Landline (Σταθερό τηλέφωνο)

My husband recently asked me if I had the telephone number for a certain friend. I told him that I had already given it to him a while ago. He said that he tried to call them on the number he usually used, but he kept getting a "number you have dialled does not exist" message from the phone company.

"They've probably had the phone disconnected," I said to him, reminding him of other friends that have no landlines in their house: A_______ disconnected it nearly two years ago, B_______ disconnected it recently, and now C_______ is joining the list.

There's a lot of talk about the many Greek people living in their house without electricity, but that was never the first thing to go. When a Greek household realises that it's running short of money, there seems to a pecking order in their reductions. If they rent, do they stop paying? Never. If they smoke, do they stop smoking? No way. The first thing to go is the landline. Certainly, electricity might get disconnected eventually, but that isn't the first thing to go.

In times of desperation, Greeks begin to regard the landline as obsolete, a white elephant that these days rings only when a cellphone company wants to push a new scheme on you: a landline call generally means that someone is trying to sell you something that you don't need. We talk mainly on cellphones these days, and quickly, in order to save money (we are more likely to send txtmsgs and use facebook than talk on the phone). We only really need a landline to have an internet connection in our house, but since this costs money too, and it is connected to the obsolete landline, AND there are a number of other (free) ways to get onto the internet without paying, the internet connection also gets lost with the disconnection of the landline. So when a Greek family admits that they don't have a landline, you can be sure that they are feeling much more than the pinch - you can be sure that there might just come a moment when the electric will go too in those homes (but that will come much later). Right now, they find themselves close to the brink of poverty.

Landline companies in Greece are mainly private. Even OTE, the state phone company, is partly private (owned by Germans). When you don't pay private service providers your dues, they stop providing the service, quite swiftly, and then they start chasing you up to pay. The worst part is being chased up. This happens with cellphone service providers too, but the big difference between a cellphone and a landline is that use of the former can be controlled via a pre-paid card, but a landline requires subscription paid in arrears. 

This scenario is all quite different to what happens in a state company: in Greece, state companies don't swiftly stop providing the service, even when you owe them money. It's easier to come to an agreement with them, paying back debt with installments, at the same time as accruing more debt. Eventually the debt will become unmanageable: you were already in debt when you were accruing more debt, and you won't be able to pay it back, even through the previous arrangement. This goes on until you run out of money, a certain period of time passes (where you continue to accrue debt), and you are then finally disconnected. As the electricity provider is a state company, no one chases you up to pay back the debt.  It just remains frozen, until you decide to reconnect, by paying back your debt, or making arrangements to pay it back. Until then, you simply remain 'unserviced'. Only you will know about your debt unless you have frequent visitors to your house. But with the landline, everyone learns about it immediately: "The number you have dialled does not exist."

Ability to satisfy basic household needs for total, poor and non-poor population (rows) such as ability to afford: a one-week holiday / a protein meal every second day / emergency expenses up to €540 (columns). Income levels for each year are based on the previous year's records. The 'poor' are classified as those with an income equal to or lower than the poverty limit, while the non-poor are thoe with a greater income than the poverty limit (which is not defined here). Interestingly, they were not called 'rich'. The data was collected via a questionnaire (which means that respondents self-reported and may be unreliable), as part of the European Union - Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) survey. The full report (ELSTAT) contains a comparison table (Table 16) for other European countries, which  places Greece as the sixth poorest in living standards among 30 European countries. 

Poverty is measured in various ways in different countries, so we always have to be careful about what and how we are measuring. The Greek statistical service ELSTAT calculates poverty by the "deprivation of basic goods and services", which includes satisfying basic needs, taking a one-week vacation per year, eating meat, chicken or fish - or a vegetarian equivalent - every second day, having sufficient heating in one's home, affording purchases of durable goods such as a washing machine, car, color TV (etc), having a landline connection and mobile phone, being able to pay off loan installments and service bills (eg rent and electricity). ELSTAT recently found that it is not only the poor population that are unable to satisfy the above-mentioned, but also the non-poor.

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Reading for understanding (Ανάγνωση)

Greeks like to tell you that high school is 'difficult'; isn't high school 'difficult' anywhere in the world, especially when you compare high school to primary school? I don't like to stress myself out about higher education, but recently I noticed that my son looked very stressed out with his homework. I really hate helping my kids with homework, because most of the time, it is akin to actually doing the homework for them. That has serious repercussions in the long run, which are widely discussed in educational sites all over the world. But I don't mind nudging them in the right direction, as long as this means that I am helping them to learn skills that they can transfer to other problem-solving situations.

Two months after terms started (don't forget that we were plagued with strike action), my son seemed to be having problems with his biology homework; he asked me to help him with a crossword (see below) based on biology terms. I have enough problems doing this in English, and I knew I would not be able to help him in Greek. But I also knew that all the answers to the questions are contained in the texts the kids are expected to read, so I told him to look at the texts more carefully before attempting the exercise page.

Click to enlarge

"But I've already read it, and I can't find the answers," he said. I decided this was impossible, but I had to confirm it in some way myself. So I checked the texts, which I found not so difficult to read after all, even for my own level of Greek, and there were lots of graphics to accompany them, which illustrated many of the points in the text. This all made sense to me, and I finally understood my son's problems: he had not understood how to use the text together with the graphics in order to grasp the meaning of the text he was studying. I also realised that he seemed not to have been taught 'how' to read something for understanding. He wasn't underlining words that looked important: instead, he underlined whole paragraphs; he wasn't using arrows to point the graphics to the text where it explains them: he was reading the text separately from the pictures. It's difficult to know whose job it is to teach kids skills about how to be better readers - the biology teacher may see this as the literature teacher's job, while the literature teacher may be teaching skills for reading 'story' texts. Both teachers may actually have said a word or two to the kids already about this - but when you are starting high school, and it all seems new to you, you may not have paid enough attention to what your teacher was saying. Perhaps also... no one has said anything about reading skills... 

Whatever the case, I found I could easily do the exercise just by reading the text quickly and picking up the key words, which were already in the exercise; some were even in bold text. I also used basic crossword skills to eliminate wrong choices, eg the number of letters in a word, and possible adjacent letters in Greek spelling. I admonished my son for his laziness - he could have done all this himself. But if he hasn't been taught to do it in the first place...? I suddenly remembered that at that very moment that I was teaching him to read for information, I had been doing a similar lesson in my English classes with... graduate science students. 

We all have a lot to read these days because we use the internet, which basically means we need to sift through a lot of information. But we don't read everything on a web page, we just look for the information we want/need. We all have different ways to do this. First and most important for me is to look at a web page in the same way that I view a picture, or a photo. Second, I look for the key words on the page. To do this, I run my eyes over the text and ignore everything that looks unimportant. Thirdly, I use all the graphics that are available on the page: this includes capitalised words (which therefore are names) and numbers (which could be quantities or dates). Fourthly, if I'm not sure what's important, I read the first sentence of the first and last paragraph, OR I read 1-2 words on each line, my eyes jumping from one line to the other in the text. There are other ways to do this too, eg the zig-zag method. Whatever way you speed-read is a personal choice - as long as it works for you. And the most important thing is - see First above: a page is a picture. 

The Greek school system is notorious for using the parrot-learning technique. But I can now understand why this happens: kids aren't being taught to read properly (OR, they are not paying attention to teachers when they are being taught to do so). So, they parrot-learn. I found this going on when my son asked me to check his knowledge of ancient civilisations before he would be tested on it. (Gawd, I really hate doing this - but look at how insecure he is feeling, that he actually asks me to do it.) For this lesson, we had fewer graphics and more texts on the page. When I asked him a question based on the texts he was learning, I noticed he was hesitating before answering, because... he was remembering not the information, but the order of the words that he had read. Another thing I noticed was that when he actually answered my question correctly, it would not only be in the exact words he had read in the book... but he kept reciting the entire paragraph, not knowing when to stop providing information, which would have been the answer to a later question! Again, he had not highlighted key words: he had highlighted whole paragraphs, "because the teacher told us this paragraph was important, and the next one wasn't"... Again, he wasn't using a technique to help him remember information - he was just memorising for short-term use, instead of learning for long-term use.

Another point that doesn't seem to be well-used in high school is personal experience. High school focusses on bookish learning so it's very academic. Some children are not academic, but quite a few of those non-academic ones would benefit if they were taught to use their personal experiences in the book-learning methods. Here is an example: So here we are in Crete, and the subject of the test is Minoan civilisation, focussing on the ανάκτορα, the palace, the most famous being in Knossos, 150 kilometres away from our house. Despite having been to Knossos with my kids on a memorable school trip, I still found my son just reading his texts to gain the knowledge he thought he needed. Somewhere along the line, the real life connections to Knossos were lost and proper application was not made of past experiences where new knowledge was acquired.

There are a whole host of problems involved here: the teacher, the child, the parent, television, information overload and junk food are all involved. The biggest issue is probably having an awareness of the problems involved. There was so much less to read when I was my son's age, and fewer resources to tap into. We now need to know what not to read...

All Greek school text books are available online at http://dschool.edu.gr/.

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Cheap eats (Φθηνά)

When my kids were young, I fed them standard portions of food at standard times. They maintained this regime throughout primary school, but in the last year, I notice how voracious their appetites have become. They are getting taller, older and hungrier, especially in the evenings, when they have been out and about doing their after-school activities.

Our main lunch meals during the week usually consist of slow-cooked bean dishes, a mince sauce for pasta and one egg meal a week, with a good deal of  'leftovers' clearance. But our evening meals are often more exciting: If I don't have time to whip up a pita (or the kitchen is too cold for rolling out dough in it), we've established a souvlaki night, I sometimes resort to a baking a frozen pizza and a quick dakos snack is also in order, with or without grated tomato (our supply is about to run out soon). But nothing beats a warm meal on a winter's night, prepared by mother.

Evening meals need to be quick and easy to prepare and cook. My choice dish for something quick and easy is an orzo pasta rice meal. You can add virtually anyting to it, including leftovers and various odds and sods that need to be used up before they gooff. If cooked in double quantities, it can be served the next day as leftovers, or perhaps as a side dish to complement another meal. All I added to this one was a few frozen/canned vegetables, olive oil and some spices. It's very filling and can be warmed up easily. 

My tuna patties were made by mashing a large can of tuna and adding a few slices of crumbled bread (not breadcrumbs), as well as some herbs and spices, garlic and onion. They were easy to make and there were enough for two meals (to accompany a lentil stew the next day). Canned tuna is not always cheap, so the addition of bread, onion and herbs makes it go a longer way.

Frozen chicken pieces are generally cheap and they cook quickly - a packet of 10 small legs costs about €4-4.50, while wings cost about half that. Small potatoes have been selling for €0.38/kg for the past month, so this meal - which made enough food to be served the next day for lunch as well - was very economical. Frozen chicken doesn't need a long time to cook - the meat becomes tender quite quickly - and if you cut up the potatoes into small chunks, it is ready in an hour from when you placed the baking tin in the oven. 

A souvlaki costs about €2 in Hania at the moment - if you used this price as a cost-per-person for a meal, then souvlaki is the most expensive meal out of all the dishes I've presented in this post. A souvlaki looks cheap on the face of it, but it would still cost you more to eat souvlaki every night than it would to prepare a filling meal virtually from scratch using basic supermarket ingredients. Home-made food is still much cheaper to serve in Greece than meals out, including the cost of the ingredients and the energy needed to cook them. They needn't take too much time to prepare or even cook, nor do they need to cost much money - what's more, they remain very healthy transparent meals for a growing family.

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Beef on discount (Βοδινό σε έκπτωση)

Every Monday, I check out the protein section at one of the LIDL supermarket branches in the town. During my last visit, I was hoping to find another egg bargain, like the one I recently pounced on, something like 30 eggs for €3.30. (Normally, a dozen eggs costs more than €2.00.) Unfortunately, there was nothing in this way on Monday. So I carried on to the fresh meat counter (a relatively recent addition at LIDL), where I might be lucky to chance on some of those discounted prices for nearly-expired fresh meats: the price is reduced by 30%. There is nearly always something to be found in those 'fridge bins', as I like to call them, on a daily basis, and everything is packed in styrofoam and cling-film, so you can clearly see the contents. Whatever I find, I usually freeze as soon as I get home, unless I plan to use it sooner. I've bought cooked chicken wings from here before, as well as uncooked chicken wings, sausages and kebabs.

This time, I found something else: 2 packets of (French) chuck beef were sitting in the fridge bin. I checked the weight and price of each packet with the use of the various machines that most supermarkets have these days in their customer areas: they weighed about a kilo each, and they were selling for just €3.50/kg. We haven't had beef (except in mince form) because it's usually quite expensive to buy it in Crete.

I found some heat-n-eat cooked marinated chicken wings which are useful for a quick meal  I bought 2 packs: 500g for €1.74 each - at that price, it's cheaper than cooking them yourself - and some cheap beef selling at €4.99/kg. Two of the three beef packets that I bought were discounted by 30% due to being close to their expiry dates. 

In the past, when I used to buy fresh beef at the supermarket counter, it usually contained very little fat or fibrous bits. But it got very expensive, whether Greek or French beef, so I just stopped buying it. The discounted beef was priced at less than half the usual price of French beef, and a third of the usual cost of Greek beef. So I decided that this offer could not be passed up. I bought both the packets, even though I could see that the beef contained a bit of sinew. What worried me most was if it would cook till tender, so that it melts in your mouth; will it be stringy and chewy with all that sinew?

When I got home, I unpacked the beef and began cutting it up into chunks. I found that this beef was rather tough, even when cutting through it with a sharp knife. Perhaps I had just fallen into the trap of false economy. But there was not much I could do about it, so I set to work cooking one of the packets into a stifado. As it stewed away, I cut up the other piece in the same way (and that too was rather tough), to get tt ready for the freezer.

Not quite done...

While the beef was cooking and spreading its aroma through the house, the family began to drift in and out of the kitchen.
Stifado? Mmmm, I'll have all the onions, my daughter said.
Stifado? I can smell the orange peel cooking in it, my son said. (I add dried peel.)
Stifado? Finally, we're eating beef again! my husband said.
He asked me about the price. I explained to him where I found the cheap meat, and how I make it a habit now to check out LIDL's discounted meat section. This trend hasn't caught on at other supermarkets, in the same way that it operated in LIDL. There are some products marked down due to a close expiry date, but they are usually highly processed packaged foods, like chocolate and crisps. I want primary ingredients with which to cook, not ready-to-eat food.
I would have bought out the stock at that price! he said. You can imagine how pleased he was when I told him that this was in fact what I had done.

Ready!

I let the beef cook three hours on a very low heat on top of the stove, testing it with a knife every now and then to see how much it was cooking through, occasionally adding some water to the pot to make sure that the meat did not stick to the bottom. The beef cooked down to a perfect texture, and it practically broke apart when pressed. Not only was it tender, but if it wasn't the best meat to begin with, the cloves, cinnamon, orange peel, onions and garlic concealed this fact very well.

This meal reminded me of a recent trip to London where my hosts let on that the meal they had prepared for the six of us at the table cost less than five pounds in total. The organic (if the labels are to be believed) chicken alone cost just two pounds. They shop after work, and they know when the specials start to become available, and what is usually going at which supermarket. I remarked how this kind of shopping was not possible in our town. That was less than a year ago - we didn't take long to catch up, did we? Not only have certain food items become cheaper, but they are being packaged in more convenient ways. Even though we are a small town, the idea of shopping after work for your evening cooking needs is now becoming well entrenched in our life too.

Buying food on special - and knowing when and where it will be on special - is not a sign of being poor or stingy. It isn't even a sign of being on a low income (my London hosts could not be described in this way). It simply shows how careful you are in your spending habits. In Greece, it is also a sign of Europeanisation. It may not always feel nice, but it's what people are doing in Europe's opposite extreme corners. Being able to eat red meat is also a healthy sign; in the western world, this is used as an indicator of poverty. Finally, it also could be said that the UK and Greece are becoming ever more similar in terms of the poverty levels being reported for each country, as well as the distorted statistics used to present optimistic accounts of how the recession in each respective country is receding. In her early EU days, Greece was in a rush to catch up with the western world's wealth; now she's also catching up with the western world's problems.

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Science (Επιστήμη)

In New Zealand single-sex high schools were common (and I think they still are), which is the reason why I went to a girls' high school. One of the reasons given as an advantage for girls to attend single-sex schools is that they are given a greater chance to study subjects not traditionally associated with girls without having to compete against boys in the class.

This argument has less standing in Greece in my opinion because girls are generally better students than boys in most ways, and this isn't something unique to Greece - girls are generally more systematic and organised, they also mature earlier than boys, and this all enables them to handle homework and study more maturely.

Science studies start in the first year of high school in Greece, where students study Biology and Physics, so children are given the opportunity to learn about science from an early age, and they can continue it at institutes of higher learning. In Hania, the Technical University of Crete was established approximately 30 years ago for this purpose. Universities in Greece which have the word 'technical' attached to them are actually the highest-level institutes in the country, where the basic degree is earned in a 5-year course of studies. (The basic bachelor's degree in Greece consists of a 4-year period of studies.)

In a landscape like Crete's, where nature gives rise to agriculture and tourism interests, it is sometimes necessary to provide greater impetus to children to get them to think beyond their immediate environmenτ, and to examine the possibility of unique innovative technologies in their world. The tourist sector, for example, is geared towards business, while agriculture tends to focus on the production of local food products. Apart from the school environment, there are fewer outlets for rural-based children to glimpse the world of science outside of nature, ie through machines and man-made constructions. 

The Technical University of Crete recently held an open day on the campus to this end, with free entrance. Primary school children were encouraged to come into contact with the world of science, where they could have new-age machinery and concepts explained to them by the experts (students and their professors). The event was organised in a highly professional manner, with guides posted all over the campus, and it was very well attended. Even though we got there early, queues were already forming at the reception centre. I was glad to see a number of people there from different regions of Hania, which suggests that the event was well publicised. 

Science is inspired by nature, and there were many activities depicting this, using wind, water and sun as the basis of creating energy. Chemistry experiments were shown to the student using ordinary household objects. Of the 40+ stalls, the football match played out by robots, run by the Laboratory of Programming and Intelligent Computing Systems, was probably the most popular. It was heartening to see a higher institute working effectively and productively, after many weeks of hearing on the news that certain Greek academic institutes remain closed due to striking staff.

Thanks to Rodopi Zouboulaki for the video link.

It was also a magic moment to observe professors and university students explaining to young children how science works and demystifying everyday phenomena in simple words. 

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After hours (Εκτός ωραρίου)

I had a slightly surreal experience late on Saturday afternoon in Hania. I had taken my daughter into the town centre to see the Christmas decorations that have been placed on the main squares, and with this opportunity, we also did some window shopping.

Most of the town's decorations have been put up, but the lighting will be launched next weekend. The street lamps are generally well lit with decorations too, so the atmosphere is not so bleak.

We didn't intend to go into any store to buy anything, and it was rather late in the afternoon for the stores to be open, but there were a number of Christmas baubles shops still open. Apart from Christmas decorations, they also usually sell some eye-catching bric-a-brac: bracelets, beads, make-up, souvenirs, inter alia. Most other businesses were either closed or in the process of closing up for the weekend (as you know, it's still never never on a Sunday for most regional stores around Greece).

There were many pretty store windows capturing the commercialised aspect of Christmas, but I chose this one out of the many photos we took on that day, because it characterised Christmas as we are living it today in Hania - most people are these days using wood-fired heaters instead of liquid fuel. Four years ago, the wood-fired heater was a rare sight in the town - now there are a number of stores in the town selling all sorts of models, and plenty of places where you can buy wood. How quickly we learn to adapt.

My daughter wanted to enter it, and I felt like a little shopping therapy myself. It was one of the €1-2 shops that entice people in with their very low prices. My daughter found a set of plastic coloured strings that can be used to make bracelets (€1), and I found a made-in-China souvenir of Crete that I thought looked quite stylish (€1.50): a tea-light candle holder with a raised image of the lighthouse and Firkas castle, with the snow-capped Lefka Ori in the background.

Last week, I complained about the lack of souvenirs on sale honouring the 100-year celebrations of the Union of Crete with Greece. Imagine if the Municipality of Chania had bothered to plan for this in advance, selling souvenirs like this during the summer to our zillions of tourists with a simple addition of the phrase '100 years' tacked onto the 'Chania' part. Planning ahead is a skill that needs to be developed in teh Greek state.

I let the child browse a little longer, then we went to pay at the cashier. 'That's €2.50', said the lady at the till. I took out my purse and found some change. She placed the items in a bag, and then whispered to me, as she lowered her head towards my face: "I have just closed the till, and I'm supposed to be closing the store now, which is why I closed the door. I can't issue you with a receipt, so as you go out, I'd appreciate it if you put your shpping in your handbag, and if someone asks you if you bought anything, just say you didn't."

She was worried about the random checks made by tax officers - you don't always know when/where they will strike, and if you are a woman working alone in a shop, you will probably just admit that you were a tax evader. How quickly we learn, when both our feet are placed in the one shoe. And how dangerous our once-easy jobs have become.

The tax that she evaded paying in my case was minimal, and of course, there was always the option of denying a sale to a customer, although it isn't a particularly Greek way of conducting business. It is difficult to envisage a time when we may in fact do this, without finding an alternative method to achieve our goals. It goes against our creative spirit.

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Aloe vera

As my friend told me:

"You must wait until you see the flower growing. Then, you know your plant is ready to be used."
I guess it is now ready for eating.

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Greek gay (Ομοφυλόφιλος)

A while back, I was testing school students' level of spoken English, where I was working with another colleague, who is much more than a colleague to me: in my opinion, she is one of the colleagues I regard as a true friend. Our job: one of us interviewed the test-taker (as examination candidates are now known), while the other assessed him/her. Due to the time pressure involved, we rarely discussed the marks between us; we both have an immense amount of trust in each other, as we regard each other as equally capable and diligent in our work. Each teacher did the job assigned to her, but every now and then, an interesting student would come along and brighten up our day, maybe with their exceptional language skills, or the interesting discussion that ensued from the questions we asked them. And so it was with one young boy, who spoke fluently and eloquently, using appropriate and natural forms of interaction that did not sound restrained or parrot-learnt (eg he would say things like: 'oh, i didn't mean that exactly, what i wanted to say was...' instead of using a standard textbook guided-speaking stock phrase, like: 'i highly disagree and i would like to state my point of view', which most students use).

"He was really quite good, wasn't he?" I remarked to my colleague, who was assessing - I had just completed the interview with him.

"Yes, he was," she agreed with me. "Most gays are usually quite good at English."

I was a little stunned by how my colleague passed judgment so quickly. It's something I couldn't do myself. I would probably need more 'verifiable evidence' to pass this kind of judgment - in fact, I'd have to hear it directly stated from him. But the main issue for me is that I would not have even put it in my mind to mention his sexuality. It would be the last thing to come to my mind. We often make this kind of estimation in men when they are effeminate in some obvious way (mistakenly influenced by the mass media: in Greece, there are a number of gay TV hosts, who - in my opinion, again - seem to 'play their part' right), but to be honest, I didn't think that this was the case with the young boy concerned. He had a very melodious voice, that's for sure... but does that make him gay?

"How can you be sure he's gay?" I asked my friend.

"I lived in England for two decades," she replied. "Trust me, I know a gay when I see one."

I didn't ask my friend this question because I doubted her opinion; I asked her because I felt that it was something I wanted to know how to do myself. I seem to be able to suss out what kind of Greek I'm talking to, for instance; is there some kind of magic formula that can be instantly applied to suss out someone's sexuality, too? I don't mean transgenders, where the obvious masculine form can be 'unmasked', as David Cade explains in his recently published book about Athens:

"On a lower landing, just below the foyer, standing all by themselves and not participating in any of the interaction, but just observing it, are three people who form a very interesting unit. I first see the two who are older: a very ordinary Greek couple, middle-aged, and probably husband and wife. I then notice that the person who is with them is clearly transgender, and whether transvestite or transsexual, I can’t tell. She’s much taller than the couple, she’s no older than thirty, and her clothing is very feminine and somewhat lavish in variety so that only her hands and face are visible. Her hair is long and luxurious, and her make-up is a very carefully-applied all-over work of art. Every visible inch of her, the clothed and the unclothed, is the product of meticulous intention and design. The ghost of masculinity, however, unfortunately remains. Her eyes and mine suddenly lock. We gaze into each other. I smile. She smiles back. Her expression toward me is timid, but brave, and her eyes widen with a knife-edged mixture of curiosity and anxiety. Stupidly perhaps, I feel I've unmasked her, conveyed to her that I know her secret. I feel embarrassed. In hindsight, I wish I’d immediately gone to her and spoken." 

I mean people who look just like you and me, who haven't had a sex change, like these people in the video link below:

A first in the world - New Zealand's defence services recently approved a video reaching out to young people struggling with the realization that they are not heterosexual. 

It is only fair for a simple-minded person like myself to ask this question: can I tell when someone is gay? I took my colleague's view quite seriously because she may have a point, and she seemed to be more sure of herself than I was. There are even countries in the world we live in that know the proportion of gay people in society. Take the UK, for instance, where she lived, which is supposedly an open society that does not discriminate against homosexuals (if you know about the story of the gay couple who were turned down relatively recently as potential customers at a hotel, you will understand that this is simply a 'stereotype' of the English): it conducts regular metrics to find out the proportion of gay people in British society.

I could have just taken the seemingly effeminate sound of the boy's voice and made the same assumption myself, but something stopped me. For a start, my affirmed gay friends are not effeminate. So an effeminate voice is not enough to make me think that someone is gay. Thankfully I don't watch much TV, so I miss out on all that crap hosted by the effeminate gays (they don't do the homosexual community in Greece a service), which would have distorted my understanding of gays in Greek society even more.

It's really common to make assumptions about people you don't know. We do it all the time. We are not as liberal as we think we are. When I read names, I try ot understand which country people are from. When I read names like 'Tom Brown', 'Sara Greene' and 'John Black', they all sound like 'white' people to me. But of course, names do not tell us the colour of a person's skin. Here is another example as related to me by an American friend who is about my age. She called her parents 'racists'. "That's what they were", she told me, and she refuses to hide it because she says that it helps her to come to terms with it. They rented out apartments and whenever there was a vacancy, they'd place a newspaper ad with their home number. When my friend answered the phone and it was about one of those ads, she'd tell her parents, who always asked her before they picked up the call "Do they sound like niggers?" My friend knew, even at such a young age, that expressing oneself in this way was 'wrong'. Being a white child, she couldn't tell if someone was white or black; even now as an adult, she knows how near impossible it is to understand the difference between a black or white person just from the sound of their voice on the phone. Not all Americans speak with the same accent, and not all Americans speak grammatically either. To her parents' question, my friend always answered "I don't know." The young girl was processing the telephone call in a different way from her parents.

My friend told me this story because she wanted to show me how the law says one thing, but how people think is another thing, even in very progressive countries where she and I both used to live. In the US, it took a long long time to get over the 'Don't ask, don't tell' prejudices against gays in the military. And even in New Zealand today, as the above video clearly shows, there are still people who fear 'coming out'. And I wonder: while you've been reading my blog post, were you thinking that my American friend was the rich offspring of Greek immigrants? Good for you; you're just trying to work out the validity of my writing. But you are wrong: my friend is simply 'American' - in any case, Greek American immigrants would probably not say the word 'nigger' to their offspring: they'd say μαύρο. As for the Greek military, here is what Wikipedia tells us about gays in the Greek army:

"While the Presidential Decree 133 (of 2002) allowed people to avoid the draft for deep psycho-sexual problems, it did not ban homosexuals from the army. The newer 2005 law 3421 has removed even the wording that could be misconstrued as offensive to homosexuals. In recent years, the Hellenic army has been shortening the length of conscription and hiring more and more professional soldiers and there hasn't been any incident of someone being fired for homosexuality."

There are many things that have to do with Greekdom that I have a hunch about, and I am often right, eg Greeks aren't homophobic*. But I've never been able to ascertain if someone is gay. Never, ever, ever; not unless they tell me. Maybe this has something to do with always struggling hard just to be myself, since I know I cannot be anyone else. Or maybe this has something to do with the fact that in Greek society, the vast majority of homosexual citizens do not feel safe enough to let people know that they are homosexual.

It isn't the first time I have found myself in the midst of discussions about a person's sexuality that bewildered me somewhat. When I first came to Greece in 1991, I had arranged to meet up with a Kiwi (not Greek) friend who was living in the Greek island of Lefkada in the Ionian. We compared notes about the islands we were living on. She asked me where I was staying:
"I'm living in my uncles' house," I told her.
"Is your uncle married?" she asked.
"No... actually, there are two of them." She had obviously misunderstood.
"Oh, are they gay?"
I felt she had shat a brick at that moment, but I could only assume that in New Zealand's then nascent gay liberation period, it took a while for people to understand homosexuality. I don't suppose anyone would actually say something like that in this day age. The woman clearly lacked understanding of both homosexuality and the Greek culture. I also find it amusing that people like my 90-year-old Cretan mother-in-law would never even pose the issue of homosexuality in a discussion of my unmarried uncles.

Maybe when you are more often yourself and you are less self-conscious of who you are, you don't worry so much about pleasing others with your own person, and you expect others to treat you in the same way. But that takes a lot of self-confidence and courage, which most people - and this extends to heads of state, who are our lawmakers - generally don't have. Greece was recently reprimanded by the European Court of Human Rights for excluding same-sex couples from a civil union, which is restricted in Greece to heterosexual couples. I take courage in the fact that Greece is not alone in Europe concerning recognition of same-sex couples: Lithuania also reserves civil unions only to heterosexuals. And beyond Europe, not even all the states in the Unites States of America recognize gay marriage.

But eventually, the modern world catches up with all of us, so it's only a matter of time when same-sex civil unions will be possible in Greece too. Already, Greece has come a long way in such a short time, with the introduction of the anti-discrimination law to combat racism. It is also supposed to cover discrimination against minority sexual orientation but the wording of the law has been changing on a daily basis, and until it actually goes through, this is difficult to ascertain at the moment**. As a step in the right direction, we should not forget that only just over a decade ago, religion was declared on Greek identity cards. This was of course almost always "Christian Orthodox", since other religious groups in Greece are in a minority. Now, religion is not stated on your identity card, despite the big brou-ha-ha that the Greek Orthodox church caused concerning this matter. Moreover, heterosexual registry office weddings are also valid in Greece, which are especially popular in the crisis (they are cheaper). Although the church wedding is still held in greater regard, the couples who marry at a registry office often go ahead with this once children come into the picture (mainly for the purpose of naming their children through the baptism ceremony). But what the church preaches is not necessarily practiced! People's thinking changes over time, because life changes. The modern world catches up with all of us, but the pace at which it does this differs among cultures.

Modern heroes like Nelson Mandela remind us of how much the modern world's ways of thinking have evolved in such a short time. The developing world may be said not to have reached the same levels of tolerance in their own societies (and I am talking about Greece as she is right now), but we mustn't forget that there is room for improvement in even the most highly developed nations. It isn't just the laws of a country that create tolerance - they were created to remind us that, as free-minded individuals, we are not all tolerant; otherwise, there would not be any need for such laws.

My hope for Greece, and by extension, the world, is that tolerance of people's differences is one day simply taken for granted.

*This post is getting really long, so I won't discuss homophobia in Greece here. We didn't even get to lesbianism, same-sex couples kissing/holding hands on the street, men dancing together, prominent gay Greeks, homosexuality and religion, and homosexuality in Ancient Greek culture.  I can do that in another post.

**UPDATE 08/12/2013
Eleftherios Venizelos of the Greek ruling coalition has basically told the Archibishop Seraphim that same-sex civil unions need protecting, and that he (Seraphim) can 'go stick it' with his empty threats: "Τέλος, επιτρέψτε μου να αγνοήσω για λόγους αναγόμενους στο σκληρό πυρήνα της ύπαρξης μου την άτυχη απειλή ότι ´´θα αποστερηθούμε de facto ως πρόσωπα την χάρη και την ευλογία του Δικαιοκρίτου Κυρίου´´. Η αποστροφή αυτή θεωρώ ότι είναι απλώς σχήμα λόγου και όχι επισκοπική θέση που αξιώνει θεολογική και εκκλησιολογική θεμελίωση." Religious leaders do not hold such power over us, after all - another myth that needs dispelling about the mysteriously wondrous Ελλάδα.

And a big thank you to my friends who supported me in writing this post.

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Vegetarian souvlaki

Last night, after a work-related event which I attended with my whole family, as it was too late to cook a meal when we got back home, we bought souvlaki.

Vegetarian souvlaki with peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, fried potatoes, onion, potatoes, red pepper and tzatziki, all rolled up in Greek-style pita bread.

They also come vegetarian these days - in fact, you can get almost anything as a filling. (And if you want a vegan souvlaki, you simply ask to have a nistisomo, ie without meat or dairy.

You may be wondering about what kind of event held in a Greek town a whole family with children could attend during a school night, which goes on till late (we left at 9pm) that doesn't include food! This will be revealed in a later post.

But for now, enjoy these night shots of Hania, which I managed to take when we went out for a mid-week walk through the harbour on a wet cold night when the street were deserted, all taken by Venetian port behind the marina.

And something to remind us of the season:

The event took place at the ΚΕΠΠΕΔΗΧ-ΚΑΜ - Centre of Mediterranean Architecture, which you can learn more about here.

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Insult (Προσβολή)

Yesterday, I blocked somebody from my facebook profile because I believed their comments were insulting. This reminded me of two instances where I felt insulted and abused by students to such an extent that I realised I would have to take 'terminal' action to ensure that such offensive behaviour would stop immediately. In social media, you just 'block' or 'unfriend' someone; but in real life, this kind of behaviour is very hard to control as it involves a matter of opinion, and it is often the case that you are closely connected to the person who may have insulted you in the face. For this reason, we don't really expect this to happen since most of the time, people 'behave' according to common beliefs about what is acceptable and what is not. So we often don't know which mechanisms and protocols to use to stop or prevent this behaviour from occurring. When we do encounter it, we have to decide how to handle it, often treating each case as it comes.

One of my students was regarded by his professors as a brilliant scientist. He had excellent research skills and well developed lab techniques. He was quite religious and kept a low profile, often taking time out on Friday afternoons to go to prayer in the makeshift mosque set up in the town. He was not a bad English student either, but he was not passing the institutionally-set English test. He was a nervous student, always worrying about what would happen if he didn't pass, which doesn't help one's confidence.

If students pass the test with the required score, they can then proceed to another year of studies at the institute. If they don't, they cannot proceed with their studies. It's the rule, and it's applied to everyone; there are no exceptions. At the time, we didn't have online coursework and instant lessons via the internet, like we do now, so the lessons were conducted in the classic style of teaching: lecture theatre, students with books, paper and pens, teacher with marker pen. During the Christmas holidays, when most students left the institute, I would come in for extra lessons with the students who had not passed. I did whatever I could within my powers to help them. I also arranged tutorials outside the regular class hours for students to ask me about anything that they did not understand.

Unfortunately for this particular student, he failed the examination twice which meant that he could not come back the following year to continue his studies (we now give students three chances to pass the test). So he stayed in the country illegally instead of returning home, but he was not allowed to register for courses and he had to manage his own living expenses. "But you know I know English!" he'd plead with me every time I bumped into him at the institute, which is rather small, so I would see him quite often. "Please do something so that I can get a pass mark!" But there was really nothing that I could do for him. Passing the test was up to him, not me. The same exams were set for all students, I did not pass around the questions beforehand, and I could not fake his grade. For a start, faking grades is morally wrong. And if I faked his grades, then who else's should I also fake? But really, why even put this in our heads? It just wasn't in my nature to cheat the system. Unfortunately, this issue did crop up a number of times with a number of students. (This very fact led to the abolition of the examination being managed institutionally - now, students sit a test set and graded by external agents.)

Eventually, he wrote to me via email to ask if I could get the institute to let him into the second year of studies without sitting the English exams. But I don't make the rules, and the rules said he couldn't. He thought I might have some pull in the matter. So he wrote to me again, this time invoking the name of Allah, and telling me that if I am a god-fearing person, I would always be able to find a way to help students. He really had crossed a line here, as I interpreted this statement as a threat. I had to take action swiftly and forcefully, so I forwarded the letter to my boss, who told him in no uncertain terms what the legal implications of sending a person such a letter would entail.

Of course, the student then stopped sending me emails, and if I remember rightly he did apologise (this was a long time ago). He also passed the English test eventually, and we all congratulated him, telling him that he had achieved this through his own personal efforts. There really had been no need for him to resort to his previous tactics, which could all be interpreted as acts of desperation. He finished his studies at the institute successfully, and went on to further studies in a Northern European country. For him, Greece was a stepping stone, which served him well. All's well that ends well.

But sometimes it doesn't end well. My other case of insulting behaviour directed at me by a student involved the case of a woman who had been granted an exemption to study at the institute, despite not having any of the academic requirements to be accepted for studies. She claimed refugee status, which enabled her to be accepted without documentation. On acceptance, though, she was also subject to the same rules as the other students. So she too had to pass an English test in order to be allowed to continue with her studies.

There was a great deal of discussion about her enrolment, because of her unusual status. She also behaved (and dressed) rather idiosyncratically, stopping people in their tracks, even when they were going to the bathroom, to ask about anything that concerned her, namely her grades, which were not very high, nor were they very promising. She'd ask her professors for private after-hours help, she'd complain that the material was too difficult for her to understand, and she wanted to know if this could be taken into account when she sat examinations in the science courses.

For some reason, she would never turn up to my classes, which were optional anyway because the language requirements did not necessarily have to be awarded by the institute itself; they could be earned with a passing grade in other internationally recognised English exams. We simply give students a chance to earn it without paying extra fees. But every now and then, she'd arrive at my office, asking for that extra private help to improve her language skills. I viewed this as a completely unfair way of teaching her, but as long as I didn't have other more urgent work to attend to, I couldn't deny her the extra tuition.

One day, after having written a mock test and not passed it (yet again), she asked me how the final exam would be scored. By this time, we were using tests set and graded by external parties. So I explained the procedure to her: she notes her answers (for multiple-choice questions) on a specially printed card and we send this card to the examiners. After expressing her fear that she may not write legibly, or may confuse the order she noted on the answer sheet, she asked me if we could grade her answers at the institute, instead of sending them to another organisation. The whole discussion reached a tragi-comical climax when she suggested that she would not be treated fairly, due to her writing style. I pointed out that she only had to blacken circles to express her choices, not actually write anything, and that her paper would be machine-read.

At this point, she looked at me in the face very seriously and said: "I don't believe you." I had been secretly hoping that she would execute some act of buffoonery like this one that would get me off the hook and make it look like she had crossed the line of trust, and which had nothing to do with my personal biases. In my exasperated state, I would then be able to get rid of her (and her antics) swiftly and effectively.

"You don't believe me?" I repeated her words. "Then get out of my office right now!" As I said this, I felt so sorry for her because she was from another country and it was plainly obvious that she was unfamiliar with certain levels of civility and commonly accepted academic norms. But I was at a loss, exasperated as I mentioned above, and this woman had taken me out of my clothes (as a popular Greek saying goes). I then wrote an email to my boss about how I can no longer offer extra one-to-one classes for somebody who does not trust me. Naturally, my position was accepted.

I did not see the student again for a while until about a week before the exam date. She came to my office and asked me if I could help her to pass the exam. "Certainly," I told her, and then gave her the times for the scheduled classes I had arranged with the other students in the group. She then asked if I could go over some material with her at that moment, but I told her that I had other 'more important' work to do, but I'll try to answer her questions after the scheduled class. She did not turn up for any of them. Unfortunately for her, she didn't pass the test either, so she wasn't able to continue her studies.

Social media is sometimes more dramatic than real life because we don't always 'know' who we are talking to; real life is too physical to avoid. The rules of trust in real life are generally not written, but they still have to be followed, and they apply to everyone. We start learning them from when we are young. Where to draw the limits just before the breakdown of trust is usually a matter of opinion.

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Wet and cold

The weather yesterday, when I picked up the kids from school:

More of the same today.

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Stormy weather (Καταιγίδα)

We went to bed on Saturday night with the wind whistling a very violent tune through the trees in the villages, which were dancing with their entire trunks to the aeolian dirge. We're not used to such violent weather in Crete, where winter comes very late, and probably for the shortest duration than anywhere else in the country. But this wind was something else: it seemed like Aeolus had reached the heights of fury. We heard the sounds of crashing debris and breakages, enormous creaks and groans, as if something was ready to fall, and the whistling didn't stop until morning.

When Aeolus rages his fury over the Earth, Poseidon bears the full brunt of his force. There is a small triangular patch in the horizon where we can glimpse the sea from our balcony. Although we could not observe the sea during the night, we knew what it probably looked like - choppy, rough, with rolling waves crashing onto the coast, spewing forth more debris as it sucked it up from the shore. The wind speed was something in the range of 11 on the Beaufort scale.

"Listen to that bitch, the sea," Zorba had once said. "That maker of widows." I wasn't worried about becoming a widow that night, as my husband was at home; my son was on my mind instead, as he was travelling back home from Athens on the overnight ferry with his sports team. They had left Hania the previous day in calm waters, and spent the day taking part in competition sport.

1st December 2013, 7.30am

From the balcony of our house, we are able to see the overnight ferry leaving at 9pm and entering the port the next day early in the morning. We were to pick up the boy at 7am, but that ship did not dock until well after 7:30am, and only with the help of tugs. While my husband was waiting for him at the port, I kept checking every so often to see when the familiar row of lights (the white ones in the photo - the yellow ones belong to the visiting Lyme Bay) would appear. 

Of course, there is always the element of worry when you know your loved ones are travelling by sea on a windy stormy day. My husband told me he didn't sleep all night. I slept quite peacefully, with the knowledge that there have been no ferry boat accidents in Cretan waters for the last 47 years, since the lessons learned in the tragedy of the SS Heraklion, which sank on 8 December 1966 after leaving from Souda Bay in Hania, bound for the port of Pireas. Cretan ferry boats are regarded these days as very safe.

But I still looked out the window every now and then to see when I would spot the ferry's lights, and when I did, you can imagine how relieved I was.

Bonus photo:

The outcome of the windstorms in Hania: lots of firewood opportunities

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Solving the world's problems (Του κόσμου τα προβλήματα)

This story was inspired by a brilliant piece I heard on the radio last Saturday as I left the town after doing my chores for the day. A stand-up Greek comic who is also a singer spoke about how tired the modern world makes him, using the punch lines I have also used in this story. I can't remember the name of the singer so I couldn't find this brilliant combination of prose and song on youtube. I hope I do it justice, and you get the picture.

What a shame you can't buy mizithra online. I really dislike going into the town centre these days. All that tinsel and the Christmas lights, the phantasmagorical window displays full of things we don't need, and can't afford anyway. They serve to remind us that the crisis is not an economic one: there must be people who can afford those things in the displays; it is an issue of changing values: we have to learn to prioritise our spending habits instead. While I was looking at the electrified shop windows and the shop owners adding more glittery decorations to their stores, I was accosted by beggars of all sorts, narrating the story of their unemployed life and asking for money to buy some bread and milk for their hungry children. It felt so Dickensian! It all seemed so incongruous! And I felt disgusted!

I thought about writing a letter to the editor of the local paper in my town about this issue. I wanted to write it there and then, to tell him that we need to help these people, and shop owners should help towards solving this issue, because they are wasting money on un-necessities! But I was in the middle of the road, so where could I stop to write the letter? There was a bus stop round the corner - perhaps I could go there and sit down to write it. But it was cold, and I decided to stop and look for a table at a nice cafe... some place where they would make me a nice cappuccino, where I could sip and write at teh same time. So I walked by the bus stop... where there was another pretty window display, some gold-sprayed biscuits placed on what looked like a tub of ice-cream which was actually moulded from plastic and it looked like snow... and I thought how lovely... I could buy my kids some gold spray paint and we could collect all the pine cones from the forest at my workplace, and place them all under the Christmas tree...

As I was in the commercial centre, I set off to find some gold spray paint. I didn't forget about the letter that I wanted to write, but I thought I could do it later in my own time... at home... after I had made myself a hot cuppa... and settled before my computer, to check the daily news... and that always makes me really tired because only no news is good news, and I generally read a lot of news, so of course, it's all bad, and that makes me exhausted. For now, anyway, the letter would have to wait, until I was more relaxed.

Then I went to the laiki. The street market is always an uplifting sight, with the brightly coloured fresh vegetables stacked high in piles, and the gypsies calling out to passersby ''Ολα τσάμπα σήμερα!' (everything is going for free today)...

... and the smell of souvlaki wafting in the air as people walk by, doing their shopping. Just as I approached the laiki, I saw a man walking with a stick, his back scruched like a hunchback, and as people passed him, he'd ask them for money, and when he accosted a woman who was leaving the laiki, she said, 'Oi mate, didn't I give you all my small change when I arrived here?' and he just kept walking, without looking up.

I was reminded of that letter I wanted to write to the editor of the local paper, and I thought what a good thing I hadn't written it before, because now I could add some more substance to it, by making mention of the disabled and helpless, so I looked for some place to sit down and start writing it, right there in the laiki, and I found a corner bench. But I was really really thirsty for some reason, despite the cold weather... probably due to my heavy but snuggly warm (and cheap) Lee Cooper jacket that I bought during my (likewise cheap) London holiday... so I nipped into the supermarket across from the laiki, and bought myself a (glass) bottle of Souroti... and now I was holding my handbag, and the bottle, and I was sipping the bubbly from a straw, and I had no hands free to hold a pen in my hand, never mind the paper, so I thought that's OK... I could write the letter later in my own time... at home... after I had made myself a hot cuppa... and settled before my computer, to check the daily news... which of course always makes me really tired because I read too much news and the news is usually bad, which of course makes me exhausted. For now, anyway, the letter would have to wait... until I was more comfortable.

I wanted to buy some mizithra, so I set off to find my favorite dairy stall, where I asked for 2 kilos of the fresh white soft cheese, but the lady put 2.125 kilos in the bag, and asked if that was OK, and I said that's OK, because we eat a lot of mizithra, and it's cheaper and better at the laiki, and then she asked me if I had tasted her feta, and before I could say no, she had already cut a piece and given it to me, and I said thank you, it's nice (well, it wasn't as good as what I'm used to), and I asked how much the mizithra cost, and she said here, have a piece of my graviera, and I said thank you (that was actually really nice), and then I took out my 20 euros and asked how much the mizithra cost, and she asked me if I preferred kaseri instead of graviera, and before I could say no, she said, here, try some.

After I had eaten the three cheeses, I thanked her, and asked to pay because it was getting cold and raindrops had started falling on my head, so she took my 20 euros and gave me the plastic bag with my mizithra, slipping a pottle of yoghurt into it, and charging me 15 euros, when the mizithra cost only 13 euros and 50 cents. So I said, 'Oi, I didn't ask for that, did I?' and she said I probably didn't know how good it was, which was fair enough, because I hadn't tried the yoghurt, only the 3 cheeses.

When I got back my change, I then made my way to another little bench behind the stall, because I wanted to put my change in my purse, and my purse in my handbag, and hopefully the 2 kilos of mizithra in my bag too, because everything was feeling like a heavy juggling act by then. As I apporached the bench, I saw a man on the other side, looking into the rubbish bin that was conveniently placed next to the bench, and rummaging inside it, as if he was looking for something special. But we all know what old men rummaging in bins want, and I thought the cheese stall holder who was within seeing distance could help him out. But she had her back to him, all the while giving out free samples of feta and graviera and kaseri to the passing trade, and he obviously didn't want to buy anything (he just wanted to eat).

Now this enraged me because now I knew that the letter I wanted to write to the editor was going to be a very long one since I would have to add something about the hungry people looking in the bins for food, so I began walking back to the car, which took me past a gypsy beggar and the same hunchback I had seen at the laiki, who was now upright, and in my hurry, I almost bumped into a man with one leg, but as I crossed the road, I came across a beautiful array of Christmas-themed teapots. They were so pretty, that I stopped and looked at them, and then I rememebred that gold spray I wanted for the pine cones, but I couldn't find a shop close by that sold it. So I just headed for the car and sped back home to the safety of my office, where I could start writing that letter (I hadn't forgotten it).

I made myself a hot cuppa and turned on the computer, and when I got an internet connection, I opened the BBC website, which had a story about rising levels of poverty in the UK, and then I opened up the eKathimerini site, which talked about rising levels of poverty in Greece, and I got so tired just reading those two stories, that I just thought to myself who do I think I am, trying to solve the world's problems. It then occurred to me that the people writing those articles got exhausted writing them too, just like me when I was readign them, and they probably used up all their energy on writing about the problems, so they had no more energy to spend on solving them.

And as I drank my cuppa, I thought I'd better get some dinner on the table before everyone else in the family came back home and found nothing to eat and mother reading the news on the internet. They really don't know how tired I am.

All photos taken on last Saturday.

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Union of Crete with Greece (Ένωση Κρήτης με την Ελλάδα)

There is a land called Crete in the midst of the wine-blue sea,
a beautiful and fertile land, seagirt; in it are many
people, innumerable, and there are ninety cities.
Language with language is mingled together. There are Akhaians,
there are great-hearted Eteocretans, there are Kydones,
and Dorians in their three clans, and noble Pelasgians.
[Homer, Odyssey 19, lines 172 - 177]

We visited the former mosque in the old harbour last night, to see an an exhibition of schoolchildren's drawings depicting their understanding of the Union of Crete with Greece: this was my daughter's contribution.

Since the Myceneans invaded Crete (around 1400BC), the local population became Hellenes, and the Greek language has always been spoken on the island, while people's names have generally been recognisably Greek in nature. But Crete has had a very muddled history of governship - depsite her obvious Greekness, she has been ruled by various cultures:
67BC - the Romans got her
330AD - the Byzantines got her
1204 - the Venetians got her
1669 - the Ottomans got her
1830 - the Egyptians got her
1840 - the Ottomans got her back
1898 - Crete is a self-governing state
1st December, 1913 - Crete is united with Greece

A 1913 picture representing the Union of Crete with Greece. Greece is represented by the blue colour, while Crete is bronze, an aptly chosen colour, given the amount of sunshine our fertile earth receives.

And in 2013, she is still part of Greece, constituing her biggest and southernmost part - the island of Gavdos, south of Hania, is in fact Europe's southernmost point.

After the exhibition, we took our reading material and went to the rooftop cafe 'ΘΕΑ' for a view out to the harbour (you can just make out the lighthouse on the left) where we enjoyed a very large cup of delicious very hot chocolate.

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Centennial celebrations

Walking through the town today, from the stadium to the commercial centre, I searched a long long time to find some sign of the centennial celebrations of the Union of Crete with Greece, in the run-up to tomorrow's celebrations which are taking place at the old harbour. 

I finally came across these flags criss-crossed on an electricity pole (don;t be confused by the internaitonal flags - that's been there for years, all part of the cafe's decorations)..

... and a hastily erected arch (reminds me of chinatowns for some reason). 

Tomorrow marks the 100th anniversary of the Union of Crete with Greece, which will be marked by some very low-key events (possibly hiding behind the excuse of the economic crisis), the highlight being the raising of the Greek flag in the Venetian port, above the Naval Museum in Firkas, as a re-enactment of the event that took place 100 years ago. Where are the souvenir mugs, shot glasses, keyrings, USBs, hats, scarves, T-shirts, pillows, aprons, coaster sets, tote bags, magnets, raki bottles and whatever other marketing paraphernalia goes with such events? 

As usual, the Greeks generously give away their culture, while it will be others who will eventually be making money out of it.

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Cold (Κρύο)

I wouldn't say we put it off - the house simply didn't feel that cold to us all this time. Last night, despite the warm clothes we were wearing and the fleece blankets we covered ourselves with, we still felt cold. It's the damp air that remains in the atmosphere which causes this sensation, and it doesn't go away without turning on some form of heating; insulating your house well doesn't mean that you will never need to use heating.

Winter's arrival in our house was a cause for celebration We even got our souvlaki delivered. Lighting a fire keeps the family together. We have all created our own little corner in the living room, so's we don't tread on each other's toes as we huddle together in the warmest part of the house. Even the location of the Christmas tree has been planned for; that's Greece for you: completely seasonal (as we await Persephone's arrival once again, να μας τα κάνει όλα καλοκαιρινά πάλι). 

Having not felt the full brunt of the cold so far this winter in our house, I asked my colleagues at work this morning if they had started using any form of heating in their homes so far. They were surprised to hear that we had only started heating our home so late in November.

I am slightly relieved to hear this. Climate change may play some role in experiencing delayed winter weather, but so does good insulation.

©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.

Evening sky

Today, 5.00pm