Souvenir shop

Souvenirs, anyone? Stall in the Agora, the central market of Hania.

deep sea sponges
black and white scarves
olive oil soap
and ouzo carafes

old men's worry beads
refrigerator magnets
postcards, key rings
I-Love-Crete gadgets

It's all Greek
but made in China
where it's cheaper
to buy labour

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SkyWatch Friday: clouds over the sky

All of a sudden, the sun disappeared, even if only for a temporary minute. Two stubborn grey clouds refused to budge, forming a shape reminiscent of the yin-yan symbol. The sky was dark enough to allow me to take a photo without the whitewash effect of a strong sun.

A turbulent sky is rare in Hania over Kalamaki Beach - I think this is the closest I'm going to get to one.

Motorbikes

Admittedly, it's not the prettiest part of town, near the central fire station. The mode of transport depicted is one of the most frequent causes of deaths among young Greek males, usually through a combination of the following reasons: not wearing a helmet, speeding, bad road conditions, joyriding, being knocked over while driving legally. In the last seven years of my life, I have lost relatives and friends' sons through potentially avoidable motorbike accidents: my cousin was wearing a helmet but didn't strap it under his chin, the son of a colleague of my husband's bent down to pick up his ringing cellphone, and drove into the back of a lorry, a friend's son fell into a ditch on a stretch of road that had been dug up for pipe-laying; these three cases are the most memorable.

At least this guy is wearing a crash helmet. He looks like a delivery agent.

ABC Wednesday: Xylophone

It's ABC Wednesday again and X is for xylophone, which stands for 'xylo' (say KSEELO) meaning wood and 'phone' meaning sound.



Press the play button to hear the music of the xylophone (which happens to be made of metal tubes, and not wood), located at the children's public library of Hania, in the municipal gardens.

The annual Wellington Cretans Association picnic

My idea of the perfect picnic was one where the picnic site was covered in green grass, the picnic was placed on a blue-and-white gingham tablecloth, the plates and cutlery were all contained in a picnic basket, and the food did not resemble the kind of food we ate on a daily basis at home. I imagined pies, muffins, prepared juices, and all kinds of food you could pick with your fingers without getting dirty. Our family picnics never turned out that way, or at least the one and only picnic we went to every year. It was never a gingham-tablecloth affair. Instead, it was a hullabaloo of expatriates from the Mediterranean island of Crete, playing Cretan music from ghetto blasters hooked up to car batteries, breaking out into Cretan jigs and eating barbecued New Zealand lamb - the annual Cretans' Association of Wellington summer picnic.

(Click the link if you want to read the whole story.)