Ramblings from Greece

Tuesday 5th July night - Hora, Wednesday 6th  July - Hora, Livadi So I went to the Taverna next to the New House last night, as I had eaten a proper lunch I ordered the Fennel balls and the Chick pea stew, the latter is a speciality on Sifnos. I washed it all down with two bottles of beer. I had paid up and was about to leave and the Swedish group appeared that I mentioned  here . They asked me to join them even though I had finished. I ended up chatting to them for two hours and got to them all really well. I thought the son Hugo was really mature for his age (17), his godmother Sara and Hugo’s mother lovely too. Unfortunately I cannot remember his mothers name, sorry. I apologise because they wanted to look at this blog! I walked home very happy, to have had a very special fun evening. The following day, I cleared the house and walked up to  Upper Hora, I had some goodbyes to say. First I popped into the bakers for a Praspitta pie for myself and Ronnie, I told Manolis I...

Tuesday July 5th - Mega Livadi and around and about So as I have mentioned before, Mega Livadi is the area on Serifos where iron ore was extracted until as recently as 1960. I have been to this area before, but did not have much time to explore then. Nearby there is the White Tower and Cycope’s throne, both which are written about on this   blog. So after picking up the car, I drove out West again, going along the road as I did yesterday, saw that our friends doing the unofficial roadworks, had dug out a slot across the road, a more substantial reel of new pipe by their side. I then took the road to Mega Livadi to follow the coast road. Before I got to Mega Livadi,  I turned off by Koutalas, I am sure I stopped here before on my last visit. It has a nice beach and the usual blue and white church. On many beaches on these islands are these trees, there are a bit like a fir or a conifer, not tall, but they grow in the sand, quite happily. The provide some much needed shade. The ...

July 4th - Hora and Livadi  Near the top of Hora is a garage where they do repairs on vehicles and boats engines. It’s like an old fashioned garage that is becoming rare in the UK, as we get more of the car manufacturer garages, all corporate, where you could eat your dinner off the floor and so on. Outside this garage is a collection of mechanical times which doesn’t seem to change, surely some of these will be useful one day. If I go past, I say “efharisto” as I do to most people I meet, I usually get a cheerful response. The inside of the garage with its pit is not squeaky clean and it’s not tidy with more things littered about. I wonder how he gets on with cars often needing specialist kit to diagnose problems. A lot of the car hire companies including Mr Blue Bird seem to have their own on site garages. I imagine that for the islanders, if you got stuck in the middle of the night, you could call this garage up, and he would rescue you. If I walk past the garage at night, it ha...

 July 2nd evening- July 3rd Hora and Livadi So I forgot to mention that the burgeoning pile of rubbish near where I walk to the church was at last being moved yesterday. It consisted of a toilet and other bathroom bits plus bags of rubble. As I went out yesterday,  the guy with his horses were coming up the path from the road. I imagine he will have shifted it all yesterday, but I wonder what his rates are? I bet he does not pay for it to be taken away with the other rubbish we all throw out. ( as it turned out, he left it by the side of the road and it was all taken away by a tipper truck on Sunday) So I had what a lot of people will imagine as a traditional Greek dinner last night, salad plus meat on skewers, chips, tomatoes, red onions and a dip. I had it with a beer which came in a can. Before I drained the can, the wind whipped the can  up and it went careering down the steps. Here was my dinner. It was pretty good and I felt like I deserved it. I was looking at the ...

Saturday 2nd July - Hora and thereabouts  One problem in this traditional Cycladian house is ants. There are minute little ones and some  that are a lot bigger than the ones we get at home. I imagine the foundations and water systems are havens for them, so they can come and go as they please. They don’t really cause problems to me, they don’t bite, but if you leave any small amount of food like a little bit of breakfast cereal in the sink, the little ones are all over it in a rash. Food bins are also a nuisance and can end up with them piling into  it. So I have two lots of waste, dry and  wet. The wet stuff like peelings, and other food waste, I try and remove as quickly as possible. In most cases I am going past a dumpster, so I throw rubbish in there. This keeps the little monsters down! Although I haven’t heard back from that Serifos group that I hoped I could volunteer for, I got my first email from a Serifos mail alias that I joined. It had an attachment, ...

Thursday 30th June - Friday 1st July Hora and Livadi The good news is my body is making great strides in repairing itself after the foolishness in the sea. I am now at the stage of flaking like a puff pastry lid. But I am on the mend and hopefully all will be well soon. So after having dinner at home and listening to several episodes of the The Rest is History podcasts, I walked up to a windy Hora. I decided to have some wine tonight so I tried “Enna Poterie Kokkari Crassie  Parakelo”. I can’t remember this phrase, but thankfully I have a series of cribs on my phone. Of course the young lady serving me then asked me a question, I had no idea what it was, but it soon became clear. Over here you will often get red wine chilled. Or they will lob some ice cubes in it. But in this case, she told me when she brought it, after I asked, that she had said the ice cubes were to make the wine less strong. The next thing is I don’t really like peanuts, but somehow  I got them swapped for ...