Soup kitchen (Συσσίτιο)

Soup kitchens: that's a scary phrase - it means poverty, misery, κακομοιριά. Unless we need them, we don't know anything about them. If you need to use the services of a soup kitchen, you have reached the lowest level - you are unable to feed yourself, whether it is because you cannot afford to, or because you are unable to.

Cook up an oily vegetable-based sauce with some cheap meat cuts (in this case, frankfurter chunks were added), pour some water over it and add the pasta - this is quick and easy to cook, and it provides a lot of servings with little effort.

So what do the poor and disabled eat when someone else provides them with their meal? I can only imagine it is something cheap and easy to cook, which can be made in large batches, to provide many portions. Those who cook the meal must procure the ingredients in the cheapest way they can. They are not running a for-profit service - they are serving hungry malnourished people. In Greece, cooking for others is guaranteed to involve large pots of something cooking fresh over a fire - the idea of packaged food does not hold, even among the poor and those who provide food for them. Packaged food is regarded as crap - not only that, but it;s expensive in a country rich in agricultural products. When you know someone is unable to feed themselves, you try to give them the best food you can afford. A hot meal is symbolic of love and sympathy; it will warm up the soul of the impoverished even before they begin to eat.

The people in need come to the parish church, slide open the aluminium window and leave their empty clean container on the mantelpiece. Not all soup kitchens have communal dining areas, but there is another reason why these people may not wish to dine with others - disability may impede them from doing so, while poverty is sometimes best suffered in silence.

Few people would be able to guess who is receiving soup kitchen meals. Most of the people who receive soup kitchen meals do not look as though they are living in discomfort. The area of St George's church in Katsifariana is not built up, there are many green fields full of orchards surrounding the church, and there are no homeless people to be seen inthe area. The people who come to the church with their empty plastic containers do not all come from the area: some walk from Souda; others use their motorbike to drive in from Hania; some come in battered cars. Distribution is the biggest problem in feeding the poor, who are all from different walks in life, but have one thing in common: an empty stomach. Your home keeps you sheltered, but it does not feed you. You can own your own home forever (who cares if the electricity is cut off?), but to keep yourself nourished, you need 2000 calories a day, spread over at least three meals, and there is never a point in your life when you will be able to say that you have enough food to keep you alive forever.

When the meal is cooked, the bowls are taken to the counter and filled. The bowls contain multiple servings. Bread is also provided, as is fruit as well as salad.

The wife of the priest cooks the meals herself, with the help of some girls and women who peel potatoes, chop vegetables and clean the kitchen. These women are not in employment themselves, but may be in a better economic position to keep themselves and their families nourished. Different meals are cooked every day. The meals are offered to families where both members have lost their jobs, and hence have no income apart from what may be needed to pay the basic utility bills: electricity, water, telephone, rent, heating fuel - it probably won't be enough even for all of that. Some meals are also offered to immigrants who will not be entitled to any benefits from the Greek state. Their existence hangs on a thread.

The people who use these services will not look much different from me. They will live in a similar house to my own. Every morning, they will get up and splash some water on their face, and comb their hair, and make a cup of tea or coffee like I do. But unlike me, they will not leave the house to go to work. I imagine that if they leave the house at all, it will be in search of work, or a hardship grant, or some food.

Before the economic crisis, this parish church used to cook up to 40 meal portions. This gradually doubled to 80 portions; it is now serving 135 portions daily - that's a 240% increase since 2009.

Many people who have recently lost their source of income use the services of this soup kitchen. But the fact is that this soup kitchen had been started well before the crisis. The economic crisis may sound like a new concept, but in reality, many of our fellow citizens have been living through some kind of crisis well before the economic crisis broke out. Churches have always been there to help them through difficult times. 

This is the kind of cooking I enjoy doing myself. If I were unemployed, I'd want to work in a soup kitchen because I know my food would always be appreciated. Plating fancy salads and hearing the first-world complaints of diners with too much spare cash and not enough sense and knowledge to cook a meal for themselves would probably not give me job satisfaction. I can imagine tipping their plates over their heads. I like cooking real food for real people.

I have never been to a soup kitchen. It is not my job to go to one, except as an onlooker, a kind of nosy-parker, and this is neither possible, nor welcome. Thanks again to Eirini who goes along to help at this one when she has time; her photos show how the system works in a non-descript area on the outskirts of the town of Chania, concealing the problems of the area in such a way that no one will ever suspect what may be hiding behind the picturesque facade of our Mediterranean coastal resort town. 

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Bored (Βαρεμάρα)

Here's how husband passed his day today. 

What time was it when I left the house this morning, Maria? Did you hear me? It was about 6.30, wasn't it? Kosta had phoned me to ask if he could keep the car until he got a ride. "Where are you?" I asked him. "Africana," he said, "and I'm alone." But Africana never gets much business these days, it's so close to Hania people walk, so I told him to bring the cab to me, because if I'd left him there, he might have brought it even later than the time you take the kids to school, so I told him to bring it home and I could begin my shift. As it was, I'd lost my regular customer from my usual first stop, because another cab had already rolled into the Kalithea rank, and I knew he'd get the fare, and all I'd end up wth is a ντουλάπα.

Now that the tablets have been taken away from us* and we had to go back to the old system of picking up fares, I had to hit the road and go to the next taxi rank, which happened to be Africana. I was surprised no one was there before me. I was all alone. Then No. 72 came along, glanced at me, and drove off. Then No. 133 appeared and he left as soon as he took one look at me. The same with No. 55. I was beginning to think  they were all avoiding me because of some decision that I had taken against them** or something, so I called No. 55 and asked him where he was. He said he was at the Koumbe rank. I also asked him if he'd seen 72 and 133; he told me they were there with him. I asked him if I should come along too, and he told me I was fine where I was - he was 7th in line.

So I here I was, all on my lonesome, watching the world waking up and passing me by, as I remained still.  I heard 72 get called, then 133 got a fare, and I began getting a little edgy as I still had nothing. No. 92 came along and parked behind me. We both got out of our cabs for a bit of fresh air and a little chat. The first fare - a very young-looking chap - came along at 8.30. Just before I got into the cab, I asked him where he was going.

"Plakias," he said, matter-of-factly. I couldn't believe my ears. If you go to Plakias, you don't need to work for the rest of the day. Well, you could work if you wanted to, but you'd have made as much money as you normally would over two days of working all day in Hania. 92 stared at me with a jaw dropped as low as his πι-πί.

"Plakias is far away," I warned him, "it's going to cost you a lot of money." It's only fair to warn him. You don't know the people who come into your cab. You may see them very day, like my regular fare at Kalithea, or you may see them once in your life, like this guy, but you never know if they have the money to pay you. I once took someone to Paleohora, and when he got out, he said "Just a minute," and he went into his house and bought back a canary in a cage and told me to take it. Luckily, I didn't take off immediately, because his mother came out of the house running to catch up with me, and she was holding her purse. She kept apologising for her son's behaviour, and she paid me in full. Then another time, I picked someone up from Souda and he told me to take him to a village in Iraklio near Moires. After I got to Rethimno, he struck up a conversation (I always let the customer start the conversation - some of them may not want to talk much in the cab). He told me how hard his life was, being stuck all day in the psychiatric unit in Souda. The cheeky bugger had come onto the main road to avoid being picked up from the τρελοκομείο where he lived. All I could think of was 'Fuck'. He probably didn't have any money on him but I couldn't very well turn back to Hania. I just carried on driving all the way to Moires. When we finally got to his house, I found his father out in the yard. The guy got out of the taxi without even turning to look at me. His father came up to me and said, "Why do you keep bringing him here?" I told him I was only doing my job, I had no idea who he was, I just picked up a fare and took him where he told me. His father told me to wait a minute. He came out of the house with his wallet and paid me in full. I felt sorry for these parents. They looked old, but their kids were young. Their children had aged them too early. I remembered these stories as I watched the young man get into the back seat of the cab.

"I've got €220 in my pocket," he said. I nodded a see-you-later to No. 92 and started up the car. Do you know how many years it's been since I've been to Plakias? I didn't remember how bad the road was. One minute you're climbing a hill, the next you're rolling down it, then you drive through a gorge, a bit more up and down before you are finally back on flat road. We got to Plakias forty minutes later, and I asked him where excatly he wanted to go. He told me to drive down to the beach, so I did. I expected him to tell me which spot on the beach he wanted to get out at, but he said nothing. I kept driving slowly along the coast, but he still said nothing. I thought maybe he was μαστουρομένος, but he didn't smell of pot or anything, and his eyes weren't jaded either. To try to work out what the hell he was up to, I asked him if he wanted to stop off and get a coffee at the kafeneio - nothing else was open. "No," he said, "it's too cold." I was fed up, and feeling a little jittery after the drive, but I couldn't do much about my situation. I asked him where he wanted me to take him.

"Let's go back to Hania," he said. I wasn't sure if he was having me on. The meter would continue ticking; he'd have to pay for the return fare too.

"You've come all the way down here, and you haven't even stepped out of the cab," I said to him.

"That's none of your business. I'm the paying customer." We arrived back in Africana at about 10.30. The round trip had cost him €140.

The man looked very young, but he was actually in his mid-30s, as I found out when I got back to Hania. No. 92 had made it known among the 200 or so cabs in Hania through the wireless that I had got lucky. Some other cabbies knew the young man I had picked up. Apparently he is from a comfortable but not very rich family. He has never worked in his life, which explains why he looks much younger than he is. He has no dreams, no aspirations, no plans to leave. In the summer, he gets up late and sits at MyCafe all afternoon drinking frappe. He is bored shitless, and he can't do anything to change his life.

I joined the Africana rank, behind two other cabs. I got out to stretch my legs and the other cabbies just stared at me like I was crazy. "What are you doing back here?" they asked me. You should go home now.| It was too early to go home. I made another €20 picking up three more fares, until it was time to pick up the kids from school. As I watched my son dragging his bag on the ground because he couldn't be bothered lifting it up onto his shoulder, my mind went back to that young man.

*For the last 18 months, the cabs of Hania were working via an online GPS-oriented system - the funding program fell through, and it's now back to old manual routine of picking up fares, at the taxi ranks and through the wireless system.

*My husband is on the Monitoring Board of the Hania cab association, which controls system cheats. 

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Pension (Σύνταξη)

When governments face a financial crisis, they need to find ways to cut back on spending, and one of the first ways to do this is to cut back on money being paid out in pensions and benefits, especially the ones being paid fradulently. For example, a while ago, it was discovered that blindness seemed to be contagious on one small Greek island; it turned out that the local opthalmologist(s) were signing out free blindness benefits, granting favours to the residents, no doubt for a cut in the takings.

It was recently revealed that at least 18,228 pensions were being paid out in Greece fradulently. The Greek word for 'pension' is σύνταξη, which can actually mean 'pension' in the classic old-age payment, or 'benefit', making it difficult to work out what kind of pensions are being paid without further analysis. But the state had conducted another clear-up of pension/benefit claims only just recently, which sorted out (or so it seems) the fraudulent beneficiaries (as in the above-mentioned cases of μεταδοτική στραβομάρα). So I'm assuming that the 18,228 pensions recently cited as being paid out illegally must be of the old-age retirement type (let's put aside the fact that many Greek state employees take early retirement, anytime from their mid-40s to their early 50s; they don't wait till they're in their 60s, as one would be assuming when they hear the words 'old' and 'retirement'). This decrease in payouts will surely help the state coffers. But that figure accounts for just a mere 0.4% of the total pensions/subsidies being paid out - in other words, that's hardly anything.

The figures are even more worrying when the total figure for pensions being paid out is taken into account: 4.41 million pensioners were registered in Greece. Subtracting the number of pensions whose payments have stopped, that makes approximately 4.39 million continuing to be paid. The population of Greece according to the 2011 census is slighly less than 11 million (it probably does not include illegal immigrant, who aren't recorded in pension/benefit schemes in the first place), which means that nearly 40% of the population is receiving a pension. Not forgetting that this figure does not take into account people who receive more than one pension (they may have worked in different sectors, which makes them entitiled to state handouts from various sources, which has laways made tracking who is getting what even murkier), it creates a dismal picture: more than one Grek citizen (and they don't necessarily live in Greece, as reitred Greeks can take their pension to another country) is receiving a benefit which has to be paid for by the taxes of at least two working people in the Greek state.

The greatest fraudsters were, unsurprisingly, those receiving public service pension funds, as well as IKA, the Greek equivalent of the United Kingdom's NHS, because they are the largest social insurance institutions in Greece. But there were also two more groups of fraudsters that stuck out like sore thumbs - the farmers' pension fund, OGA, and the doctors', ETEAM. Sadly, it's the usual suspects that are milking the system.

On a happier note, the Greek economy showed a surplus for the first two months of this year, which sounds like good news. Our finance minister is very pleased about the way things are going at the moment. But this surplus was created simply by making cutbacks, not by profiting from any investment. In other words, Greek state spending went on a diet and lost some weight. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Sharing your junk food over some television is the best way to enjoy a comedy spot in the evening. In my search for something different for my Greek eaters to experiment with, during today's supermarket trip, I found a combination of Europe's extremities: some (expensive) Burts' crisps (€2.96 a packet) some (cheap) made-in-Greece green cola (€0.60 per can - there was also a special going: buy 5, get 1 free). When choosing a junk food treat, we allow a budget cost of up to €2 per person because that's how much a filling souvlaki costs. I can still supplement this meal with another €4. In the same way, we've tried a whole host of 'exotic' treats, including Bundaberg ginger beer, Ocean spray craisins and cranberry juice, pecan nuts, among other treats now being made available temproarily at the local supermarkets: 'all in moderation' follows.  

On a more global scale, cutbacks are being planned in all European economies, and pensions/benefits are the main target. One need look no further than Europe's extremities to see how bad things are in the pensions/benefits sector: Greece and the UK, with their completely different politicial systems, different transparency levels and different social structure, are both in the same boat, wading through choppy waters. They make an interesting comparison: for completely different reasons, they are now faced with the same dilemma. They greatest losers will not be the tiny number of fraudsters: it will be the suckers who have to keep paying into the system to ensure that there will be enough for them when they leave the workforce. For there to be anything left, we will have to face cutbacks in both the health and education systems, the last two bastions of state intervention. When these are lost, it's each for his own.

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Love cookies (Κουλουράκια της αγάπης)

On the eve of the feast day of the Forty Saints, Άγιοι Σαράντα (Ayii Saranta) as they are known in Greek, the parish of the Forty Saints church in Nerokourou held a celebratory mass. The 9th of March is dedicated to the forty martyrs of Sebasteia who died in battle for their love of Christ.

At the end of the service, apart from the regular sweet offerings, a basket of love cookies was being handed out to the congregation. The cookies were made the children attending Sunday School in the area.

"Please take one!" the little girl said. "It has the recipe my mother wrote!" 
The icons came with a cookie, the recipe and a matchstick with cotton dipped in oil from a candle.

Not being a church goer, I missed out on gettingmy share, but my friend managed to get one, which came along with the recipe. Love cookies are made with ingredients not commonly found in the supermarket.

You need:
3 water glasses of peaceful conscience (when the sea is calm, we say it looks like olive oil)
2 water glasses of honest heart (like the purity of sweet sugar)
1 wine glass of laughter (which you can find in the form of tsikoudia, the Cretan firewater)
1 wine glass of good will (which you have in the juice of freshly squeezed orange)
1 water glass of love (in the smell of toasted sesame seed)
1 sachet of bubbly joy (a sachet of baking powder will do)
1 teaspoon of insistence (baking soda will be fine)
1 teaspoon of inspiration (ammonia can be used, although I usually don't add this, as I find my inspiration in other ways)
communication and a happy countenance as you embark on the task (try some ground cinnamon and cloves)
as much work as is needed (keep adding flour till you can knead the dough easily)

To make the love cookies:
Pour the peaceful conscience of your inner world into a bowl, together with your honest heart. Work very hard at it constantly and add the love, some communication and your happy countenance. Our mixture takes on a ruddy cheek colour. To this we add the joy and laughter. We must be careful here, because sulkiness might spoil our mixture! Then we add the hard work. We mould our cookies onto the tray of our soul, we warm up the oven with our good will, and bake the cookies at 170 degrees Celsius of patience for 30 minutes. 

Whoever eats these cookies ascertains that the main charcateristic of their taste is the tranquility of the soul! 

The preparation time is as long as life itself. And there is no caloric value.  

Thanks to Eirini for the photos.

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The cheap life

I heard on the news last night (and it was plastered all over the Greek news this morning) that Greece's money lenders are pushing for the continuation of the temporary property tax being clamped on our bi-monthly electricity bills. I was really upset. We'd been advised by the state that this temporary tax would be abolished this year, and swallowed up in the newly-designed taxation system, which would make it cheaper, and would treat it as a tax rather than an added expense, as it is designed now.

We pay the electricity bill via an automatic payment at our bank, which means that we've always paid this extra tax. It added extra expenses of €45 per month on our own house, and meant we received reduced rentals from our tenants, who get the tax clamped onto their electricity bill, but which we are required to pay. So the added tax actually amounts to a lot more money in reduced income per month for us. The continuation of payment of this tax via the electricity bill means that we have to continue to live with less.

Finally, I can throw my canvas sneakers out, now that i have discovered a hole in them! I wonder if the hole was there before I noticed; they cost 6 pounds from Primark (UK) last year - because it didn't rain much this winter, I have been wearing them until now. I expect I will find another pair at a similar price to replace them, thanks to RyanAir: flying from Chania to London  direct has never been cheaper - I bought a ticket for €40, but the last time I checked its site, I noticed that the same time and day was selling at €30!!! 

This is nothing new for me; I have always been frugal and I will always continue to pay my taxes no matter how much money I make, so what am I complaining about? I also know that it isn't the Greek government that is insisting on this situation - it's the infamously named troika: the EU, the IMF and the ECB, who now govern Greece. Apparently, they liked the way the tax was being claimed instantly without delay - who wants to risk having their electricity disconnected? - and have decided that Greece has a good thing going with this system. The troika must be thinking that, over the last two years, Greek property owners have been paying this hefty tax, we have made the appropriate adjustments that we needed to make in order to live with less money, so it's not going to be a major issue to just 'carry on' paying it.

The old washing machine drum is about to get a new lease of life.

I really shouldn't complain. The way I have organised my life is such that I am planning for a moment in my life when I will end up having very little money. For the present time, I have shown to the state that I can afford to sacrifice what I earn in order to save the country. The troika and the Greek state duped me into it. Unwittingly, I showed them that I can - and do - live with less, without compromising my quality of life.

So I'll just keep calm and carry on - carry on giving myself haircuts (hair tongs do a great job of hiding mistakes), eating fish heads (so that the rest of the family can eat fish), wearing sneakers to work in the winter (it doesn't rain THAT much down here, and I don't work outdoors), recycling tea leaves (we've all done it at some point), growing our own food (and not a lawn), giving silent thanks when we are given a rabbit ("if he gave me a chicken, we'd eat chicken," I often tell my husband, who asks me why we eat rabbit more often than chicken), foraging greens (money can't buy the quality I can find here), and all those other things I do that add a dimension of hardship - physical or emotional - in my life, at the same time as making it heaps cheaper.

I'm educated enough to know that a post-WW2 lifestyle won't kill me and it doesn't actually make me less healthy: in the UK, this diet was called 'rationing', while in Greece, it was (albeit much later) called the 'Mediterranean diet', which mocks all that bullshit often written about how we can't go back to our past. Yes, we can; not only have many of us done so, but we have actually been living like this for a long time without realising it. But living the way I do will not kill me; it will actually make me healthier. Being tax-free and debt-free, I can even afford to joke about the crisis.

After preparing the pastry and mixture from the previous evening, I rolled out the dough this morning and assembled the spanakopita. Spanakopita? What am I talking about? Apart from a few spinach leaves from the garden, my 'spinach' pie contains mainly foraged greens, including a large bunch of nettles. 

Unfortunately, not many people are in my position. Most Greeks don't live in Crete, where the tourist season is only just round the corner, the winter is not so cold, the sun shines most of the year round, the soil is fertile and the ground is sun-drenched. Most people need boots in the winter to go to work - I can get away with sneakers, which lower my clothing costs. I don't need to go on a summer holiday - I live in a coastal resort. In a nutshell, I can live cheaply - but only if I want to. There are rich people who have lived most of their lives as if they were in crisis, but they are few and far between.

The sun-drenched lifestyle - who needs driers?

The news from my Athenian acquaintances is not good. They aren't used to living with less money. My own local economy cannot be compared to their urban-apartment lifestyle. But even here, we see signs of the crisis. When other cabbies ask my taxi-driver husband how he's coping, he just shrugs. He doesn't want to tell them how we're coping because most of the time, they aren't. Greeks have now become split into three groups: the very rich (they always had been), the very poor (most of them are newly impoverished), and a middle group who seem to be coping. We belong to the middle group, but you feel awkward telling others that you are coping: people have the idea that if you are not poor, then you are hiding something, kind of like tax-evading. If we told people how we live, they wouldn't believe us. It's not just a case of having free food available to us - every aspect of our life is frugal, economical and cheap.

The best way to accept who you have become is to remember who you were.

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New (Καινούργιο)

The guarantees must have run out at the same time. The washing machine had shown signs of this much earlier than all the other appliances. The drum wasn't turning when the machine loaded (not even lightly). To ensure the clothes got washed (which they never really did, anyway - towels were a lost cause), I had to turn the power button on and off in quick succession, in order for the drum to slump quickly back to inertia at the off position, so as to get a kick-start when I pushed the button back to on.

But it wasn't until the microwave did a sound and light show last Thursday when we decided to do something about replacing the washing machine. I never cook anything in the microwave (that's a lie - I boil rice and do popcorn), and even though I know I can live without it, my husband knows he can't.

So off we went to the one place I buy any household appliance I've bought and chose the most energy-efficient washing machine we found. The price tag: €680. Then we chose a microwave oven (€75), and an iron (€57), and an ironing board (€40). The total cost: €700, in 12 monthly credit-card instalments. The crisis, coupled with long-term custom and a debt-free record, yielded a good discount.

And if you happen to notice that I haven't featured barbecued food for a long time, yes, you guessed it, our coal barbecue had a few holes in its bottom. But we don't need to buy a new one, because it's a Greek tradition to turn an old washing machine drum into a barbecue.

Just when we were wondering what to do with all the scrap metal, along comes the Roma scrap collector, who was only too glad to get his hands on it.

"Could you treat me to a cigarette?" he asked me.

"Sorry," I apologised, although I don't know why I felt I had to, "None of us smoke."

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Spring (Άνοιξη)

With spring...

... come the first strawberries.

Photos taken this morning.

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Image (Φήμη)

Image is very important in the market-driven world that we live in. We can create an image of ourselves, but it's not always the intended image that other people will see of us. Image-making is very hard work, and certain moves can send out the wrong messages. The truth is that most people are ignorant of how others live, and even though no one knows us as well as we know ourselves, even we are not truthful to ourselves when we deliberately try to create our image.

Most of the time, we concentrate on creating our 'outer' image, the one others can see, colouring it, touching it up, keeping it looking shiny, so that others can judge us positively on it. Hair, face, weight, clothes, shoes, accessories, cars, accommodation and gadgets all play a part in our outer image, as does being seen in various places with various people. Although we can also try to improve our 'inner' image, it's much harder to make this visible to other people. People who don't know us very well will not see this inner image; it is much harder to see it anyway, by its very nature.

Once our image is tarnished by a controversial opinion, a misguided action, an intolerant gesture, the outer image will play no role in upholding a formerly good inner image. It's the inner image which needs to be re-created before the outer image will start to have any effect on the blissfully ignorant.

Greece faces this very image dilemma at the moment. To make things even more difficult, Greece is often confused with Greeks. But Greece and Greeks are not the same thing. Those who do not know Greece or Greeks very well - apart from what they hear on the news about Greece - will not be able to tell them apart. But that isn't actually their fault - they were ignorant to begin with, and the only messages they are getting are not very good ones. Their opinion of Greecey Greeks will be affected mainly by those messages. In the end, it's ultimately up to the greasy Greeks to change their image to a more positive one, because in the end, they will be the only ones to benefit from such a change.

This ad - for Westpac, a bank that operates in NZ - is being shown to Kiwi television audiences at the moment. 

Let's take an example of someone who doesn't really have any opinion of Greece or the Greeks because they have never had much contact with either of the above-mentioned. Their opinion of Greeks will probably be based on what they see/hear/read about Greece, and these days, I am sure no one will refute my claim that a lot is seen/hear/written about Greece. Take the average New Zealander, for example: they are most likely to regard Greece as a poor country, and hence, by extension, the Greeks are poor, because they spent all their money lavishly, without making any plans for future savings and investment. And if they aren't poor, then they must be tax evaders.

The video depicts a man recklessly spending his money on things that will not give him any return on his initial investment. He doesn't look particularly Greek at all; one can only surmise that he and his entourage are all Greek, from the music being played in the background. I was wondering whether the average Kiwi would actually recognise the music: sirtaki and Zorba are, well... kind of old-fashioned, and even obsolete remnants of Greek identity in the minds of many Greeks. They weren't even invented by them, having become popularised by the film of the same name. The average Kiwi is more likely these days to have travelled to Bali and Thailand than to Greece. So they will not have spent so much time at a Greek taverna in the Acropolis region where they may still hear this music, unless they are old enough to remember the Beatles.

So what can we surmise as being the national identity of the man dressed up as a tennis player? I can only think that he's Romanian or Bulgarian, while his newly acquired partner is English; she had originally been married to the Greek man, but left him when he became bankrupt. She went back to the UK, where she could claim benefits, as did the Romanian/Bulgarian, for the same reason. She's probably come back to see the Greek man to claim maintenance payments.

As a Greek, I can see why my compatriots could easily be offended by the video. But we have to remember that this video is an ad, and ads are made for one purpose: to sell something. If we put ourselves in the shoes of that poor man (ie Greece), we know we wouldn't want to ever end up like him (ie the Greek). I certainly wouldn't - and I'm Greek.

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Τσικνοπέμπτη (Tsiknopempti)

Some of my old photos (they make me wonder where I used to find the energy).

If you don't indulge in red meat often, today is the day to do it. It's Tsiknopempti, the Thursday before Cheesefare Week which precedes the 50 days of Great Lent in the Greek Orthodox calendar. Tsiknopempti is the first food-related tradition in the run-up to Holy Sunday, Easter Sunday.

Tsiknopempti is generally reserved for char-grilled meat dishes. So get your chops stuck into some juicy steaks, or spicy sausages, grilled chicken or maybe a souvlaki (or two) with all the toppings. It's a good time to go out tonight, and a souvlaki is a cheap way to enjoy the evening as you sit in the souvlatzidiko people-watching.

We're probably going to have one of the latter somewhere in town and enjoy the revelry as we see it take place. For the last two years, Thursdays have been set

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Splantzia (Σπλάντζια)

Our old town is very old, sometimes too old for us to comprehend. Here's how I saw a recent walk through it which we took as a family during Christmas.

At the children's insistence, we visited Hania's Christmas funfair, staged by the municipal authorities next to the Agora, as it is every year during the Christmas period. After buying some olives and mizithra in the market, we took a walk starting from Tsouderon Street which has now been completely pedestrianised (it was once a very narrow one-way road, with just enough space for pedestrians). The fresh air was very invigorating after the gaudy lights of the funfair and the fish and meat smells of the market stalls.

Splantzia

Although it had been raining during the day, the evening was warm enough for a stroll in the back streets of the old town, which are hidden from view, being bordered by the main streets that provide vehicular access. One of the two minarets still standing in the town, from former Ottoman times, is found on a parallel road behind Tsouderon St, where we thought it would be a good place to start our little walk in the very historical Splantzia district. Walking around Splantzia feels a little like walking in the Anafiotika area under the Acropolis. You only see houses with closed doors; the people seem to have vanished. The only sign of life is maybe a room with the light on. Despite this, some parts of the neighbourhood have taken on a more social identity, with food and drinks businesses emerging as the biggest winners.

Chatzimichali Ntaliani St now houses one of the more vibrant parts of the town, filled with cozy cafes, fine dining experiences, modern bars, retro patisseries, wine bars and other modern and slightly alternative businesses in the food industry. The area attracts young people and those seeking to get away from the standard traditional staple offerings Hania is well known for among its tourist areas. These new places are becoming regular haunts of the local population of all age groups. They are often combined with artistic displays of jewelry, crafts, old books and other arty designs, a sign of Greeks' change in perspective during the economic crisis, as they seek to make a new identity out of their past.

There were few people walking around at this moment  I was surprised how alone I felt walking down this very dark street, save the lights that originated from the empty shops. It was that time of evening when it would be too early for dinner, to late for coffee and not quite appropriate for drinks. The roads were wet, possibly putting people off from coming out. But it was in between Christmas and the New Year - the time and weather have probably not played as much of a role as the economic crisis in keeping people away from these upbeat κουτούκια.

Passing the minaret, we thought about getting a bite to eat at the nearby Kouzina EPE on Daskalogianni St, which turned out to be just about to close down trading for the day. The plan changed: we would get a souvlaki instead. The architecture of the area, despite it being late and dark, was very endearing, so we decided to continue our walk before returning home. Sarpaki St turned out to be a more residential part of the area. It was somewhere here that we came across the 'soupa party'.  

Splantzia has not been given so much attention by tourist developers. It is very hard to do this anyway, as most of the buildings are protected, due to their historical significance. Few of our tourists would venture through these dark streets, since they cannot guess the treasures they possess, helping this maintain the area is a mainly local's resort, with its well-concealed layout. We always want to keep some part of the town to ourselves, as we are inundated by passing strangers for half the year, making the town fell leased out to them for their own pleasure.

The eastern part of the old town hides many narrow roads that all lead off one another like a rabbit warren. The only signs of life in these streets are the washing hanging outside the houses and some healthy looking potted plants, maybe a motorbike parked in front of a house, or a tied-up plastic bag housing unknown contents, lying on a chair. The streets are paved and virtually no cars can be seen here. The houses seem to lean precariously on each side, almost touching each other. Some of these houses are poor people's quarters, others have been done up as luxury inner-city studios, and some others are also used as hotels, apart from the business-oriented ones, as described above. Quite a few are dilapidated  with no renovation possibilities. But they will continue to stand as a testament of time, until perhaps an earthquake strong enough to bring them down (and it has to be very strong, because they are still standing) tears down their walls from their already missing heart. They each have an individual charm, the one being quite unlike the other, and they all remind us of the multicultural history of our town, when Greeks, Jews and Muslims all lived in different areas, retaining their own customs and traditions. As more houses are renovated, ancient ruins are constantly being uncovered.

Eventually we got lost as the narrow streets ran into one another, with some turning into dead ends, while others led us into grand courtyards, none of which are visible before stumbling onto them quite by accident. All the streets had names, judging by the signs stuck ont he houses, but they didn't mean anything to us. So we just took any road we found that led somewhere, eventually turning up at Melchisedek St where we saw the bright lights of Daskalogianni St, which signalled our return back to the real world.

The lights spurred a wake-up call that got us out of our trance. To Pazari was just across the road, where we nipped in for a look over their DVD collection (Little Britain! better late than never!), and then walked briskly to the car. By that time, the idea of a souvlaki sounded quite enticing. But my mind was still on the magic of the evening which took us back in time; I'm looking forward to walking there again soon.


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Braised greens (Χόρτα τσιαγαριαστά)

The wild winter greens are now blooming very quickly with our sunny weather. It's still cold, but the sunshine has made them all grow quite tall, as if reaching for the sun's warmth, which makes them  rather spindly with their fibrous stalks. Last week, when I bought some of my favorite aromatic greens from the street market seller, I noticed that many of them were in flower. They won't be around for much longer!

Wild greens can form a complete meal with some bread and olive oil. This vegan dish suits vegans, vegetarians and meat eaters alike: some form of protein can be served alongside it, for those who are not complete vegans, while vegans can get their protein from a bean dish. The greens are cooked with onions and garlic, in a light olive oil and tomato sauce.

If that sounds a bit boring to you, you could try cooking your protein with the greens. A simple way to do this is after the greens are cooked; break an egg or two over them in the pot:

... or poach some fish (which never really needs a lot of cooking time) in the liquids of the greens:

If you like to keep things very traditional, you could add some xinohondro (dry milk and wheat rusk) to the finished greens, which gives extra falvour and bulk to a very simple vegetable dish (it's also used popularly with cauliflower, eggplant and snails):

Both wild greens and garden greens can be used in exactly the same way. They need different kinds of cooking times (garden greens cook more quickly than wild greens). I recently cooked a similar dish with the tender parts of cabbage greens, broccoli and cauliflower, once the main heads had been chopped off and the plants kept sprouting:

And in the summer, I do the same thing with zucchini tops, vlita greens (amaranth) and garden-grown corn and beans:

The meals I have described above are very frugal healthy ways of keeping yourself nourished. But they are only as frugal as the climate and the soil allow you to be, as well as your pocket: if you can't afford high quality olive oil, you will not really find these meals so enjoyable. Today, the UK press is full of details about the sorry state of affairs of British health, leading some important-sounding bureaucrat to say something to the likes of:

"It must be worth looking to see how Italy and Greece (ahead of the UK) can do better than us in spite of their economic and political problems...It [is] not difficult to get fresh fruit and olive oil in the UK. It is more the propensity not to stuff yourself with all the wrong things, which we are rather good at."

Sure, it all looks easy, but did he take into account the British climate and the sun factor, which have an impact on what one can grow in their environment?. As a facebook reader mentioned, two weeks of a foreign holiday don't make up for a lifetime of Vitamin D deficiency!

The meals shown above are all based on the same recipe as my braised celery dish. They are all  about making something out of hardly anything - all you need is some high quality olive oil and some tasty aromatic greens.

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