Moussaka under the mistletoe . . .

Posted on December 13, 2015 by Marjory

Wallace in a Greek festive mood

“YOU can’t have moussaka for Christmas,” said one of our English expat friends in the Mani just before our second Christmas in the region, as we discussed festive menus.

“Why not? It seems perfectly reasonable for a Greek odyssey.”

“Okay,” he said with a shrug. “But you can get moussaka any time. Christmas calls for turkey, or at least a chicken. It’s tradition.”

Yes it was, but not necessarily here. Of course he thought we were mad opting for moussaka, but madder still was the whole British faff of trying to replicate Christmas in Greece, with turkeys and even Brussels sprouts. One genial expat who lived full-time in the Mani had bemoaned the fact he had not been able to grow a sprout yet in his garden. If there was one thing I didn’t miss about a British Christmas it was the metallic after-taste of a sprout.

It seemed bizarre to even think of a normal Christmas when some years you can swim until the end of the year ̶ in the southern Peloponnese at least. And if had been any hotter that particular December we may have plumped for a day at the beach, like some of my teenage Bondi Beach Christmases, when I was growing up in Sydney.

That was because the traditional Christmas in Australia is bizarre as well. I had plenty of those in my childhood from my Scottish family keen to stick to the rules of the ‘homeland’, with turkey or a fat chook (chicken) in 100-degree heat, watching the tree ignite from overheated festive lights, and all the oldies squabbling and then passing out in front of British Christmas reruns on the TV.

Christmas in Greece is a quiet time and revolves around family and the church

Christmas in Greece is refreshingly and sensibly low-key, no hysterics, no burn-out. It’s more about family, a time of reflection and religious observation. Greeks do buy presents but they are exchanged mainly on New Year’s Day, which is the feast day of Ayios Vassilis, the Greek version of Santa Claus, without the red suit and reindeer mates.

Villages still opt for the old tradition of a decorated boat like this one in the square at Koroni, Messinia

Some younger Greeks, particularly in towns, have slowly adopted elements of the western Christmas, and having a decorated tree is something of a status symbol now, despite the economic crisis. However, the old ways remain, especially in villages. You still see illuminated boats in a village plateia because this symbol is associated with Ayios Nikolaos, whose feast day is earlier in December, and he’s the patron saint of sailors. You will also hear kids shuffling about the streets on Christmas Eve singing the kalanda song, a kind of Greek carol which might earn them a coin or a sweet.

Christmas decorations with a rural Greek flavour

Our first Christmas in the Mani had been in 2010, the year we moved into the hillside village of Megali Mantineia. On Christmas Day there was a morning service, which was hard to ignore as the sound of the chanting rolled out over the entire village. After this, there were quiet preparations for the long family lunch.

In the morning some village friends had brought us gifts of olive oil and kourabiedes (shortbread) with a thick dusting of powdered sugar. We had visited our farming friend Foteini in the morning and took her a small gift. She was having her Christmas lunch with a neighbour Eftihia and her family but, as with most rural Greeks it would be a modest meal, probably roast goat, since everyone here kept goats.

Foteini insisted we come with her to Christmas lunch and it was tempting but we had already accepted lunch with an expat friend further down the Mani. She had recently retired to Greece and perhaps it was an attempt to summon up the familiar, but it was a proper British meal with all the trimmings and plenty of wine. It, too, seemed bizarre and slightly out of place, but at least we could work off the lipid overload by pacing round the nearby olive groves after lunch.

During the second Christmas we were living down the hill from Megali Mantineia in the seaside village of Paleohora. We were renting a house from a genial Greek couple, Andreas and Marina. On Christmas Day, while they stayed at their home in Kalamata for a family gathering, we planned to have a quiet lunch this time, and make the moussaka, for which we had bought all the ingredients. But it was such a gloriously sunny day, despite being cool, that even after all the fuss we had made about the moussaka, we changed our minds.

We drove instead up to Megali Mantineia to have lunch in one of our favourite tavernas, the Iliovasilema (Sunset taverna). The place was open though the whole family was gathered at one long table to eat their lunch of succulent oven-roasted goat and lemony potatoes. There were several other people dining, a few expats and Greek couple from Athens with a house in the village, but somehow we were all annexed to the family proceedings and it turned out to be one of our loveliest Christmases: traditional, with plenty of parea (company) and no fuss.

Our lovely Greek landlords in Paleohora, making Christmas wreaths

During our second Christmas in Paleohora, however, we did discover one surprising thing about our landlord Marina. She had a secret obsession for some of the rituals of Christmas and it all started way ahead of the festive season. It became one of the chapters in my sequel Homer’s Where The Heart Is, which, to end my Christmas blog, I would like to share in a small excerpt:

“One Saturday there was a knock at the front door. It was Marina and Andreas. Marina was loaded up with things in baskets and myriad plastic bags hooked over her wrist. I was very afraid though when I saw the big pointed red hat of what appeared to be a papier maché Santa Claus.

“Good morning, I’ve brought some Christmas things. I will just sort them out, yes?” she said.

With her usual proprietorial charm that we had fully accepted now, she barged passed us. I assumed she was taking them to the apothiki (store room) to leave until Christmas. Andreas stayed on the doorstep because his feet were muddy and handed us a bag of sweet oranges from his trees. We stood outside, talking and leaning on the wrought-iron railing on the top steps.

While we chatted outside we forgot all about Marina. Suddenly I became aware of furious scurrying and hammering going on behind us.

“What’s happening inside, Andreas?”

He rolled his eyes. “Marina has just decorated your place for Christmas.”

“What?”

We turned around and the living room, which had looked atmospheric and Greek, now resembled Santa’s Grotto at a John Lewis store. The big red Santa was on the dining table and tinsel was strung up over the fireplace, with Christmas lights, candle stands and a dozen statues of Santa Claus striking various festive poses.

“Here,” said Marina, pushing two festive woollen socks towards me. “For Christmas Day.”

“But Marina, it’s only November. Too early for Christmas, surely?” I pleaded.

Andreas shook his head. “I agree, Margarita, but Marina loves Christmas, you have no idea.”

Oh yes I did! The living room − lit up and pulsating, lacking only a sound system for Christmas carols − told me so.

“This old place looks better now, don’t you think?” said Marina, hands on hips like the presenter of a TV home makeover show.

One of the things we liked about being in Greece at Christmas was the lack of commercialism and houses lit up like Blackpool seafront. It was a quiet, reflective time instead. But now we had the whole Christmas fizz inside the house. We laughed over it all later and slowly began to dismantle the effects, leaving some of Marina’s festive tat in place and hiding the rest in the apothiki, hoping she wouldn’t notice….”

Wallace the lovable Jack Russell sends love and licks for Christmas

Well that’s it for the year. To all readers, I would like to thank you for your continuing interest and support of the blog and my Greek books. I wish you a very happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year. If you happen to find yourself in Greece at Christmas, go for the roast goat every time, or have an Aussie beach Christmas instead.

(Text: © Marjory McGinn)

See you all next year.

Χρονια Πολλα. X

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.

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.

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

Thanks for calling by.

© All rights reserved. All text and photographs copyright of the authors 2015. No content/text or photographs may be copied from the blog without the prior written permission of the authors. This applies to all posts on the blog

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Is a dream life in the sun the high road to happiness?

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Marjory

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Caption here for Marjie and Jimmy and Wally

Marjory, Jim and Wallace the Jack Russell terrier in front of Koroni castle, Messinia

BEFORE Jim and I set off on our mid-life adventure to Greece in 2010, a friend commented on our plan with a yearning look in his eyes. “I can only wonder what it must be like to divest yourself of everything and take off into the wild blue yonder.”

As a successful professional with a lovely house and two young children, his comment was motivated mainly by a wish to be free of nine-to-five pressure for a while, nothing more complicated than that.

But many other people said very similar things as we moved closer to our departure date. One professional guy, stuck in a difficult job and with children to support, asked me rather sadly: “Where is our mid-life odyssey? When can we do what you’re doing?”

I felt for his predicament. “You can do it one day if you really want it badly enough” was all I could offer him. But it did become our kind of stock answer to these unexpected comments, because that statement had been true for us.

We had put in a huge amount of planning and time into the proposed odyssey, putting our personal possessions in storage, renting out our house in Scotland, as well as all the nagging issues involved in leaving the UK for a while. Our to-do list before we left was four A4 pages long. But not once did we doubt we were doing the right thing, even though Greece was moving into the first stages of its economic crisis.

Castle Campbell in the spectacular Ochil hills above our former village in Scotland

We wanted it badly enough, but we didn’t seek out the odyssey because we hated our lives, or where we were living, which was in fact a very picturesque village outside Stirling. We just wanted to live for a while under a “wandering star”. And who doesn’t?

Sadly, the subtext to a lot of the comments we heard over and over again were that many other Brits were desperate for an overseas odyssey, or in some cases a permanent move abroad, because they were innately unhappy and they believed life would be happier if only they were some place else.

But is this true? Can your life be happier just because you change location, particularly to a warm sunny country like Greece, for example? I don’t think so. It will be different, for sure, but not necessarily happier, or better.

The lovely harbour of Koroni where we spent the last year of our Greek odyssey

A taverna by the water at Limeni Bay, the Mani. The casual Greek lifestyle has a massive pull for foreigners

Our years in Greece brought us in contact with a lot of British, American and other expatriates, who told us they came to live in Greece to ‘escape’ their old, humdrum lives. Many of them obviously thrived in the gorgeous climate with a better lifestyle than they had back home, particularly the Brits, as if they were permanently on holiday, and no-one should blame them for wanting easier lives and sun and sea.

Many confessed to being happier in their new location, and said it was the best move they had ever made. However, those who sought Greece for a particular reason rather than the expectation of being happier, were probably the most successful resettlers, especially those who managed to assimilate well.

The American artist and writer Pamela Jane Rogers, who has written a fascinating memoir Greekscapes: Journeys With An Artist, left America after the break-up of her marriage and ended up settling on Poros island. She has been living there for 26 years. Mostly, she came to Greece for its beauty and as an inspiration for her painting. She has built up a great reputation for her work worldwide and is thriving in Greece. www.pamelajanerogers.com

The Scottish crime writer Paul Johnson has lived in Greece for some years, which has been the inspiration for many of his novels. Many other writers and artists also find that Greece provides a sunny muse and have no intention of leaving, despite the crisis.

Tsapi cove, Messinia. Who can resist the lure of enless sun and sea?

But a move to Greece is not always the answer to everything. Some British expats told us that although their lifestyle was easier, they weren’t as happy as they thought they’d be. The same problems that plagued them back home, plague them in Greece, as well as the fact that in Greece there is no financial safety net, a poorer health system, and their extended families are not around for support.

Many of those who escaped to Greece have ultimately returned home. One British expat I interviewed in 2010 for a freelance story about Greece had gone there with her husband where they built their ‘dream’ home near Kalamata, only it turned out to be anything but. It was planned as a retirement home, but after a heartbreaking series of bungles with builders, bureaucracy and other disasters, they sold up and moved back the UK, and have no further plans to pursue a dream life abroad.

Wallace our Jack Russell enjoying life as a Greek beach bum

Perhaps it shows that you can’t ramp up happiness just by changing location. It’s something deeper, more intrinsic. There’s a line in a poem by famous Greek poet Konstantinos Kavafis which sums it up. It loosely translates as: “You can change your skies but not your soul.”

To a great extent that’s true. The old life will follow you about wherever you go. A broken heart will be a broken heart wherever you are. A failure to relate with others, or to feel fulfilled on many levels, won’t change just because you go to Greece, or another sunny location.

The Greek/American travel writer Matt Barrett, who has an informative and popular Greek travel website www.greecetravel.com also had similar thoughts recently on his blog, written while on the island of Lesvos. In many ways he inspired me to write this piece.

Having lived for many years in Greece, he made this astute comment about those who want to leave their old life and move there: “The truth is that you only think you want to throw it all away and move to Greece because you are not taking the time to appreciate the things you have that you would absolutely miss if you did … If you are happy, with yourself then it does not matter if you are in Greece or Nebraska.”

The search for happiness is only part of it, of course. People are seeking different things when they go to Greece, and sometimes it’s not all that straightforward. It was one of the themes of my second travel memoir, Homer’s Where the Heart Is, after a Greek businessman had posed a question to me at a village celebration in the Mani. Apart from sun and sea, he asked, “what is it you (foreigners) seek to find in our country that you cannot find in your own?”

It’s not an easy question to answer and it is one of the things I thought about a great deal while in Greece, the illusive thing we are seeking there, and I am not sure I’ve really found it yet. Or that it can be found.

We went to the southern Peloponnese for a year and ended up staying for four. Although we never went seeking greater happiness and contentment I think we were unintentionally happier overall, despite the fact that not all our experiences were positive. We didn’t always get things right. We had tough times in the crisis, like everyone. We found it hard adjusting to another culture, and in our case a very traditional rural culture in the hillside village of Megali Mantineia. We found it tough renting abroad, without all the comforts and security we take for granted in Britain.

But in the end, we went without any illusions or expectations and we were constantly surprised and delighted by everything we found, helped in no small part by the wonderful Greeks we met (and occasionally expats, too), who shared their lives and their stories. Because we never sought happiness in a different location, I believe we found it and that may be the only thing I learnt after four years in Greece.

The place really isn’t the thing. It doesn’t set the agenda I believe.

The expat I mentioned earlier who built her dream home near Kalamata later told me that when she returned to the UK she realised perhaps for the first time what positive things the country had to offer her. So her story really did have a happy ending but not in the way she expected.

Of course, I’m not saying, don’t go abroad to search for the dream life, or have a long adventure – especially in warm and welcoming Greece, and even though it is still in crisis. But don’t go expecting it will change your life forever. As Kavafis indicated, it may only change your ‘sky’ and nothing more – unless that’s really all you want.

Travel Memoirs

TO read more about living in Greece during the crisis in the southern Peloponnese, read my travel memoirs, Things Can Only Get Feta, Homer’s Where The Heart Is and A Scorpion in the Lemon Tree.

The books are available on all Amazon’s international sites, Barnes and Noble 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.

New Book

Marjory has just published a debut novel, set in southern Greece, called A Saint For The Summer. This is a contemporary tale with a narrative thread back to the Second World War, a “tale of heroism, faith and love” described by a recent reviewer as “entertaining, enthralling”. For more information, see the books page link, above.

The book is available on all Amazon sites.

A Saint For The Summer

If you have liked my books please think of adding a small review on Amazon sites which is always very welcome. Thanks for calling by. x

You can also find me on Twitter @fatgreekodyssey

And my books page on Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

© All rights reserved. All text and photographs copyright of the authors 2010 to 2018. No content/text or photographs may be copied from the blog without the prior written permission of the authors. This applies to all posts on the blog

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An Odyssey in Homer’s stomping ground . . .

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Marjory

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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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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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New book – Homer’s Where The Heart Is

Posted on April 20, 2015 by Marjory

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FOR all blog readers who have read and enjoyed my Greek travel memoir, Things Can Only Get Feta, I am very pleased to announce that the sequel is now available as a Kindle and paperback on Amazon worldwide.

Called Homer’s Where the Heart Is, the story takes up where Feta left off, as we decide to stay longer in the Mani in southern Greece after our first amazing year, despite the economic crisis becoming more severe.

Caption here for the local cove near Paleohora

A quiet cove near Paleohora with Mount Kalathio in the distance.

We rent a house in a slightly different location, but nearby the first village of Megali Mantineia. In Paleohora, we share an olive grove with our Greek landlords and their crazy collection of animals, including a she-wolf with a shady past.

It’s a fabulous new chapter in our odyssey but, typically for Greece, not everything goes to plan, although there’s plenty of entertainment as we deal with Greeks on the edge, gun-toting farmers and Wallace, our much loved Jack Russell dog, is up to a few of his tricks as usual. But he also faces one of his most challenging problems yet.

Caption here for Wallace surfboard riding

Wallace our Jack Russell can’t help getting up to a bit of mischief in the sequel.

I hope readers of the first book will be pleased to find that some of the original Greek characters from the hillside village of Megali Mantineia are very much part of this book, as we keep in close contact with them and take part in more of their village activities. Foteini the goat farmer, who charmed readers in Feta, is still one of the stars of this book, with her endearing and eccentric rural ways and her sense of fun.

We also explore more of the southern Peloponnese, and visit new locations, including ‘Little Australia’, the charming island of Kythera, and the wonderful house of the late Patrick Leigh Fermor in Kardamili, while researching a feature article on the famous travel writer’s home.

The famous stone arcade in the late Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Greek home.

There is also a grittier side to this book as the economic crisis intensifies and Greece edges closer to bankruptcy. Interwoven with the narrative of the book is my own back story from another troubling era in Greece’s history, which provides an interesting parallel to current events.

In the early 1970s, as a young woman fresh from high school, I travelled to Greece and spent a year in Athens during the military dictatorship. This was an edgy and fascinating time that I have never written about before. It will reveal as much about Greece as it does about my own personal journey and my continuing love affair with this country.

I hope you enjoy this book, and in the coming months I will share with blog readers some pictures and stories from behind the scenes that might help you to get a broader idea of what life has been like in Greece during the crisis.

Lastly, I must thank the very talented English artist Tony Hannaford for his absolutely gorgeous illustration for this book. Tony has a great love of Greece and has the ability to capture the vibrancy and beauty of this country to perfection, as he also did with the cover of Things Can Only Get Feta. To see more of his work on Greece and the Mediterranean in general, please visit his website www.anthonyhannaford.co.uk

The editing and formatting for the Kindle was done by ex-journalist Jim Bruce and I can’t praise his work enough. For more information on his service please visit www.ebooklover.co.uk

Please let me know how you like the book, and if you do, please think about leaving a review on Amazon. Writers are always very appreciative of this. And comments to the blog are also very welcome.

As always, I thank you for your ongoing interest in our Greek odyssey and for support of Things Can Only Get Feta and all your very kind messages to the blog.

* To buy the new book Homer’s Where The Heart Is in Kindle or paperback in Britain or the US, please click on one of these links: amazon.co.uk or amazon.com The book is also available on European and most other international sites as well.

For more information about the books and about our time living, firstly in the Mani and currently in Koroni in Messinia, visit our website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com

© All rights reserved. Text and photographs copyright of the authors 2015. No content/text or photographs may be copied from the blog without the prior written permission of the authors. This applies to all posts on the blog.

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What’s Greece in winter really like?

Posted on December 30, 2014 by Marjory

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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.

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.

lazy fat wally caption here for the old pupster

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.

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.

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.

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!

caption for jim and his juicy pair here pls

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.

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.

© All rights reserved. Text and photographs copyright of the authors 2016. No content/text or photographs may be copied from the blog without the prior written permission of the authors. This applies to all posts on the blog.

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Scotland’s role in an Elgin Marbles mystery …

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Marjory

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Broomhall House in Fife, historic home of the Earls of Elgin

I AM standing within sight of Broomhall House in central Scotland on a bitterly cold day and marvelling at how this grey, slightly dour stately home has been at the centre of one of the most heated cultural debates of modern times.

This is the house built by Thomas Bruce, the 7^th Earl of Elgin, which he planned to adorn with his vast heist of Parthenon sculptures, and other antiquities that are now known as the Elgin Marbles. It amounted to some 220 tonnes and nearly half of what the Parthenon was decorated with up to the late 18^th century, as well as other significant items from the Acropolis and other sites around Athens.

Broomhall House, near the village of Charlestown, Fife, is fenced off to the public, so you can’t get too close, yet even from a distance the house seems vast: a huge frontage, Grecian-style columns at the entrance, large windows, but Downton Abbey it is not!

And so I find it hard to fathom the aristocratic folly of Lord Elgin, or the hubris in wanting to hack apart some of Greece’s great cultural achievements, just to impart Grecian splendour to rural Scotland. The plan failed, as we know, yet the house has become home to some of Lord Elgin’s antiquities at least. Though which ones exactly is still a bit of a mystery.

Marjory in front of Broomhall House, the centre of a cultural debate

In the late 18^th century, Lord Elgin was British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Greece at the time, where he got permission to remove some items from the Parthenon by using what is now considered to be a dodgy ‘firman’, official authorisation. In the end he took as much as he could, also by bribing workers on the Acropolis to help in the removal.

It was all bound for Broomhall House, and much of this was financed by his wealthy Scottish heiress wife, Mary Nisbet. What he mainly took was nearly half the frieze from the Parthenon, which depicts a religious procession, as well as some carved metopes from above the columns and 17 stunning life-sized statues from the gable ends, depicting scenes from Greek mythology. He also took a huge amount of objects, plundered from ancient Athenian burial sites and the graves of prestigious Athenians, and other Acropolis temples.

Copy of the horse of Selene on the east pediment of the Parthenon

The top of the Parthenon was once decorated with carved metopes, and sculptures on the gable ends

Lord Elgin arrived back in Britain in ill health, due to syphilis. He was about to be divorced by his wealthy wife, and he was also broke. He ended up having to sell the Marbles to the British Museum for £35,000, half what he wanted.

His justification for his heist was to preserve the items for posterity because the Acropolis by the 18^th century had become a seedy garrison, with Turkish soldiers using the antiquities for target practice. Yet the Marbles, after being shipped from Athens, had a worse fate, being stored in a damp shed in central London for years and later said to be over-cleaned and bleached by over-zealous BM staff.

Greeks have been campaigning for years for the return of the Marbles, especially since the elite Acropolis Museum has a top floor gallery specially designed to house them in their original positions. There has also been a groundswell of international support, especially as celebrities come on board, like actor George Clooney, who made a recent plea on the subject while promoting his latest film about art theft, The Monuments Men.

And the collection of overlooked antiquities in Broomhall House would be welcome in Greece as well. These were items that Lord Elgin squirreled away here after the BM rejected them as too small, damaged or insignificant and are said to include some steles (grave markers) and pieces of sculpture. Not that you will ever see them because the house is not open to the public.

I rang the Edinburgh property management company that handles inquiries about the house, to request a comment from the current Elgin family about their collection of antiquities, and possibly as visit to the house. All the voicemail messages I left went unanswered. When I eventually tracked down a phone number for Broomhall House, I was told by a member of staff the family wouldn’t speak about the Marbles under any circumstances.

The Earl of Elgin in his study during a rare magazine interview

A picture taken in 1998 (above) of the current Earl of Elgin (Andrew Bruce) in his study (courtesy of Freemasonry Today magazine), shows what is believed to be a carved stele and some other items mounted on the wall. Small pickings of course compared to what Elgin looted in the early 1800s, but for Greeks these are significant items.

One local man I spoke to in the nearby village of Limekilns, who asked not to be named, has been inside the house fairly recently, in a professional capacity, and told me there are many pieces lying about.

“They are all around the house, scattered informally like bits of the furniture, but they are quite striking. The Earl of Elgin will give you the history of the items, though I can’t claim to really know their significance. His attitude to them is very relaxed and open because he doesn’t feel he has anything to hide. What he will say is that he agrees with the 7^th Lord Elgin in that they were brought to Britain for preservation and that’s what he’s been brought up to think. The Elgin family are very close to the (British) Royal Family and they just have a different way of looking at things,” he said.

Nearby Limekilns village on the Firth of Forth

Tom Minogue is a crusading retiree from Dunfermline, who grew up near Broomhall House and has been researching and writing about the Marbles for a decade on his blog www.tomminogue.com which has a great deal of interesting material and a history of the Elgin Marbles.

He says: “I believe there could be a lot more of the original pieces inside the house, especially smaller pieces because there was so much material taken from Athens, like funerary urns and items taken from the graves of some of Athens’s greatest heroes.”

Certainly there are antiquities that appear to be unaccounted for. While researching this article, I came across an old library document dated 1810 with an inventory of Elgin’s “Museum” which his collection seems to have originally been called. This inventory predates the list of items presented at a Parliamentary debate in 1816 before the BM sale. Some items on the 1810 list are not in the later one, like a large sarcophagus from an Athens grave site. Also, there are some unique items on the 1816 list that are also unaccounted for, like three ancient cedar wood musical instruments, including a lute, taken from an Athens location. When I rang the BM I was told there was no record of them, or the sacrcophagus. Where are these things now?

Tom Minogue has felt so strongly about the Greek antiquities currently in Broomhall House that he took the unusual step of writing to the police in Fife and London in 2004 and again in 2009 requesting that they investigate the matter, but so far the police haven’t acted on his letters. You can read more about this on Tom’s website.

There are those who would say it’s not fair to hold the current Earl of Elgin, who fought valiantly at the Normandy landing in 1944 and recently turned 90, responsible for the sins of his forebear. However, with increasing calls for reunification of the Parthenon art works, perhaps it’s the right time for someone else in the family to engage in the argument and at least exonerate Scots from this ‘heist’.

Tom Minogue says: “Scotland’s reputation has become a byword for imperial looting and it is hoped that with the restoration of the Parthenon Marbles, the reputation of Scotland as a compassionate and fair nation would also be restored.”

A copy of part of the frieze from the original inside ‘cella’ of the Parthenon showing a religious procession

Certainly it’s a sentiment the great philhellene Lord Byron expressed in the early 19th century when he carved onto the side of the Acropolis the Latin for: “What the Goths have spared, the Scots have destroyed.”

Dr Nikolaos Chatziandreou is a Greek research scientist and cultural resource manager who also runs the very informative website www.AcropolisofAthens.gr. He spent several years studying at St Andrews University, Scotland, and is one of the main campaigners for the reunification of the Sculptures. He thinks that Scotland can play a catalytic role in this regard because the Scots can relate with the issue in yet another dimension.

He draws a poignant link between Scotland and Greece, between the historic struggle for the return of the Stone of Scone, once used for the coronation of Scottish monarchs, and the quest to reunite the pieces of the Acropolis to “restore conceptually the symbol of democracy”.

“The Acropolis sculptures are to the Greeks what the Stone of Scone is to the Scots. It is this strong historic, symbolic, emotional link between ourselves and pieces of heritage that help us define our life experience and sense of self […] Is it a coincidence the Stone of Scone is also called the Stone of Destiny? When it comes to the sculptures of the Acropolis, whose destiny should we see in them?” says Dr Chatziandreou.

The Scottish Stone of Destiny eventually went back home. What about the Marbles? I hope the guy at Limekilns isn’t right when he says the attitude of the Elgins was one of “finders, keepers”. The same could easily be said for the BM and the current British Government.

* To read a more detailed account of why the Scots are uniquely placed to lead the return of the Parthenon Sculptures, click this link http://www.acropolisofathens.gr/aoa/reuniting-the-sculptures/a-plea-for-support-from-the-scots/

For information about the new Acropolis Museum www.theacropolismuseum.gr

Books about living in Greece

For more details about my travel memoirs, Things Can Only Get Feta and Homer’s Where the Heart Is based on three years living in the Mani, southern Greece during the crisis, visit the ‘books’ page on my website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com

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

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

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© Text and photographs copyright of the authors 2010 to 2019. No content/text or photographs may be copied from the blog without the prior written permission of the authors. This applies to all posts on the blog.

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American poet inspired by the mythical Mani in Greece

Posted on January 7, 2014 by Marjory

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Otylo Bay in the Deep Mani, close to Areopolis.

I’M delighted to welcome Katie Aliferis to the blog this week. Katie is an American writer and poet whose family originally came from the Mani peninsula in the southern Peloponnese. She is passionate about her Greek ancestry, and in particular the Mesa Mani (Deep Mani) region itself. Yet, surprisingly, she has never been to Greece – so far.

That’s a remarkable fact, given that her love for this country has inspired some of her poetry to date. She may not have seen the Mani region yet, but she has managed to capture its ravishing, pared-down beauty so eloquently in her work.

The Deep Mani is the remote lower part of the middle peninsula, a region of untamed beauty dominated by the Taygetos Mountains. It is a place of stony fields, ruined towers, sheltered coves and, to endorse its mythical stature, the ancient Cave of Hades (Entrance to the Underworld) lies at its southernmost point, Cape Tainaron, and features in one of Katie’s poems, Pilgrimage.

It’s little wonder then that the Mani has been the creative muse for much of Katie’s life and I am very pleased to share with readers three of her lovely poems below, following the interview. I hope you enjoy them!

Katie Aliferis

1. Katie, tell us a little about yourself.

In 1906, my pro-papou (great grandfather) came to America from the village of Areopolis, in the Deep Mani, and eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. My grandparents were the first generation born in America, which makes me 4^th generation Greek-American. I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area and graduated from Sonoma State University with a degree in history.

2. Was your Greek heritage an important part of your early life?

Yes it was, and much of it was passed down to me through my yiayia (grandmother) Viola. She was an amazing woman. She worked hard to keep the traditions alive, telling me stories about the village, cooking Greek dishes and teaching me some of the language. Occasionally, she made me traditional Greek costumes for Halloween and I would go as the “village girl”.

Some of my favourite memories are of the family cracking the traditional red-painted eggs at Easter Sunday lunch to see who would have good luck for the year ahead. Yiayia’s love for our heritage was always contagious.

Narrow street in Areopolis

3. I’m surprised to learn that despite your passion for Greece, you haven’t been there yet!

Most people say that! It is surprising, but I haven’t gone…yet! Throughout my life, I’ve seen many pictures of the Mani and our family’s house and even the family chapel that still stands in the centre of Areopolis. My yiayia and other family members who have been back, or lived there for a time, have told me countless stories of the area and our family history. In my heart, a fire ignites whenever I think of the Mani, Areopolis, our house and the chapel. It is a feeling that is hard to describe, that many people may not understand, but it’s a passion that, when ignited, helps produce some of my best writing.

The family's chapel in the heart of Areopolis

The family chapel in the heart of Areopolis

4. Did you start writing as a way of expressing your love for the Mani and your heritage?

Not exactly. When I was 10 years old, my papou and one of my uncles passed away and I needed an outlet for my grief. A family member suggested I write a poem about my feelings and after that the poetry took off. Writing became a source of catharsis and pleasure.

5. Apart from writing about it, how do you maintain the older ways of Greek culture in such a modern, vibrant place like America?

Interesting question! I am incredibly proud to be a Maniatissa (woman of the Mani). After I learned about the history of the Maniots and their ways I began to understand more about myself. As you know, from your time in the Mani, Maniots are proud and fierce. We fight for what is right and are (stubbornly) committed to protecting home and family. Every day I work to keep my Greek identity alive by honouring my ancestry and heritage with my actions, passions and writing, of course!

A typical fortified Mani tower built by one of the area’s clan chiefs

6. Hopefully, you’re planning a trip to Greece in the future?
Yes! I want to go sometime soon. Without a doubt, I will be there for Greek Independence Day in 2021, which is the 200th anniversary of the Greek War of Independence, which was started in Areopolis. The war against the Ottoman Turks was first declared there in 1821. My dream is to own our family’s house and live in the village, or at least visit yearly.

7. How do feel about the economic crisis Greece has suffered for the past four years?

It makes me sad to see Greece in crisis, but I hope the worst is behind them and I am optimistic that the Greek people can use their passion and determination, and their kefi (high spirits), to get the country back to a glorious, positive and powerful state.

8. What do you like doing when not working or writing?

I love spending time with family and friends, reading (I’m a sucker for good murder mysteries), travelling and tasting wines and artisan cheeses.

*Katie’s writing has appeared in various journals and websites including: 9 Muses News, Voices of Hellenism Project: Voices (Volume I, Number I) and Velvet Revolution Reading Series. Her poetry is forthcoming in Voices of Hellenism Project: Voices (Volume I, Number II).

Follow Katie on Twitter: @KatieA_SF and visit her website: http://KatieAliferis.com

www.9musesnews.com is a respected American arts and culture website.

Old bakery in Areopolis and below, a traditional, hand-painted shop sign

Χωριό Μου (Horio Mou: My Village)

Deep in my soul
A pulse beats for a
Place I have never visited
A town I have never seen

Blue waves beat against the
White rocks that litter the shore
Cleansing the heart of all who
Rest upon the land

In the center of town
A square of stone acts as the
Focal point of this village
A place where all gather

For coffee, for bread, for ouzo
Just off the square
Rests a moderate home
Made of stone

Slightly white-washed
Slightly dingy, beige
In this house my soul rests
My heart resides

Surrounding the house
Brown and green land
Stands strong
United in stubbornness

Crowned by a majestic mountain
My soul, my heart
My village
My pulse.

Near the entrance to the Cave of Hades

Pilgrimage

I left the world
To see you smile
I journeyed into
The underworld

Past Cerberus
To hear you
Laugh

I abandoned my
Family and home
To feel your
Skin against mine
Every choice was
Right, every
Decision valid.

Asomati Bay at Cape Tainaron

The Boat

Curves of brass rust in the wind
Solid base of wood glides over the
Salty white rolling waves while a
Man searches for his destiny
His dinner, his day, his freedom
Gales of might shake and rattle the
Frame that survives these conditions
Simple, this vessel is so simple
Yet so complex to the one who pulls its ropes.*

Thanks for talking to me today, Katie and I look forward to reading more of your work in the near future.

* The poems here are copyright of Katie Aliferis. Not to be copied or used in any other way without permission of the author.

To leave a comment about the blog or to ask Katie a question, please scroll down to the end of this post and click on the ‘comments’ link which you will find at the end of the ‘tags’ listing.

A book about living in Greece

For more details about my book, Things Can Only Get Feta based on three years living in the Mani, southern Greece during the crisis, visit my website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com or visit Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

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

© Text and photographs copyright of the authors 2014. No content/text or photographs may be copied from the blog without the prior written permission of the authors. This applies to all posts on the blog.

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Christmas in Greece? It’s another world!

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Marjory

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Kalamata’s main square at Christmas draws the crowds. Picture courtesy of the Tharros Newspaper.

I HAVE fond memories of our Christmases in the rural Mani, southern Peloponnese. Mainly because they weren’t like any others I have ever had, anywhere. And the rules were slightly, and sometimes amusingly, different.

Christmas in Greece has traditionally been more of a religious observance, with big family gatherings and a special meal after church to mark the occasion. In rural areas it’s more devout and Greeks here often fast in the lead-up to Christmas Day. After years of Christmas pizzazz in Britain and the usual shopping frenzy, this low-key celebration seemed refreshing.

The decorated boat preceded the northern European import of the Christmas tree.

A decorated boat was once the main symbol of Christmas festivities in Greece and every house would also sport a small wooden craft lit with candles. This ties in with the Orthodox feast day of Ayios Nikolaos (St Nicholas), the patron saint of sailors, early in December. Kalamata (the capital of this region), as in other Greek cities, has given way now to more European decorations with trees and lights, but it’s rather nice that the emphasis is still on family and the community, especially in these difficult times.

There is a fabulous Christmas fair in Kalamata with small festive houses trying to outdo each other for cuteness, set up along the main square on Aristomenous Street, where hand-made gifts are sold for charity.

A festive house in the main square, Kalamata, for a community group in Mikra Mantineia, Avia.

We spent our first Mani Christmas in the remote hillside village of Megali Mantineia where the church bells rang out at seven in the morning and the melodious chanting of the priest and kantors floated down the hill towards our stone house. After church there was a knock at the door. One of the village farmers had brought us a huge can of fresh olive oil from the recent harvest and a plate of festive kourabiedes biscuits, and other villagers gave us small gifts of food which was generous indeed since the crisis had begun to bite in hard.

The giving of gifts is a low-key affair and usually takes place on New Year’s Day, which is the feast day of Ayios Vassilis (St Basil), the Greek version of Santa Claus.

Foteini our charming goat farmer friend preferred the gesture of giving, if not the gifts.

I had planned to give small presents to a couple of the farming women I liked, including our eccentric and wonderful friend Foteini. I had brought an expensive woollen scarf with me from Scotland (Royal Stewart) – and don’t ask why. Did I think I’d be homesick? But I had heard the winters were perishing, which they were. Yet, I had never worn it and decided to wrap it up and give it to Foteini because she seemed to have thing about tartan, as I wrote in my book Things Can Only Get Feta.

Foteini often wore big mannish plaid shirts for working round her ktima (farming compound), so I thought she’d love this cosy Scottish gift. How wrong I was! I went up to her house later on Christmas morning, where she was outside feeding her donkey, her black church clothes replaced by the usual thick layers, and stout wellies. When I gave her the small offering she pulled off the paper and beamed at the bright woollen scarf and then squeezed it all over in her big meaty hands as if giving it a bit of rural quality control.

“It’s not for wearing to church of course,” I said, trying to show her that I knew the limitations of tartan in Greek culture. “It will keep you warm in the ktima on a winter’s day.”

She gave me a bemused look and then bear-hugged me, wishing me Happy Christmas and ran off to show her neighbours this unexpected gift from her new foreign friends.

Yet I never saw Foteini wearing the scarf, not once, even in her ramshackle ktima, even though the plaid work shirts of indeterminate Scottish clan design continued to make a regular appearance. One day, months later, curiosity got the better of me and I asked her if she liked the tartan scarf. Had she worn it? She squirmed a bit.

“It’s the colour. Bad things happen to me when I wear anything with red in it.”

I was amused by the response. This was either a bit of folk nonsense or she hated the gift and was too polite to say anything. But Foteini often gave away things that other people offered her, for reasons I could never fathom, whether it was scrumptious cakes or chocolates or other offerings. I expected to see one of the other farmers about the village sporting the Royal Stewart one day, but I never did. Yet it was refreshing that in this corner of rural Greece it seemed the gesture of giving created the most response. The gift was incidental.

Wallace our cheeky Jack Russell sorting out his Christmas decorations.

We wish you a wonderful Christmas and a prosperous New Year wherever you are. xx

A book about living in Greece

Visit Amazon to buy the book (Kindle version – new edition), or any of my other books.

If you have already read my books set in Greece, and liked them, please think about leaving a small review on Amazon. It will be very much appreciated.

I always love to hear from blog readers. To leave a comment, please click on the ‘comment’ link at the end of this post, right under the ‘tags’ list.

Thanks for calling by.

© Text and photographs copyright of the authors 2010 to 2018. No content/text or photographs may be copied from the blog without the prior written permission of the authors. This applies to all posts on the blog.

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T-shirts just got feta & olive envy begins in Greece …

Posted on November 19, 2013 by Marjory

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Christina Kakavas with her Greek-inspired T-shirts

Christina Kakavas with Greek-inspired T-shirts

A COUPLE of weeks ago I was delighted to receive an unusual present in the mail from across the pond – a ‘feta’ T-shirt made by Greek American businesswoman Christina Kakavas. Christina, from Chicago, started her company a few years ago, when she recognised a gap in the market for original T-shirts with a Greek theme and created her company Loukoumaki, which means sweet treat.

She now has a delightful range of T-shirts for kids and adults with Greek words and logos featuring feta (which I love, with its neat drawing of a feta slice) and other indelibly Greek symbols: the octopus, owl, and also the blue-eyed ‘mati’ (good luck) charm.

Marjory in feta T-shirt

Christina is a warm, fun-loving Greek whose roots are in the southern Peloponnese. Her mother is from Kalamata, her father was from Messini, just north of the city. They migrated to Montreal, later moving to Chicago, but Christina says she has never forgotten her Greek heritage. She has had many summer holidays back in the Mani and also got married there, in the lofty village of Verga, overlooking Kalamata and the Messinian gulf.

The idea for the company came about after the birth of one of her nephews. “I looked for some cute Greek baby gifts after his birth but I couldn’t find any. When it was my turn to populate the earth with Greek babies (she now has two children, 8 & 5), the quest resumed. With some gentle pushing and prodding from friends and family, I decided to put my art degree to good use and started Loukoumaki,” she says.

Apart from wanting to have a business that would “proclaim my Greek heritage”, she also wanted to have some fun with the venture. “I wanted people to embrace their inner child and let it all out.”

To see Christina’s range of Ts and other accessories visit: www.loukoumaki.com

The good oil

Villager Foteini up her wobbly ladder harvesting olives

Villager Foteini climbs up her wobbly ladder to harvest her olives

IT’S tedious, back-breaking work but also fabulous when the sun’s shining and fat crimson olives are raining down on you. Olive harvest! Nothing like it! We well remember from our time in the Mani how the harvest dominates all of life from now until the beginning of February, especially in this region, which produces some of the best olive oil in Greece from the koroneiki variety of fruit, and of course the chunky Kalamata eating olives.

It’s also a time of olive angst and envy, with farmers arguing over sizes: “Mine are bigger than yours”, “His are as small as sultanas and wouldn’t even oil a bicycle wheel.” On and on it goes.

I can vouch for how hard the harvest is as we helped our farming friend Foteini, who does the work the traditional way with a katsoni stick, bashing the olives down from the branches on to ground sheets, bagging them and dragging the ground sheet from tree to tree. Foteini does more than 100 trees herself, unless she gets some help from rookies such as us. Most people now use petrol-motored combs that whirr the olives from the branches and mechanical trays that shoogle olives from cut branches. You can cover more distance this way.

Harvesting olives the modern, mechanical way

Harvesting olives the modern way

Because of the economic crisis, olive production has come to mean more to rural Greeks, who can sell their surplus. Many Greeks we spoke to in Kalamata in 2011/2012, facing unemployment and wage cuts, told us they were thinking of moving back to their ancestral villages to work the land again and harvest their own olives.

The humble olive tree has always sustained Greeks in the past and nothing is ever wasted. The branches are gathered after the harvest, dried and used as fuel for heating in winter, more so now than ever before with the price of heating oil rising to around 1.30 euro a litre.

Wallace plays peek-a-boo in an old olive tree

Wallace peeps through an ancient, hollowed-out olive tree

There’s something about olive trees that makes them uniquely appealing. Perhaps it’s their almost human shape – the stocky trunk and branches like sticky-up hair. Some of the trees around the Mani are hundreds of years old. Some of the oldest trees in the Mediterranean region have been dated to the early 11^th century. A recent report on some of the olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, where Christ prayed the night before his crucifixion, are said to be at least 1,000 years old and directly related to the original family of trees that grew there at the time of Christ, which is an awesome link with the past.

Greeks are passionate and fearless about their trees and the harvest. Foteini, whose olive exploits were mentioned in my book, Things Can Only Get Feta, was expert at shimmying up through the branches wearing old welly boots, a hacksaw in her holster, singing folk songs and generally not giving a damn for health and safety, which is the endearing trait of most Greeks.

When we helped her, she was using an old patched-up ladder with thin metal strips bound around splintered rungs. When I asked her if she was worried about falling off her dilapidated ladder she simply slapped a big hand on her thigh and said: “Ach, I’ll worry about that when it happens.”

Sacks of olives and a katsoni stick used to beat them down from the tree

Sacks of olives and an old katsoni stick used to beat the fruit down from the trees

After the harvest, the olives have to be taken to an olive press pretty soon, before the fruit deteriorates, and tins of fresh, bright green oil can be back in the farmer’s hands in days.

I still remember the first time that Yioryia, the owner of the Iliovasilema (Sunset) taverna in our village of Megali Mantineia, gave us a bottle of oil straight from the press that day. When we took the top off it, the air zinged with a ripe, fruity aroma. It’s hard to describe just how delicious this fresh olive oil is drizzled on a simple plate of tomatoes and a slice of feta cheese.

Juicy Kalamata olives in a Greek salad

Fresh olive oil is a ‘super food’. And it was no surprise to us that many of the older folk in Megali Mantineia were very spry, even in their 90s, with some of them still doing olive harvests and climbing trees.

Olive oil from this southern region is considered to be one of the purest, and Kalamata eating olives among the best in the world. Read British nutritionist, Nina Geraghty’s recent blog (in Food News) about the quality of these olives:

www.goodfoodandnutrition.com

Having lived in Greece for a few years, I feel that the olive tree defines this land and is rooted deep in the Greek psyche. Beautiful, hardy, life-sustaining, the olive tree to most Greeks is a metaphor for their ability to survive and maintain their cultural identity whatever history throws at them. Never more so than now.

A book about living in Greece

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.

I always love to hear from blog readers. To leave a comment, please click on the ‘comment’ link at the end of this post, right under the ‘tags’ list.

Thanks for calling by.

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Village that inspired Things Can Only Get Feta …

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Marjory

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I always love to hear from blog readers. To leave a comment, please click on the ‘comment’ link below. Thank you.

Follow @fatgreekodyssey

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Life in the southern Peloponnese with two journalists and a crazy dog

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