Of thunder storms, olives, .... and earthquakes

Our local roads ...

After our first few weeks in Greece it is time to report in. Our first observation is that we’re glad we’re not elsewhere in Europe at this time of year! While winter approaches with single-figure temperatures further north, we’ve experienced temperatures consistently in the high teens or low 20s. Certainly warm enough to spend our working days outdoors in t-shirts and shorts. However, we have experienced rain – bucket-loads of the stuff - accompanied by lightning and thunder that rolls on for hours on end, thankfully often at night. These are the biggest and longest thunderstorms we have ever experienced by far – exciting for us indeed.

Koroni

Koroni alley

We are near the little harbour town of Koroni, near but not in. We usually walk into town at the weekends, avoiding the main road so we can avoid certain death at the hands of Greek drivers, and taking the single-lane concrete and mud tracks through the olive groves. Even when we resist stopping every few minutes to exercise our cameras it still takes about 1¼ hours to get there. Koroni is a bit of a tourist town – white-washed houses, restaurants along the water front, little alleyways between houses, and a few gift shops. Indeed quite the opposite of most of the other little towns and villages around here – they are somewhat agricultural with most buildings and streets being in a state of disrepair.  Some of the smarter houses in the area are owned by foreigners who have departed for the winter. Koroni does have a Venetian-era fortress though which include huge bastions that you can venture inside of, as long as you don't pay attention to the large cracks in the ceiling...

Inside fortress

“Agricultural” describes this area at this time of year. Though there are quite a few houses for rent in summer when there will be plenty of tourists around, now we are probably two of very few foreigners around. In a normal year there would be plenty of Albanian itinerant workers around for the olive harvest, but not this year because of the low yield this year. All the land is covered by olives with just a sprinkling of grape vines (harvested for wine and raisins). And the car parks in town are full of utes or tractors and trailers with bags of olives in the back.

Greek is a difficult language and we haven’t made much of an effort yet apart from saying  Hello, which always elicits a friendly response from the locals. They’ve seen us wandering around the roads and village often enough now to recognise us. We’re lucky that we’ve met quite a few of the locals via our hosts, Michael and Maria.  They are well integrated into the local community and, having good Greek, have many friends and acquaintances locally. One of the local restaurants has live music each Friday night, and our hosts have taken us there. Greek music? Interesting! We also had a big party here a few weeks ago. Greeks don’t celebrate their birthdays but almost every day of the year is a “name day” (yiorti) where everyone with that day’s name gets to celebrate together. Certain days are more popular than others as there is traditionally a very limited set of first names to choose from: in this area there appears to be approximately six male names! Very confusing.

Food in Greece is always one of the highlights. And it is lucky that Greek food is varied and good as they don’t eat food from other cultures – don't bother trying to find an Indian restaurant in Greece (though there is a pizzeria in the local village).

Konstantina

Our elderly neighbour, Konstantina, only eats certain meals on particular days, e.g. it is Wednesday so it must be lamb and potatoes. And it must be cooked in the traditional way – our hosts remember inviting some locals and cooking a traditional meal, except she substituted sage for thyme. Some guests refused to eat it! And this is odd because Maria is an excellent cook. She provides a big lunch for us each work day, so we only have to find a light dinner for ourselves, and it really is a highlight. Plus we are lucky to have an endless supply of the best home grown olives, olive oil, jams and chutneys, and wine...and we pick fresh oranges from the tree half a minute from our front door.  Today, while we were sweeping the road in front of Konstantina's house, she invited us to pick ten oranges from her tree behind her house.  She speaks no English and we speak no Greek.  She stood at her window, showed us an orange, pointed to us, pointed to the orange then each of her ten fingers and thumbs and pointed to her tree.  We worked it out and many smiles and patting of tummies seemed to confirm we'd interpreted the conversation correctly.  One of many precious experiences!

We're not sorry to have left behind earthquakes in New Zealand, but it seems rather ironic that we've come to an area that has centuries of active earthquake activity.  So far we have not experienced any here.  Right now we find ourselves with Kalamata less than an hour's drive away.  Until we arrived here, the name Kalamata meant only olives to me.  I had forgotten I'd visited there briefly in 1985.  On September 13 1986 it was hit by a 6.0 earthquake.  A quarter of the population, of 40,000, were left homeless and more than 3000 buildings were destroyed.  Twenty people were killed.  We spent a few hours in Kalamata a week ago.  It was very sobering.  28 years after the earthquake there are still several half-standing old buildings in the main city streets.  You can walk up a lane between modern buildings and be met by a very old stone wall that blocks further progress - the area beyond is a shell, half covered with opportunistic plants.  In the suburban areas at the very edge of the 'CBD' there are old stone walls at the edges of modern apartments, empty sections with stone staircases leading nowhere, and hollowed out buildings being reclaimed by greenery.  Very sobering.

At work

At play

Our work here has been quite varied: sanding and oiling outdoor furniture; harvesting olives; investigating and recommending a new mobile phone; bottling olive oil; packaging orders for products; mopping out one of the villas here when it got flooded during a storm; sweeping; installing a plastic covering on the pergola to give extra outside workspace; feeding the cats while our hosts were away for a couple of days (which happened to coincide with the worst of the storms we've experienced so far).

The olive harvest has been particularly disappointing for the locals this year with most growers getting about 10% of last years crop, apparently due to adverse weather conditions at important stages of the growing season, and not helped by the storms that have seen many ripe olives knocked off the trees. Here, at the Icon Painter villas, last year they harvested 38 70kg sacks of olives.  This year we nearly got three and a half sacks!  It's very sad.

Both here and in Italy we've been spoiled with fabulous fresh extra virgin olive oils.  Nigel asked me the other day if we'll go back to buying cheap, tasteless extra virgin oils when we get home ..... not a chance!!  A good oil is so good for you and simply tastes great. 

And what would Greece be without cats everywhere?