Decade of a Feta way of life . . .

Posted on July 17, 2023 by Marjory

THIS month it’s 10 years since my first Greek travel memoir, Things Can Only Get Feta, was published and I’m thrilled to say the book is still going strong: a best-seller in various Amazon categories, despite a publishing drama early on. However, it has soldiered on with vigour and even found its way recently onto the syllabus of a Greek university course. But more of that later.

If you’ve followed my blog over the past decade, you’ll be familiar with how the book, about living in Greece during the economic crisis, came about. But if you’re just tuning in for the first time, in short: my husband Jim and I, and our famously bonkers Jack Russell terrier Wallace, left a Scottish village in 2010 for a mid-life adventure in southern Greece. It was during a British recession and a downturn in the newspaper industry, in which we both worked as journalists.

**Wallace, above, and again with Jim and Marjory in Koroni**

And what an adventure it turned out to be, settling in a rented stone house in a hillside village in the remote, wild Mani region. It was a working village, raw in places, sometimes well beyond our comfort zone but perfect for our aim of living a Greek kind of life while we freelanced for various publications in Britain and Australia to help fund our odyssey. Greece was on the brink of meltdown due to its devastating economic crisis of 2010. The country, with massive debts, had to accept a bailout from the EU and punishing austerity to go with it. An ideal time for journalists perhaps, but not for a trouble-free stay in beautiful Greece.

However, we went regardless and found ourselves in an ideal location, living amongst big-hearted goat and olive farmers. We made friends with many, particularly the inimitable Foteini, the eccentric goat farmer with her famously endearing taste for thick, clashing layers of clothing and rural mayhem. Ironically, it was my curious friendship with Foteini (pushing my imperfect Greek to its limits) that helped steer our path in the village. She also became an unlikely literary muse – who knew?! Her touching stories and her antics inspired me to start writing Feta, to record a rural way of life in the Mani peninsula (one of the three that hang down from the southern mainland) that I was sure was about to change forever.

**Marjory with the unforgettable Foteini**

**The village of Megali Mantineia, where the author spent the first year of her Greek odyssey**

**Jim (back row, right) with the wonderful villagers and two of its priests at a celebration in Megali Mantineia**

The first year in the village of Megali Mantineia, beneath the Taygetos mountains, exceeded all our expectations. It was challenging, fascinating, often hilarious, and sometimes downright frustrating. We dealt with macabre local customs, a health drama for Wallace, a hospital visit for Jim, critters (scorpions, lots!), eccentric expats, but mostly it was a lesson in surviving Foteini’s ramshackle farm compound, her strong mizithra goat cheese, and a slew of scatty, but endearing animals. At the end of the first year, we decided to stay longer in Greece, which grew to four years in all, living for the final year in the nearby Messinian peninsula, near Koroni. I wrote four best-selling books about our life in Greece, and two romantic suspense novels, also set in the Mani.

**Some of the press coverage for the book in 2013**

I started writing Feta in the freezing winter of 2010/11 in our stone house, my desk wedged up against the loungeroom window with a view of the snow-capped mountains. But I also had a view of the rickety back entrance of Foteini’s old village house, where she spent her evenings. Sometimes, she must have seen me at the window. Or perhaps she just sensed I was writing about our village antics, many of them hers, and she’d phone, particularly if she hadn’t seen us for a while. It was usually with the same humorous lament. “Ach, you’ve forgotten me already, koritsara mou (my girl)!” she’d say. “When are you coming for coffee at the ktima?”

The idea of sitting in Foteini’s draughty farm shack in foul weather beside a dodgy petrogazi (small gas cooker) didn’t always appeal. However, we did go now and then in winter, which I wrote about, including the memorable day Foteini came close to blowing up the shed.

**Foteini on her donkey Riko, taken at her farm compound in Megali Mantineia**

I had plenty of material for a book, from the adventures and mishaps of the first year, and I continued to add to the narrative over the next three years. Things Can Only Get Feta was published in 2013 by a small London publisher, during a long intermission in Scotland before we returned to Greece again. From the beginning, Feta did very well and sparked great interest, particularly in Greece in the summer of 2013. After doing a phone interview with the editor (Sotiris Hadzimanolis) of the Australian Greek newspaper Neos Kosmos, about our life in Greece and the book, Sotiris filed a similar piece to a Greek news outlet and from there, the story of our exploits went slightly viral.

Versions of it turned up in a slew of Greek publications and internet news sites with variations of the headline: “Scottish journalist besotted with Greece”. While there are many authors today, focusing on a much trendier, revitalised Greece post-crisis, 10 years ago the story of a foreigner having a love affair with Greece in turmoil was certainly more unusual. More than that, it struck a chord with long-suffering Greeks who had hitherto heard nothing but negative, often beat-up, reports in the international media. There were harsh criticisms of the country’s fiscal attitudes and work practices, whereas the story about Feta was a good-news story.

We had scores of messages sent to our website with notes of thanks for my Greek ‘ardour’ and my favourite comment of all time is still: “For your information, Greece loves you back.”

However, despite the book’s success, two years later, while Jim and I were now living in Koroni, I had a falling-out with my London publisher when he seriously broke the terms of our contract. (In publishing, be careful what you wish for!) Rather than allow the book’s success to be sabotaged, I legally forced the return of the book rights to me, and republished it myself in a very short time. This was no small feat, working on an old laptop computer from a hillside house with just a mobile phone and poor wi-fi, or often, no wi-fi. But nevertheless, once re-published the book had a fresh gust of wind under its wings and continued to do very well. Not long afterwards, I published the second memoir, Homer’s Where The Heart Is, and there are now four in all (see links below).

But Feta will always be close to my heart and I’m proud to say it was to become (and the sequels too) one of the very few books to be written in English about life in the economic crisis by a non-Greek living in the country during that time. It prompted Greek author Stella Pierides to suggest: “This book might become a future reference source about life in unspoilt Greece.”

It may have been a presentment of sorts and in 2021, I was thrilled to be contacted by a charming Greek girl called Panayiota, who told me that Feta and the following two memoirs had been offered on the syllabus of a literary course she attended in a northern Greek university, under the theme of how foreigner writers viewed Greek life during the crisis. She had written a paper on the subject. When I first started writing Feta in our Greek rural village during a cold winter, I wouldn’t have believed it would end up on a university syllabus. Or that Wallace may even have been the subject of some literary scrutiny. About time!

**Wallace, up to his usual mischief on the first week of our Greek odyssey in 2010**

I’m grateful to all my blog readers on this site (some of you have been following my Greek blogs since the beginning) and others who have read my books and shared my stories and had a laugh over some of our more daring, crazy exploits and those of the famously crazy Wallace. I’m grateful to those who still write to me to offer their feedback. One Facebook friend recently told me she has read Feta 10 times so far. “Feta is my comfort-blanket read.” That’s a first! Many reviews and comments have been humorous. “More than Feta, this book is a whole picnic hamper of delights,” said one Amazon reviewer.

It would be true to say that going to Greece and writing the books changed our lives for ever, and only for the better. The only note of sadness in our otherwise happy life was that dear Wallace, one of the stars of Feta, passed away at the age of 16 in 2017 after we moved back to Britain. We were devastated, as Wallace had been through all our adventures with us and had been a talisman, as well as a welcome distraction at times. Few Greeks we lived amongst will ever forget his antics I’m sure, and neither will the many readers who wrote to me after Wallace died with kind thoughts and wishes.

The main consolation I have in Wallace’s passing is that he had a wonderful life and hopefully his memory will live on in my Greek books.

**The main stadium at Ancient Messene, which was no match for the shenanigans of Jim, Marjory and Wallace**

Feta extract

If you haven’t read Things Can Only Get Feta, here’s a funny extract from the book of one of our crazier exploits, when Jim and I set out to visit the archaeological site of Ancient Messene (10^th century AD), north-west of Kalamata. The only problem was we had Wallace with us and, as we’d discovered on an earlier attempt on Messene, only guide dogs were allowed inside this large gated site, even on a near-deserted January day. While we sat in the car eating chicken sandwiches for lunch, we mulled over how we could blag our way inside with the dog. Jim finally came up with a daring strategy. Inspired by the once-warring Spartans who’d also dreamt up unlikely ways to sneak into Ancient Messene, Jim planned to get inside with Wallace hidden in his rucksack . . . . .

“Okay. But there’s one big problem: how do we get Wallace to stay quiet in the rucksack and not start barking?” I said.

Jim thought for a minute. “It sounds a bit gross but we’ll put him inside with the last chicken sandwich. Then we’ll zip the bag at the top and leave him a little air hole. He’ll be busy eating. You know what he’s like about chicken.”

Wallace always had a thing about chicken because Brigit, his kind but eccentric breeder in Edinburgh, fed all her puppies with roast chicken, which was a disaster for feeding programmes later. It explained why chicken was the only food that the fussy Wallace liked unequivocally. He was so besotted with chicken that we had broken every rule in the dog-rearing manual by using the word ‘chicken’ on occasions where danger loomed and every other command was flatly ignored. I turned and looked at Wallace on the back seat. He was panting. He’d definitely heard the ‘chicken’ word.

I expressed serious doubts about the plan but Jim was more optimistic.

“Don’t worry,” said Jim, soothingly, “He’ll be okay in the rucksack. Remember the time we carried him in it when we were hill walking in Scotland and he hurt his paw and was limping? He was good and quiet then.”

“What would the staff do if they caught us with Wallace?”

“Call the cops, put us in the cells for the night. Feed us two-month-old mizithra cheese and village bread.”

My teeth started to ping. “Ach, let’s go for it!”

If nothing else, at least we’d have a bit of a laugh. And in a cold January in Greece, you can get like that, wanting a laugh, any laugh.

“Let’s try him out in the rucksack first,” said Jim, unzipping it and taking things out. First, we threw in a couple of Wallace’s dog biscuits and lifted him inside the bag, which was roomy. He didn’t like it at first but when he caught a whiff of the biscuits, he squirmed around inside to retrieve them, thinking it was a new game, better than hiding biscuits in shoes.

I wasn’t totally convinced, but Jim still seemed confident, and I guessed it was just a bit of a boy thing.

“Okay,” he said. “Get ready to leave now. Get all your stuff. As soon as we unwrap the chicken sandwich and drop it in, we’ve only got a few minutes or so to get through the gate and on our way.” He checked his watch at the same time, as if this was a finely tuned military raid.

We got out of the car and locked it. Jim put on the rucksack with Wallace in it and I dropped in the chicken sandwich, torn into several pieces, which was the messiest part of the plan, and zipped up the bag, leaving the air hole. The minute the sandwich hit the bottom, Wallace was down there like a deep-sea diver and the bag was wriggling like mad, then all went quiet. I could almost hear his lip-smacking enjoyment over the chicken. We walked quickly through the main gate, Jim stood to one side while I went to the small cabin window. I remembered the attendant from the first time we came here, but assumed she wouldn’t recognise me after a summer of foreign visitors. I asked her what time the site closed.

“Are you together?” the woman said, pointing to Jim.

“Yes?”

She looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Can I ask what’s in the rucksack the man is carrying?”

“Just lunch things,” I said in a nervous, squeaky voice. I glanced at the rucksack and thought I saw the edge of it was wriggling. Maybe she saw it as well.

Jim sensed the hitch, aware that Wallace was growing restless, eager for another chicken soother, so he started walking down the dirt track that led between broken columns and the outlines of ancient buildings.

“My husband’s impatient…big archaeology fan. Been reading all about Ancient Mess…”

“Okay,” she said, cutting me off. “But you must be back by 3.30 when the site closes.”

I turned and legged it down the track, smiling to myself. When I caught up with Jim I could hear Wallace starting to whine and the zip was coming further apart at the top as he tried to get his snout into the cool air. Jim walked faster. The site sloped down to an old amphitheatre and from there it was a short walk to a cluster of olive trees. Once there we were safe, out of sight of the entrance cabin.”

. . . . . or were we? Find out how the smuggling strategy panned out finally, one of many amusing adventures in Things Can Only Get Feta

Book extract and all photos ©Marjory McGinn

To celebrate 10 years of Things Can Only Get Feta, the ebook will be discounted to 99p UK/US for three days on Amazon stores from Monday July 17. I hope enjoy it.

To buy Feta on Amazon UK or US click this link:

The book is available as an ebook and paperback on all Amazon sites. The other books in the best-selling Peloponnese series of memoirs, Homer’s Where The Heart Is; A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree, and A Donkey On The Catwalk, are also available on all Amazon sites, the paperbacks also through Barnes & Noble, Booktopia in Australia, and independent bookstores.

Marjory’s latest book Wake Me Up For The Elephants is a travel memoir with a broader canvas: Africa, Fiji, Australia, Scotland, Greece, Ireland. It’s a collection of candid and hilarious tales based on real journeys many taken by Marjory as a journalist and described by best-selling author, Peter Kerr, as “Travel writing at its best.” The book is in part a prequel to the Greek series of memoirs on what the author’s adventurous life was like even before she embarked on the Big Greek Odyssey.

The ebook and paperback are available on all Amazon sites. To buy the Kindle version, in either the UK or the US, click on one of the links below:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0C2N788HD
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C2N788HD

For all books by Marjory McGinn visit her Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/author/marjory-mcginn

Or visit the website: https://www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com

If you have liked Marjory’s books, do consider putting a review on Amazon sites. It helps a book become more visible and is always appreciated by the author.

Thanks for stopping by.

© All rights reserved. All text and photographs copyright of the authors 2010-2023. 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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Secrets of life in a Greek village

Posted on May 6, 2019 by Marjory

Part of the lovely plateia in Makrinitsa village, Pelion

NOT all Greek villages are created equally. Two villages can be several miles apart, with roughly the same background and geographical aspect, yet one will be thriving, with a plateia rimmed by busy cafes and tavernas, while the other is on the slide. Sometimes there’s no explanation apart from something that’s now lost in the natural twists of history.

When I was in the mainland region of Pelion last year I was strongly reminded of this fact and also how fiercely loyal and competitive Greeks are about their own village, no matter what shape it’s in. Jim and I had rented a villa in the south of the Pelion peninsula for a month. It was on the edge of a small village, which was quiet, with not many inhabitants apparently, but with gorgeous views down to the Pagasitikos gulf and well placed to access both this side of the peninsula and the other, on the Aegean. As people who don’t like touristy locations in Greece, we thought we’d done pretty well to find a comfortable house in this location.

View from the village of Metochi towards the gulf

Yet, while browsing in an old-fashioned souvenir shop in the coastal village of Milina, the black-clad owner of a venerable age asked us where we were staying. I told her Metochi, in the foothills behind. She pulled a great lemony face. “Metochi! Why would you want to stay there? There’s nothing there. Nothing but old houses. Pah! Here is better,” she said, waving towards the vista of crowded tavernas and sun loungers along the beachfront.

I laughed at her put-down of Metochi for being the poor relation to the buzzy, thriving Milina. In her mind Metochi fell into the second category of villages dwindling into oblivion. There are a number of run-down and abandoned houses in the centre of Metochi, that’s true, and it wasn’t hoaching with people, in September anyway. On the surface it was just a village on the way to somewhere else as it’s on the ‘main’ road from the popular town of Argalasti to the bigger village of Lafkos and then to the south of the peninsula. Lafkos is elegant with a large church and wide plateia (square) with classical houses and busy tavernas and cafes.

The elegant plateia in Lafkos village

Makrinitsa in the Pelion mountains is one of the most picturesque in Greece

The plateia is usually the hub of a Greek village and always a good indication as to whether the place is thriving or not, and it’s worth flagging this up when you’re in the market to buy a house in Greece. Some of the more remarkable villages in the Pelion mountains further north have sumptuous plateias, like Makrinitsa, set under huge plane trees and with a view down to the city of Volos. But Makrinitsa is well established with a stronger foothold in the region’s history. It has old churches with frescos and an impressive museum. This village has been the haunt of artists, writers and revolutionaries. Milies and Tsagarada are smaller mountain villages yet they too have obvious treasures. Milies has a public library with one of the largest collections of Greek and foreign books in Greece, with some of them dating to the 14^th century. Its church of the Taxiarchon is also world famous for its acoustics. Tsagarada has a 1,000 year old plane tree in its beautiful plateia.

The surviving kafeneio in Metochi has rustic charm and doubles as a shop

A slightly forlorn sign on the plane tree in Metochi says: “Our village square.”

Metochi’s plateia was a ghost plateia during the day at least. It was large enough and well situated, high above the road under plane trees with incredible gulf views, and perfect to catch a cool afternoon breeze in summer. It must have been lovely once, with a traditional kafeneio on the far side, now closed, and a smaller one beside it, still operating for limited hours and serving also as a general store. The only time we saw people in the plateia was at night, men mostly, drinking beer and playing the board game, tavli.

At the top of the steps was a sign fixed to a plane tree saying: “Our village plateia”, which was a touching and yet forlorn message. Such as it was, many people obviously still took great pride in their plateia. But its semi-abandonment speaks of a village having lost its way somewhat, apart from some modern, yet discreet, holiday villas at its outskirts, surrounded by olive groves, where we were staying.

The deserted grill house in the village that is a quiet reminder of more convivial days in Metochi

The village had obviously had a different life once. At one end of it there’s a natural spring, spouting cool sweet water, where people still stop to fill up bottles. Across the road from the spring, there’s an abandoned psistaria (grill house) with its huge barbecue still visible at the front, for spit-roasting meat. The broad terrace here would once have been packed, especially on important feast days, but is now just an empty space where fallen leaves twirl in the wind and people park to fill up their bottles across the way.

This is a reflection of what’s happening everywhere in rural Greece, in hillside locations. In the Mani we found many villages that were beautifully sited with once-lovely stone houses that now seemed dead. In one village we found an abandoned kafeneio, its door hanging open and a collection of old junk and furniture piled up inside and old bottles and dusty glasses still on the wooden counter. It was as if the owners had hurriedly disappeared and left everything as it was. In another village we found a group of old people sitting around the front door of a crumbling stone house. There were five of them, most of the current full-time population, they told us rather mournfully.

The village of Metochi is not in such bad shape, not as long as an essential road cuts through it. It wasn’t vibrant and yet we liked its wound-down appeal, its solitude, the view, and no-one bothered us at all, apart from one village gossip. She regularly passed by on the road and one day stopped to ask a slew of personal questions, as Greeks often do, including how much we were renting the villa for because her daughter also had one to rent nearby if we were interested. Cheeky!

Greek rural villages at least are a world apart, whether they buzz or not. When you plan to live in one for any length of time you have to navigated them thoughtfully and choose wisely. Too quiet, too noisy, too parochial, or too steeped in difficult history, and you might be in peril.

A view of Megali Mantineia under the northern slopes of the Taygetos mountains in the Mani

The small sign on the main road to Megali Mantineia. It’s all you get. Blink and you’ll miss it!

When we settled in the Mani, southern Peloponnese, in 2010, for our long Greek odyssey, we picked a hillside village that felt remote, with the Taygetos mountains as its backdrop, but in fact was only a 15-minute drive to the outskirts of Kalamata at the head of the Gulf of Messinia. As it turned out, Megali Mantineia was perfect for us and our crazy Jack Russell Wallace, a type of dog that none of the villagers had seen before and thought resembled a small goat – and he often acted like one!

Megali Mantineia is a successful working village where locals still cultivate their vast olive groves and herd goats. We decided the best way to live there was to befriend Greek villagers rather than cultivate the British expats because we didn’t want to live an expat life. Not that trying to fit into any village as a foreigner is easy. It’s not. Had I not spoken reasonable Greek from a long association with the country and endless Greek language classes, I would have found it more difficult, as few of the villagers spoke much English. I quickly learnt the secret of fitting in was simple: go well beyond your comfort zone and leave all your preconceptions about life, up to a point, behind you.

Foteini, thrilled to have a copy of my first memoir which features her, and donkey Riko, on the cover

Riko grazing outside Foteini’s farm compound

When we first met the goat farmer Foteini – who features in my three Greek memoirs – she was riding into the village on her donkey. Conversing was a challenge as she spoke a heavy mountain dialect and things could easily have gone nowhere. But there was something so unique about her that Jim and I instantly took to her and when she invited us back to her farm compound (a place of rural junk and manic disorder) we never thought twice about it really. And so a strange and unusual friendship flourished, particularly between myself and Foteini. She certainly trounced all my personal preconceptions and, in her way, became a very unlikely muse. Our regular, generally very funny, interactions sparked my journalistic curiosity and inspired me to write the memoirs. How could I not? Fate had cast her on my path, on the very first day in the village.

Some of the villagers and priests from Megali Mantineia on a special feast day. Jim standing in back row, right

Since my first memoir, Things Can Only Get Feta, was published in 2013, readers have contacted me to confess they want their own Greek odyssey, which is lovely, and have asked for advice. I don’t have much really except for this: learn some Greek, talk to everyone. Go beyond what’s comfortable and take part in all the village celebrations (there are many during the year), and church services too because this is the best way to see Greeks as they really are. It’s a window into their society and shows villagers that you respect this, and their culture, and you’re not in the village just to have a remote, parallel life to them.

Before we finally returned to Britain, for personal reasons, we invited many of the villagers from Megali Mantineia to a farewell meal at one of the local tavernas. It was a bitter/sweet night and very sad to say goodbye at last. Everyone lined up to kiss us farewell, some bringing small gifts. One of the women, Voula, whom I’d also become fond of, hugged me and announced: “You’re one of us now Margarita (the name Foteini had given me). You’re a Maniatissa.” Maniatissa is the Greek word for a woman of the Mani. It was humbling to get the title; far better than a Queen’s honour.

Navigating the cultural terrain of a Greek village isn’t easy. It requires more of you than you sometimes want to give. But in the end, it offers you life experiences and insights you will struggle to find elsewhere.

Greek book offer

If you want to read more about life, drama and romance in Greek villages, my first novel A Saint For The Summer is currently on an Amazon ebook promo, 99p/99c (UK/US) from August 16 to 23. It’s a tale or heroism, faith and love with a narrative thread back to WW2 and set in the wild Mani region of Greece. One reviewer described it as: “An excellent read. I was hooked from the first page.” Another said: “The story made me laugh, made me think and made me cry a little.”

Link: https://bookgoodies.com/a/B07B4K34TV

If you have read any of my books and liked them, please think of leaving a small review on Amazon. It will be gratefully received. Thanks.

For more information about all the books please visit the books page on our website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com

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

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Would the Durrells have picked Corfu today?

Posted on May 1, 2017 by Marjory

Peaceful Kaminaki beach in the north-east of Corfu

THE Durrells, the popular TV drama based on the memoirs of naturalist Gerald Durrell, has just started its second series in Britain. Once again it promises light-hearted entertainment in the glorious surroundings of Corfu, and follows the adventures of the slightly skint Louisa Durrell and her four children as they move from Bournemouth in 1935, searching for a cheaper, more liberating life on a Greek island.

The Durrell family from the popular ITV series

When we were deciding on locations for our own Greek odyssey back in 2009, ironically, we first thought of Corfu, as it was an island we had visited many times, particularly the northern part, which has spectacular beaches and historic mountain villages, such as Old Perithia.

Jim and Marjory in a taverna on Corfu’s nearby island of Paxos

We were quite in love with the beauty of the place for a while and its easy-going people, but in the end we decided against Corfu as, to us, it seemed the most ‘British’ of all the Greek islands because of its historic link with the UK and ironically probably because the Durrells’ association has lured more Brits there than anywhere else. Not that we had a problem with that, but for a Greek adventure we were seeking a totally unspoilt location, something rougher and wilder, and the Mani, in the middle peninsula of the southern Peloponnese, fitted our requirements perfectly. We were not disappointed.

Having watched all The Durrells’ episodes up to now, and read many of Gerald and Lawrence’s books, particularly Prospero’s Cell, a fascinating account of Lawrence’s time living at the White House in Kalami Bay, when life in Corfu was grittier and more authentic, I can’t help but wonder: if the Durrells were around now, planning a Grecian odyssey, would they really have picked Corfu? Or would they also have looked for a location with more edginess.

Chris Nye, writing for Greece Property Guides www.propertyguides.com/greece/news/ believes anyone wanting to ‘do a Durrell’ these days would be better off choosing Crete for its glorious landscape and affordable lifestyle, and he outlines a helpful comparison of current living expenses in Bournemouth and Crete and what kind of property you can find on this island. Incidentally, Chris is the brother of Simon Nye, who wrote and co-produced the ITV television series The Durrells.

The hillside village of Megali Mantineia, beneath the Taygetos mountains where we first lived in the Mani

Spectacular view from the north Taygetos looking down on Kalamata city, the olive oil capital of Greece

I can imagine the Durrells in Crete, no problem, but for sheer rawness and rural eccentricity, which Gerald Durrell’s books have in spades, I feel sure they would have gone for the wilder shores of the Mani as well. As a slightly unorthodox family, led by feisty, sometimes bibulous Louisa, they would have been looking for the kind of rural adventure that we were searching for, and you don’t easily find that in Greece any more. You need to go off the beaten track to places such as the Mani and the nearby peninsulas (Messinia, Laconia) of the southern Peloponnese, or the far north and north-west of the Greek mainland.

Local farmer Foteini became a good friend and eased us into rural life

I think the Durrells would have enjoyed reckless encounters with some of the local farming community in the Mani, as we did when we first settled in the hillside village of Megali Mantineia, in the shade of the Taygetos mountains. They would certainly have enjoyed our eccentric, donkey-riding farming friend Foteini, and her ramshackle farm compound. And Gerald at least would have relished our stone house with its scorpions, hornets and the big prowling kounavi, pine marten, not to mention a few fuzzy expats in the undergrowth.

I did love the scene in Episode 2 of The Durrells, where Louisa is holding a food stall to raise some much-needed cash for the family, selling her home-made English ‘delicacies’ to Greeks, like trays of toad in the hole (for non-Brits, that’s sausages baked in a pillow of batter). A philandering British expat called Hugh tries to justify his chat-up lines, saying it’s nice to make contact with interesting fellow Brits, but the petulant Louisa bats him off nicely saying she prefers to mix with the locals and not feel that she’s back in Bournemouth. Good for her!

One of the coves close to where we lived for part of our odyssey, with Kalamata city in the background

The Durrells have many adventures of the rural kind, with animals, guns and dodgy neighbours. And they have house rental woes. In reality, the family moved a few times in Corfu but the house most remembered was the Daffodil House, near Gouvia, a large sprawling Venetian mansion, which is depicted fairly accurately in the TV series as having plenty of ambience, but was pretty shabby and chaotic inside. The best family home they could get for the price. Like the Durrells, we also had plenty of rental woes, many of which I outlined in my three travel memoirs. I only wish we’d had the gumption though to refuse paying rent at times, as Louisa did in Episode 2, when the coquettish landlady called round.

Wallace and his animal magnetism

We had trouble finding suitable houses because we had taken our lovable but bonkers Jack Russell terrier, Wallace, with us. The house we rented in Megali Mantineia had its drawbacks, but was owned by an Englishman who was sympathetic to a resident dog. Wallace rewarded him and the village with a slew of antics, the odd breakout, and some distinctive barking, which I hope they still think fondly of! Every house we rented had issues/difficulties: industrial garbage bins, critter infestations, crazy neighbours, sparse furniture, though the problems were mitigated by stunning views. I will write more about renting in Greece in a later blog post.

Wallace and ‘guard dog’ Zina

The second property we rented in the Mani, from an entertaining Greek family, was a wonderful rambling place, with an olive orchard. It also had animals: chickens, rampant roosters, a big chained-up dog called Zina, plenty of stray cats, but also water strikes, Arctic winds whistling through in winter, and Orestes, the eccentric neighbour with a hunting rifle, who used to drive us mad, firing off rounds regularly, mostly at song birds perched in his precious almond trees. When he took his sheep out to graze nearby, he often carried a long hunting knife, for a worrying reason, which I revealed in my second memoir Homer’s Where The Heart Is.

Marjory, Jim and Wallace spent the fourth year of their odyssey in the nearby Messinian peninsula in lovely Koroni

The southern Peloponnese is the perfect location for a glorious life on the edge, for Brits seeking more than just sandy beaches and an easy, ouzo-flavoured lifestyle. Unlike the smaller confines of most Greek islands, pretty though they are, places like the Mani are BIG and diverse, with plenty of room to spread out and even discover your inner rebel/cowboy. Here you can lead the kind of life that you could only have lived in Britain decades ago. Or okay, at a pinch, you might still discover in the highlands of Scotland, or the wilds of Ireland.

If it was madness and mayhem that the Durrells of today were searching for, trust me, it’s all there in southern Greece. We had adventures we only dreamt about before we left the UK. But there are limits. I would never have flogged a tray of toad in the hole at the laiki, farmer’s market. No way! I think if I’d tried that, Orestes would probably have swung by and shot it!

Illustration of Jim and I taken from Womankind magazine

Our big fat Greek odyssey has featured this month in the international magazine Womankind www.womankindmag.com and is available in the UK at WH Smith stores. It will be out in North America shortly (through Barnes and Noble), or via the magazine’s website. I love the small illustration of Jim and I on donkeys in the Mani.

Illustration: (c) Womankind Magazine

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 her books page on Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

New Book

Marjory has recently a new book, a 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 the Chicago magazine site, Windycity Greek, as a book “that will renew your faith in mankind”. 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

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

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Cracking Greek Easter: red eggs, euphoria and a touch of madness

Posted on April 9, 2017 by Marjory

Greek Easter service at Ayios Dimitrios, Koroni, Messinia

WHEN I think of Easter in Greece, I think of dyed red eggs, euphoria and feasting. I also think of mutant incense, terrier rebellion and ‘Ecclesiastical Knee Syndrome’.

The Holy Week (Megali Evdomada) is this week, and it’s the most significant date in the Greek calendar. From all my many years of visiting Greece, Easter leaves indelible memories for its sense of drama and anticipation. Much of the drama is supplied by the daily church services that are like small one-act plays of varying intensity and nail-biting climaxes that progress the story of Easter, which seems unique to the Orthodox Church. Even if you’re not religious, it’s a wonderful chance to see Greeks at their most reverent, and at their colourful best, with plenty of pomp, circumstance and sometimes unplanned slip-ups showing that the best rehearsed productions can be derailed.

When we were living in the hillside village of Megali Mantineia in the Mani (southern Peloponnese), the sombre Easter Friday service ran slightly amok when Wallace, our naughty Jack Russell terrier, disgraced himself, slipped out of our village house and raced along with the procession, turning a timeless ritual into a cross between a riot and a Crufts obstacle course for Jack Russells. The Friday service is the grand procession of the Epitafios, where a flower-decked bier, representing the crucified Christ, is carried through villages and cities everywhere in Greece, and is a magical event to witness.

Our village procession started at the main church, went up to the graveyard, so the papas could offer prayers for the dead, and looped back along village lanes towards the church again, with the papas and elders at its head. Wallace managed to invade it early on. I don’t think the villagers had seen anything quite like the hyperkinetic Wallace, weaving his way through the procession, a blur of white fur, and retrieving him required a bit of a miracle. It became one of the chapters in my first memoir Things Can Only Get Feta.

Marjory with naughty Wallace, the Easter procession buster

The services in this Easter week are awe-inspiring for their organisation, their props and those amazing psaltes, chanters, who advance most of the service and seem tireless. Even during the tough economic crisis, no detail was ever spared and for that you can only admire the Greeks. Yet sometimes nerves get the better of everyone. On one of the Thursday services in our first year in the Mani, which is a particularly long and devotional service, the poor deacon, standing beside the local papas, turning over the pages of the old hymn book, overlooked the massively smoking censer in his hand.

“The incense started off with fragrant puffs but quickly increased to billowing acrid clouds that shrouded the first few rows of seating. We started coughing and choking. If this had been an aeroplane, oxygen masks would have dropped from the ceiling by now.” (Things Can Only Get Feta, chapter 25).

Easter Sunday with the family who featured in Marjory’s second travel memoir, Homer’s Where The Heart Is

I have experienced Easter in many locations in Greece, from tiny islands to cities. In each location, the church services have been handled with aplomb. I have also found the same level of hospitality and kindness from locals, with many invitations to share the traditional Sunday roast with an extended Greek family. One of my first Greek Easters was in Crete, which I first visited in the 1970s on my first long odyssey to Greece. I had been living and working in Athens, but before I left I had taken a few weeks’ break in Crete with a friend. We were offered a tiny holiday house by an Athenian colleague. It was opposite the beach in a completely authentic, untouched area of the northern coast, east of Hania. While the area is, sadly, unrecognisable now from what I remember then, it was a glorious piece of old Greece, with a few nearby houses, a taverna across the road, a deserted beach and not much else.

My friend and I had planned to have a quiet Easter as we knew no-one there and we knew very little about Easter customs and protocol. On Sunday morning, however, there was a knock at the door. It was the farmer who lived up the hill behind us. He vibrantly announced Christos Anesti which I knew meant, Christ Is Risen, the salutation after the Saturday night service. He told us that for the traditional Sunday feast he was roasting one of his lambs and that we must come and join his family. There was no way we could refuse. He insisted.

So we went up to his house, where the lamb was turning slowly on a spit outside and the olive groves around us were filled with succulent meaty, herby aromas. A big family had gathered: grandparents, kids, everyone excited to be eating a proper meal after weeks of the strict Lenten fast. We had lunch at a long table surrounded by these wonderful, big-hearted people, whom I could barely talk to as I spoke only limited Greek then. Somehow we managed okay and enjoyed all the conviviality, the laughter and lusty cracking of the dyed eggs, an ancient Orthodox ritual that symbolises eternal life and becomes a contest to see who can crack everyone else’s eggs without cracking their own.

Boiled eggs are dyed red for Easter and decorated with other symbols of the season

Jim and Marjory enjoying the egg-cracking contest at a memorable supper with their Kalamatan friend Kostas and his lovely family

This Sunday lunch experience was during my first long but youthful foray into a foreign culture and I had never come across such inclusiveness and kindness before from strangers, even having grown up in friendly, knock-about Australia. This was unique and the memory has lingered.

Every Easter I have spent in Greece has taught me something more about the Greek spirit, the sense of filoxenia, hospitality and this unique culture. It has also offered me some unexpected, occasionally humorous, outcomes, and the odd devious medical problem which Jim and I came across during Easter, 2014, for our second odyssey in southern Greece, in Koroni. We had decided that we would set ourselves the task for Lent of going to every evening church service of Megali Evdomada, in a different church each night, which we had never done before.

Some of the chanters at an Easter service in Koroni, Messinia

We made it through the first part of the week no trouble, but by Thursday, which is a very long service, nearly three hours, depicting Christ’s crucifixion, we were starting to run out of steam. Jim developed a painful problem which he called Ecclesiastical Knee Syndrome (EKS) because there is so much standing up and sitting down during Greek services, and at this time of year, churches are slightly cold and bone-numbing.

“The service was longer than I ever remembered any to be, full of Greek I couldn’t decipher, and as I glanced around the church I saw many Greeks looking pale and wilted, with many of the men discreetly slipping outside for a quick cigarette in the cool evening air. As foreigners, we felt the need to stay, and endure, lest we be considered slightly soft or disinterested. Nine-thirty came and went in a strange agony of chanting, incense and a babble of high Greek. Unlike Jim, after a while I welcomed EKS, and every opportunity to stand up and feel my legs like an economy passenger on a long-haul flight to Australia which is what the service began to feel like.” (Chapter 2, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree).

A Byzantine church in the Mani hills

But the Thursday service actually ended with a surprise, slightly controversial, climax that was worth the wait, despite distressed knee cartilage. And it was a dramatic lead-up to the finale of this week, which is the Saturday service. This is something that everyone should experience once in their lives, which in the Orthodox Church represents the resurrection of Christ. And on a less illustrious level, it also represents the end of the Lenten agony for many devout Greeks, who have lived for six weeks on boiled greens and water, or near enough. It represents the end of an ecclesiastical marathon. I have experienced this Saturday service in Greek cathedrals and also in tiny island churches and it never fails to be affecting and inspiring.

The moment when the church is plunged into darkness at midnight and a single lighted candle is brought out of the sanctuary by the papas and its light slowly shared to every other member of the congregation until the church is luminescent is a simple, yet thrilling spectacle. And if you are lucky enough to also hear a particularly good rendition of the hymn Christos Anesti (Christ is Risen) then you are truly blessed.

Happy Easter!

Καλη Aνάσταση! (Kali Anastasi) Have a good resurrection, as they say in Greece!

(To hear the Vangelis rendition of Christos Anesti performed by Greek actress, Irene Pappas, please click on the link below.)

https://youtu.be/AKwizUzyj0I

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 or the books page on Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

The third book, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree is available on all Amazon sites:

amazon.uk

amazon.com

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

Things Can Only Get Feta

Homer’s Where The Heart Is

Messages are always welcome. Thanks for calling by. x

© 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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Wild woman of the Mani . . .

Posted on January 23, 2017 by Marjory

Readers have made a pilgrimage to a Mani village to see the unique farmer, Foteini

AFTER my three travel memoirs were published from 2013, readers have been in touch to say they visited the locations featured in the books. Many have made it up to the hillside village of Megali Mantineia, in the Mani, where the first book (Things Can Only Get Feta) was set, and mainly in search of the inimitable goat farmer Foteini.

This unassuming rural woman, whom I met at the very beginning of our odyssey on a village road, seems to have struck a chord with many readers, as she has with me. Perhaps it’s her struggle to survive a tough farming life on her own, made harsher still by the Greek economic crisis. It is also, I suspect, her endearing eccentricities, her tendency to wear mismatched layers of clothing and oversized hats, shoes that look like Cornish pasties, and her odd habits, like washing skinned bananas before she eats them.

I recently called one of my favourite friends from the village, the lovely Stavroula (Voula), who lives near Foteini but unlike her, usually answers her village phone. Voula and I hadn’t spoken for a while and at first she thought I must be in Greece. She got excited at the prospect of a visit. When I told her I was in England she shouted vibrantly down the phone: “Well, when are you coming back here? We’ve missed you!”

It’s the quality I most love about rural Greeks, the fact that when they warm to you they are inclusive and caring. Their interest in you is like a big, delicious hug, and is irresistible.

Marjory riding Foteini’s beloved donkey Riko

I was told that all was well in the village and everyone was surviving the crisis, which was good news. The only recent news I could glean of Foteini, however, was that her beloved old donkey Riko, which I rode on my last odyssey in Greece (from 2014 to 2015), has been pensioned out to pastures sweeter and a new beast has taken his place, as Foteini uses her donkeys for her rural work. Riko was a gentle, stoical creature and he made an appearance in all my travel memoirs.

Foteini, however, continues to attract readers to the village. One American Facebook friend told me she went to the village just to find her and was ecstatic when she did, but was then very put out when Foteini rather stubbornly wouldn’t agree to a photo session beside the donkey.

Some readers have told me they have also gone in pursuit of Foteini, waving a copy of Things Can Only Get Feta, which features Foteini and Riko on the cover illustration, which must have amused her, or maybe terrified her perhaps, I can’t tell which. Some have bravely angled for a coffee in her ramshackle ktima, farm compound, which I wrote about at length, but no-one has pulled it off yet, I think. I am left amazed at so many sightings of Foteini when I had always thought of her as somewhat shy!

The village of Megali Mantineia beside the Taygetos mountains where we spent the first year of our odyssey

The church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, in the village

One reader called John recently sent me a long email telling me about his summer visit to Megali Mantineia. He was thrilled to drive along the main village road and find Foteini walking along it with Riko loaded up with wood. John told me that he stopped the car and jumped out, waving Feta, and shouting ‘Good morning’ in his best learner’s Greek.

“She came up to me and put her hand on my shoulder and spoke for about 20 seconds…,” he explained, “though I honestly couldn’t recognise one Greek word. Then she placed one of her big bronze-like hands on my hand. What an amazing experience. To most people this would probably not mean much, but to me it meant a lot. I asked Foteini if I could take her picture alongside Riko and she said ‘yes’. I was totally amazed. It was brilliant. My wife, who hadn’t read Feta at that point, said to me, ‘This has made your holiday, hasn’t it?’ And to be honest, it really had.”

Foteini uses her donkey Riko to transport firewood. Stacking it on a donkey is something of a rural art

At Foteini’s farm there is ingenious plumbing like this hosepipe and a soap holder fashioned from a sawn-off bottle

Recently in East Sussex I was invited to give some talks about my time in Greece at local book groups. I was not surprised to find that it was not Greece in crisis, or the recklessness of Jim and me – and crazy Wallace the dog – going on a mid-life odyssey that piqued their interest so much, but Foteini. They wanted to know all about her: how she lived, what her house was like, and about her outrageous horticultural couture. I passed around photos of her and the village and they were pored over. I imagine the women of peaceful, retiring Sussex have never come across anyone quite like her. Neither had I when we first started our Greek odyssey in 2010 in the remote southern Peloponnese.

Foteini became the most unlikely creative muse for me. From the moment I saw her riding Riko on that village road in 2010, wearing a massive straw hat, her donkey loaded up with ‘half a house’, she stirred my journalistic interest, initially, with her “promise of authenticity, tinged with craziness” as I wrote in Feta. It was Foteini who talked us into renting the small stone house we’d just viewed in the village. We dithered over it for many reasons. She merely said: “But why wouldn’t you take it?” Great journeys can start on such simple promptings as this. It was she who first christened me Margarita, a name that has stuck with me in Greece. But it was also her character that drew me to her, and against the odds, even with my rusty Greek language skills, she and I began the most unusual, and challenging, of friendships, which I described in the books.

Sweet and lovely Voula from the village, giving Marjory a hug

Foteini was not the only villager, however, who we came to love during our time in the Mani, which stretched to three years. There were other Greeks who became an indelible part of our lives, especially dark-haired, gregarious Voula, whom I have already mentioned, and her lovely mother, Nikoletta. When the pair sat side by side, they were like “two voluptuous bookends”. I wrote about them both in my first two books, where I had called them Eftihia and Pelagia, though sadly, Nikoletta passed away in 2012, which was a great loss to the village. There were also many other characters: Voula’s brother Yiorgos, locals who ran the kafeneio and tavernas, the farmer with the Paul Newman eyes, the ever gracious Leonidas. Yet still people contact me about Foteini (not her real name, by the way).

Giving Foteini a copy of Feta

When I first gave her a copy of the book on a visit in 2014, she grabbed it in her big meaty hands, turning it this way and that, with a look of wonder. Having anything published is an incomparable experience, but watching Foteini gripping her copy of Feta, a book she inspired in so many ways, ranks as one of the most satisfying moments of my life.

* * * * *

Riding Riko

When I had the mad urge to ride Foteini’s donkey Riko along the village road from her ktima, it took a bit of persuasion. Jim also needed a bit of prompting too, as I described in this extract from my third memoir, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree:

“Foteini stared at me hard. ‘You want to ride Riko, on the road? Out there?’

‘Yes, just for 10 minutes. You know I won’t let anything happen to him.’

She scratched at her face, worrying a curly grey hair hanging from her chin.

‘You’d be careful wouldn’t you, koritsara mou? (My girl).’

‘Yes, of course, I will,’ I said, wondering if she felt this nervous when she took him out on the road, or did I just seem like a total rookie.

Jim was watching me with narrowed eyes. ‘What’s going on? I’m having a Greek breakthrough moment. I’m making out words and I’m not well pleased.’

‘I’ve asked Foteini if I can take Riko along the road for a ride.’

‘Oh, no way! You know how people drive in the Mani. A car will hit you both.’

‘Shhh! Stop fussing. Can a woman not have a moment of madness in her life?’ I said, remembering Zorba the Greek’s famous appeal for getting in touch with your inner rebel.

Jim shook his head. ‘Margarita, you have not been a woman bereft of mad moments, I seem to recall.’

‘I won’t be long, I promise.’

‘Okay. Margarita mou,’ Foteini said at last as she led the donkey through the main gate. She handed me the lead rope, which was all I had for reins, and for a crop, she gave me a thin piece of whittled olive wood.

‘Take him,’ she said. ‘You’re always giving me things. This is my gift to you. Enjoy it. And don’t be long.’

I brushed my legs over Riko’s sides to move him quickly down the road. As I went I could hear Foteini and Jim grumbling together, and Wallace whining. It was like a Greek chorus.”

January Promo

My second memoir, Amazon best-seller Homer’s Where The Heart Is, which continues the story of our three years in the Mani, is currently on an Amazon Kindle promo for the rest of January at 99p (UK only). To buy, click the link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00WEC7YCY

For more information about this book and the two others in the series, including the latest, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree, go to the books page on the website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com or the books page on Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

The latest is on all Amazon sites:

amazon.uk

amazon.com

I’m always happy to hear from readers. Please click the comment link on this page. Thanks for calling by.

© All rights reserved. All text and photographs copyright of the authors 2017. 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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New travel memoir set in Greece

Posted on June 18, 2016 by Marjory

Hello, blog readers. I am happy to announce that my third travel memoir, set in southern Greece, is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

Called A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree: Mad adventures on a Greek peninsula, the book charts my second long odyssey in the southern Peloponnese with my partner Jim and our crazy Jack Russell dog, Wallace.

While the first two books were set in the Mani, the central peninsula, this one takes place in and around Koroni at the tip of the Messinian Peninsula, where we stayed for 14 months from early 2014.

Marjory, Jim and Wallace in Koroni.

At the window of Palio Spiti (the old house), described in the new book.

Why we ended up in Koroni, when we had our heart set on living once more in the Mani, forms the basis of the book and reveals how you can plan your life down to the last detail but it will be derailed in the end, especially in the wonderfully spontaneous, and sometimes chaotic, place that Greece is. There are more perilous and funny adventures along the way as we try to find long-term rental accommodation and finally come to terms with living in a house that we didn’t expect we’d end up in. If you read the book, you’ll find out why.

A lemon tree at Villa Anemos overlooking the Gulf of Messinia.

You might be wondering about the title, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree. There are specific reasons why I chose this title and apart from being unlucky enough to have these pesky critters calling on us quite a bit, the title is a kind of metaphor as well, and you can make your own mind up about what the scorpion represents in the context of the narrative. And in case you’ve missed it, there is a scorpion in the lemon tree on the cover illustration. Can you spot it? Wallace the dog should give you a clue.

View of Koroni from its old Venetian castle.

The artwork was produced by the talented London artist Anthony Hannaford, www.anthonyhannaford.co.uk, who created the fabulous covers for my first two books. Once again, he has managed to capture all the colour and vibrancy of Greece. And cheeky Wallace got a front-row seat this time. I also have to thank Jim Bruce for his great editing and formatting of this edition www.ebooklover.co.uk

In this memoir we will make friends with a new cast of heart-warming characters, while connecting again with old friends in the Mani, including our dear friend, goat farmer Foteini, with whom we have several humorous encounters, as always.

Long sandy beaches along the gulf side of Koroni.

While we may have started our latest odyssey disappointed at not being able to live once more in the Mani, we fell in love with Koroni in the end. What’s not to love? It is in a remote part of the (left-hand) Messinian peninsula and I was surprised that there had been so little written about it in the past, so I am thrilled to be able to highlight this region and I hope I will entice more of you to visit. It is a haven of peace and quiet where you won’t see the outward signs of economic crisis, or the effects of recent migration to Greece.

Koroni is set beside a lovely old harbour, with a castle on a high acropolis above and narrow winding streets ascending to it. It is atmospheric and unspoilt, with the Messinian gulf on one side and the Ionian Sea on the other. On either side of the promontory are wide sandy beaches, old churches, and thriving villages within easy reach.

Over the coming months on the blog, I will focus on other aspects of Messinia, as mentioned in the book including some of the hidden corners of this area, and a few curious and unexplained phenomena, like The Hand of God Tree. Watch this space!

I hope you enjoy this memoir, the third in my Peloponnese series. Like the other two books, the narrative is such that you can read it on its own and understand what our travels in Greece have been all about, but you will get a better understanding of how we connected with this region, and its people, if you read the other books as well, starting with Things Can Only Get Feta. The first two chart our adventures from 2010, when we first left our Scottish village to relocate to a remote hillside village for a year, despite the economic crisis. But the year became four in the end. Four of the most fascinating years of our lives.

Enjoy the new book, which is currently available as an ebook and a paperback on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other outlets. I thank you all for your ongoing support of my work. I always appreciated comments on the blog and if you have liked the books, a small review on Amazon will also be most welcome. It is the lifeblood of authors.

Marjory’s new book is on all Amazon sites:

amazon.uk

amazon.com

On the website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com you will also find a ‘books’ page with other information about the books. Or visit the Facebook page www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

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

Things Can Only Get Feta

Homer’s Where The Heart Is

Thanks for calling by. x

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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.

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.

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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Searching for the real Arcadia …

Posted on November 7, 2014 by Marjory

Stemnitsa nestles on the edge of the Lousios Gorge.

ARCADIA! The word suggest images of pastoral bliss and goat-legged Pan, the god of shepherds, twirling around olive trees, playing his pan-pipes. It was a place that inspired the European poets and painters of the 18th and 19th centuries and suggested an innocent, golden age. It sometimes seems more of a mythical place than a real province. So, on a cool autumn day, we set off from the tip of the Messinian peninsula and drove north to discover what Arcadia is all about, and if it still has mythical charm. The excellent Cadogen guidebook, Peloponnese and Athens, describes Arcadia as “one of the best kept secrets of the Peloponnese … a place that seemed ancient even in ancient times”. I know just what that means now as Arcadia has a certain timelessness, sitting snug amid mountains and ravines in the centre of the Peloponnese.

Gerousia kafeneio, a little piece of traditional Greece

We were heading for the mountain eyrie of Stemnitsa, west of Tripolis. It is one of several mountain outposts in this region, including Dimitsana and Karitaina, but Stemnitsa is also claimed to be one of the 15 most beautiful villages in Greece. Dating back to the Middle Ages, Stemnitsa is built in giddy tiers up a precipice on the western slopes of Mount Menalo, at 1,100 metres, with a view down the long, deep Lousios Gorge.

Gerousia promises to be cosy in winter with its wood-burning stove

On the day of our visit it had a wintry feel so high up, despite being a warm day elsewhere. The main square is the heart of this old village, with tables and chairs under the walnut and cherry trees, an old church nearby, and a few tavernas and kafeneia. The Gerousia is an elegant old kafeneio with outdoor seating, but it wasn’t hard to imagine how, in deep winter, villagers would be huddled around the central wood-burning stove inside. It has a feel of how kafeneia used to be in Greece, and in case you can’t imagine it, there is a wonderful collection of old photos around the walls showing groups of villagers from last century sitting outside the main door. Sophia, the owner’s mother, is very friendly and obviously proud of the establishment, as it featured not long ago in a travel story in a popular Greek magazine. Along with coffee she serves some of the local sweets like skaltsounia, pastry shells filled with walnuts and honey. She was very taken with our Jack Russell dog Wallace hiding under the table. “He’s very quiet,” she said. I knew she was tempting fate and the minute her back was turned he sprang to life, like Pan chasing a woodland nymph and barked loudly, scattering a group of passers-by. Just another day in Arcadia! Before we left, Sophia gave us a small container of cherry tomatoes from her garden to take away, and insisted we try a couple first. They were sweet and delicious and it was a nice gesture of hospitality. But coffee followed by tomatoes? Don’t try it at home!

One of the arty village gates

The village is full of old-world charm with some quirky rural corners – great stacks of olive wood for the winter, donkeys tethered in gardens, gates and fences seemingly fashioned by crafty elves from sticks. It could have been a setting for a Brothers Grimm fairytale, without all the scary stuff. The village is best appreciated by walking up the narrow streets bordered by solid stone houses with heavy wooden shutters built for winter weather.

Cute donkey with a fringe on the top, and a traditional wooden saddle still favoured by villagers

The village is also renowned for its gold and silver smithery and there is school here in an old renovated building that teaches the craft. Several shops selling items made there and also a range of other traditional and modern jewellery, and at least one with more folky designs called the Politimes Dimiourgies.

Politimes Dimiourgies, one of several jewellery shops in the village near the silversmithery school

There are 18 churches here, from the 12th century to 17th century, though you will need to ask around or the keyholders. The church in the main square, Ayios Yiorgos, is open most mornings and has a nice collection of frescos and an intriguing relic in a silver box which is a piece of bone from the 13-century Peloponnesian saint Leontios. Most of the village is open in the winter and has some nice boutique hotels.

The spectacular Prodromou monastery hanging onto a rockface on the Lousios Gorge

One of the more curious attractions of this area are the three amazing monasteries built along the side of the Lousios Gorge, particularly the monastery of the Timios Prodromou. You can’t see the monastery from its parking area at the top of the gorge and a sign sends you on to a cobbled path that leads down the side of the gorge. Just when you think it can’t possibly be here, because there’s nothing but a steep-sided ravine, and trees, you look up and there it is, above you, a long mass of buildings clinging like limpets to the rockface, with some tiny, box-like structures with wooden buttresses underneath. It’s eerily quiet in the afternoon, hours before the monastery opens for visitors, and all you can hear are the sounds of birds and the Lousios river gushing way below, and maybe even Pan pipes when the vibes are right.

The bullet-scarred door of the monastery church hints at turbulent times

The Prodromou monastery was established in the 12th century and its church is also built into the rockface, with frescos from the 16th century. It hasn’t always been as quiet though. This area was the haunt of hero and clan chief Theodoros Kolokotronis, who was one of the leaders of the Messinian uprising against the Ottoman Turks that kicked off the War of Independence in 1821. During the war, he took refuge in this area and in the Promdromou church, securely locked by an impenetrable thick wooden door which was repeatedly shot at by the invading Turks and still bears the bullet holes to this day (see photo above).

Marjory and her woodland sprite Wallace at the ancient site of Gortys

A trip to this region wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the site of Ancient Gortys, further down the gorge from Stemnitsa. The site was established in 335 BC and was once an important shrine and centre of healing. In the river Lousios below, Zeus, the father of the Gods, was said to have been bathed as a child. Alexander the Great was so impressed with the site he offered his breast plate and shield as a tribute.

Some of the ruins of Ancient Gortys with the Lousios Gorge behind

There’s not much to see here now apart from fallen columns and crumbling walls amid ancient olive trees and clumps of wild sage. The original ‘spa’ and bathing area is still visible, with a curious wall of ‘cublicles’, each with a small stone depression in front, which may have been for foot bathing, and I can only assume the ancient Gortyians had tiny feet.

Bathing cubicles of ancient Greece?

Arcadia is an enchanting place that does feel rather ancient, a small corner of Greece that probably won’t change much because of its mountainous terrain. Perhaps the minxy nymphs and sprites that inhabit this blissful zone had taken control of our sense of direction but when we left late in the afternoon, with a long drive back to Koroni, we ended up driving west past the equally alluring town of Karitaina, with its massive castle atop a craggy hill, instead of heading south, and added another hour on to our journey. For more information about Arcadia and what to see, visit the Greek government website www.mythicalpeloponnese.gr

Wallace goes large in his backpack

He ain’t heavy, he’s a Jack Russell!

AFTER my book about living in the Peloponnese, Things Can Only Get Feta (Bene Factum Publishing), came out last year, a few readers contacted me about one of the chapters. They doubted that you could get a Jack Russell terrier to sit still in a rucksack. Readers might recall that we smuggled Wallace into an archaeological site near Kalamata after being told dogs were not allowed in. So, here’s a picture that shows it’s possible. But how did we keep him quiet for a while once he was inside? Well, you’ll just have to read the book … For details about the book and where to buy it and its sequel, Homer’s Where the Heart Is, Big Fat Greek Odyssey website, book page.

Visit Amazon to buy the book (Kindle version – new edition). A new edition is also available. Please remember that reviews on Amazon are always much appreciated, however small they are. Thanks for stopping by and your comments on the blog are always welcome too.

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

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Scotland’s role in an Elgin Marbles mystery …

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Marjory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nearby Limekilns village on the Firth of Forth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Books about living in Greece

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

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

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

Things Can Only Get Feta

Homer’s Where The Heart Is

You can also find me on Twitter @fatgreekodyssey

And Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

www.facebook.com/HomersWhereTheHeartIs

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

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My big fat Greek love affair …

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Marjory

LAST week started off quietly enough, writing a few stories to promote my book here and there; some social networking. But by Monday night all that had been swept away. I found myself in the centre of a mini media frenzy in Greece. As a journalist, I am used to being on the other side of the notebook, so this was something new.

It followed a recent interview I’d done with the editor of Australia’s esteemed Greek newspaper Neos Kosmos about why I and my partner Jim, and our dog Wallace, went to live in the wild Mani region of Greece for three years during the economic crisis, which became the subject of my book, Things Can Only Get Feta.

I was sent a link on Monday to the published story in the Greek edition of the newspaper. But it wasn’t quite the story I’d expected. The Mani adventure was certainly there, but this had a different spin. Here was a story that exposed me irrevocably as a woman who has had a long love affair – with Greece. Outed!

I blushed as I read about “the unbelievable story” of my “erotic relationship” with the country, and that I had been “besotted with the place” from the first moment I had set foot on Greek soil as a youth.

All true, and the feature was written affectionately and without irony by Greek-Aussie editor Sotiris Hatzimanolis. I have indeed been in love with Greece all my life, from a fateful childhood friendship with a Greek girl called Anna in Australia, as a shy Scottish migrant, to my regular jaunts there ever since.

I didn’t think for a minute that Greeks would be moved by the passion of one foreigner for Greece. Boy, was I wrong, as the response to the story proved. Sotiris had known something about the Greek psyche at this moment in time that I didn’t.

The article in Australia’s Greek newspaper Neos Kosmos, with the headline “An Australian journalist in love with Greece”.

The Neos Kosmos piece was picked up quickly by an Athens press agency and sent out everywhere in Greece. By Monday evening it was on most internet news site and blogs – splashed with a similar headline “A Scottish journalist’s love affair with Greece”. One headline simply yelled, “Marjory McGinn in love with Greece”, like something you might have seen scrawled on the bike sheds in primary school.

The stories were sometimes revamped and occasionally in English, with a quaint Google-style translation. In one instance I was described as having “the most erotic relationship with Greece”, as if I’d just written a novel called Fifty Shades of Greece. I wish!

Greece and I do have a history, yet I have skirted around the issue of my affection for Greece most of my life because I’ve found that other people feel uncomfortable when you confess your love for a country, especially one that’s not yours.

By Tuesday, several Greek newspapers had contacted me for interviews and ran features in the following days, and one Athens TV station was keen for a live interview, but there were problems with the link-up and it’s still pending. Which is just as well. I think the Greeks have enough problems at present without having to listen to my less-than-perfect Greek.

Another feature in Athens daily newspaper Dimokratia

But this welcome publicity for the book isn’t the main point I want to make here.

The story Sotiris wrote had struck a chord with Greeks still suffering through the crisis, jaded and tired with their troubles. And the response to it was enormous. Our website, named in the stories, suddenly had 150,000 hits in three days – which crashed the site at one point. And there was a flood of emails, mostly from Greeks, with messages of thanks to an unknown foreigner for saying something nice about Greece for a change.

It made me realise how, over the past four years, there has been so little written about Greece that hasn’t been pessimistic, blaming, insulting at times.

Greeks have suffered critically during the crisis, as has been well documented already, but what I don’t think has been conveyed so accurately in the international media is how the crisis, and the effect of the austerity measures, has crippled their self-confidence as well as their standard of living. Many Greeks told us, when we were living in the Mani, they were ashamed of how low their country had sunk, even though it wasn’t all their fault.

So I want to share a few of those thoughts and wishes (both serious and light-hearted) from my recent correspondents (full names withheld). All the emails sent were sent in English.

“Thank you for being gracious toward Greece in these difficult times. We Greeks have been subjected to pure and evil racism because of the crisis, with an intensity that we never expected. In (some European countries), patients in hospital have said they don’t want to be examined by Greek doctors just because they are Greek. Greeks have been bullied because of the usual stereotypes. Greece is not perfect and there are many things to be corrected, but it is very unfair for Greece to be demonized the world over.” – Stergios

“Your story has made me really happy. It is an inspiration to Greek readers who really need something like this right now.” – Kelly

“I felt proud and grateful when I read about you and your love for Hellas (Greece). I would like to thank you for coming to my country and wishing that Greeks would love this country as much as you have.” – Giorgos

“Any anthropos (person) who falls in love with this place isn’t (doing it) by accident. For your information, Hellas (Greece) loves you back. We are living the economic nightmare here that those who would call themselves “human” have played out on us. I know we will win as long as we are together and help each other.” – Stephanos (Greek American living in Greece)

“I am so proud that you would visit my country, my people, my beloved places. Thank you so much for what you have done for us. I want you to come here again to love us more, to feel the Greek hospitality.” – Olga

From a woman who thought we were still in the Mani: “We will be beside you and protect you as guests. Greek hospitality is great to those who respect us. Our country is your country.”

And lastly, a comment sent to my Facebook page from Kyriacos: “Way to go, Marj! You are a pure Hellenic lady. Be well.”

So, what’s not to love about Greece and its warm-hearted people? Here’s my similar wish for the country. Be well! Or, as they say in Greek, na eiste kala.

For details about the book visit www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com and 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.

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Big fat Greek blog

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

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