Post-weekend story: The real Greek

Stavros recently posted some photographs of a Greek festival that took place in his part of the world, Maine, USA, where people living far away from Greece are maintaining customs and traditions that their parents passed on to them when they first emigrated from poverty-stricken Greece. Hermes from Australia thought the whole idea of staging a Greek festival in Maine was more like an American's nostalgisised attempt to hold on to an ancient culture whose language he can't speak.

Up until I was five years old, I didn't know I was a Greek. I knew I was a 'person', a diminutive form of the people who I was surrounded by: my parents, aunts and uncles, neighbours, the landlord, our friends. Everyone spoke the same language, went to the same church, had similar names (Kosta, Nikos, Yiannis, George for men and Maria, Toula, Soula, Voula for women), and ate roughly the same kind of food. All this was taking place in 1960s Wellington, in the suburb of Mount Victoria where many of those people lived at the time. This was the only world I knew up until 1970.

(7 of the 12 12-years-olds in this photo are of Greek origin;
Clyde Quay School, 1978, Wellington, NZ)

Then I started school, and that's when I realised that there were people who spoke my home language, and people who didn't. The people who spoke Greek were usually the same people as the ones I came across at church, while everyone else was some kind of 'inglezos' - English - or 'xenos' - foreigner. Greeks never considered themselves to be part of the 'xenos' category. I only realised I was the xenos when I was first labeled 'Greek', in the same way that I (and others) labelled people form other cultures, for example, Chinese or Indian. The only exception to this category was 'Maori'; they weren't 'inglezos', and they couldn't be 'xenos' because they were the indigenous people of New Zealand. They were 'maouri', as my parents' dialect called them.

My MA thesis (1991) centred around Greek language use in the Greek community of Wellington. One of the conclusions was that the Greek language was being maintained in the home, mainly by people who had direct contact with immigrant Greeks. When there are no immigrants in the home environment, maintaining the language through the generations becomes very difficult. This happens across all immigrant communities whose direct contact with the country the language is spoken in has been lost, due to permanent settlement away from the lingusitic environment. The Greek communities should be one of the first to suffer, in any case; only Cyprus uses Greek as a main language. In contrast, the Chinese language will continue to spread, because there is a constant influx of Chinese immigrants to countries all over the world. Greek migration has pretty much stopped; Greece is no longer a country of fleeing emigres.

So what happens to those people who called themselves Greek, then lost their language through the generations? Do they stop calling themselves Greek? During the course of my interviewing Greek people from all walk of life (I had to interview at least 100 people, and ensure that I had a good range of ages and generaitons), I also came across people who didn't speak the language very well, or whose children did not speak it at all. They still called themselves Greek, and they insisted that that's what they told people who asked them about their strange-sounding names: "I'm Greek," they all insisted.

The feeling a person has of his/her Greekness has never centred around the Greek language. There are many other factors involved. If the Greek language was one of the main defining factors in "engagement with Hellenism" as Hermes insists, surely the Greek communities of the disapora would have died out one by one, instead of flourishing, as they are still doing, judging by Stavros' and Laurie's reports of Greek festivals in Maine and Alaska, respectively. Clearly, religious choice is a more defining factor in the expression of Greekness than language - and if there were no Greek Orthodox church organising a Greek festival, there would be no festival.

I myself hated the hyphenated version of being Greek. I was born in New Zealand, but I knew that I was being raised to be a Greek. Was I a Greek New Zealander, or a New Zealand Greek? When I came to Greece and ended up staying here, I feel I was still regarded for a long time as a foreigner. Now that I have been living in Crete for nearly fifteen years, I've almost forgotten what it's like to feel like a New Zealander, but I still get asked where I come from, since whenever I open my mouth to speak, a foreign Greek accent is detected.

Hermes, when your veins run Greek blood through your body, you cannot but be a Greek. Eventually it will become evident somewhere somehow, evn if you have tried to ignore it in your life, and that's when you will be caught by surprise, when you realise that you are a Greek and can no longer hide it.

I will never forget a visit by a Greek politician to New Zealand in 1990, because he made one of the most condescending remarks I had ever heard made towards a Greek born outside Greece (up until then, that is, as I heard many more after I came to live permanently in Greece). He had just been given a guided tour round the Greek community halls of Wellington when he chanced upon a meeting being held by the young people of the Greek community. "Κοίτα να δεις, μιλάνε Ελληνικά", he said, ("oh, look, they're speaking Greek") gawking at us like we were aliens. It was one of my closest encounters with a Greek politician. Once I came to Greece, I realised that there were also many other people like him who did not regard us as Greeks equal to himself. Maybe we weren't Greeks just like him, because we had better manners, in any case.

Every non-Greece-born Greek will probably have asked themselves this question at some time in their life: what is it that makes them say they are Greek, when in fact that they were born in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, or any other place in the world, except Greece? I think I just answered the $64,000,000 question (which has drastically depreciated in value just recently) of who is the real Greek:

(Souvlaki chain restaurant found in the UK; this branch is located across the river Thames, on Southwark Bridge Road, London).

Who would have thought that a souvlatzidiko in the 'xeniteia' (the word Greeks use to mean a place away from their own homeland) would have provided the answer? What an elitist group we are.

Yesterday's answer: chunks of charcoal are in the big white sacks. They are produced at the end of summer, which is why there is alot available at this time, but it is mainly used for the BBQ, not to heat ourselves.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Post-weekend story: Searching for utopia

Kambi, 1919

Nikolas had heard the word 'Ameriki' mentioned many times in the village. Ameriki was the land of a poor man's wildest dream, something akin to utopia, where everyone is happy, employed and rich, like his brother, who sent one single postcard to his family since he left Kambi.

When Nikolas' older brother Grigori returned to the village from Ameriki, he had enough money on him to buy 90 acres of olive trees in the village, and live happily ever after. After working in the restaurant trade for five years in New York, being the patriot that he was, Grigori decided to return to the mother country to buy the land his family could not afford to give him and to complete his Greek military service, at a time when Greece was under attack from an enemy.

"In Ameriki, people are prepared to fight for their freedom. How can I stand and watch when my country is in danger?" he replied to his family when they pleaded with him not to leave so soon after his arrival. His betrothal to a blooming village girl arranged (as befitted his financial position), he had no sooner invested his money in buying land than he left again, this time to Thesaloniki where his knowledge of English earned him the rank of officer. He managed to survive the Battle of Skra, only to die from malaria two months before the end of the campaign, having never set foot on the land that he had worked five years on foreign soil to buy. It was shared unevenly among his siblings: his four sisters received a large share each as a dowry, making them attractively eligible for marriage, while Grigori's brother ended up with the remainder, a mere pittance of the original amount.

Nikolas received 10 acres of the land that had been bought with his brother's money from Ameriki, along with the beautiful bride his brother never married. He married her out of pity; even though her engagement did not constitute a marriage (there was no marriage to consummate in the first place), she would have a hard time finding another husband after being betrothed once already. Word would have spread that she was engaged to be married; her fate had already been decided. Who knows when the next offer would come? Nikolas also felt that she had partly inherited his brother's fortune, so that she deserved to be in on his good fortune.

Aggeliki, for all her outward qualities, was not the most useful woman around the house. She had been raised in the 'mimou aptou' way, as if her beauty did not permit her to cook, wash and clean the way a less attractive woman might conduct herself with respect to these duties, lest by applying herself to such tasks, her beauty may deteriorate, fade away, disappear, as if age could never play a part in this demeaning process, and it was all to do with how often one's hands touched the soil on the ground or how much sunlight shone on a woman's face.

Nikolas' land was fruitful, especially once he had cleared most of it from the thyme and dictamo bushes, after which he set about planting it with olive trees. He hunted hares and wild birds, plentiful in his own fields, but the cook was wonting in culinary skills; the rumour spread all over the village, with its population of 500, that Aggeliki was a hopeless cook. Nikolas didn't know who to feel sorry for more: himself for earning such fate, or the oven-charred or water-sodden carcasses that came out of the kitchen, sometimes sporting their fur or plumage. When he sat at the kafeneio with other men from the village, and listened to their chatter about how their own wives conducted themselves at home, his gut tightened.

"Give her time, Nikola, you're not even into a year of married life," the others would comfort him. But he neglected to tell them that Aggeliki entered the marriage in this way right from the start, and that his clothing was now almost ragged and Aggeliki showed no sign of replacing them for him before they had become tatters. He felt that the land - and possibly Angela's inviting appearance - had cursed him into the misfortune of a loveless marriage.

*** *** ***

When Aggeliki became engaged to Grigori, she had hopes of leaving the village for good. She knew that Grigori had made a lot of money, but she didn't realise that he had invested it in the mountainous territory that made up the village of Kambi. She expected that, once he had finished his military duty, he would move to lower ground - as most villagers who prospered did - and build a suitable dwelling for them to live in. After all, this is what he must have been accustomed to living in in Ameriki; everyone there apparently lived in fully furnished houses and had their clothes made for them by tailors and seamstresses. They did not need to shear sheep, spin yarn, or weave cloth on the argalio, which would eventually be turned into bedsheets and men's shirts; like cooking, sewing was not Aggeliki's forte. So it was to her greatest disappointment that Grigori did not return from Thesaloniki. She knew what fate had in store for her.

(Crete in the 1960s, four decades after Aggeliki and Nikolas emigrated; the photos come from CRETE 1960, by John Donat, Crete University Press)

Aggeliki had not wanted to marry her fiance's brother, but there was no question of that now that Grigori was dead. Had she been married to Grigori before he had left for Thesaloniki, she would have inherited his land, a mixed blessing if ever there was one. She would have become a rich woman, highly ineligible for marriage; what man in the village would have been able to match her wealth? As it was, she suffered the cruel fate of being labelled a widow after Grigori's death anyway, even though she had never married; such was the nature of life in the impenetrable snow-capped mountains of Kambi, at the foothills of the Lefka Ori.

She looked around the house Grigori had built in roughshod style a short while before they were married: two simple stone-built rooms with openings for windows, blocked by wooden shutters to stop the winter cold from entering. There was an outhouse a little way from the house and an earth oven built next to one of them rooms. This was not the Ameriki she had dreamed of, nor was it the town of Hania that she had hoped to move to after her marriage. It was true that she had never known better than the village life she was born into, but no one could stop her from dreaming, which is what she did most of the day when Nikolas was away, clearing scrubland, planting olive trees, hunting hares and grazing sheep.

*** *** ***

Kambi, 1921

Nikolas was sitting at the kafeneio. He usually sat on his own these days, as he had little to share with the locals. It was almost three years since he married Aggeliki and still no children. He had by now grown accustomed to the way the kafeneio chatter died down when he entered the shop, and the compassionate smiles of the other men sitting in groups around the tables. He picked up one of the newspapers that had been left on the fireplace, to be used for kindling a flame. Although he had not finished primary school, his reading was at a reasonable level. He did not write anything apart from his name; there was no one to write to, in any case, and no one interested in reading anything that he wrote.

He had not grown tired of working the village land. What tired him most of all - and he seemed to have aged a decade since his wedding day - was that he was working with no future in mind. So what if he had thousands of olive trees; so what if his coffers were filled with olive oil. There was no one to eat it, and no one to sell it to; people were too poor in the village to buy more as their own stocks ran out, so they simply used it more sparingly. The economy of the country was still engaged in a new war effort; there was no interest in trading olive oil. So much effort for very little reward; produce-rich but lacking currency.

Every morning started off the same, as every evening finished. Routine after routine, with very little variation. Nikolas saddled the donkey, which lived in a makeshift shelter next to the main house, along with a group of six goats and sheep which Aggeliki milked each morning, and left for the hills. The land he had inherited had never before been touched by human hands. He worked most of the day with some paid labourers clearing the land of the scrub wood and rocks, digging it up, tilling it, and planting it with olive trees. Aggeliki had filled a woven bag with bread, some olives, a chunk of graviera and a carafe of wine for Nikolas to curb his hunger, before he came back home at midday. It was usually too hot to work after that; the sun did not rest even in winter. The midday meal was a very silent affair, one that always heightened the void between the couple. They could not fill the space between them with their presence. They had little to say to each other; their world had become static.

Without offspring, there was no one to work for but himself, and his wife, of course, who, at times, seemed to live in her own reticent world. Apart from his requests for better food and clean clothes to wear, he had very little to say to her. Yesterday, she had cooked youvarlakia in a tomato sauce, using the anidres tomatoes he had hung on the rafters of the house to dry for the winter, while the lemon tree was bulging from its own weight, laden with fruit. Hadn't she ever had youvarlakia? Didn't she know how to make an avgolemono sauce?

"What were you thinking, using the tomatoes I was saving for the winter? Where are we going to find them when we need them, woman!" He could hear the rumble in his own voice as he shouted at her. Usually the house was so quiet. He wasn't used to hearing himself speak like this. He left the house feeling more angry with himself than his wife.

(Kambi village, 1974)

Things were not looking good in Smyrna: according to the front page, war was imminent. His mind immediately conjured up the image of his brother leaving the village to fight against the Bulgarians. What was it that his brother had said? "In Ameriki, people are prepared to fight for their freedom. How can I stand and watch when my country is in danger?" Did he understand what he was fighting for? Had he thought about whether the cause was worth fighting for? Did he know how close the war was to the end when he lay sick and dying? Nikolas did not share his brother's patriotism. He did not want to fight a war that he hadn't started. He did not wish to be one of the victims of war like his brother. Now seemed a good time to leave the village, maybe even the island, and why not the country if it got to that stage. The shame of childlessness could be avoided if he simply lived elsewhere, far away from anyone who knew him. Nikolas put it in his mind to seek a passage to Ameriki.

(The kind of Crete Nikolas and Aggeliki left when they decided to emigrate to Ameriki; the photographs are works by George Meis, taken from a souvenir calendar of Crete )

*** *** ***

The video shows how Cretan families from Kambi were living in California in 1948; Crete at that time was extremely poor, while Greece was in the midst of a civil war. To the average Cretan, this picture would have seemed like a scene from paradise; poverty remains the main reason why, up to the early 1980s, Greek people emigrated to the New Worlds.

This post is dedicated to all the Cretans from Kambi, my mother's village, living in Modesto and Manteca, California, where very many of them congregated. It doesn't matter where they were born, whether it was in Crete or America, or whether they continue to speak Greek or not; they are still Greek at heart, and they know it.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Post weekend story: Paleohora

When I am in Hania, in some ways, I feel as I am in Wellington New Zealand. Wellington is bound by sea and mountains - just like Hania; the city centre is more compact - just like Hania; life has a slower pace - just like Hania. Crete may be an island (the biggest in Greece), but it doesn't have that air of island life that you find in the very small summer-only isles of the Aegean. For a start, most of the more populated areas are located on the north coast of Crete, which is bordered from the more agricultural part of the island by a small (but over-used) motorway. You never feel very far away from town life in Hania, even if you live in a village.


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One of my first working experiences in Hania was in a small town located on the south coast of Hania. At the time, Paleohora was a two-hour drive southwest of Hania (improved road conditions have now shortened the journey by half an hour).


(The first hotel in Paleohora - the Livykon, whose name is taken from the Libyan Sea - has a history of its own; it is now an earthquake risk and is slowly being renovated when funds permit; the main road in Paleohora is a hive of activity right throughout the summer, but not one of these chairs will be seen after October.)

Having been to Paleohora on a few occasions to visit friends, I knew what I was in for: dry sunny weather for most of the year (the south coast is warmer and drier than the north with less rain), beautiful nature walks, the cleanest beaches, and all-night weekend partying; once the summer season ended, the restaurants and bars would open from Friday afternoon and work through the weekend, serving the town's growing population, and helping its citizens dispense with their accumulated wealth.


(Pahia Ammos Beach; Yianiscari Beach)

(The enticing waters of the Libyan sea: Yianiscari and Grammenos beaches)

Every Friday morning, I would take a KTEL bus from the dingy outskirts of Hania where the long-distance buses are housed (always make sure you've been to bathroom before you come to the bus station) to one of the most picturesque towns in the whole province. Paleohora bears no resemblance to Hania.


(Nature spot at Grammenos Beach; the view from the hotel)

It's one of the places on the island that clearly reminds you that you are on an island and not an urban centre. It is located on a slightly remote peninsula that is bound by hills high enough to act as a natural border, giving the whole area an island feel. I taught English from the early hours of the afternoon to the early evening. My students were primary and secondary school children in the area, who were always more lively than their counterparts in Hania. They weren't as bookish as the children in the town, but they were more street-wise. They warned me that when the weather turns really bad, the only channels that would play clearly were the Arabic ones from North Africa (not all main Greek channels were able to send out their signal to Paleohora, anyway, so I suppose some television was better than none). When they made a mistake in their response to one of my questions, one of the better-informed would call out: "Hey, are you from the highlands?"; if they responded incorrectly for a second time, they'd get asked: "Did you take a KTEL bus to come here?"


(I remember sitting on the border of this tree having a sandwich in the middle of winter. Not a table or chair in sight, an empty beach, not even a car; just me and the sounds nature; I often stayed at this hotel: I felt as if I were in van Gogh's bedsit)

For lunch, I sometimes ate at a traditional mageirio or a friend's house; sometimes I even ate a packed lunch al fresco by the beach, with not a sound to be heard but the wind and waves. In the evening, I chose something from the menu of one of the grillhouses in the area.


(Votsala Beach)

Before the school term ended, I usually spent a three-day weekend in Paleohora sometime in May when the cold weather had abandoned the area, before the harsh summer heat overtook the whole area for nearly a third of the year. My favorite walk was to take the road right around the peninsula that forms Paleohora, walking up the steep rise of the small hill in the centre of the peninsula, housing the ruins of a former fortress, dated to the 13th century, which was used to guard against incursions.




(Views from Fortezza, also known as Selino Castle)

The infamous Barbarossa destroyed it, and its ruins were recently restored to a level that makes it safe for even young visitors to explore and pretend to be looking for pirates and lost treasure.

Another of my favorite haunts to explore was Gavdiotika. People from Gavdos island, the most southern point of Greece (in fact, it's the southernmost point of Europe), were some of the earliest permanent residents of Paleohora. The first houses that they built are found near the port area. Gavdos Island is clearly discerned from here when there is no mist surrounding it.




Despite its more recent settlement - it was never a traditional Cretan village - Paleohora has suffered the brunt of all the wars that have influenced Greece and Europe, with its share of losses.

*** *** ***

Paleohora is a great family destination, well-known for good chill-out beaches, a relaxed atmosphere, car-free evenings in the central part of the town and very good food at low prices. The peninsula it is located on is small enough to give you the feeling that you are on an island; if you stand in the middle of the main road, you can see the sea from both sides of the street.


(Paleohora peninsula viewed from Fortezza; Pahia Ammos is barely discernible on the left, but Votsala and the port on the right are not visible)




(The centre of the town; the port area next to Votsala beach; Pahia Ammos beach)

Paleohora has an open-air nightlife that will suit everyone's tastes, and some kinky arts and crafts shops to add a touch of the alternative, catering especially for people who want to get away from the main town without getting too far off the beaten track. Some of the best Cretan New Zealanders are now living in Paleohora; if you aren't from Wellington, it's a little difficult to understand why a hotel-cum-restaurant by the sea is called 'Oriental Bay'.




(Oriental Bay, Paleohora; an Antipodean umbrella clothesline at the hotel; Oriental Bay, Wellington)


(Beach gear; wooden hand-made items crafted by a senior citizen)

To get to Paleohora is quite a hike, despite the considerable road improvements. The road leading away from the north coast looks very fertile with its patchwork mosaic of olive fields.


(Fields of olive trees; a villager prepares for the winter)

The soil is reddish-brown, the land is flat, and the area is covered in trees. On the side of the road, instead of rocks and stones as one sees when travelling to Vathi, there are piles of chopped branches; somebody is getting the fireplace well-stocked for the winter. The fertile red earth on the flat fields is perfect for cultivating olive trees.

The point where the rocks start is also the where the long and winding road begins: I still get an upset stomach on those bends. A few stops are sometimes needed to catch a breath of fresh air before continuing to climb up the bends to the highest village - Floria, where it usually snows in the winter, cutting off the road connecting the north to the south - before descending the mountain on its other side, and heading for the south coast.

The first rocky hillside comes into view at the village of Kakopetros, a name meaning 'bad stone'. Rocks and trees intermingle, each one struggling to conquer the area. A long stretch of road after this point is constantly under construction. Ever since I started frequenting the area (over a decade), one or another part of that windy road is always under construction. Excavation machines, rock crushers and heavy rollers make it seem like child's play; the original road was carved out by men with pick-axes. It is amazing to think that from those rocks grow olive trees that produce some of the highest quality olive oil in Crete. Oil from the Selino mountain ranges is considered the best in the world.



One tree-lined village after another, all sporting a kafeneio and maybe a church near the main square; two or three old men holding onto their self-fashioned walking sticks, arms resting on table, legs outstretched; not a woman in sight. Have they just come from the fields? Aren't they too old to still be working the soil? Where have all the young men gone?

And so it goes on, until the Libyan sea comes into view on the south coast; you are now not far from the narrow tree-lined road that leads into the peninsula that forms Paleohora, almost an island itself, bound by the craggy mountains and the clear blue deep waters of Paleohora's coastline.


(When the coast comes into view, you are five minutes away from Paleohora; the road leading into the centre of the town)

*** *** ***

Paleohora is a summer lover's paradise. Bay after bay of clear blue water with the sun sparkling on it as if someone has thrown diamonds on a baby blue satin sheet, secluded beaches for that off-the-beaten-track feeling, an outdoor nightlife suited to the coastal location coupled with the hot dry climate. Crete offers one of the highest numbers of 'blue flag' beaches in the whole country. Don't come to Paleohora in July and August without having previously booked a room, as all the hotels are running on a no-vacancy basis, usually filled with Northern Europeans and mainland Greeks yearning to chill out and darken their skin a shade or two before going back to their air-conditioned offices or the mouldy climate of their homelands. September is always cooler, enticing the retired, the aged, the backpack-cum-walking-booters, coming to explore the lunar landscape of the rugged coast, braving the scorching sun and dirt-blown paths. There is very little natural shade; a few carob and tamarisk trees are of great assistance but they do not suffice. Sun hats are a basic essential, while umbrellas are a welcome sight on the beaches, some of which are stony, others sandy.


(The road to Yianiscari beach on the east side of the Paleohora peninsula; the road had to be excavated to provide access to the area - rock and sand dominate the landscape.)


(Painting rocks at Yianiscari beach - an artist's view of the area behind the beach)
(More views of Yianiscari)

September is also bird-hunting season, adding another element to Paleohora's mixed society of visitors. Hunters can be seen sitting at the kafeneia, wearing their camouflage gear, boasting about how many birds they caught that morning, discussing the best spots to wait for passing migratory birds making their way to Africa; ortiki (ορτύκι) - quail - and trigoni (τριγώνι) - I'd love to know what this one is in English - are the ones sought after by hunters this month. If the direction of the wind is in their face, it's a good flying day, but not a good hunting one; if the wind blows onto their tails, then the hunters are going to have a field day, as these weather conditions make it difficult for birds to fly smoothly. When it's not windy at all - this is rarely the case in southern Crete, with winds high enough to send all the outdoor furniture to the other side of the peninsula - birds are slowed down in their passage, and may sometimes hide in a tree, waiting for more suitable climatic conditions.


(A lucky day for one particular hunter - trigoni)

*** *** ***

Paleohora is also a place to enjoy Greek cuisine at very low prices. Wherever you look, the food promoted in the menus and display cases of the restaurants, takeaway shops, bars, cafes, anything connected with the food industry, looks enticing. There are few empty seats by the tables of most of the eateries throughout most of the day. In the evening, the foreign tourists, used to eating an early evening meal, eat first, followed by the Greeks, who eat their evening meals much later. Most pensions and hotels contain self-catering facilities, but why stay indoors to eat, when you can sit outside and eat an excellent (and cheap) meal, in the traditional Greek flavours, prepared by someone else, so that you can breathe the fresh air, take in the magnificent scenery and enjoy the splendid view of the sparkling Libyan Sea?


(Almost fully booked - the whole night)

What astounded me most about the food served in the restaurants of Paleohora was its price. The cost per day for our food needs (a family of four) is approximately the same amount of money needed for one meal out in Hania. How do they manage to keep their prices so low? For a start, most restaurants are owner-operated on personal property, so most people do not pay rental costs to use the land. They just have their business and maintenance costs. But the rest does not add up: the harsh sunlight and the dry conditions - there is a constant water shortage in the area - could not possibly harbour verdant fields and a flourishing agriculture in the summer, as it does in the northern area of the province of Hania...

Many people think of Paleohora as a tourist town. In the winter, it suffers from the great winter closedown: the only thing moving on the street in the afternoon in the middle of winter by the sea-front are the moulting leaves from the trees. Tables and chairs are stacked up in front of the restaurant doors; the locked-up look settles in the air, rendering the whole place a ghost town. Where does a population of 2000-strong (and constantly growing) go in the winter when none of the hotels are working, when the bars, cafes and restaurants have closed down after the last charter flight out of Crete, and the sea starts to roll in the waves that crash onto the main road? Not to mention the treacherous road conditions when the weather turns nasty, and snow cuts off the main road to Hania. What do people do here after the summer?


(The newest suburb of Paleohora, Panorama, as seen from Koundoura; the rugged coastline of Yianiscari)

Many Paleohorites often take their vacation in November and December, if family responsibilities permit. In January, they work in the olive fields: the area surrounding Paleohora contains olive trees producing high-grade olive oil. Most people in Paleohora are not from the town itself; they settled here for work reasons, while their home base is some village close to Paleohora, where their parents and grandparents are from, and where they own ancestral land, cultivating olive trees that are already a century old. It is very tough work, but it also provides a good source of income. But not everyone in Paleohora owns ancestral land. Most of the seasonal employees are economic migrants from Eastern Europe: they cannot afford to sit around waiting for the next summer season to start (usually in April), nor is it viable to leave the town and settle elsewhere looking for work; they have already migrated once. Paleohora was settled in recent times since the opening of its port in the late 1800s, so it cannot be said to have had an established pattern of agricultural activity or other regular sources of income. So what do the locals do in the winter?

*** *** ***

We had been swimming at Pahia Ammos ('thick sand'), a wonderful child-friendly beach on the west side of the Paleohora peninsula; the refreshing waters of the Libyan Sea whet our appetite and food was on our mind.


(Pahia Ammos beach; the suburb of Panorama overlooking Pahia Ammos)

I offered to walk to the burger joint not far away from the beach and get some junk food for lunch. I returned to find the rest of the family drying off, waiting to be fed. We decided to leave the beach (we hadn't hired an umbrella or deckchairs) and search for a picnic spot. This is how we ended up in Koundoura.

Not many people know about Koundoura, a satellite village just 2 kilometres west of Paleohora; activity is transferred from the summer resort town to this agricultural winter village in the last month of the summer season, when the charter-flight package tourism that Paleohora subsists from slows down, coming to an eventual halt at the end of October. Koundoura is a greenhouse centre - there are quite a few of these on the southern coast of Crete - which provides many parts of Crete and the rest of Greece with out-of-season produce during the colder months of the year. The greenhouses can be seen from the coast, lending an alternative view to an otherwise rocky landscape mixed with lush foliage from the olive trees. The greenhouses look so orderly and uniform, just like the terraced houses in the London suburbs, one attached to the wall of the other, their triangular roofs forming a zig zag design along the hillsides, the white plastic sheeting reflecting the sun's rays on the clear blue skyline; their gleam dazzles the onlooker's vision.


(Greenhouses in Koundoura)

Driving through Koundoura, I was not surprised to find the greenhouses empty: the weather was scorching (there is always a temperature difference of 4 degrees Celsius between Paleohora and Hania), the grass and weeds on the side of the road looked sun-dried, with arid desert-like conditions prevailing. Nothing can grow easily in this heat: even the spearmint that was planted in the flowerbed of the hotel looked like dry nettle leaves, spearing forth from the ground which had been covered in small stones to stop weeds from sprouting; they would have a hard time surviving even if they did.

Koundoura is the preferred hunter's ground for birds and hare. Hunters come here and set up their tents under the few trees providing shade by Krios beach.


(Krios Beach; a camper marks his turf)

When I first visited Krios, I thought it was a wilderness haven. Even the trees looked savage: gnarled trunks, bare branches, lying on sandy brown soil carried from the beach to the hills by the high winds. Everything that grows on it - grass, weeds, leaves on low-lying branches of all the trees, even the bark of the trees themselves - gets eaten, torn or ravaged by the goats that the modern-day Cretan shepherds have left to graze in the area, feeding off pristine land that no one has ever laid their hands on.




(A carob tree, showing signs that it is used by goats; the sun playing games on the sea)

Then there are the illegal poachers who come to the area in the middle of the night with torches, shining a low light on every inch of the mountainside, in the hope of dazzling a hare (or three), which, upon seeing the light, stands in the same spot, dumbstruck, without realising that all it has to do is run for its life to stay alive. Instead it stands there, like a lamb being led to the slaughter. It suddenly struck me that the greenhouses that I had just passed as we drove through the village must be leaving pesticide residues that somehow run off into the water stream; they are right next to the sea, right above the most alluring coastline in the whole province...


(Grammenos beach)

Koundoura, for all its paradoxes, is the lifesaver of the region, providing agricultural winter work once Paleohora's summer tourist industry closes down. Each one complements the other, and this is what is helping the town to grow in population - and size. Paleohora now has a brand new suburb; new apartments have been built on a height overlooking Pahia Ammos beach - appropriately called "Panorama" - providing houses for the growing population, the offspring of the children of the older residents who decided to stay on the remote town, that they didn't need to leave their hometown after all, that there was a life worth living on the south coast of Hania, away from the bright lights of the old port and the urban sprawl of the main centre. Along with them, the economic migrants are probably happy to have work all year round, and to live in a small community where everyone knows the value of another person, socially, financially and spiritually; once the town closes down to visitors and retreats, the community keeps itself active with family responsibilities.

In amongst the double standards of the Koundoura habitat, we did find a place that provided us with a sense of inner peace. We had a hard time finding a shady spot to have our burger meal; all the coves and bays were exposed to the midday sun, Krios beach was overtaken by hunter campers, the greenhouse-lined roads were not at all alluring. My eyes caught sight of a dead end side-street, flanked by more greenhouses, which ended up at the sea; we could see it from the road we were driving on. We decided to investigate. The greenhouses were in a despicable state: dilapidated, abandoned; one of the walls of one had toppled over, and was beyond repair. Next to it was a house, plain and boring in appearance, the kind that would never attract the attention of a potential buyer, completely hidden from view, not a soul in sight. The iron fencework had been thatched with black nets, the kind used in olive picking (they are laid on the ground, the olives fall on them, either by being shaken or naturally, after which they are gathered and poured into a sack ready for crushing), so that the house looked barricaded against any intrusions. Tamarisk trees bordered the house from a gully which probably filled up with water during a heavy rainfall; despite the desert landscape of the area, it has suffered from flooding, in which a bridge was completely washed away a few years ago, breaking off communication between Paleohora and Koundoura.


(Lunch in a shady spot on the back of our pick-up truck)

(Imagine this to be your back yard; our view directly in front of the truck)

A makeshift gate had been erected as a way to keep access to the beach directly in front of the gully private. Thankfully, it wasn't locked. We had our lunch on this path, serenaded by the wind rustling among the leaves of the trees that provided shade and the lapping waves on the shore. The beach was rocky and uncomfortable; it was bordered by rough slippery rock, unsuitable (and probably dangerous) for swimming. But the water was that unmistakable Mediterranean blue. It was a day to remember, the first time in a while that I had been away from any form of artificial sound whatsoever.

*** *** ***

On the last day of our vacation, we decided to leave in the late afternoon and to enjoy a meal in one of the pretty villages we had driven past on our way to Paleohora. We drove for what seemed like a long time before we came across any light coming from inside one of the kafeneia and village restaurants by the roadside. The shop owners - they were still in their aprons - were usually the only people sitting outside enjoying the cool September breeze, chatting with the odd villager who had ventured out to buy something from the bakaliko (μπακάλικο - the general store); everyone else was at home, the lights of the houses attesting to this. We decided not to stop off anywhere after all; as soon as we entered the motorway, it was home sweet home on our minds.

Και του χρόνου (ke tou hronou), Paleohora, we'll see you next year, too.

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