Hugged by an octopus …

Posted on January 6, 2018 by Marjory

I’VE been going to Greece all my life and I had never seen a live octopus in the sea, or come close to seeing one, though I’ve snorkelled a lot in all the right places. But when Jim and I were on the beach late last summer in Koroni (southern Peloponnese), our attention was caught by a German family in the water, and one of the kids shouting the word ‘Octopus!’

Jim and I looked at each other as we splashed about in the warm clear water. We thought it must be a childish wind-up, but the father dived in with a snorkel mask on and after a while the whole family were in a circle, the kids getting fizzy with excitement. It was pretty infectious, so we swam over to have a look and luckily we were wearing swimming goggles. The German guy was friendly and pointed out a flat stone on the sandy bottom in about five feet of water where the octopus had apparently built a lair. It wasn’t much to look at, though it did have a curious arrangement of smaller stones across a gap under the stone and a bent stick wedged across it like a barrier. Where was the octopus? we asked the guy, who it turns out had a nearby holiday home and was familiar with the beach, having swum there for years, and was familiar with octopuses, it seemed.

The beach we visited just north of Koroni town

“It’s hiding under the rock. Give it a moment. It will come out,” he said, putting his foot on the sand right next to the entrance to the lair. By now the kids had skittered off, rather bored, and it was just us three, flattened out in the water in a magic circle, staring at the octopus lair, willing it to come out. After a while there was movement – the tip of a tentacle groped its way out, then more of it, until it was tickling one side of the guy’s ankle. Then another tentacle appeared and finally out popped the whole octopus. It was medium sized and dark brown. The guy seemed pretty relaxed about things, even when two tentacles fastened themselves round each side of his ankle in a strange hug.

Video grab of the German tourist being embraced by the octopus

“He’s pulling me,” the man said excitedly. “He’s really strong. He’s trying to pull me towards his house.”

He wasn’t kidding. We could see the octopus’s tentacles drawing tight, the suckers gripping and his body edged backwards. Was he just playing with the man, or did he fancy having him for lunch? After a bit, the man’s foot was pulled closer to the lair, the creature backing into the opening and then the octopus finally gave up when task became (comically) insurmountable. We felt incredibly privileged, however, to have witnessed this strange encounter.

Back on the beach we chatted to the German guy for a while about octopuses. He was a keen explorer of this local coastline and an underwater amateur photographer as well. This wasn’t his first experienced of being hugged by this octopus. He had already taken footage of a previous episode. He gave us the video link, which we watched when we got back to our holiday apartment. It was outstanding and almost identical to what we had seen that day. (To watch it, click the link below.)

https://youtu.be/_x4bWFA1rGw

We went back to the beach the next day, hoping to see the holidaymaker again and watch another man/octopus interface, but as fate would have it, he never reappeared and must have returned home. His parting gift to us, however, had been the amazing introduction to this curious little creature we named Oscar. And we were left wondering how we could lure him out of his house and experience the hug for ourselves. Obsessions can grow on long indolent holidays when the imagination is given a long rein.

With the October weather in southern Greece being exceptionally good, we went back for the next few days to replicate the German’s stance next to Oscar’s lair. Jim would stand with his foot next to it to entice Oscar out. While I was desperate to do the same, I was too short to keep my foot steady on the sea bottom without drowning! Even for Jim, it proved harder than we thought because the currents were slightly stronger than previously and it was difficult to hold the foot in one place for very long, so I had to add extra weight to his efforts by leaning on his shoulders. I imagine we looked like a funny pair to other holidaymakers, though there are never more than a few bathers on the beach in this slightly remote spot.

We tried this out for a few days, hoping to entice Oscar out of his lair, but he was having none of it. We guessed that after a few weeks of interaction with the German, Oscar had got to know him, as strange as that sounds, whereas we were only on nodding, not hugging, terms yet. We could see him curled up inside the lair, often one eye visible, guarding his turf, but nothing else was stirring.

“One day we’ll get hugged,” said Jim. “You wait and see!”

To be honest, we had never really thought much about octopuses until we read a feature, ironically, just before our Greek holiday. It was about a fascinating new book called Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life (HarperCollins) by Peter Godfrey-Smith, full of anecdotes that shed light on this amazing creature that has the intelligence roughly of a dog or a three-year-old child ‒ and the mischief to match.

The octopus is a cephalopod related to squid and cuttlefish that developed from a snail-like creature about 290 million years ago. It compensated for losing its shell by developing a large brain. The octopus is capable of playing, recognising different humans, as well as other octopuses; it can ‘see’ through its skin and change its shape and colour according to its moods. The Nobel Prize-winning biologist Sydney Brenner once said that the octopus was the “first intelligent being on earth”. And Godfrey-Smith shows that they’re still one of the smartest, but with their eight legs, three hearts and blue/green blood, he also describes them as the “closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien”.

Octopuses inspired the imagination of mankind long before we understood much about them. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote about them and they were admired also by the Byzantine Greeks, who feature them in many of their church frescos, especially the Ainoi (The Praises), with Christ encircled by the sun and moon, the zodiac and various creatures from elephants to scorpions – and octopuses.

A section of Byzantine fresco showing an octopus from the monastery at Homatero, Messinian peninsula

Octopuses are not only smart, however, they are also adept at interacting with humans and manipulating the environment to suit themselves. Godfrey-Smith refers to one study at the University of Otago in New Zealand, where octopuses were kept in tanks in a laboratory. It was found they could turn off the lights (they don’t like bright light) by squirting jets of water at the light bulbs when no one was watching, short-circuiting the power supply. Or they could squirt water at lab assistants they didn’t particularly like. In another international experiment, where the octopuses were routinely fed on shrimp instead of crab (which they much prefer), one octopus rebelled and would shove his shrimp into the outflow pipe as the lab assistant passed by his tank towards the exit, as a gesture of disapproval.

Godfrey-Smith, a philosopher of science and keen scuba diver, has done much of his own investigation of octopus behaviour, particularly off the east coast of Australia, where there are large colonies of octopus. He has had many similar encounters to our German acquaintance.

“If you sit in front of their den and reach out a hand, they’ll often send out an arm or two, first to explore you, and then – absurdly – to try to haul you into their lair. Often no doubt, this is an overambitious attempt to turn you into lunch. But it’s been shown that octopuses are also interested in objects that they pretty clearly know they can’t eat,” he wrote.

He also reports that a fellow diver, Matthew Lawrence, had another curious encounter with an octopus while diving off the Australian coast. The octopus grabbed Lawrence’s hand and “walked off with him in tow. Matt followed, as if he were being led across the sea floor by a very small eight-legged child”.

After about six consecutive days on the beach on Oscar patrol, during which there had been mostly cloudy, windy weather with poor water visibility, the weather cleared suddenly and became hotter and calmer again and we were able to check out Oscar’s lair properly ‒ and found him still inside. Maybe it was a case of finally putting a name to a foot, but Oscar seemed more responsive this time to Jim planting his foot by the lair. With our heads just in the water, watching through our goggles, we were finally rewarded with the sight of one tentacle emerging, groping its way to Jim’s ankle and attaching itself, and then another tentacle round the other side. Then, as we’d seen before, Oscar moved completely out of his lair and stood beside Jim’s foot, the two tentacles straining, the others locked into position behind him.

The beach near Koroni with its clear water where Jim had his first octopus hug

“He’s pulling my foot. My God, it feels weird! He’s really strong,” said Jim, with an edge of hysteria in his voice. “I hope he doesn’t pull me into the den!”

“Nah, you wouldn’t fit!” I snipped, because I had octopus-hug envy really bad by then. Why couldn’t it be me too, I thought? It would have been right up there with swimming with dolphins or snorkelling with whales.

After a while, Oscar, bored probably with trying to lug a goliath into his house, slithered back inside, watching us all the while with his dark, shrewd eyes. Maybe he only offered the hug to shut us up; get us off his back finally, but though we returned a few days more and swam around his lair, he never emerged again. Game over!

One night, not long after the Oscar hug, we were having dinner with a Greek couple we had met in Koroni a few years earlier. Tasos is a genial guy who likes a good wind-up and having been a fisherman early on in life, he was very interested in our octopus story.

“You were lucky to find one. They are quite rare in these parts now. The eggs get eaten by some African fish that’s breeding now in these waters. If you tell any other Greeks where you saw the octopus exactly, they’ll go out and catch him, so don’t say a word. Okay?” We nodded, horrified.

“But you can tell me,” he said with a wink. “Just out of interest.”

Ho, ho! “No way!” I told him.

But that got me thinking. Before our encounter, barbecued octopus was one of my favourite meals in Greece, as it is for most people ‒ but not any more. I haven’t, and won’t, eat octopus again. They live for just a few years, are too smart and too rare in places, too cute all round to devour. Most of all, I’ll never be able to forget the sight of small Oscar giving Jim that shy, watery hug. It’s something we won’t ever experience again. Unless … he’s still there this summer when we go back to Greece!

For more information about Marjory’s three travel memoirs about living in Greece during the crisis, go to the books page on the website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com/greek-books www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com or the book page on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

New Book

Marjory has just published a new book, a novel, set in southern Greece, called A Saint For The Summer. This is a contemporary tale but 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 any of the books please think of adding a small review on Amazon sites which is always very welcome. And comments on the blog are also very welcome. Thanks for calling by.

© All rights reserved. All text and photographs copyright of the authors 2010-2018. 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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Is a dream life in the sun the high road to happiness?

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Marjory

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

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.

© 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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Why the EU must embrace the Zorba philosophy

Posted on July 18, 2015 by Marjory

Anthony Quinn as Zorba, with Alan Bates, dancing the sirtaki in the 1964 movie

THE events of the last few weeks, as Greece has fought for a new bailout deal, have left us all in shock. They have shown us how oppressive and vindictive the EU can be and, in contrast, how spirited and stoical the Greeks are when under attack and fighting for their lives.

I don’t want to add any more to the voluminous public discussions. Greater minds than mine have debated all the political/economic issues of the crisis. As someone who loves Greece, I can only pray there will be a good outcome for the country, despite more austerity piling up against it.

What I have gathered from watching recent events unfold – the June referendum and then EU leaders, particularly Germany, acting like schoolyard bullies – is this: most Europeans don’t really understand Greeks, or their culture. It’s as if few of them have ever been to Greece.

What EU leaders have tried to do is shoehorn the Greek character into a northern European template. It won’t go; it never will go. It’s ham-fisted and almost laughable. Greeks have a different story, a different history and cultural influences. Greece is still the least European country in Europe, still leaning gently towards its old Levantine influences, which makes it the exotic, appealing, often chaotic and, sometimes, maddeningly different place that it is. But we wouldn’t have it any other way.

A favourite old friend, Artemios, from Santorini typifies the Greek character: generous, maverick and an expert at skinning prickly pears

Wonderful, vibrant villagers from Megali Mantineia, where we lived in the Mani from 2010

Greeks will never be cool-headed, flinty, northern European clock-watchers, which is why generations of foreigners have flocked to Greece for respite. Apart from its physical beauty, Greece still has the human touch, which is something that has been lost in many parts of Europe, and the UK as well, to a degree.

Greeks have not been blameless in the way they have handled their economy, but I believe that it’s basically because they are different from their northern partners, their character has come in for a battering. They have been labelled as lazy, work-shy and corrupt, and these clichés have been echoed unfairly throughout much of the international media.

There is corruption, of course, as there is in every country, and there are complex reasons for it, but I believe that due to a weaker and not very independent media, the corruption and excesses of past governments have not been exposed as they might have been in western countries. Only now are we seeing more transparency in Greece, and the internet and social media has helped to expose wrongdoing where some of the press has not.

We forget that Greece has only recently emerged from a devastating series of occupations and political upheavals: 400 years of Turkish occupation; the punitive German occupation of the Second World War and the Greek civil war it spawned, and a disastrous military takeover in 1967 with a regime that lasted until 1974.

Four decades of relative calm since the 1970s is but a drop in the ocean for a country to re-invent itself. Until recent weeks, at least, the economic crisis was just another upheaval that Greeks have had to cope with.

During my time in Greece, I have found Greeks are among the hardest working people in Europe. In the last five years I met countless people, especially in the restaurant trade, who work more than 12 hours a day, seven days a week from May to October and in many areas like the Peloponnese will then do a long olive harvest in the winter.

Greeks are bred tough like Foteini, a ‘traditional woman’ from the Mani

Foteini, one of my farming friends in the Mani, who features prominently in both my books, is an unforgettable character and the toughest woman (a pensioner!) I’ve ever met anywhere. She harvests olives from her 200 trees, alone, every year, without fail, and rears a few goats to supplement her paltry farmer’s pension of 300 euros a month, which has been cut back since 2011. No pensioner in the UK would live like Foteini.

Not only have the Eurocrats tried to reinvent the Greek personality but they have also asked for the impossible, for a country to change its system overnight.

Andreas, one of our Greek friends in the Mani, who I wrote about in my second memoir Homer’s Where The Heart Is, put it this way during a discussion about the crisis in 2012, and I quote from the book (chapter 20): “The Troika moans at us… they say we don’t make changes fast enough in the government, and with taxes… but they want us to change centuries of customs and business in a few months. We cannot do it! Impossible!”

The recent events have proved him right. Impossible, and heartbreaking!

After a lifetime of visiting Greece and after four years living in the southern Peloponnese, most recently Koroni, in Messinia, I do not recognise many of the criticisms and cliches levelled at the Greeks. And nor do I feel they deserve the excruciating contempt and hatred that has been slung at them during the crisis.

Perhaps the main fault of ordinary Greeks (and not the dynastic elites or the shipping magnates) is not just making a mess of their fiscal spreadsheets, but in not putting money first in the way that other societies in the west do. In my opinion, this is a country that has put life to the fore, and people, with a belief in leventia (generosity of heart), parea (company), kefi (high spirits) filotimo (sense of honour).

I have found Greeks to be the kindest people I have ever met. When we lived in Koroni for a year, we befriended a couple who had a small holding (with a few goats and chickens) near to where we lived. Tasos and Eleni are warm-hearted and interesting people, whom we saw regularly and became fond of, along with their lovely family.

Gifts to strangers and hospitality, filoxenia, is alive and well in Greece

One day, after their long olive harvest, they arrived at our house with a big basket full of gifts from their farm: olive oil, olives, capers, goat cheese, herbs, and a bottle of their homemade wine (above). They simply wanted to show us hospitality, filoxenia, and make our stay more pleasant. We were overwhelmed by this gesture of friendship. It’s not the first time I’ve experienced this in Greece. Whether Greeks are in crisis or not, they never lose this generosity, or their indomitable spirit. The Zorba factor.

I believe it’s not Greeks who need to change radically, it’s the ‘other’ Europeans. They need to thaw and become more like the Greeks; get in touch with their inner Zorba. Perhaps then they’ll understand Greeks a bit better, offer a more reasonable fiscal blueprint for the future. And create a more compassionate EU.

As Nikos Kazantzakis, author of Zorba the Greek, wrote: “A man needs a little madness in his life!”

The Eurocrats need to kick off their shoes, find a beach and dance on it. Opa!

Homer’s Where The Heart Is

TO read more about living in Greece during the crisis in the southern Peloponnese, read my new travel memoir Homer’s Where The Heart Is. This is the sequel to my first memoir, Things Can Only Get Feta (first published in 2013) about the start of our three-year adventure living 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). If you are in Greece you can inquire about having the book ordered at your branch of the Public store www.public.gr

If any readers have queries about availability for both books, please contact me via the contact page on our website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com where 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. 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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You’re never a lost soul in Greece . . .

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Marjory

Marjory in one of the old doorways of Mistraki

WE were recently invited to a village church on a Sunday morning by a local papas (priest), who promised there would be a lovely service. The church of Ayia Triada was celebrating the national feast day of the Holy Spirit (To Ayio Pnevma), which is part of the important Pentecost period in the Greek Orthodox Church.

We’d never visited the old and rather remote village of Mistraki, though we knew roughly where it was, and planned to get there by 8.45am for the last hour of the service. It was a pleasant drive on a sunny day up through the hills, where there are only a few scattered villages, with views down to the Messinian Gulf.

The splendid house of well-known, 19th-century resident Martha Kypriopoulou-Boziki

When we got to Mistraki, however, the village seemed deserted. Not a soul about, apart from two huge dogs lying across the dusty road. All the houses were shuttered and there was no church in sight, or even a kafeneio. No signs of life.

We parked the car and walked about from one end of the village to the other. It’s a tiny place with lovely old houses, mostly dating from the early 18th century. Many have been restored to their original glory but a few others lie in ruins. But where was the church?

It was past 8.45 when we began to walk up dirt tracks out of the village, looking for signs of a church dome peeking up from the trees, listening for the sound of chanting, but every path yielded nothing but more houses and goat farms. This was curious. Had we got the name of the village wrong? Was the church hidden deep in the fold of a hill?

After nine o’clock, we were still wandering about, convinced that having come all this way we would miss the service, and the small yiorti (festivity) we anticipated afterwards. We were disappointed.

“Let’s hope the Holy Spirit’s looking out for us and we’ll get a sign,” said Jim, more in a jokey, bantering way, as on our long odysseys in Greece we’ve always tried to make light of most difficulties we’ve encountered along the way, big and small. We trudged around a bit more. It was getting hot and we decided we’d have to give up soon and retreat.

Jim suddenly stopped and cocked his head slightly. “I can hear a tractor in the distance.”

There was a dog-tired, High Noon feel to the hillside settlement of Mistraki

He started running through the village, waking up dozing dogs and scattering dust, with me trotting on behind, trying to keep my best sandals from disappearing down potholes. Sure enough, I could hear it too and we sprinted up to the ‘main’ road just as a tractor with two men on board was rumbling by. We shouted and waved our arms, and thankfully the tractor stopped. The two men looked amused when we asked where the church was.

“It’s just through there,” said one guy in overalls, “Five minutes’ walk away.”

The church of Ayia Triada celebrating the feast of the Holy Spirit (Ayio Pnevma)

They directed us to the one dirt road we hadn’t tried yet, unsignposted, but with the remains of an old spring water outlet on the corner, which should have alerted us to a church nearby.

We thanked them and rushed along the track until the church appeared, in a clearing amid tall trees. The faintest sounds of chanting reached us now. We were late, but all was far from lost.

“Well Marj!” said Jim. “Did the Holy Spirit come to the rescue or what?”

I laughed. “Probably! It was a nice touch though, wasn’t it, sweeping in on a tractor. Very appropriate.”

One of the icons of Ayia Triada, depicting the presentation of Christ at the Temple

We burst into the church, a bit out of breath. Heads swivelled our way, and we were surprised to find a big turnout of locals in this old, restored church, with some lovely icons. And Papa Theodoros, dressed in his ornamental robe, was in fine voice, particularly at the end of the service, offering a spine-tingling crescendo to the chanting.

Genial Papa Theodoros, the main priest for the large rural community north-west of Koroni

This is an important service and celebration, coming on Monday, June 1, the day after the Pentakosti, the Pentecost, which falls 50 days after Easter Sunday and commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit on Christ’s disciples.

After the service, the congregation gathered in the forecourt. These were locals, from several outlying villages too, who were among some of the friendliest people we had met in this part of Greece, near Koroni. They wished us ‘chronia polla’ (many years) and a good month, ‘kalo mina’. They were chatty and keen to know where we were from and what our impressions were of Greece. They were at least able to explain why Mistraki seemed deserted. There are now, sadly, only seven permanent residents left in this village, and they were all at the service.

Spit roasted pork is traditional for local celebrations in this part of southern Greece

At the edge of the forecourt, two men had set up a trestle table, with a whole roast pig on top, complete with head, and carved into chunks, and a set of scales nearby. The meat was not all destined for this venue, however, as the pair with their ‘roaming roasts’ would visit other locations that day for other yiortes.

The air was full of the succulent aroma of spit-roasted meat, yet there were no other signs in the forecourt of a yiorti – chairs, tables, or drinks – until the papas came rushing out of the church, dressed down in his black robe and, curiously, carrying a bulging plastic bag.

“Elate,” he called to us, with a wave, herding us towards a low stone wall under the trees. Perhaps because we were foreigners, ‘guests’, we were asked to sit down first and the papas unscrewed a large plastic bottle filled with local, honey-coloured wine and put a liberal dash in our plastic cups.

There was a lot of banter and laughter from the rest of the congregation behind him, watching as he pulled things from his bag: chunks of bread, sweet tomatoes, and goat cheese, paper plates, serviettes. Someone was summoned to collect a huge chunk of roast pork, wrapped in thick paper. It was placed on the wall and opened up for everyone to help themselves, and the wine was shared around.

It was an impromtu feast, and one of the nicest yiortes we had been to for its spontaneity and warmth, and its Biblical simplicity. Papa Theodoros is like no other priest we have met in Greece, and we were introduced to him months earlier while trying to find the key holder for a local Byzantine monastery. He is warm and approachable and has a nice sense of humour.

Although in his late 60s, I would guess, he would also be one of the hardest working priests in this area, with three or four churches to preside over, as well as a nearby monastery. Due to cutbacks during the economic crisis, few retiring priests are ever replaced in villages.

One of the colourful touches in the village

The time had passed all too quickly and people left with kind wishes for the rest of our stay in Koroni.

“Tou chronou, next year,” they said, a common expression meaning that we would hopefully all do the same again next year.

Indeed, I think we will. Next time, we may be less in need of the Holy Spirit, at least on church-finding missions.

Homer’s Where the Heart Is

To read more about village life in the southern Peloponnese and how the economic crisis has impacted on Greece, read my new travel memoir Homer’s Where the Heart Is. This is the sequel to my first memoir, Things Can Only Get Feta (first published in 2013) about the start of our three-year adventure living 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. However, several Greek friends and readers have asked about buying the latest book in Greece. Apart from Amazon and the Book Depository www.bookdepository.com (with free overseas postage), Homer’s Where the Heart Is is not currently in bookshops in Greece.

However, if you inquire at any Public bookstore www.public.gr (some of which stock Things Can Only Get Feta), you may be able to arrange for the store to order the paperback from Amazon. And some independent bookstores will also do the same for you. I will offer more advice on this in the months to come.

I have had some very favourable comments also about the design and layout of Homer’s Where the Heart Is and for that I would like to thank the expert skills of ex-journalist Jim Bruce. Jim’s book editing and formatting operation, called ebooklover www.ebooklover.co.uk can help both indie authors and those seeking publishers. Jim can get your manuscript ready and in perfect shape for presenting to publishers, which is a great help in this highly competitive publishing market right now.

To buy either of my books please click on the Amazon link 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. 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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The real Greece: How hard is it to find?

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Marjory

Independence Day on March 23 in Kalamata is a great opportunity to see traditional folk costumes and customs and the day ends with festivities and fun.

SOME people have written to me lately asking how they can go on holiday and find the real Greece, something closer to the unpredictable, plate smashing Zorba-style Greece of old, before mass tourism and the spread of EU cultural blandness.

It’s impossible to turn the clock back but obviously you’ll get a head start with this one if you steer away from popular destinations that attract most tourists, and particularly at the height of summer, even if these are often the most picturesque places, like Santorini or Mykonos.

If only a Greek island will do, then pick one without an airport so it’s harder to get to, like gorgeous Symi in the Dodecanese, or Serifos and Sifnos in the Cyclades, tiny Paxos, near Corfu, though there are numerous others. These islands will give you a better chance to conjure up a more traditional Greece, and engage with the locals. Tourists often avoid the mainland and yet it’s here you can still find towns and villages that are more authentically Greek, especially if you go off-season.

Jim and I spending a happy Easter Sunday with a lovely Greek family in the Mani.

I am biased after spending three years in the wonderful, unspoilt southern Peloponnese, but you can really get away from it all here and tackle a slightly more raw side of life. Away from the more popular tourist areas, you will find hill villages galore where life moves to a slightly different beat and hasn’t really changed that much in centuries. In the Mani hinterland you will find small Greek communities, olive farmers, goat herders, and at least one tiny cove where the real George Zorbas, who inspired the book and film character, hung out and danced the sirtaki along the shoreline. In search of old Greece? It doesn’t get better than that.

I’ve put together a few things you can definitely do if meeting locals and learning about the Greek way of life is your objective.

Two happy villagers taking part in a saint’s day parade.

Get spiritual

1. If you find yourself in Greece at Easter, do take part in some of the celebrations, as this is the most important time of the year for Greeks. Whether you’re religious or not, it’s worth going to some of the daily Orthodox Church services that lead up to Easter Saturday for their sheer spine-tingling drama, ritual and the Byzantine chanting. In fact, any time of the year it’s worth going along to a Sunday service to observe Greeks in their own unique setting. No-one will mind if you just go for 10 minutes because in this respect the Orthodox service is much more flexible than our services, but don’t push your luck by dropping in on the way to the beach dressed in shorts and flip-flops.

Feasts and fairs

2. During the summer months, paniyiria (fairs) and saint’s day ‘feasts’ are held all over Greece, particularly in the villages. In the southern Peloponnese alone there are 64 different paniyiria for various saints and to mark other religious events. There are also festivals commemorating different foods and crops: a Potato Festival in the Mani, an Onion and Tomato Festival in the Messinian peninsula and others to honour bread, wine, figs, fish, to name a few. Many of these fairs last several days and are the best place to rub shoulders with locals, and are great fun. For details of various festivals held in the southern Peloponnese visit the Costa Navarino website www.costanavarino.com Ask at your local kafeneion, council office or tourist office about festivals and fairs.

Off season, volunteer to help a farmer with his olive harvest. It’s hard work but you’ll feel like a local.

Try an olive harvest

3. If you are in Greece in November or later, especially in olive growing areas like Crete, southern Peloponnese or some of the islands, offer to help at a local olive harvest to get a feel for this ancient practice which is vital to the local economy. There are plenty of farmers in Greece still suffering because of the economic crisis who will be happy for you to help – and you might get some olive oil at the end of it all. Ask around your local village.

Food for thought

4. Seek out tavernas and coffee shops where only Greeks go because the food will probably be more authentic for a start and you will soak up some local colour. If you’re in a city, try to find the small street stalls selling souvlaki and gyros (slices of grilled meat in pitta bread), favoured by locals. In Kalamata try Jimmy’s, near the Archaelogical Museum in 23^rd March Square. And in towns and cities try an old-style ouzerie which sells ouzo and other drinks, as well as serving meze (appetisers) to go with them. Plenty of interesting characters congregate in these places.

Market forces

5. If you’re in a town or city, seek out local fruit and veg markets where you can soak up some Greek vibes. In Kalamata there is a fabulous laiki community market on a Wednesday morning in the city, not far from the historic centre. There’s a vibrant camaraderie among the sellers and Greeks from all walks of life do their weekly shop here. You’ll pick up colourful stories, bargains and the odd freebie. There are also nice bars and cafes nearby.

Find a fisherman in the harbour to take you out on his boat. You never know how the story might end.

Float your boat

6. If you’re staying in or near a fishing village, go down early in the morning to where the boats are landing fish for a real local experience and try to find a fisherman who will take you out for a morning to experience a traditional way of earning a living. Ask in your local kafeneion about this. In fact, the kafeneion is the best place to go for almost any inquiry in Greece.

Talented iconographer Maria Tsiboka creating a Byzantine masterpiece in her workshop in Mystras.

Icons of style

7. Try to find art and crafts studios, or jewellery workshops in villages and towns where you can watch someone carrying out a traditional skill. Although I have mentioned her a few times before, one of my favourite people in the southern Peloponnese is Maria Tsiboka, a traditional icon painter and a lovely soul with excellent English who will demonstrate how a Byzantine icon is produced, at Porfyra Icons, her studio and shop in the town of Mystras (near Sparta). The town is beside the hillside famous as the last outpost of the Byzantine Empire. Maria also has a lovely collection of icons at reasonable prices and will paint one to your own specifications and post it back home for you. www.porfyraicons.gr (003) 27310 82848.

Learn the lingo

8. It might seem obvious but try to learn some Greek if you can and use it everywhere even if your efforts are riddled with mistakes. I have made many howlers of my own over the years but Greeks will only love you all the more for trying and it’s your first step in engaging with the culture. You might even make a new Greek friend and be invited to their home for a family celebration or for Easter Sunday lunch with spit- roasted lamb and red-dyed eggs to crack for good luck. You know you’ve done something right in Greece when this happens. Enjoy it!

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

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

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