10 years after the big Greek odyssey

WHEN we decided 10 years ago to leave Scotland and have a year’s odyssey in Greece at the start of its economic crisis, people said this was madness. Yet now, with the Corona virus causing misery around the world with ‘lockdown’ restrictions on lifestyle and travel, we would have been madder still not to have gone for the odyssey while we had the chance.

Marjory, Jim and Wallace in Scotland weeks before they left on their Greek odyssey

As we look back to that spring of 2010, when my husband Jim and I and our fizzy Jack Russell terrier Wallace set off, we know that despite the economic risks, it turned out to be one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. And as one year stretched to four, it changed our lives completely.

We left with Britain during a harsh recession and our village in central Scotland, near Stirling, during a blast of Arctic weather. We had the added uncertainty of leaving regular employment in Scottish journalism to cast ourselves adrift with modest savings, but with the hope of future freelancing. But Greece, despite its massive bailout from the EU and ensuing austerity measures, still seemed like a safer option, to our way of thinking anyway.

Piles of luggage, and Wallace the dog, ready to be shoehorned into the Ford car to be driven to Greece

Even now, I recall vividly the excitement of planning the trip which was no small undertaking. Months beforehand we had a bullet list of things to do filling four A4 pages: renting out our Scottish apartment and putting personal items in storage; all the endless bureaucracy involved in cutting loose from Britain; having to limit our travel luggage to what would fit in a small Ford Fiesta. Amazingly, everything in the picture above was shoehorned in finally on a grey dreich Scottish morning, threatening rain.

Wallace taking his first look at Calais from our pet-friendly ferry cabin

And because we were taking our much loved terrier with us, there was a long list of necessities for him as well: microchip, pet passport, vaccinations. And hotels had to be booked along the way that were pet friendly, no easy task back then. While Wallace had a fabulous personality and was hugely entertaining, he did have the crazy Jack Russell gene: boisterous and often unpredictable. So it ramped up the uncertainty as well. A comical Scottish friend commented: “You’re not taking Wallace to Greece? Haven’t they got enough problems there already?” Indeed they did!

Marjory and Wallace in the car, outside a hotel in Battenheim, near the Swiss border

We drove south to Dover and took the car ferry to Calais and then made our way through France, Switzerland and Italy, to Ancona, for the crossing to Patras in Greece with a pet-friendly cabin. It was a great trip and Wallace was fine most of the time, apart from barking at every motorway toll booth attendant and having one or two angsty moments in hotels, the most memorable being in Italy. While we waited at the front desk in a large hotel in central Italy, Wallace took a dislike to two rowdy teenagers skittering about the foyer and launched into his characteristic slightly hysterical bark. The manager checking us in had a massive strop, which set Wallace off again. We were forbidden from leaving him in the room alone while we went out to dinner, so we had to take him with us. But that’s another nervy story.

Jim, Marjory and Wallace near Koroni, on the Messinian Peninsula, 2014
A view of Kalamata city on the Messenian Gulf from olive groves near the village of Megali Mantineia

Once we’d arrived in Greece, staying in a 4-week holiday let, and had our first taverna meal and swum in a warm sea, everything clicked into place. I’ve travelled to Greece many times during my life and worked in Athens in the 1970s for a year, and in those first few weeks in 2010, I couldn’t detect any sense of angst in the country. Life seemed sweet in the southern mainland least. It was a warm April, people seemed happy, tavernas and cafes had brisk trade. What we didn’t know then was that Greece was right on a tipping point, still with a lot of the ‘siga siga’ laid-back quality we all love about the country. But that was about to swing over as 2010 progressed, with unimaginable changes and hardships on the cards for Greek people.

The small stone house where we stayed for the first year with our Greek car out front

We had decided to live in the Mani peninsula of the southern Peloponnese, a wild and authentic region. We rented a small stone house in the hillside village of Megali Mantineia, just south of the city of Kalamata. We stayed in the village a year, which became the basis of my first Greek memoir, Things Can Only Get Feta (2013) and which I’ve written about in various publications as well as on this blog. The rest of our adventures in other locations in southern Greece are recounted in the sequels, Homer’s Where The Heart Is and A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree.

Jim and Wallace in the first few weeks of the Greek odyssey touring around the Mani peninsula

In our four years in Greece, we managed to cram a great deal into our lives out of sheer delight at being able to have a mid-life adventure at all, in those crisis-ridden days. We travelled regularly around the three peninsulas of this region and to the north Peloponnese and saw most of famed sites like Olympia, Mystras, Arcadian villages, and the island of Kythera. Occasionally there was some difficulty, travelling with a dog, in a country that regarded them more as working animals, like the day we had to smuggle Wallace into the Ancient Messene archaeological site because dogs were banned. Because of Wallace, there were mishaps galore (mostly comical). Yet conversely, some of the decisions we made just to accommodate Wallace on our trip, ironically turned out to be wise decisions which I describe in my memoirs.

The wonderful Byzantine church of Ayia Sophia at the top of the fortified rock fortress that is Monemvasia, a World Heritage site

We had a huge challenge on the gorgeous World Heritage Byzantine rock island of Monemvasia, on the east of the Peloponnese, when Wallace got the jitters in the historic 12th century house we rented for a few days. Situated in the heart of the fortified settlement, where the owner told us some devilish times had been suffered by the householders during an Ottoman-Turkish siege, Wallace seemed to picked up grisly vibes. It was all brought to a head in a storm, when he howled like a banshee and then accidentally wrecked a piece of ancestral furnishing. If you’ve read my first memoir, you’ll know what I refer to.

In all, throughout our odyssey, we made a point of not sinking into the familiarity of expat communities, entertaining though they were, but sought out a more authentic Greek life. We went out of our way to meet neighbouring rural Greeks for which I had to brush up fast on my rusty Greek language skills. We went to festivals, endless church services, at least one funeral but no weddings, olive harvests, coffee mornings in hornet-infested, ramshackle farmyards, and dubious cheese tasting events.

The lovable farmer Foteini clutching an early edition of Things Can Only Get Feta with its cover showing her riding Riko the donkey

This turned out to be another good decision. It is the friendships and the kindness of Greek people even in dire circumstances that will stay in my memory forever; people like Foteini the goat farmer, who turned out to be an unlikely literary muse for me and who appears in all three memoirs.

A tough Maniot farmer and a charming but eccentric woman, she became a friend and provided me with many hilarious encounters that seemed skewed from other eras of old Greece. I well remember us sitting in her dilapidated village house one winter in front of a roaring fire while wind whistled through the cracks in her kitchen walls. We drank Coca-Cola and roasted chunks of goat cheese (which we hated, sadly, but pretended otherwise) on skewers over the flames. Other times we also observed and smiled over her many comical rituals: peeling bananas at a sink and then washing the fruit, or indulging in riskier pursuits like almost blowing up her farming shed while making Greek coffee.

But these were also challenging years. While Jim and I were freelancing for overseas publications and were able to live frugally without being affected directly by the crisis, we had involved ourselves in Greek communities and witnessed the impact of the crisis on locals. This was particularly so in 2012, when social unrest and poverty began to climb and Greeks became uncharacteristically depressed and nervous. It was the first time we questioned whether we had any right to continue our Greek odyssey.

The Greek car packed and ready to leave in 2015 with Wallace’s head just visible over the back seat, to the left

I have visited Greece during other difficult times in its history and these crisis years were no less frightening, especially with the rise of a particular extreme and violent right-wing party that had gained seats in the Greek parliament. I even began to hear Greeks anticipate the sight of tanks rumbling down the streets again, as they had during the infamous military dictatorship of the 1960s and 70s. Fortunately it never came to that. In the end, in 2015, we did finally leave but only because an illness in Jim’s family had made a return to the UK the right thing to do at that time.

Lovable and unpredictable Wallace was always up for a bit of fun and always a perfect photographic model. Occasionally a dab hand at book editing as well! Taken in Koroni, 2014

Although we’ve only been able to return to Greece for long holidays since 2015 and not an extended return, our former odyssey lives vividly in our minds and sustains us in so many ways. It is never forgotten, is always a source of lively discussion between Jim and me and has inspired us during happy and sad times, including August 2017, when dear Wallace passed away in England, aged 16 years. We could rightly say that he’d had an amazing life, and an odyssey that few dogs ever get a crack at, and which he took to with verve and stoicism especially during a serious illness that I touched on in Homer’s Where The Heart Is. And few of the Greeks we came in contact with will ever forget some of Wallace’s more diverting antics.

The Greek ‘journey’ for me still continues because after finishing my three memoirs, I wrote two novels in a series (A Saint For The Summer, and recently, How Greek Is Your Love?) both set in the Mani region, and more may be planned. And especially in these worrying times in lockdown, due to the Corona virus, Jim and I find ourselves thinking more and more of those Greek years, grateful we were able to have an amazing, long adventure that neither of us had anticipated in that freezing winter when we left Scotland.

If I’ve learnt nothing else from the Greek odyssey it’s been that when the opportunity to (safely) change your life comes your way, take it and don’t let fear cloud your vision. And at the very least, don’t worry over the awkward, nagging details, because “you never know what the next sunrise will bring you”, to quote a Greek saying. That applies more now than ever before as our world turns upside down with health worries. And let’s pray the ‘new normal’ will one day allow a few restless souls to still cut loose on foreign shores for their own big, fat odyssey.

* All Marjory’s books are available from Amazon stores worldwide, Barnes & Noble, and in Greece can be ordered through the Public stores, www.public.gr or ordered anywhere through independent bookstores.

The Peloponnese series of memoirs:

Things Can Only Get Feta

Homer’s Where The Heart Is

A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree

Bronte In Greece series of novels:

A Saint For The Summer

How Greek Is Your Love?

For more information about Marjory’s books, please visit her Amazon page or the Greek books page on our website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com

If you like the books, please consider putting a small review/comment on Amazon. It all helps to raise the profile of a book. And is always welcome. Thank you.

Thanks for dropping by. All comments are gratefully received. Just click on the ‘chat’ bubble at the top of this page.

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An Odyssey in Homer’s stomping ground . . .

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Small cove in Paleohora with the Taygetos behind and Kalamata at the head of the Messinian gulf.

THERE was a reason I put Homer into the title of my latest Greek travel memoir, Homer’s Where The Heart Is. And it has nothing to do with Homer and Marge Simpson, let’s clear that up right away, much as I love their goofball antics and Marge’s towering blue hairdo.

Homer, the slightly more venerable, and ancient Greek poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey (who lived in the 8th century BC), had a significant influence on the north Mani region of the southern Peloponnese, where we spent three years from 2010.

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I’m not sure that Homer physically spent any time in the Mani – the middle peninsula of the southern Peloponnese. There’s no evidence of that, or Homer Simpson for that matter, despite the fact that the third episode of the first TV series in 1990 was called Homer’s Odyssey, when he became a citizens’ safety crusader. But as far as I know he hasn’t trudged the sylvan hills of the Mani.

As for Homer the venerable Greek, he named the area around the present day village of Paleohora, Iri (Ιρή), which is situated on the coastal strip just south of Kalamata and it is mentioned in the Iliad as one of the seven cities (including Kardamili further south) that Agamemnon offered to the angry Achilles to appease him. In its time, Iri had serious historic cachet.

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One of the coves at Paleohora with the Portella and a view towards the Messinian peninsula opposite.

Paleohora is certainly historic, settled from the Mycenean age, and in the Homeric years it had the important temple dedicated to Asclepios (the ancient god of healing) built on the high clifftop overlooking the gulf. Ancient relics have been found from this time and it was said that people came from all over southern Greece to be healed at this temple.

On the escarpment over a small pebbled cove is what was known as the Portella, a natural opening in the rock, where the sick could be lowered down to the sea below for treatment, and which later in the 17th and 18th centuries became an escape hatch for those fleeing from Turkish interlopers.

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A local papas about to throw the cross in the cold waters at Paleohora in January.

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One of the three tiny coves at Paleohora that locals call Koukino with the church of Ayios Yiorgos behind. 

A castle was built here in the 15th century by the Venetians, though only the north wall remains. The Orthodox Church of the Dormition was built here in 1775 and it is from here that the Epiphany (Epifania) service in January is conducted down on the beach below where young boys race to retrieve the cross thrown into the freezing waters. Whoever brings it back to shore will have good luck for the whole year.

The title of my travel memoir is of course a pun, and for those not familiar with the English expression, it’s a play on the saying, “home is where the heart is”. It seemed a fitting title for me because this spectacular Homeric land, including the hill village of Megali Mantineia – where I, my partner Jim and our mad Jack Russell Wallace – spent our first year, is a place that stole our hearts for the time we lived there, and still does. It’s a place of great natural beauty beneath the towering Taygetos mountains, but is also quite remote and not high yet on the tourist’s bucket list. Not as high as it should be.

Megali Mantineia was the focus of my first memoir Things Can Only Feta and I wrote a lot about it subsequently in media articles and on the blog, but I haven’t written much so far about the coastal area where Paleohora is situated and where we spent our next two years in the Mani.

Modern Paleohora is a small village with a few churches and a cluster of tavernas and kafeneia close to three small pebbly coves, which are unspoilt, with the remnants of the Portella still visible above one of them.

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Jim and Wallace at Koukino with the cove and village of Archontiko in the distance. 

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Another quiet cove in Paleohora with an old house on the beach. 

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A tiny lane leads to the hidden beach of Koukino – a secret Greek retreat. 

The coves here, like those of nearby Archontiko, Mikra Mantineia and Akroyiali, are close to the main road but some are so splendidly hidden from view that it is mostly Greeks who frequent them in summer. Mikra (Small) Mantineia was once a thriving village but its residents fled during the pirate raids of earlier centuries and moved up to the sister village of (Big) Megali Mantineia in the shadow of the Taygetos mountains.  After Greece won the War of Independence against the Turks in the early 19th century, many of the hillside villagers moved back to the coast. Sometimes the migration was quite dramatic.

A narrow road from Mikra Mantineia will take you past a small olive press to Palia (Old) Mikra Mantineia, where a village on the saddle of a hill once sat and which was destroyed by an earthquake in the 1940s, after which most villagers fled to the coast. Most of the lovely old houses here, with courtyards and intricate balconies and doorways, lie in ruins. We found one house up there in 2011 that still had old family photos on the wall in a crumbling sitting room, and a kitchen with old utensils as if the place had been abandoned in an instant and had never been returned to, sadly. While there was a plan for a developer to totally renovate the village a few years back, it seems this has now been shelved due to Greece’s economic crisis.

Paleohora, however, is the place that seems to have the most history on this coastal strip, and many of the archaeological finds are now on display in the Archaeological Museum in Kalamata.

Scenes and characters that inspired Homer’s Where The Heart Is

 

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The family we spent much of our time with at the Paleohora property. 

We owe a great deal to the lovely family from whom we rented our house at Paleohora, with its olive groves and fruit trees and spectacular views of the gulf and the mountains. The couple I wrote about in Homer’s Where the Heart Is, Andreas and Marina, lived in Kalamata but spent a great deal of their spare time fixing up an old spitaki (little house)  in the corner of the property which was the original house here and owned by Marina’s grandfather. We spent a great deal of time with this generous family.

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The old vine-covered spitaki with its big wooden table in the yard below was the focal point of life on the property. 

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Andreas in the soap-making episode described in my second travel memoir. 

It was in the yard of the house at the big wooden table, in front of the spitaki, that we shared many celebrations with the family, including Easter Sunday lunch, which became a chapter in the book. It was also where we watched the family making olive oil soap one year in an ancient kazani (cauldron), to an old village recipe, and where Marina would fire up the ancient fournos (oven) and cook various festive biscuits, like kourabiedes.

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Jim with a fire extinguisher ready to deal with one of Marina’s famous fournos fires.  

Most of the time Marina used dried olive branches and several times she slightly overdid things and created a fireball, with black smoke belching out of the front of the fournos.

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Wallace and his new friend, the ‘she-wolf’ Zina, who lived at the Paleohora house and was mentioned in the book. 

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Andreas and a friend trimming the olive trees. 

In the winter the family harvested their 80 olive trees with the help of local harvesters from outlying villages.

Despite the fact that while we lived in Paleohora as the crisis intensified to a heartbreaking level, particularly during 2011 and 2012, our stay was nothing short of inspiring and we owe much to this wonderful area and its people for giving us some of the best years of our lives.

Lastly, I couldn’t end a story without mentioning the inimitable goat farmer and friend Foteini, from the village of Megali Mantineia. While she was one of the star’s of the first book Things Can Only Get Feta, she makes several appearances in the second book, when I go to visit her at her ktima (farm compound), most memorably when I watch her crazy outdoor washing routine one hot summer.

eleni and hat

Foteini and her beautiful outdoor laundrette. 

 

Homer’s Where The Heart Is

TO read more about living in Greece during the crisis in the southern Peloponnese, read my second travel memoir Homer’s Where The Heart Is.

To help you along, Homer will be available to buy this week on a Kindle Countdown Deal from November 5 to 7 at 99p in the UK and 99c in the US. See links below.

This book is the sequel to the first, Things Can Only Get Feta (published in 2013) about the start of our long odyssey in the rural Mani.

HOMER'S COVER FOR WEB

To those who have already read the latest book, thanks for your kind comments and Amazon reviews, which are always appreciated.

Both books are available on all Amazon’s international sites and also on the Book Depository www.bookdepository.com (with free overseas postage).

On the website  www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com you will also find a ‘books’ page with other information about the books.

To buy either of my books please click on the Amazon links below:

Things Can Only Get Feta

Homer’s Where The Heart Is

You can also find me on Twitter @fatgreekodyssey

And Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

www.facebook.com/HomersWhereTheHeartIs

Last word: This blog has kindly been shared by American writer Amelia Dellos on the Women Who Write blog site. Thanks https://womenwhowriteblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/03/an-odyssey-in-homers-stomping-ground/

Thanks for calling by.

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What’s Greece in winter really like?

 

boats caption here pleaase

Fishing caiques in Koroni harbour at the start of winter

MY work desk is currently a blue metal kafeneion-style table parked in front of the balcony windows. The view from here is always glorious, across the olive orchards to the Messinian Gulf, but now it’s a winter scene. Dark clouds scud over the vast expanse of water. There are snowcaps on the Taygetos mountains opposite. In the olive groves some stoical harvesters have spread their nets and are working in the rain and cold. We were swimming just a few days ago – but there will be little chance of that now as winter deepens.

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The view across the Messinian gulf towards the Taygetos mountains in the Mani peninsula

Everyone adores Greece in summer – the endless hot days, the warm clear sea, the tavernas brimming with happy holidaymakers – but what’s it really like living in Greece in the winter? Well, it’s very different, of course. And while it’s hard to imagine in the punishing heat of August, it does get pretty cold in winter, especially in January and February, when an icy wind blows down from the mountains, or here in Koroni (at the tip of the Messinian peninsula), across from the Ionian Sea.

Snow-capped peaks of the Taygetos mountains in December

It can rain for days on end, powerful, heavy rain. A few weeks ago we had something like a mini-hurricane in Koroni, with heavy winds and hailstones. There were mudslides on the hillside where we live and stone walls collapsed along the narrow road between the olive groves. On the Mani peninsula, opposite, there was a twister one day and then a storm that caused havoc to the small villages along the coast. But by the spring, the damage will be sorted, the beachside terraces renewed and tourists will never know we even had a winter.

 

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Wallace our cheeky Jack Russell keeping himself warm during the winter

Some days in December there were flashes of hot weather, with the temperature around 18 to 20 degrees C, and we’ve been seized by the crazy desire to grab our swimming gear and pile down to the beach for a bracing swim. We’ve usually been the only ones there but the experience has been worth it, even swimming with the snow- capped Taygetos mountains mocking us from across the gulf.

Now it seems property winter with cooler temperatures and days of rain and even Wallace our Jack Russell has been reluctant to get out of his bed in the morning. But there are compensations too: no summer pests … mosquitoes, hornets, snakes or scorpions now, apart from the huge beige one we found one morning sitting by the front door. It put us all into a tailspin, especially Wallace, who, true to his crazy breed, wanted to bark the critter into a swift retreat, as if it were a pesky Jehovah’s Witness with a pitch fork. He gave up eventually and scarpered – Wallace that is, not the scorpion, which Jim despatched with a sweepy brush.

Koroni is a popular harbour town. In summer, the narrow streets by the harbour are thronging with holidaymakers, the waterside tavernas buzzing with life. Now the road along the paralia is almost deserted. The outside terraces have their scuffed plastic sides rolled up, the tables and chairs have gone and cars park in the spaces now – at least when it isn’t stormy and huge waves roll across the road. It’s hard to remember now what it was all like in summer. For some people, this side of Greece is much less appealing, but if you love Greece, as we do, you won’t ever be bored.

In a working town like Koroni, there are always Greeks about and they have more time to talk now. There are only one or two tavernas still open, a few old-fashioned ouzeries and several cafes, as well as regular shops. When the sun’s out, the harbour still bustles but it’s different. The locals have reclaimed their town and the atmosphere is most definitely Greek. It’s now about everyday life and having a gossip over a Greek coffee and for many of the taverna owners who have survived their seven-day working week, all summer, it’s a blessed relief to have a normal life again. But with most of our favourite haunts now shut, we’re already missing the tables set by the waterside, the plates of sizzling kalamari, slabs of moussaka and the familiar bowls of Greek salad with a doorstopper wedge of Feta on top.

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The olive harvest is a familiar and comforting scene all over the southern Peloponnese, famed for its oil

In this part of Greece, for now, all life revolves around the olive harvest, particularly with the bumper crop this year and with the higher price of oil. It has lifted morale in rural areas and brought hope where there has been little for the past five years. The roads outside the town are full of trucks stacked high with bulging sacks of olives, heading to the local presses. If you want to see how Greeks really live, winter’s the best time to be here.

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There’s plenty of winter seating for the strip of road outside the castle with its gulf view. But you might need to form an orderly queue in summer

If you look hard enough there’s still plenty to do. Even if you’re not particularly religious you can also take part in one of the many Orthodox services at this time of year, just out of sheer curiosity for its history and Byzantine ritual. A few days before Christmas we went to an intriguing service called the Iero Evhelaio, in Koroni’s main church of Ayios Dimitrios. It involved a blessing with holy oil. It was a small congregation and a long service, for which we were all given lighted candles to hold, which seemed to mark the duration of this service because by the time the candles had burnt down to waxy stubs in our fingers, it was close to the end.

It was a rather solemn service, apart from the moment when one of the chanters collapsed in a chair in a coughing fit with a case of incense overdose. Yet it felt rather Christmassy at the end when we all lined up in front of a small table, a bowl of warmed oil in the centre, and the Papas blessed each of us in turn, marking our faces and hands with small oily crosses. With good wishes from friends and neighbours, we left and wandered out into the cold night.

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One of the old-style ouzeries in Koroni

Some nights it’s pleasant just to go into Koroni and sit in one of the zaharoplasteia (pastry shops) and share a slab of rich, custardy galaktoboureko, for which this town is apparently famous. One Saturday night we discovered a small ouzerie by the harbour, where we had a simple meal of souvlaki, Greek salad and local wine. It’s an old building, with rickety chairs and tables, where mementoes on the walls remind you of an older, probably happier era in Greece.

The tables slowly filled up with locals, mostly drinking ouzo. One man called Andreas told us that in the past there would probably have been a few bouzouki players here and a singer or two for an impromptu night of music, but this is rarer now. But the next best thing for many Greeks on a Saturday night is the live TV music show called Cheers, Friends (Stin Iyeia Mas). Watching it is almost mandatory and in the ouzerie, a TV propped up on one wall was tuned into the show with its popular songs and vivacious bouzouki riffs, obviously delighting this assembled audience. Had we stayed to the very end I felt sure someone would eventually have got up and danced unselfconsciously around the tables. As we left, Andreas told us he played the bouzouki and he’d bring it there one night for a music session. What night, we asked? He shrugged. “When the mood takes me.” Okay, this is Greece. No rules. Take it or leave it!

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Jim is jealously guarding his crop of grapefruits, a mere fraction of what we have gathered already this winter

Winter in Greece is what you want to make it. If you don’t live here permanently, and we don’t, then you want every day to count, whatever the season. When the weather is fine we go out and explore the countryside or fuss over our new vegetable plot, with its crop of cabbages and broccoli and pick sweet winter oranges and grapefruits from the abundance of fruit trees we have around the house.

With fewer distractions in autumn and winter we have been lucky to have time to spend on projects. I have had plenty of time for writing and have finished a second book on our adventures in Greece, a task eased by an inspiring view and peaceful surroundings.

My partner Jim has been working hard on his new ebook editing and formatting business (www.ebooklover.co.uk) and twice a week he is attending government-run Greek classes in Koroni, aimed at beginners, and held in a local primary school. He’s finding it challenging since, as Greek is a hard language, but the class has not been without humour.

One night the charming teacher Panayiotis was explaining the possessive case with the sentence “to panteloni mas”, (our trousers) but one of the more advanced students was quick to correct him. “Surely it should be ta pantelonia (trousers, plural) rather than one pair?” which is what the teacher had written on the board, illustrating the fact that even Greeks can slip up sometimes.

Panayiotis covered his mistake quickly by saying: “No, this is Greece in crisis. We all have to share one pair of trousers now.” The class erupted in laughter, and even Panayiotis joined in. I doubt that anyone there will ever forget the plural for trousers at least, or the word for crisis, a Greek word after all.

 

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Marjory wishes you all Happy New Year after her last blissful swim of the year 

 

Happy New Year, Kali Xronia

WE’VE had a wonderful 2014, with quite a lot of it spent in southern Greece. It hasn’t all gone to plan because, in crisis-ridden Greece, things never do. We have had our adventures, frustrations and our moments of anxiety. But every day has been blessed with new experiences and we hope that next year will be as good. Wishing all our loyal blog readers a very happy New Year and a joyous 2015. I hope many of you will spend some of your holidays at least in Greece – even in winter!

Things Can Only Get Feta

For details about my book, recounting our adventures in the Mani, and for reviews and articles, please visit our Big Fat Greek Odyssey website, book page

Visit Amazon to buy the book (Kindle version – new edition). A new edition of the paperback will also be available shortly.

If you like the book please think about leaving a review on Amazon. It will be very much appreciated.

Thanks for stopping by.

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Village that inspired Things Can Only Get Feta …

megalivillage

THANKS to everyone who has read the book so far, and put excellent reviews on Amazon and sent comments to the website. Very much appreciated.

Quite a few people have asked about the hillside village, Megali Mantineia, where the book is set, and asked to see photos of it. So I’ve selected a few favourite images that give a sense of what this rural retreat in the north Mani (southern Peloponnese) is really like. Apart from its setting, the expanse of olive orchards, the fabulous views of the Taygetos mountains and the Messinian gulf, some of my favourite parts of the village are also its quirky, rough edges as well.

I have included a few photos of the villagers, the ones who were happy to be photographed, because in a small traditional settlement, not everyone is. Delightful Foteini, the goat farmer who has a starring role in the book, was generally always up for a photo.

In the three years we were in the Mani I have photographed her riding her donkey, harvesting olives, singing, dancing, carrying out the painstaking business of clothes washing, under her mulberry trees using an ancient cauldron, with plenty of repartee and laughter to break the monotony. I’ve also taken pictures of her small donkey loaded up with olive wood and a vast array of other rural and household goods – and even wearing a makeshift ‘raincoat’. Prada – not.

Most of the hundreds of pictures I took are a delightful portrait of village life but will remain unpublished for the time being. Since the book came out in July, Foteini has been somewhat mystified by the attention she’s had because of it, and because of the illustration on the book jacket of her on the donkey which appeared in newspaper articles and news websites around Greece in August. It was a wave of attention that neither of us expected. Some people, including foreign tourists, have recognised her on the donkey and stopped her on the road to show her articles and wave copies of the book, which, mostly, has made her smile.

The last time I spoke to her on the phone, I asked her what she thought of her overnight celebrity. She was sweetly disinterested. “When are you coming back to Greece?” was her slightly gruff response.

The picture below is the village on the hillside taken from a nearby ridge, with the Taygetos mountains behind. The gorgeous olive orchards are a feature of this part of the Mani. The bottom picture shows a typically old village house that now sits empty but gives some idea of Megali Mantineia’s thriving past when it had many fine stone villas, several shops, and even a police station.

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The village church is where all the Sunday services take place. It was here on the forecourt (just to the left) we gathered at Easter before Wallace escaped from the house and gatecrashed the Good Friday procession, where the flower-decked Epitafios is carried through the village.

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The kafeneion, the Kali Kardia (Good Heart), with its old stone archway, is the heart of the village in many ways. It was the scene of many summer evening get-togethers and humorous discussions with its owners Angeliki and Ilias.

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Foteini is one of many goat farmers in the village with her own rambling olive groves as well. Few do as much work on their own as Foteini, pictured on her farm with me, below. And carrying olive wood on her donkey. Bottom, a typical rural scene, with a goat tap-dancing on an abandoned car.

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Like all Greek villages, Megali Mantineia celebrates plenty of  feast days to honour different saints. The picture below shows a group of villagers and the two local papades (priests) at the feast of Ayios Yiorgos (St George’s day). The villagers collected money that year to build a fabulous new wood-fired oven (pictured, left) to serve trays of baked lamb and goat at regular festivals here.  The events continued during the crisis, food provided by the four generous local taverna owners, and served by uncomplaining local teenagers.

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Here’s another celebration beside the small church of Ayia Triada with a view towards the Messinian gulf.

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The village is visited every week by friendly Vassilis the manavis (grocer) in his truck where women gather round for a bit of gossip as much as a weekly shop. Here he is with Maria, a sweet elderly lady who was one of the regular church-goers, mentioned in the book.

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The village has views of sea and mountains and never more spectacular than in winter with the nearby snow-capped Taygetos mountains.

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In the village, Wallace our Jack Russell was one of the few domesticated dogs but there were plenty of cats, including Cyclops, the one-eyed moggie who lived on our rented property and had a few steeple chases through the garden with Wallace.

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The village has some quiet, peaceful spots. Here’s a favourite of mine, a bench outside the walls of the old cemetery, overhung with bougainvillea. It was always a nice place to sit and watch village life stream on by.

Marjorybychurch

A BOOK ABOUT LIVING IN GREECE

If you want to know more about life in a traditional rural village in the Mani and about the wonderful local characters we met, it’s all in my book: Things Can Only Get Feta: Two journalists and their crazy dog living through the Greek crisis (Bene Factum Publishing, London).

For details about the book go to the home page of our website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com

Visit Amazon to buy the book (Kindle version – new edition). A new edition of the paperback will also be available shortly.

If you have already read the book and liked it please think about leaving a small review on Amazon. It will be very much appreciated. 

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© Text and photographs copyright of the authors 2013

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