Different Culture

 

It's all Greek to you....

This is the playground sign

Opening hours 

8.30am to 11.30pm

Good little English or Kiwi children would be in bed by 8 or 9?  I wonder if it's still like that, or even those times have changed.

11.30 is actually quite early for Midsummer here.  1am would be more like it.  Hot sultry evenings are for adults to socialise and children to play.  Early morning hours are the coolest 

Those Ukranian children I said were so well behaved.....

they actually generally are. We saw them all eating in the restaurant today.  No screaming or complaining.  

Friends who stay in the same building as them say they let off a lot of steam thundering up and down the stairs. 

Just regular kids 

Rainy Day

 Rainy days and Mondays  don't  get me down. Not when I'm on holiday.  It's a bit damp and I didn't pack an umbrella .  Who cares

We wake late, make coffee in our room .  Sit on the balcony with our hot coffee and watch a few braver souls dodge the downpour on the way to the cafeteria. Then it's just a matter of filling in time till 1pm when the restaurant opens. Everyone else is on the same timetable.  It's better to wait till 2. At 1 o'clock there's a queue and a bustle and rush for trays and tables. 

No need to rush. There's plenty of food for everyone.  Also for the busload of children from war torn Ukraine.  We see them on the beach and in a long orderly queue waiting for ice cream. They're amazingly well behaved

Cold wet sandy beach

Though incredibly there are a few swimmers

Just looking at that choppy grey water is quite enough for me

News flash....the only news I've heard in days

82 year old died after a violent fight over sun chairs with a 76 year old on an Athens beach.

I heard the oldies here discussing it in depth. The 82 yr old was once an officer in the Greek navy.  

I thought he might be German. They're so possessive of their sunbeds

Another day

The sun is shining again. But we went into town and stopped at the Chinese Emporium and bought an umbrella, just in case.

We had to go shopping at Ks favourite electrical shop for a special spray.  The car windows were left open during the storm and now one groans and sticks on its way up and down.

Fixed now he says!

I sat on the beach and finished my 3rd book. 2 whodunnits and a memoir of an English girl in a French village

Now I'm reading 'What am I Doing Here' by travel writer Bruce Chatwin .  A personal selection of stories and travelogues.  Published in 1989, the year he died, aged only 48.

His ashes are buried near a Byzantine church above the greek village of Kardamyli.  His friend and  Philhellene Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor  lived out his latter years there in a house he had built nearby. 

Late Summer Holiday

 No wifi in our room and it's sketchy on the balcony. Not even data works.  I eventually get to read blogs and sometimes write one 

No news.  That's good news.  Its all very strange, life without wifi, social media, but I'm getting used to it. Except at night when I used to listen to YouTube in the sleepless hours. Now I pass the hours with my thoughts and try to relax by counting sheep, or listening to my breath and Ks snoring.  

The first few sunny days.  Crazy people out there in the sea doing water Zumba. I watch for a few minutes and put my head back in my book.  

The weekend was busy

Families with young children. We heard their happy voices at the far away playground well into the night

The playground is well kept, lots of unusual games.  Right next to the helicopter pad. I've never seen a helicopter land in all our years of holidays here 

I managed 2 swims before the weather changed.

The first swim .  The water was warm but there was a strange breeze and a tide which pushed me back.  I had to battle to move through the water and reach K who was just a few metres away. 

It was a very strange experience. It would have been frightening but I could actually touch the bottom.  Keeping afloat was tiring and it wasn't long before I was battling back to shore.

The next day the sea was back to normal.  I swam a little, just to say I'd done it, then got out to read and muse in the sun

Now we seem to have a wi fi signal. I'm sitting on our small balcony listening to night sounds and drinking a Spanish red 

We went out for supplies today. K got his raki and some greek white wine. This Spanish red was cheap, in a box. It's actually quite good. Not plonk.

Cheers BigEars

Away

Agia Marina tou Naftikou

 or in English our Navy holiday resort. We are here.

Hooray...I think

A long 4 hour drive was uneventful.  Traffic minimal

And we arrived at our room to find this....

I dragged 6 heavy bags, pillows, sheets, towels, clothes, shoes, books up to the 2 floor, via the lift, to find a broken lock 

The room they reassigned us was on the ground floor of the next door building

Ye gods and little fishes

While K went to get the key for the other room I dragged all the bags back down and reloaded the car

It was a long day before we got settled

But worth it

After a meal in the restaurant we sat on the balcony and opened a bottle of 2023 red

And listened to the crickets, the soft sound of distant  voices and the  repeating call of the scops owl

It's my idea of peace to sit on the balcony and enjoy the night sounds and watch the lights of planes descending into Athens airport

The resort itself is descending into disrepair 

The grass uncut, the cafeteria with despicable coffee

Not what it used to be

The long grass reminded me of paspalum, grasses with long sticky fronds, which grow in the warm summer in wild unmown  gardens in NZ

The first time I'd thought of that stuff in many years

Eyesores

Poros properties.

 There are so many abandoned properties around the island. Some just left to fall down, usually because of family differences, or just left for years half finished usually because of illegal permits. Or no building permit

The old electric  company building.  It's right on the waterfront and been in this state for as long as I can remember.  There's some dispute which means no-one can touch it.  Prime real estate,  grimy and peeling away and full of rubbish

Another property right on the harbour front, next door to that last abandoned building.  This one is owned by a bank and has been sitting here, half built and full of rubbish now for over 25 years.  Rumours are that the foundations filled with sea water and it couldn't be finished.  Who knows.  Like the other one, rumours fly.

They both should at least be cleaned up and painted.

 

And as for this one

It's a house owned by an english family.  The parents died, the children couldn't agree what to do with it .  Another piece of prime real estate, a large house with gardens, right opposite the Police Station.  Now it's virtually unsellable.  There is so much owed on it and a pile of papers and red tape that need sorting out.  

Slowly it has become place for tipping rubbish

And it's falling to pieces

The next 2 properties, once again right on the waterfront, have been painted and one completely restored

 Above...... The old Latsi Hotel 

Now only the ground floor is used. The site of the island's largest supermarket.  A mini market size for most of you.  Not repaired or restored but repainted.

An attractive sight when visitors approach by sea

A neo-classical mansion as it was

The difference is amazing.  The waterfront is so much more attractive. 

Those other buildings in disrepair need a whitewash and a clean up.  They probably need a few rat traps as well

Idyllic NZ

 

Enjoying the sunset 

From my brother's patio in NZ

Looking out towards Mount Maunganui

Drink in hand

Look at that

 brilliant trail of colour across the sea

An idyllic isle

Thanks for the photos Rainy

Another Life

 LIVING IN GREECE ... A repost 

Imagine having a mother in law who threatened to have the police stop your wedding ceremony, who couldn’t understand that all the world didn’t speak greek, didn’t want her son to marry you because you didn’t have a dowry and couldn’t understand why my brothers didn’t buy a house for me.  An alien culture.

Growing up in the Bay of Plenty.  Growing up in the 60s.  We were free, the world was our oyster.  I remember biking, many miles, with my younger brother , from Te Puke to our bach at Papamoa.  A bach* still there, now prime waterfront real estate** but no longer owned by the family  

In the olden days and up until few years ago  the traffic was constant, the side wind from  logging trucks could have hurled us into the road or over into a silage pit.  No place for 10 year olds on bicycles.  Main highway. 

I haven’t been back since my father’s funeral in September 2006.  20 years. 

** real estate, realestate, relestate.  I had to look that up.  Nowadays a thesaurus is essential equipment as I write.  No longer fluent in English, or Greek

*This bach, small holiday home, was built by my father from an old garage. Basic, long drop loos in the early years and artesian water we had to pump to fill the tank, but right above the waves. 

I used to miss NZ acutely, smells, sounds, accents, family .   Now I’m just as much at home in Greece as I once was back there.  I used to feel rejuvenated as I stepped back on New Zealand soil, back to a place which I knew and understood.  I could understand the language, the laws, those laws which back then Greeks considered so strict and suffocating.  But NZers took for granted and (mostly) obeyed.  I understood the culture, could (sort of) pronounce the Maori place names, and knew my way home even though I had been away for years.  No, amend that.  I did not know how to get out of Auckland.  A huge city surrounded by multi-lane highways.  I was used to just one road, most of it without a white line down the middle, no traffic lights, no pedestrian crossings.

I once got a traffic ticket in Tauranga for parking facing the wrong way.  Is that possible?  I wrote the Council a letter explaining what a law abiding citizen I was BUT also explaining where I came from.  A small greek island where we double parked and left the keys in the car in case someone needed to move it.

Where most roads are so narrow you drive in the middle.  Where, back then, there were no traffic police, no-one wore a helmet or a seat belt.  The right hand rule was probably on the books but you gave way, or not, depending who was approaching and where you met.  One golden rule.  Always give way to taxis.  The Tauranga council cancelled my parking ticket.

My father told us that we should see our own country before leaving and we had summer camping holidays all over the country.  I wish I could remember more about these trips.  I know we loaded up the car with a huge roof rack of tents and tables.  Four kids in a car. Arguing of course. One of my brothers was once turfed out and left on the side of the road. That shut us all up.  We did go back to pick him up, to my relief 

 We visited the far north and went to Coromandel many times.  I remember going down to a farm to get a container of milk from the farmer’s  cows.  All things you just wouldn’t do anymore.  Someone would call child services on you for ‘abandoning’ a child on the sound of the road and milk now has to be sterilized or pasteurized, or both.

I felt, ‘knew’ , when I left New Zealand that  I  wouldn’t be returning for a long time.  It took 11 years before I came back to NZ, with my greek family, and that was only because the extended family rallied round and bought our tickets.

Now my daughter Elli says she feels a very strong tie to NZ, as though she has been born in the wrong country.  My niece Katy says the Maori have a word  for this.   Tangatawhenua, the feeling of belonging.  All my greek family love anything NZ and they’ve all visited except the youngest grandchildren. Daughter  Elli should be living there.  At the moment its hard to even afford the passport.

My downunder family, brothers, beloved sisters in law, the next generation, nephews and nieces all love Poros .  I'm lucky, grateful, that they visit year after year.  

NZers will understand 

Chocolate fish. Iconic treat (thanks Elli, just  a bit of NZ colour)