New book – Homer’s Where The Heart Is

Posted on April 20, 2015 by Marjory

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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Mani happy returns …

Posted on November 25, 2014 by Marjory

Foteini holds a copy of the book in which she is one of the starring characters, along with donkey Riko

RECENTLY we returned to the village of Megali Mantineia, in the Mani, where we spent the first year of our Greek Odyssey from 2010. It was also the place that inspired me to write the book Things Can Only Get Feta about our decision to live in the southern Peloponnese for a while.

Megali Mantineia is situated on a hillside, just south of Kalamata city, and beneath the towering Taygetos mountains. It hasn’t changed much in centuries and continues its rural traditions with olive harvesting and farming. As we turned off the main road with its big blue sign pointing to the village, I felt the same flutter of excitement I had on the first day of our original adventure because everything was just the way it was five years ago.

Megali Mantineia sits on the edge of the deep Rindomo gorge, with the Taygetos mountains behind

When we drove up to see our farming friend Foteini at her ktima, farm compound, we weren’t sure if she’d be there and she doesn’t carry anything as modern as a mobile phone. But straight away we saw her small donkey Riko, tied up under an olive tree beside his old feta tin, filled with water. Moments later, Foteini came bounding up to the front gates, looking much as she always did in a big plaid shirt, an apron and wellies. She threw her arms around us in turn, wanting to know how long we’d be staying and eager to catch up on our news.

Foteini is often described as a ‘traditional woman’ because few older Greeks live her kind of rural life any more

We followed her down to her ‘kafeneio’, the ramshackle spot I often described in the book, a place with an old shed, a shaky table and chairs, and trees patrolled by hornets and wasps. Though in winter there’s not too many of them, fortunately. We sat in the sun and drank Greek coffee from small white cups and again I felt as if the intervening year we had spent back in Scotland hadn’t happened at all, and that we had always been here.

When I gave her a copy of Things Can Only Get Feta she sat with it in her hands, admiring the cover illustration of her riding Riko, with Wallace our Jack Russell trailing behind on a dusty village road. It’s a lovely image by London artist Tony Hannaford (see note below) and Foteini is very recognisable on the cover. She had seen the cover last year when a story about the book appeared in one of Kalamata’s newspapers, the Tharros, and it delighted and amused all the other villagers as well to now have a ‘rural star’ (Foteini) in their midst. Though of course, this isn’t her real name. I changed the names in the book to protect people’s privacy. But everyone knows Foteini. She’s priceless!

The village road where our Greek odyssey began

The view from the edge of Megali Mantineia towards the city of Kalamata, spread along the gulf of Messinia

Foteini is a unique character and with the help of my rusty Greek I’d had an unusual friendship with her from the beginning. It was one of cultural differences that challenged all my assumptions about life but I was drawn to her stoical character and her story, as I was to many of the other villagers. I never thought, however, when we first met the irrepressible Foteini, riding her donkey along the village road, that five years later we would still be in touch with her and that I would have exchanged letters, cards and even called her from Scotland on several occasions to see how things were going. “When are you coming back?” was her usual question.

Now that we were finally back on her farm I asked her how it felt to know that so many people around the world had now read about her and were interested in her rural life? Her pale blue eyes simply looked at me uncomprehending. “Really?” she finally said, but I knew my question meant little to her and it made me smile.

How rare a thing it is, in this slick internet world, to meet someone who knows nothing about the customs and taste of people beyond this southern region of Greece. Although she had a village education and can read and write and is wise to rural life, she has read few books and has no concept of the media, the publishing industry or publicity.

I told her that in a very small way, she was kind of ‘famous’. I don’t think she really understood this concept either. But her eyes danced with mirth as she gazed at the book cover, and that was good enough for me. I almost envied the monastic simplicity of her life in this glorious setting, which is something that won’t last forever, and one of the reasons our time in this region was so precious to us.

We didn’t have much time to spend with her, as we are staying in a different part of the southern Peloponnese, and we only had a few hours in the village, and other friends to see, but we will be heading back to the Mani again before too long.

We also visited the delightful Eftihia and her brother Yiorgos, who also featured in the book and were amongst the warmest people in the village. Eftihia (meaning happiness) is not her real name and most names were changed for the book, but it suits her big personality exactly. She bear-hugged us and took us inside for a big plate of delicious, home-made olive oil biscuits and we spent a long time in her cosy kitchen catching up on village gossip. Yiorgos was away for the day with a harvesting gang working on his olive groves.

Eftihia told me that while nothing very obvious had changed in the village since we left, sadly, everyone had felt the effects of the crisis with all the new farming and property taxes, and there was a general complaint that their earnings, however small, go straight to the government with little left to spend which is the same all over the country and one reason the economy has stalled in the past few years.

The main church and a Byzantine church behind which was once the village school

People are now living off the land, she told me, growing their own food and keeping animals. There is no light at the end of the tunnel for many of these hard-working people and many villagers who had earned money previously doing building, painting or gardening work in the area now have no jobs. The Greek clients have tightened their belts and many of the expats, who had built houses here and employed Greek workers, are selling up and returning to the UK.

But the price of olive oil has gone up this year from 2 euros a litre to around 4 euros, partly due to a bumper crop and the fact that the harvests in Spain and Italy have been disastrous. As one taverna owner told me: “Just for once Greece is claiming a small victory over other Mediterranean countries.” It couldn’t have come soon enough.

The bumper price for oil this year is good news for most of the villagers in Megali Mantineia who all have olive orchards on the edge of the village, and many earn the bulk of their income from the harvest.

Yiorgos and his gang returned in good spirits in the afternoon and sat in the sun eating a late lunch and toasting the results of the day’s labours with small glasses of home-made wine. There was family here, villagers and friends, and that’s the most heart-warming thing about Greece that when things get tough, people pitch in and help each other. It has always been this way, and that fact of life is never likely to change.

A detail of the book cover by artist Tony Hannaford, showing Foteini

Greece at a stroke

MANY people have commented on the lovely cover of Things Can Only Get Feta and thanks must go to the artist who created it, London-based Tony Hannaford, who has a particular love for Greece and its islands. You can see his collection of Mediterranean-inspired artwork on his website www.anthonyhannaford.co.uk

For details about the book and where to buy it 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 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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Greece and food – a seductive partnership

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Marjory

Tables for four with a view at Taki’s Taverna, Limeni Bay in the Mani.

WHAT happens when a few hungry friends get together on Twitter one afternoon and start talking about food – more particularly, Greek food? A global event is hatched! And that’ s pretty much what happened when the group, including a couple of Greek Americans, toyed with the idea of holding a huge Greek dinner Stateside.

One of the group, Keri Douglas, editor of a popular news and culture website based in Washington, took it up a notch and said: “Well, why not make it a global Greek event?” Why not indeed, and the event was launched.

She put the call out on her website and on social media for people to host a dinner at home, or in a favourite Greek restaurant. The idea was to connect Greeks and philhellenes everywhere on one evening (January 15) and help promote Greek produce, restaurants, recipes, food and wine businesses, as well as authors, bloggers and, well, everyone who wanted to join in. The condition was that everyone should Tweet and Facebook their event and share pictures.

The idea quickly went viral and by the time the dinner evening arrived there were four continents involved, 14 countries and 52 cities. And no-one was more surprised than Keri Douglas at how many people had jumped on board, giving their time, their cookery expertise, and even free produce. All for a good cause – Greece.

Yiouvetsi and moussaka at the restaurant we picked, Mediterranea, Stirling, Scotland.

Keri summed up the Greek Dinner on her website (www.9musesnews.com) saying: “Imagine a paradigm of connecting the culinary dimension of Greek culture with the intangible Greek heritage that influences people around the world!” Well, we couldn’t imagine it before, but we can now. And this amazing event looks set to become the first of many. Opa!

The Greek art of simplicity: fresh Mani figs, peaches and Feta cheese.

How food lies at the heart of Greekness

Greek holidays! What do you always remember, apart from the sun and sea, the laid-back lifestyle? Most people remember the fabulous meals they ate at sunny, beachside tavernas: Greek salad with feta, souvlaki, juicy stuffed peppers, fresh green olive oil, carafes of local wine. Food and Greece have always had a sensual partnership, but it’s more than just the joy of eating wholesome fresh produce in fabulous surroundings. The ritual of the long Greek meal is a social and cultural mainstay.

Through good times, and especially bad (and Greece has had its share of catastrophe), the Greek meal has been the thread that has united the community, family, the generations from the yiayia, who has passed down precious recipes, to the youngest children who will carry the traditions on. And it’s also about parea, company.

Villagers and priests from Megali Mantineia in the Mani celebrating a saint’s day and toasting their new village oven (behind).

To me the most enduring symbol of Greek life is the village yiorti (celebration), usually the feast day of a saint, where tables are set under the olive trees and you will see the local priest and village elders sitting beside goat farmers, olive harvesters, the rich, the poor, and all enjoying lively parea, good village food, and some local wine, of course.

In Greece, food shared together can be sumptuous or simple, like the vegetable dishes eaten by the more devout during Lent – a platter of horta (wild spring greens) collected from hillsides and fields, boiled and served with lemon juice and a drizzle of olive oil.

My own memories of holidays in Greece will always be bound up with the meals we shared with Greek friends.

Fish, salad, wine and good company, with Artemios on his Santorini balcony.

In 2003, Jim and I were visiting the island of Santorini and became friends with a farmer called Artemios who was 80 years old but energetic and spry for his age. He rode a donkey, kept goats, grew his own food in the rich volcanic soil around his small rural home, and also made his own wine.

The first time he invited us for lunch on the tiny balcony of his house, he made us fried fish, roasted eggplant and Greek salad, with a jug of his own wine. A simple meal, bursting with flavour. More than just the food, it was the length of time we sat eating, talking, sharing stories – despite my stuttering Greek. And also the time it took him later to sit and peel the spiky, fiddly fruit of the frangosika (prickly pear) for us to try for the first time.

I will always remember his words on that first occasion. It sums up the Greek philosophy of food and parea exactly.

“Now that we have shared a meal together at my house, we are friends forever,” he said.

And he meant it. On subsequent visits to Santorini we went to see him and shared other meals, sometimes at his house, sometimes in the nearby villages, and we remained great friends. It’s an ethos that Greeks all over the world share, which was reflected in last month’s event. Friendships forged on that January night will hopefully last a long time.

Artemios and Marjory sharing a Greek coffee on the island of Santorini.

I have enjoyed many, many fine meals in Greece with some wonderful people, but the meals Artemios gave us remain closest to my heart.

There have been entertaining meals as well in Greece that I remember for different reasons, like the meal Jim and I shared with a big-hearted family in the village of Megali Mantineia during our three-year stay in the Mani.

It was during a scorching, August lunch where we had to try tsikles, the little picked birds with the heads left on, so loved by the Maniots but not to everyone’s taste. Not to have tried one would have been an insult, and so we went through a kind of TV Bush Tucker Trial in front of all the other guests, with amusing results. The experience formed one of the chapters in my book Things Can Only Get Feta.

To share a meal with Greeks, or anyone for that matter, and then be friends forever. In this life, it doesn’t get much better than that!

For a full report on the Greek Dinner Around the World, visit Keri Douglas’s site www.9musesnews.com click here

If you share notes and pictures on Twitter about your Greek dinner, use the hashtag #GreekDinner to connect with international followers.

Books about Greece

To find out more about my two travel memoirs set in Greece Things Can Only Get Feta, and Homer’s Where the Heart Is, please visit the books page on the website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com

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 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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Christmas in Greece? It’s another world!

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Marjory

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

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), 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

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.

© Text and photographs copyright of the authors 2013

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Village that inspired Things Can Only Get Feta …

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Marjory

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.

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Southern Peloponnese is the star attraction

Posted on July 7, 2013 by Marjory

Stoupa beach in the Mani

THE Hollywood movie Before Midnight is now doing the rounds with mixed reviews, but one aspect is indisputable – the real star of the piece is the southern Peloponnese.

Focus on this wonderful region of Greece has been long overdue. Having spent three years living in the Mani region (situated in the middle of the three peninsulas), I can vouch for its beauty and real authenticity.

From my experience there, I have drawn up a list of some favourite places to visit, mostly in the Mani. The recommendations for tavernas and other businesses are based on my personal taste alone. Come to the region one day so you can draw up your own list of favourites.

Hillside village of Megali Mantineia

* BEST HILL VILLAGE: Megali Mantineia, in north Mani.

There are many lovely rural villages in the southern Peloponnese but this is my favourite, partly because my partner Jim and I, and our mad Jack Russell dog Wallace, spent the first year of our Greek adventure here and it was the inspiration for my book Things Can Only Get Feta. It’s a short drive from popular Santova beach and nestles on a quiet hillside beneath the north Taygetos Mountains. It’s an unspoilt village with a tight-knit community where most people work as goat farmers or harvest olives.

Unusually for a rural village, there are four very good family-run tavernas here offering traditional dishes. The Lofos (27210 58630), with its vast terrace overlooking the Messinian gulf is on the drive up from the sea; Iliovasilema, or more commonly called Yioryia’s after the owner’s wife (27210 58660), and nearby Sotiris Taverna (27210 58191); Anavriti Taverna (27210 58062), behind the main church, and the Kali Kardia kafeneion in the heart of the village (27210 58306).

Dining experience in Kardamili

* BEST COASTAL VILLAGE: Kardamili

Kardamili is an hour’s drive from Kalamata and is the village where some of Before Midnight was filmed. It has a nice old harbour and pebble beaches. The Taygetos mountains form a picturesque backdrop and there is an historic area with traditional Maniot tower houses. From the village are good walking tracks up to the villages behind, like Agia Sophia and Petrovouni. The late Patrick Leigh Fermor’s house is situated at the southern end beside Kalamitsi beach, with excellent swimming and snorkelling.

Favourite walk: from the old town up to Agia Sophia. Favourite taverna: Hariloas (27210 73373), by the harbour, for its charming owner Maria, and the food, of course. Try the doorstep-sized moussaka, always freshly baked.

Favourite shop: The Bead Shop on the main street of Kardamili (693 9455 365), run by Gill Rochelle. This is a treasure trove of unusual handmade jewellery and a trillion fab beads if you want to get creative while on holiday and make your own. Gill is also very knowledgeable about this area.

Kalogria beach with the house of George Zorbas

* BEST LITERARY CONNECTION: Kalogria beach

Ten minutes further south from Kardamili is the sheltered sandy cove where much of the book Zorba the Greek was conceptualised. Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis spent some time here with the real George Zorbas when they were running a lignite mine nearby (see earlier blog post in November for more details). The beach here, where the writer lived in a wooden hut, now demolished, was also the inspiration for the scene in the book where Zorba teaches the narrator to dance the sirtaki. Stoupa is a close second, a long sandy beach nearby with a good selection of tavernas.

Altomira village in the Taygetos mountains

* BEST LOFTY VILLAGE: Altomira

This is a fabulous village in north Mani at nearly 3,000 ft with a stunning view towards Profitis Ilias, the highest peak in the Taygetos range. The village is partially in ruins, though many Greeks are buying houses and renovating them for summer holidays. The best approach is from the main Kalamata to Stoupa road with the turn-off to Sotirianika, and a 4×4 is recommended.

If you’re a fit, keen walker, there is an old stone kalderimi (donkey track), called the Biliova, from Sotirianika up the side of a hill that will lead you to the village, with great views. You will need to get hold of a local walking map.

Near the Cave of Hades, Cape Tainaron

* BEST SPOOKY SITE: The Cave of Hades

This is situated on Cape Tainaron at the tip of the Mani peninsula. From the end of the road, at the car park, you take the path down to a nearby cove and the cave is behind a high rocky outcrop, covered by bushes. This is the doorway to the Underworld mentioned by ancient writers and scholars. The place where Hercules performed his 12^th labour, dragging out the three-headed dog Cerberus. From here there is a path to some ancient Roman ruins with mosaics and further on is the lighthouse on the southernmost point of Greece.

Favourite taverna: This is on the road down to the fascinating town of Areopolis, and the Cape, at wide Limeni Bay near Otylo. Takis Taverna (27330 51327) is right by the water where fishing boats pull in and land the day’s catch.

Stunning Voidokoilia beach

* BEST BEACH: Voidokoilia

Apart from the long peaceful Santova beach in the Mani, the most perfect, photogenic beach is Voidokoilia, near Navarino Bay on the Messinian peninsula (left-hand prong). Shaped like the Greek letter omega Ω, it has two headlands, one with a ruined Frankish castle on top. The sand here is soft and the water pale and silky. There is nothing much here apart from the beach, so head back towards Pylos town to the fishing village of Yialova with its own sandy beach and a row of nice tavernas and cafes by the water.

View across Kalamata city centre

* BEST CITY: Kalamata

Okay, it’s the only city of the southern Peloponnese, but as Greek cities go, this one is very appealing. Set at the head of the Messinian Gulf, it has the lot: a long clean city beach; history (the historic centre, Frankish castle, cathedral and archaeological museum); a vibrant café scene along Navarino Street; a bustling marina with a selection of tavernas.

Favourite tavernas: Koilakos for fish, especially calamari and grilled octopus, Navarinou St, 12, (27210 22016); the Argo, Salaminos St 52, (27210 25380). Favourite dish, grilled sardines. The other dish is the lovely Adonis, a very entertaining waiter, and a city celebrity. Ta Rolla, Sparta St, 53 (27210 26218). An old-style taverna in the market area of the city with wine barrels full of a lovely local brew and specialties like bean soup and stuffed tomatoes.

Best monastery/silk workshop in Kalamata:

Head to the 18^th century Kalograion (Nuns’) Monastery in Mystra Street (near the Ypapanti Cathedral). Once internationally famous for its silk products, made at the monastery by the nuns, it still produces many lovely items in-house though the nuns number only a couple of dozen these days. The shop here stocks unique hand-printed scarves, embroideries, as well as small icons and religious books.

This is an oasis of calm in the city with a courtyard shaded by orange trees and two small churches. Later, head to the Ypapanti Cathedral to see the ‘miraculous’ icon of the Panagia (Virgin Mary) saved from a fire in the 19^th century during a skirmish with the Turks, and the patroness of this city.

Other places to visit in the southern Peloponnese: the archaeological site of Ancient Messene, north-west of Kalamata, close to the village of Mavromati; Nestor’s Palace, one of the finest Mycenaean sites in southern Greece, near Pylos. The twin “eyes of the Venetian empire” Koroni and sprawling Methoni castles at the tip of the Messinian peninsula; lastly, Monemvasia, Greece’s “rock of Gibraltar” in the Laconian peninsula.

For more information about what to see and do in the southern Peloponnese go to our home page on www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com or visit www.mythicalpeloponnese.gr run by the Greek National Tourist Board. A great site for walking tracks in the Mani and other information: www.insidemani.gr

Marjory and Wallace with the new book

A book about living in Greece

For more details about my book, Things Can Only Get Feta (Bene Factum Publishing, London) 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.

To read my recent story in The Scotsman newspaper about the southern Peloponnese please click on the following link: http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/features/travel-mani-delights-in-greece-1-2976801

If you are a resident or frequent visitor to the southern Peloponnese please share your favourite place and tell me what it means to you. Click on ‘comments’ link below

To leave a comment please click on the comment link below

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Things can only get feta …

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Marjory

CAN you have an adventure in crisis-torn Greece and not come unstuck? Can you take a mad Jack Russell dog to a rural region and not create havoc? Can you ever feel like more than an outsider in a mountain village that has changed little over the centuries?

You might find the answers to these questions, and hopefully have a giggle along the way, in the book based on my first year in the Mani, in the southern Peloponnese, due to be published in July this year. It’s called Things Can Only Get Feta (Two journalists and their crazy dog living through the Greek crisis) by Marjory McGinn.

In the first year of the big fat Greek adventure, along with my partner Jim (which I started writing about in this blog in 2010), we had such an amazing time, having travelled extensively through this beautiful region, and having befriended some wonderful local characters, that I wanted to shape it into a book so that other adventurers/armchair travellers could get a feel for this unique rural way of life.

Chairman: Wallace soaking up the sun in the Mani

Chairman: Wallace sunbakes in the Mani

I was encouraged by many of the regular blog readers who wrote to the website saying how much they enjoyed our mad meanderings in Greece, especially with naughty Wallace the Jack Russell in tow. A big thanks for that and I hope you enjoy the book.

For an outline of the book and details of how to pre-order it, click on this link to take you to the home page of our website: http://www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com

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

Land’s end: Marjory and Wallace at the southernmost point of the Mani peninsula

Looking back

When we set off in early 2010, it was supposed to be for a year’s adventure only. We aimed to live in the Mani region (middle peninsula of the southern Peloponnese), but we had no idea of the exact location, or what our life would be like, or even if we would find a suitable place to live, especially in the midst of an economic crisis. But that’s the whole point of adventure – stepping right into the unknown and taking whatever comes your way.

The village we ended up in surpassed all our expectations, particularly with regard to the location and the wonderful local characters we met, some colourful British expats, and the mad escapades that would unfold. But other things were difficult, as we outlined in the blog: dealing with Greek bureaucracy, buying a Greek car, surviving the first scorching summer, dealing with alien wildlife (the critters, not the expats) – scorpions, polecats, snakes, hornets.

Then there was the problem of getting a tiny Greek village with typical zero-tolerance of ‘pet’ dogs to accept the crazy, barky, territorial Wallace. Many villagers had never seen a Jack Russell dog before and to their mind, he just looked like a small mutant sheep. To find out how Wallace’s immersion into Greek life panned out, you’ll have to read the book.

Branching out: Jim and Wallace enjoying the lush olive orchards in the spring

One year’s adventure turned into another and in the end we stayed almost three years in the southern Peloponnese, having loved every mad and magical moment. Then there was the Greek crisis, of course. I commented on this in the blog along the way and we did see some massive changes over the three years, particularly in the city of Kalamata where shop closures and business failures were a daily occurrence.

The austerity measures affected everyone in the region, sometimes tragically so, but one thing that never changed was the stoicism of Greek people and their enduring spirit particularly in the face of often spiteful criticism by the international media. Stories from outside the country that depicted Greeks as ‘lazy’ and ‘work-shy’ were not helpful, and yet anyone who has lived in the country will know just how hard most ordinary Greeks do work and strive for a better life, with no state handouts.

Water baby: Wallace swimming in a cove in the shadow of the Taygetos mountains

In our three years, we travelled the whole of the southern Peloponnese, through the Mani, Laconia and the Messinian peninsula, much of which we have already written about and many places we haven’t got round to writing about yet. I will post some short blogs on these, with photos, over the coming months, and general thoughts about Greek life, as we found it. So please keep reading, and your feedback, as always, is appreciated.

We are currently back in Britain for the time being but are keeping close ties with Greece and look forward to our next big fat adventure there.

Best wishes for a happy summer.

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Big fat Greek blog

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

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