response to the security check that makes one’s logging in process more secure, hopefully), there has been an orange box showing up telling me to update my personal details. There’s a direct link there to the government portal, where you can log in with you own password and PIN and, once in, you can download your tax return, or your vehicle road tax certificate (and a bunch of other stuff) and also update your user profile. The only thing is, each time I’ve clicked that link and logged into my account with the Greek Government, even though I could access my profile, it wouldn’t let me make any changes. The relevant buttons were greyed out for some reason. We were in the accountant’s office a few months back, and I asked him about it.

You know what he said? “Forget it, we all see that. I should ignore it if I were you.”

So, for a few more months I did. Then Yvonne had an email from the bank just the other day, suggesting that she may want to make an appointment with our local bank manager in order to be sure that they have all her details correct. Although we still thought that there wasn’t much point, since we were convinced that nothing had changed, we complied. It was a flaming good job we did.

Here in Greece your bank needs to know a great deal more about you than your UK one does. It can seem a little intrusive, to tell you the truth, but then they’re only doing their job by complying with the government regulations, after all. We dreaded going back into the bank because, here in Greece, our experience of stepping inside that building has always been horrendous. For starters you’d be best advised to take a flask of coffee and a picnic with you, maybe even your shaving gear (and that’s only the ladies! – Sorry, couldn’t resist that one, even though it’s a bit hackneyed by now). You know what, though? Things have changed, and we were very pleasantly surprised.

In our branch of Alpha Bank here in Ierapetra, the desk staff are all situated in a kind of open plan arrangement around the periphery of the banking hall. OK, so yes, the cash desk is still woefully undermanned, but we saw that the Manager’s desk was free and so I popped my head around his glass partition and asked if we could enquire about something. He immediately bade us sit down and asked what it was he could do for us. When we explained, he enquired after our tax numbers and called our details up on screen. Oops. Last spring we renewed our passports, for the second time since moving to Greece in fact, since we’ve now passed our twenty year anniversary of living here. He was quick to point out that ‘Your passports have expired,’ and that without a hint of accusation or condescension, but we did need to be reminded that the bank needs our passport details on file, after all.

One thing I learned a long time ago now was that any time you need to visit an office, be it the Tax Office, the KEP, the hospital or the bank, you’d best have every single piece of documentation you possess with you. You can bet your very last dollar that the one piece of paper that you don’t bring along will be the one they need. I was well pleased with myself for having brought along colour photocopies of our new passports, as well as the originals. Belt and braces, folks, belt and braces.

To cut a long story short, it amazed us how many odd details were out of date and needed updating. What was even more astounding though, was how affable our bank manager turned out to be. He asked about where in the UK we came from and confessed that he’d actually spent his honeymoon there, partly in Scotland and partly in London. He’d gone to university in Swansea, would you believe. Plus, he turned out to be quite the expert on both Scottish and Irish Whiskey (He’s been to Ireland too and knows about Jameson’s and Bush Mills, for starters), and Guinness. He asked if there was anything we missed about life in the UK and my reply was, “Not much really, although I could kill for a pint of ale from the pump now and again in a traditional pub.”

“Hmm, not a fan, but when you talk about Guinness, now there’s a different story!” And he proceeded to reveal just how much he knows about how to draw the perfect pint of Guinness, letting it stand and all the works. We left there with warm glow, having passed an extremely agreeable half an hour chatting with him. It was like he had all the time in the world.

I already mentioned in a previous post about how the government here has streamlined the process of renewing one’s driving licence. All in all, things are looking up. Bureaucracy in Greece is still a deal more involved that it is in the UK, but it’s become an entirely different ball game to wade through than it was just a few years back. So, returning to my opening comments about the wonderful December weather we’re having today; not a day passes without us expressing to each other how contented we are with our own little home, our own little car, and a simply amazing place to live. If you’re thinking about a major change in your life, I’d never say don’t do your homework, but all the same, taking the plunge may be the best thing you ever did.

Yes, to express gratitude is good for your mental and physical health, so I’ve read somewhere. Well, mine comes with a capital ‘G’ and no mistake.

Above (& the photo at the top): Ierapetra fishing harbour in December.

Above: This Red Admiral settled on our fence to sun itself as we were sipping our coffee.

Above: The tiny church right opposite the fortress at the entrance to the fishing harbour.

Above: Some of the hibiscus that we keep in pots on our terrace, nice eh?

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Well, winter has arrived for sure. We’re experiencing our first cool air mass since the summer and it’s brought the daytime temperatures down into the teens. In fact, today we’ve just been for an hour’s walk up towards Meseleri and the temperature on the veranda when we left the house was only reading 15ºC at around 3.30pm, which is generally as cold as it ever gets during the day at any time in the winter. We’re not complaining though, because we still had our coffee out on the sun-loungers on the terrace this morning as the clouds scudded sedately around above us, occasionally granting some warm sunshine and other times obscuring the sun so that it instantly felt colder.

We’ve actually now had some real rain too, and that’s good because the drought was getting rather serious. A few nights ago Storm Byron swept across the whole country, bringing fast-flowing muddy torrents even to the streets on the tiny island of Kastelorizo. We saw this on the TV news report and decided that we’d got off very lightly here. All we had was a rather wild night, and the worst of the rain only lasted about an hour. There were, however, a few major wind gusts, one of which managed to knock a couple of plant pots over and rearrange the patio chairs a little. We didn’t lose power either, apart from one very brief millisecond when it went off and immediately came back on again. It did annoy me anyway though, as I was watching a music documentary on YouTube at the time and had to wait a few minutes while the router reset itself.

That’s nothing though. In Myrtos, just 15k to the west of us, some friends of ours said that they’d lost power in the night and it was off for most of the next day. 

Passing by the mailboxes in the main street on Friday, I opened ours to find it empty (it usually is), although it did grate slightly because Yvonne’s been waiting for a new debit card to arrive from our UK bank, and you just never know how long mail is going to take from the UK ever since it left the EU (grrr). The boxes are only a couple of minutes walk from the house, but we usually pull up beside them in the car as we’re returning home from town. I was just about to get back into the car when a voice called out, “Hang on there Gianni!”

I looked up to see that Angla’i’a was trotting towards me, a bunch of letters and a package or two in her hands. She came right up to me and asked if I’d help her sort it all, and thrust them all into my hands while she fumbled with the master key to open the front panel of the village mailboxes. 

“How come you’ve got it all then?” I asked her, “and the master key too?”

‘The latest postman’s too lazy to hang about long enough to make sure that all the mail goes into the correct boxes,” she replied, “so I told him to give it all to me and I’d do it.”

That figured. At least she knows that she’ll do a good job, especially when she’s got the likes of me happening by to lend a hand. Sifting through what was in my hands, I soon discovered that half of it was either for us or our next door neighbours, so I was able to take that off her hands. There was a package from Healthspan, the UK Channel Island-based company from which we order all our herb supplements and vitamins, and there was also a letter for Yvonne with a stiff section in it and, when we opened it, it proved to be that which we’d theorised. Her new card had arrived safely, phew. The mail only comes to the village once a week, and the recent TV news report about the Greek Government’s decision to close around 200 post offices nationwide set alarm bells ringing loudly. We’d seen a newspaper report that the ELTA Courier office in Ierapetra was closing without delay, so not a few people around here also concluded that we were in danger of losing our main post office too, which would truly be a disaster for this area.

Just last Tuesday we’d had to go into town to see if we could get Yvonne’s new driving licence sorted. I’m not about to tell you how old she is, but both of us need to renew our licenses every three years now. Sigh. Still, we knew what to do because we’d already done it a couple of times anyway, the last time having been when I renewed mine last winter. In case you’re not aware, in order to get your new driving license ordered correctly, you need to fulfil a number of criteria.

1. You have to get a ‘paraboli’ from the local KEP office. That’s essentially a form that you take to either your bank or the local Post Office where you pay a fee of €105.

2. You need to get two identical photos done and they need to fulfil the right requirements size-wise and content-wise.

3. You have to get a doctor/cardiologist to check your heart over and sign that you’re not likely to keel over while at the wheel.

4. You need to visit an optician where the eye test isn’t as rigorous as it would be for a new pair of glasses, but you need to be able to read numbers and letters from a specific distance. He or she too has to issue a certificate declaring that you can see OK to drive. Both the cardiologist and the optician levy a fixed fee of €20. It’s gone up a bit over recent years, but not a great deal. I have heard some horror stories from ex-pats living here, though, who tell me that they were charged well over the odds, like for example €50 a pop, or even more. It’s a lottery depending on where in the country you live, it seems, but if you speak the language well enough, you’re OK, they’ll treat you as a local and you’re less likely to be ripped off.

Once you’ve got all that done you have to go back to the KEP office where they’ll process the application. This time around we were well impressed at how much progress the government has made in digitalising the whole process. When you go to the KEP office for the paraboli it now has a four digit PIN on it. That PIN is then used by both the optician and the cardiologist to process their certificates, and it’s all done via the government’s computerised system. Wow, eh? Greece is well and truly getting adapted to the 21st century and no mistake. The photo too, isn’t printed out like it used to be, the photographer merely emails it to the KEP office, and from there it’s added to the online application, and bob’s your uncle, all done. Say goodbye to reams of A4 photocopies with rubber stamps all over them. Ooh, I could get quite nostalgic, but I won’t, don’t you worry.

With only a couple of slight hiccups we got it all done in the one morning and went for a coffee on the seafront to celebrate. Oh, and since we were in the Post Office to pay the paraboli, I was able to ask the lady behind the counter if ours was going to close under the Government’s sweeping reforms. “No,” she replied, “it’s not.” Boy was I relieved to hear that, as no doubt would 26,000 other local residents be too, I reckon.

Here is the usual selection of recent photos (and maybe a nostalgic one or two, we’ll see):

Above: Coffee at the Plaz on November 14th, around 1.00pm.

Above: At last, with the weather cooling down we can go back to taking walks in the olive groves and mountainsides, a truly joyous winter pastime.

Above: the view through our French Windows on November 28th at 8.25am.

Both of the above: The north beach at Ierapetra, November 30th at around 11.25am

Above: We’re giving our olive trees a serious prune, but that doesn’t mean we can’t stop for coffee.

Above gallery: Just after dawn last Thursday, as Storm Byron retreats into the distance.

And, finally, one from the archive…

Above: Believe it or not, the above is a colour photo. It was taken Friday 9th March 2012 from our garden in Kiotari on Rhodes, and I still marvel at the beauty of those cloud formations. The photo is not retouched in any way.

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Here are some more photos from our twenty years in Greece. There are descriptions on them and if you click to open them individually, you get a better view. All of these are from our 14 years on Rhodes. Hope you like them…

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Above: The winter arrangement. All beach furniture now removed until next spring, but the sea’s still perfect for swimming.

Having finished reading Kathryn Gauci’s wonderfully evocative ‘Aegean Odyssey,” I’ve been immersed in some nostalgic thoughts of late about moments over the past 48 years of my Greek experience. Some brief instances in time are still so vivid in my memory that I can, not only see them in my mind’s eye, but smell the smells, feel the breeze, hear the sounds. Kathryn talks about various small accommodations that she stayed in during her journey of self re-discovery among a selection of Greek islands where the real Greece was still to be found back in 2005.

I’ve been to some of those places that she describes, although not all. Sadly, there have been changes since she re-visited those locations. After all, two decades have passed now and ‘development’ is no respecter of either place or memory. She mentions, for instance, the very pretty coastal village of Mochlos, on the north coast of Lasithi, just off the road from Agios Nikolaos to Sitia. Mochlos is still just as pretty as it was in 2005, but alas, now extremely busy with foreign tourists during the summer months. It’s not more than 30 minutes drive from our home, so a couple of years ago we decided to go and check it out, mainly because we’d had a chat with an English woman (a rare occurrence still on the local town beach here in Ierapetra) who’d raved about the place and said it was her favourite location for a waterside meal.

We set off full of anticipation and were soon winding our way down the snaky lane that drops down from the main Sitia road. Just behind the mountain from Mochlos is a massive quarry, where half a mountainside has been gouged out in order to provide sandstone for building works on the island and doubtless other locations as well. You can’t help but notice it as you negotiate the tight twists and turns of the steeply descending road on the way down to Mochlos. In fact, you drive right past the works entrance, where all the surrounding vegetation is coated with a thick layer of dust from the cutting of the stone. Although it’s now an eyesore, it does, oddly enough have a very ancient beginning and is thus an integral part of area’s history. It was extensively used during the Minoan New Palace period (around 1700-1450 B.C.) to produce large ashlar blocks for constructing important buildings, most notably the nearby Minoan palace at Gournia.  Sandstone was valued at the time for its colour, texture, and the ease with which it could be cut.

Anyway, once you get well past it, the mountain cuts it off from view and you soon catch sight of the tiny island that’s only metres from the Mochlos quay, and this island too boasts a Minoan ruin dating back many thousands of years. The Mochlos sea front is quite compact, and consists mainly of a footpath which winds in and out of a couple of tiny bays and offers a varied choice of tavernas and bars. Picturesque it most certainly still is, but quiet? Afraid not. We walked the entire sea front and also the few back streets, and were quite dismayed at the fact that we hardly saw a Greek person eating at any of the tavernas. We had so expected to be charmed by the place, but found ourselves musing that, had we decided to sit down at one of the restaurants, our fluency in Greek aside, the staff would be certain to talk to us in English. Despite its visual appeal, we couldn’t wait to get out of there and back to Ierapetra. The whole place seemed to be packed with tall, blonde people. In fact, nearby Pachi Amos is nowhere near as pretty, but it’s much more authentic, and many locals can be seen in the few bars and restaurants there at any time of the year. We’ve eaten there a few times and always felt at home, and unhurried.

Meditating on Kathryn’s words, as she expressed her feelings when sitting in some tiny taverna, sampling the fish that’d been caught only hours earlier, one of my most vivid and cherished memories came flooding back over me. Four times in five years from 1977 through 1982, we’d stayed for three weeks at a time on the tiny island of Poros in the Saronic Gulf. Every time we’d gone there we’d stayed in village rooms run by Mrs Georgia Mellou, whose rooms were up a steeply stepped backstreet from the quayside where the boats plying the route from Piraeus to Hydra and Spetses tied up. We’d telephone Kyria Georgia a few days before flying (Dan Air, of course) and she’d be sure and keep us the same room each time. We had a tiny balcony, just large enough for a couple of chairs and one of those little round tables that we often think of as French to nestle on. After an afternoon sleep, we’d rise and make a cup of tea before Yvonne would begin her unhurried ritual of getting herself ready for our evening adventure, beginning with a stroll off down the narrow street called Mitropoleos to the sea front.

I’d say it would have been around the hours of 7.00pm to 8.30pm when I’d sit out on that balcony, book in hand, with other houses nestled right beneath where I sat, so close that I could see into their courtyards if I wanted to. There was a jumble of terracotta tiled roofs between me and the waterfront, just maybe fifty metres away, and I could catch through the gaps between the houses glimpses of some of the small shops on the steep Mitropoleos, which connected the street where we were staying with the harbour front below. Bougainvillea and jasmine scented the air and, as the evening slowly enveloped us and the stars began to emerge in the darkening sky, the smell of charcoal being prepared to cook was everywhere. The heartbeat of that small harbour town pulsed strong and true and I loved it. The smell of the charcoal would get my tastebuds excited as I sipped at my aperitif, usually ouzo, or maybe a vermouth, or perhaps Campari. I’d even imbibe a chilled beer that we kept in the shared fridge along the landing now and then too.

Those brief interludes were a life changing and enhancing experience for me, a young English kid, not long married and with a Greek mother-in-law. They made such an impact on me that here I am now, all those years later living the experience again when I close my eyes.

I could go on and on, but that’s enough for now. You want to see some photos, yeah? Here’s a gallery of recent shots taken in Ierapetra…

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… And be sure to read An Aegean Odyssey, by Kathryn Gauci. 

Here’s my personal review:

I’ve just finished Kathryn Gauci’s very personal memoir, and I’m slightly annoyed with her because it’s not longer. I’ve been so immersed in her self-awakening solo trip back to Greece after many years away that I didn’t want it to end so soon. I suppose that you’ll probably get more out of this book if, like me, you’re a hopeless Grecophile, but if you like travel writing in general, you’d better not pass this one up anyway.

Kathryn wasn’t sure she wanted to make this trip alone, since she had a perfectly good marriage, but, owing to circumstances, she went ahead anyway. Right at the very end of the book she makes a really valid point about travelling solo that I’ve often thought too, although never been able to put it into words. When you experience something on your own, it’s an entirely different thing from how it would be if accompanied by someone else, in this case, her husband. You meet people, experience feelings and emotions, see places in ways that wouldn’t be the same with someone beside you. It’s not better, it’s not worse, it’s simply different, but in such a way that you realise how much it enriches your life. If you can do it, then it’s 100% worthwhile.

Kathryn goes to places (islands, mainly) many of which I know well myself, so maybe that too made her writings resonate more deeply with me. But if you’ve any experience at all of Greek people and culture, then surely you’ll also find this work totally absorbing. She has a wonderful gift for evoking in you mental pictures of the places she’s describing, the people she’s interacting with.

Kathryn Gauci is a living treasure that all avid book readers would do well to appreciate. I’ve already gushed about this book on previous posts, but, now I’ve finished it, here are a few more quotes that especially resonated with me:

“Tactility, expressions of love and friendship that are not all sexual.” Here she talks about the tendency of the Greeks, especially of close friends, even of the same sex, to walk along the street with arms around each other. It’s affection, pure and simple, and it’s indicative of a warmth that we Brits as a rule do not possess and has nothing to do with their sexual orientation.

“‘Unfortunately,’ Sotiris said, ‘many of the package tourists are not encouraged to come to the theatre. There is now a growing number of hotels who try to keep their guests entertained at the hotel in order to make them spend their money there. All-you-can-eat buffets, happy hours, and live entertainment by mediocre pop musicians have all added to the decline in audiences experiencing the real Greece.” This comment by Sotiris, a struggling Greek businessman, well expresses the locals’ view of the awful and meteoric increase in ‘all inclusive’ resorts these past few years. And this is from twenty years ago too, when ‘all Inclusive’ was still in its infancy. If you want to experience the ‘Real Greece,’ then you’re never going to find it in these altars to mass tourism that only benefit rich tour operators, hotel chains and owners.

“The moonlight has soothed my soul and energised my body. It is a moment when I truly understand that there is so much more to life than material gain. Nature in all its glory will always be with us, everywhere and for everyone, and we can all have a ringside seat if only we bother to look.” Kathryn’s on the tiny island of Karpathos when she writes this. How we humans so often fail to understand what truly brings contentment and peace of mind. If you’re in a small village on a hillside in Greece, and you actually take a moment to pause and imbibe the environment around you, then you may just crack it.

“The sea is already a deep blue-green, the surrounding mountains are bathed in a soft haze, and the air is humid. The perspiration is already dripping from my body. This is not typical Greek weather, which is normally a dry heat.” I so identified with this. Although the moment she describes took place twenty years ago, it’s indicative of a change in climate that’s affecting Greece, just like everywhere else, more and more with the passing years. I’ve been coming to this country since 1977, and most of my visits before we moved here in 2005 were made in either June or September/October. The depth of blue in the sky at that time of the year (and she writes this comment about the month of October) is impossibly vivid. You’d see a blue that we never ever saw in the UK. The reason for this has been the dry atmosphere, pure and simple. You could be very, very hot here, yet not perspire too much. In actuality, heat makes us perspire commensurately, but a dry heat means that our sweat evaporates and thus we don’t feel sticky. If the atmosphere’s humid then the sweat remains on our skin and doesn’t evaporate so easily, thus making us feel uncomfortably ‘damp.’ A humid atmosphere also makes the sky’s blue more milky. This past two decades there has been much more weather like this. So-called experts have been warning us for a long time about the possibility of rising sea levels owing to melting polar ice caps. We haven’t seen the sea level rise anything like to the extent that some had predicted, so where has all the extra water gone? In my humble opinion, it’s all around us, it’s in the atmosphere, making it more humid more often.

“The mental paralysis that creeps upon us in the modern industrial world is like a cancer. Achievement is measured by material possessions and commercial success. Like the tide that slowly ebbs away, a more spiritual and meaningful life has taken its place during these last weeks.”  Here Kathryn expresses a view about the healing nature of her Aegean Odyssey. If you immerse yourself in the ‘Real Greece,’ that is to say the little out-of-the-way tavernas and kafeneia that are frequented more by locals than by the tourist hordes, if you go up into the mountains and forests and allow the environment to seep into your psyche, if you engage in conversation with a little old lady all dressed in black, who’ll proffer you a sprig of basil, or maybe a Greek coffee if you’ll sit with her awhile, then your appreciation for what truly matters gradually and imperceptibly changes for the better. 

If you take the time to read Kathryn’s deeply personal solo odyssey, then even through its pages you’ll probably become more mellow, more able to appreciate what’s truly important in this life. So much has been said and written about why Greece is unique. If you want to understand why, reading this wonderful book will go a long way towards helping you find the answer.

Now for a few of my own photos…

Above: My late and much missed mother-in-law, Lela, on an Athens doorstep not long after the Second World War.

Above: A moody shot in the village of Meseleri, the next one about 5km up the road from us.

Above gallery: ‘Filling the hole in the bole’ of one of two ancient olive trees in the lower garden. That tree’s trunk is split so completely that it almost looks like two trees beside each other, although it is one rootstock. The gap between the two trunks has long looked a bit bereft to us, so when we split the canas in one of our pots beside the house recently, we first filled the ‘hole in the bole’ with a large sack of compost, then replanted the cana that we’d taken out of the overcrowded pot there. It’s already settled in well and is producing new flowers. A result!

Above gallery: After a wonderful couple of hours on the town beach on Sunday, we repaired to the Konaki taverna for lunch. It has to be said that at this time of the year the climate difference between Crete and the UK is especially noticeable!

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Philotimo is a cornerstone of Greek culture that embodies a complex set of virtues that are almost impossible to translate with a single word. While literally meaning “love of honor,” its true significance extends far beyond that phrase to encompass a deep sense of dignity, integrity, and selflessness. For Greeks, it is a way of life that emphasizes treating others with kindness and respect. The thing is, there’s no direct way of translating what that word means into English. What are its core values though?

Honor and integrity: At its heart, it’s about acting with a strong moral compass and doing the right thing, simply because it is the right thing to do. It’s a matter of personal and family pride, where one’s actions reflect not just on themselves but also on their community.

Generosity and selflessness: Demonstrating philotimo often involves acts of sincere, selfless kindness, such as helping others without expecting anything in return. This can be seen in everyday gestures, like a host’s warm hospitality, or in more profound examples, like citizens rescuing refugees.

Empathy and respect: The concept is deeply rooted in empathy—the ability to understand and consider the well-being of others. This drives the behavior of treating others, including strangers, with warmth, courtesy, and respect.

Humility and duty: Despite its connection to honour, philotimo is expressed with humility, and it entails an awareness that one’s behavior reflects on their family and country. It is a conscious effort to perform one’s duty and live responsibly.

I’ve known the word for many years, of course, but it sprang to mind recently as I was reading the magical and totally engaging memoir by Kathryn Gauci, ‘An Aegean Odyssey.’ Here are a few quotes from that part of the book that I’ve most recently been absorbed in:
“I pass an old woman standing outside her kafeneion, crocheting. ‘Kalimera sas,’ I say to her, bidding her good day. ‘Kalimera,’ she replies. We start a conversation. She is curious, not only that I understand her, but about my life. Am I married? Where is my husband? Do I have any children? All the usual questions that I answer time and time again in Greece. It’s always the women who ask; no Greek man has ever asked me these questions. She gives me a sprig of basil – a Greek welcome.“

It was that sprig of basil that set me off on yet another reverie. A local Greek will always want to give you something, and if they have nothing else, it’ll be a sprig of basil, a flower, a koulouraki, but always it’ll be something. I think that philotimo goes a long way towards explaining too why the crime rates are so low in local village communities. There is such a deep sense of family pride and reputation at stake. OK, so it’s a fine line between aloofness and a healthy dose of pride. I say ‘pride’ in this context to refer mainly, not to an air of superiority, but to a desire to maintain the family’s reputation. It works on everyone in the ‘tribe,’ so to speak. No one wants to bring shame on their relatives, and it’s a really healthy deterrent to wrong conduct. I so identify with her words about women asking quite personal questions about one’s life too. It takes some getting used to if you’re new to Greece, but they mean no harm and wouldn’t understand our British reserve, as it were.

Another brief but telling quote from Kathryn’s travelogue, as she investigates different islands and the more remote villages on them, “Everywhere, people want to give me gifts – small gestures of remembrance – Philotimo.” She’s right, of course, no matter where you go in either rural or island Greece, this principle applies. Kathryn goes into one aging kafeneio, primarily because she wants to find a toilet, but she ends up having a rewarding conversation with the female host, not to mention three swarthy Greeks sitting at a table, whose appearance puts her on edge to begin with. Of course, within minutes they’ve called to her and asked her to join them, which in this instance she politely declines, but carries on her conversation with the café owner. When she gets up to leave and asks how much is the coffee, the reply is, “Nothing, you are my guest. I hope that you will have good memories of Crete.”

This has been our experience so many times as well. I remember one particular instance on the island of Patmos, when we’d made the walk all the way from Skala, the main village and port on the island (where we were staying) all the way up to Kampos, which is quite a trek. When you reach Kampos, you arrive first at a modest little square with a picturesque little church to your right, and adjacent to that is the road leading down to Kampos beach, a further fifteen minutes away on foot. On the left is the truly delightful little cafe bar called the ‘Aroma,’ which has a very appealing shady terrace, filled with traditional-looking tables and chairs. After a fairly strenuous walk, we were only too pleased to rest our pins at a table and order a couple of iced coffees. We were also a bit peckish, so once our coffees had arrived I went inside to ask the host what she had that we could eat along with a cold coffee. She didn’t have much, but showed me a cake that she’d made that morning, one of those that’s quite common here in Greece. It’s round, with a hole in the middle (like an inner tube) and is two different colours, one rather chocolaty-looking and the other yellow, like a heavy sponge cake. It’s actually quite to our liking as it’s in no way too sweet. In fact many Greeks eat this cake at breakfast time, along with some olives, a slice or two of ham and some cheese and paximadia.

She offered to cut us a couple of chunks of cake, and I accepted gratefully.

Also seated on the terrace were an elderly couple, the wife of whom had her arm bandaged and in a sling, plus a couple of local working men taking a short break from their toil. The landlady too eventually sat down and there followed a lovely conversation, much of which involved us answering the kinds of questions that Kathryn refers to above. When we decided it was time to move on, since we wanted to make it down to the beach where we planned to have lunch beside the sea, I asked the café owner for the bill. She replied, “Oh, forget it. You’ve were my guests. Hope to see you again some day.”

And, as it happens, she eventually did. We went back to Patmos the following year for a further three weeks during springtime, and we made the same walk and sat once again in the Aroma, where this time I made sure that we paid for our drinks, since the poor woman has to make a living.

I’ve got a further 30% or so of Kathryn’s book to read before I finish it, but I’m already having withdrawal symptoms. I shall miss it when I reach the end. If you’ve done what we did and moved out here to live permanently, then you’ll easily identify with many of Kathryn Gauci’s experiences. If you simply come here for your holidays and have made sure to get away from the hordes and experience the ‘Real Greece,’ then you’ll also I’m sure find many of her experiences resonate with your own. If you’ve yet to find out what it is about this amazing country that seeps into one’s soul and never lets it escape again, then I’d advise you to start planning for a visit now, and do so without resorting to tour operators’ big hotels or All Inclusive packages, and you’ll soon be smitten, I guarantee it.

Photo time again…

Above: Our sun terrace after dark. I rather like the mood of this one.

Above: Our beloved town beach a few days ago. You can see the newly opened renovated Venetian Fortress at the far end of the bay, and to the left the harbour wall.

Above: The back of the same beach, showing why we so love eating and drinking here. The one below was taken during an evening meal right there, in fact:

As was this one too…

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I’m getting a bit behind with all the photos I’ve been snapping lately, so this post will be mainly photos and a brief description/explanation where necessary. Hope you like them. Firstly, the one above was taken on Sunday October 12th in the area known as Mavros Kolymvos, just west of Makry Gialos at around 11.30am.

Gallery above: The new Mayor of the village (although I suppose he’s been ‘in office’ for a while now) Manolis, has been busy upgrading the traditional-looking lampposts in the village to LED type. Just a few nights ago, after a week or so of darkness while the new lamps were being fitted, they were switched on. I reckon they look pretty good. What do you think? These were taken at around 3.30am. Here are just a few more of the village in daylight too…

We did our first real walk of the winter on Friday October 3rd, since the temperatures have been somewhat low for the time of year since the beginning of the month (although they’re cranking up again now. It’s 25ºC outside as I type this post). With it having been slightly cooler we made the walk to the tiny church on the hillside across the valley from the village. Here are two views looking back on the village, one from around halfway to the church, and the other taken from outside the churchyard wall…

The first of those two above shows well how the olive farmers rotavate their olive groves at the end of the summer, in the hope that there will be autumn rains that will soak into the soil and fatten up their olives for the harvest that begins in earnest during November. Apart from one big short-lived storm though, they’re still waiting.

Above: I know, I’m showing off again, but since the hibiscus in their pots and the trailing plant that I put into the raised beds that I’d built have brought us so much joy this summer, I couldn’t help but take photos of them.

Above: A tiny cairn that someone had built on the beach. It’s only about 9 inches tall, and I couldn’t believe that it had stayed erect for as long as it had. Plus a delicious milopita (apple pastry) that comes a very close second to bougatsa as a small indulgence to accompany our iced coffees on the beach now and then.

Above: When we walk the lane up the mountain from our village towards Meseleri there are a couple of almond trees right beside the road, and they’re sadly not harvested any more. So, without much encouragement needed, we stuffed our pockets with the ones we could reach. I shelled them after drying them for a couple of days and added them to our almond jar. When you consider that they are grown everywhere here, it’s a bit eye-watering to see how much you have to spend to buy them in the shops.

And, finally…

Above: In a small café in Makry Gialos on Sunday, I couldn’t help noticing this sign. Good eh?

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I’m currently reading Kathryn Gauci’s enchanting book about her odyssey in the Aegean around twenty years ago. She travelled alone around much of the Aegean in 2005, the very year, by sheer coincidence, that my wife and I moved from the UK to live permanently in Greece. I’m currently around 40% of the way through this arresting account and I have to say that so far it’s grabbed hold of my soul and sent me down all kinds of memory lanes. Kathryn’s prose is erudite, without being pretentious. She enfolds the reader in her own experience effortlessly and the wonder of what she sees and hears during her travels and how these things affect her seeps into your head and plucks at your heart strings.

Maybe it’s affecting me this way because so much of what she writes about echoes my own experience both with Greek people and with the country itself, I don’t know. What I do know is that it’s essential reading for any grecophile, that’s for sure. Kathryn’s Greek experience has given her an ‘honorary Greekness’ in much the same way as I feel mine has done for me. She writes, for example, “Here in Greece it is possible to sit for ages with only one drink. The café and bar owners will never make you feel uncomfortable. They appreciate the true meaning of a leisurely drink.” You have to truly know how to simply sit and enjoy the moment, much in the same way as the locals do and have done since they were born, to grasp what this means, and how good it is for the soul.

Another quote from her that I really like is: “Somehow I feel different. I can sense a peacefulness I don’t think I’ve had for years. I have begun to let go and really relax, and I wasn’t even aware of it happening.” This happens when you interact with the locals, when you stop looking at your watch, when you simply savour the moment. If you’ve spent any time at all in Greece then you’ll certainly have seen the old guys simply sitting. Sometimes they’re on a rickety old chair under a tree beside the road. Sometimes they’re at their ropey old table on their terrace, under the shade of a bougainvillea, but you’ll have seen them. They know how to simply sit and watch, observe, allow the experience to calm them for the day or week ahead. 

Kathryn also knows how most Greeks view their homes. Maybe things are changing in the cities these days, but in rural areas and villages, locals hardly ever buy or sell property. It’s simply not done. Kathryn writes, “There are hardly any estate agents. Greeks very rarely buy and sell from a real estate agent unless they are in the market for exclusive properties. Estate agents, by and large cater to the foreign tourists looking for holiday homes.”

Kathryn, when growing up in the UK, had a friend whose mother was Greek. Her introduction to things such as Greek cuisine came through this channel, much the same way as mine did owing to the fact that my girlfriend (eventually my fiancee and then wife) also had a mother who was Greek, and the aromas from her kitchen were something I’d never experienced before I began frequenting her house in Ringswell Gardens, Bath, UK. The exotic smell of fish soup done with olive oil and lemon juice, for example captured my imagination in just the same way as it did hers. Maybe this is why this book is enchanting me so. I have to say that this past few days I’ve been reading it on the Kindle app on my phone while laying on a lounger on the local town beach, and it’s caused me to take stock of my life, of ours, Yvonne’s and mine, I should say.

I began this very morning (as I’m writing this part of the post late at night on Monday October 6th) by looking up from the device and taking in my surroundings with a fresh perspective for what’s probably the umpteenth time. People back in the UK often talk about either buying a property in Greece, or maybe moving out here permanently, as ‘living the dream.’ What precisely is that ‘dream’ I don’t really think we actually know. Spending a couple of weeks here during your summer holiday gives you an entirely different experience from that which you have once you’ve burned your bridges and taken the plunge, which we did back in August 2005. Yet, if you can hack it, as in navigate your way through the complex bureaucracy that’s involved, and adjusting to the mindset of the local people, you may stand a chance. Over our twenty years now of living here we’ve seen many, many folk pack it all in and go back. There have been all kinds of reasons for this, but often it’s that they simply weren’t prepared for the difference in living here during July and August and spending an entire winter here. Maybe they had grandchildren and realised that living a couple of thousand miles away meant that they were missing their children’s children’s formative years. Some have gone back owing to major health problems. There’s quite a daunting list, I can tell you. 

Yet as I sat on that beach this morning, I became acutely aware that I’ve never been so happy, truly. My wife was laying there, her phone playing Dalkas, a Greek Laika radio station, while she dozed, mouthing the words to most of the songs, many of which she’s known since she was a child, when her mother used to play them on her stereogram while Yvonne was growing up. Behind us there were people stretched lazily in the canvas backed director’s chairs of the beach bar, their toes wiggling into the sand while enjoying long languid conversations without the slightest time pressure. I look at this delightful little seaside town, the southernmost town not only in Greece, but in the whole of Europe, and I realise that it has just about everything that we ever sought for when looking for places to go for a summer holiday. Its tourism is very low-key. Ierapetra subsists much more on agriculture than it does on tourism. Most of the voices you hear around you while dining out, or spending an hour or two over your Freddo espresso on the beach, are Greek. After six years now of living here we know so many people, all of whom greet each other with a warm smile and exchange a few words of chit-chat before settling down to the serious business of spending time with their coffee. No one stays on the beach all day, no. Most people arrive, order their coffee, stretch out under a straw umbrella, take a dip or two, then, after a maximum of around two hours, pack up and move on to the next stage of their day. But no one does any of this in a hurry. There’s always time for a chat when you make eye contact with someone you see regularly. 

There are restaurants to cater for all budget levels, and enough coffee bars to keep one going for a lifetime. The climate is the best in all of Greece, as the photos below can testify, as they were all taken in the last week or so, some this very morning. So, I’ll close out this one with those photos. It’s now October, and the temperatures are in the mid twenties, the skies still primarily blue (although we have had a welcome rainstorm about a week ago, plus a few showers during the night, which is good) and – I guess I just have to resort here to a trite expression but, well – all’s right with the world.

The third photo in that gallery above is of a group of ladies (of a certain age) as they go about their daily ritual of treading water while exchanging local gossip. Beats the local old folks’ coffee morning at the day centre doesn’t it.

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Here’s another post of images spanning our two decades of life here in Greece. The one above was taken on board the Triton, during one of my excursions while I was working as an escort on Rhodes from 2007/8 until 2018. This shot was taken in July 2016. There is another, much more modern vessel with the same name operating out of Mandraki Harbour, on which I also served now and then, but this one was a beautiful traditional caique, originally built to carry cargo, although people visiting Greece on their holidays would be forgiven for assuming that all vessels of this type were first built as fishing boats. Here’s another shot, showing her under way in all her glory…

A true highlight of our earlier visits to Crete was when our good friends Timotheo and Sylvia (originally from Rhodes, but now living in Crete) surprised us by taking us to see the amazing Palace of Knossos. We went in November, so the place was virtually deserted, whereas if you go during the tourist season, be prepared to be among the hordes…

While we were living on Southern Rhodes, we ran a small charity event for a couple of years aimed at raising money for the local doctor’s surgery in the village of Gennadi. It was a great experience and to receive the gratitude of Doctor Niko and his team at an unexpected re-opening ceremony attended by some local dignitaries was truly humbling. The cash we were able to raise gave the surgery the opportunity to purchase much needed medical supplies and even one special piece of machinery for carrying out specific examinations (can’t remember now what it was though!)…

Finally, we’ve been to Vai quite a few times now, as it’s in our ‘county’ of Lasithi here on Crete, but I still well remember our memorable first ever visit, which was once again during November, when the beach was clear of umbrellas and the only people around were locals…

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