Granola (Γρανόλα)

An Athenian friend of mine introduced me to granola and since then, my kids have been hooked on it. It's so easy to make at home that I couldn't understand the hype concerning boxed granola when I stayed with my London hosts. They introduced the sturdy box containing a sturdy plastic bag whose contents looked nothing more than cereal with mixed nuts. "It's Dorset", one of them said, a bit like a name-dropper wishing to impress. 12 glorious bowlfuls, the box proclaimed on the front. Seriously? I thought. That's 42g of granola a serving - it must be a tiny bowl. That box wouldn't last in my house for more than three days between my two kids.

My friend's granola mixture is home-made.

As they watched my kids devouring the decadently flavoured granola (chocolate), they exclaimed how expensive kids were to maintain. "Imagine needing 2 of these boxes a week just for their breakfast!" they said. I stared at my kids pouring out the contents of the pretty packaging and imagined how easily the recycling bin at my hosts' house would be filled if they ate Dorset chocolate granola every day for breakfast.

What is granola? Rolled oats, cornflakes, nuts and dried fruit, baked in some kind of oil and sweetener. It is so incredibly easy to make that I rarely think of it as a recipe. Recipes abound on the internet, the ingredients are easy to find and rarely need any processing before being turned into granola. Different varieties of store-bought granola basically contain some ingredient that has been added for a more exotic dimension, eg chocolate or dried cherries, both of which raise the prestige of the product (and of course the price).

Making granola does not need much more than a spoon to mix it with. 

Store-bought granola is expensive because of the way it is marketed - to make the buyer feel a certain degree of prestige: buying a certain brand will earn him/her a good reputation. Contentious ingredients in granola include chocolate: the labelling on the packet will tell you where it's sourced (or it will divert you to their website), which is especially important for people with a heightened awareness of what they owe the lesser world that has made their one more comfortable. If anything has been added to a product that may not sound like your average natural-and-sitting-in-your-pantry ingredient, it will be explained to sound natural, eg "antioxidant: natural tocopherol-rich soya extract" is explained as something that is natural and found in "planta" (as if "planta" is an everyday word), which is added in the quantity of a "smudge" (so tiny it wasn't really necessary?) to make sure that "everything stays lovely and fresh" (the expiry date is often a year after the product was packed). Claims that the granola is hand-made in a country kitchen add to the prestige of the product even though we all know that a machine would have made this product cheaper; it is simply another association to class - we may not live in a house with a country kitchen, but we want our food to come from one, for that extra added illusion of affluence. Some kind of certification gprocides added trust: eg UK Vegetarian Society approved. And if the granola company is involved in conscientious projects, eg supporting tree planting in forests, it makes the consumer feel more righteous, supporting environmentally-friendly socially responsible companies.

Crispy granola keeps easily in an air-tight container.

Making your own granola will not inflate your ego in the same way, although it may help to keep your pocket inflated. It will also reinforce the fact you really cannot afford to dispose of your money so easily, and it may make you think your children are less privileged because they do not have access to such prestige products, even if they were available where you live. Home-made granola also brings home to you the reality of your environment. In Crete, for example, people do not worry about whether chocolate is fairtrade or not. If this really did worry me, I wouldn't eat chocolate at all, and I'd be demanding higher prices for our orange production (rather than selling it at low prices, we simply give it away to friends). This could be my get-rich-quick moment, marketing granola in my area, among people who do not know it as a concept; it may be an untapped market here, but who needs granola in a place where other breakfasts are already in use? Selling granola is all about building an image of exclusivity - Greeks generally follow the fashion rather than create it. But even if granola did become a fashion, in a crisis, if people cotton on to what granola is actually made of and how easy it is to make it, they will immediately realise they are being overcharged for such a simple product. You pay for the marketing more than the product.

My granola is made with Cretan honey and Cretan olive oil, which is a natural anti-oxidant in itself. Nothing can be more natural than what you make yourself, especially if all the natural individual ingredients are available cheaply to you. I use a mixture of rolled oats and muesli (it's cheaper to buy a ready mix) and locally foraged walnuts. It's all browned in the oven and left to cool before being stored in a covered bowl that slowly empties out during the week. In today's granola-making session, I added goji berries, which are now being promoted as a superfood. We may not be able to afford the cereal box, but we can still have our cereal.

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Berlin (Βερολίνο)

Of all the places we visited during our trip through Northern Europe in April, Berlin was the most difficult place to write about, perhaps because its points of interest sometimes felt overwhelming.

Gedachtniskriche, 1991

We remember places we have visited in such a way that their image doesn't change over time, even though the place will have changed considerably. There were some things about Berlin that made an impression on me from a previous visit there. That's why, as soon as we arrived in Berlin on my more recent visit (last April), I wanted to visit the Gedachtniskriche, a bombed church standing as a testament of time, depicting the events that occurred during a single moment in the past. Alas, some things do not last forever; a church still wearing its WW2 ruins will only continue to erode without serious maintenance work. All we saw was a tall white tower of dirty square plastic panels covering the church, to protect it from pollution and climate change, awaiting its fate as renovation plans were being decided.

The train ride to the church did not go wasted. This was where we had our first currywurst, the famous Berlin street snack. Sausages are one food thing the Germans do really well.

Different kinds of sausages, sold in kiosks outside the Gedachtniskriche. Over the two-day period we were in Berlin, we tried them all.

The only disappointing thing about the kiosks is that they close early - by 8pm, they all had their shutters down. Can you imagine a souvlaki shop closed before 8pm?!

The drab cover over the Gedachtniskriche represented a good deal of the Berlin that we saw during our brief stay. On arriving to the city, what surprised us about Schoenefeld Airport was that not only was it small, but it was also rather shabby. The stores were located haphazardly, and had the appearance of badly maintained remnants of the bygone communist era. Space was tight with few seating areas, so that many people were milling about upright in the middle of the departure lounge. It reminded me of ferry boat passengers at small Greek islands, waiting anxiously for the only boat that would be coming in for the day to take them away from a rather boring confined space. In terms of political and economic standing, Berlin is one of continental Europe's most important and influential cities, so this old-fashioned looking airport did not seem a fitting tribute to Berlin's magnitude. I found out later that a new airport would be opening in a month's time (or so the Germans thought, but nothing goes to plan these days in Europe, nor does it go to budget), which explained the relaxed attitude of the whole operation.

Berlin had a similar look to most European cities: wide footpaths, narrow streets, pillar billboards, outdoor cafes. Older buildings have kept the same facade: the focus is not on veneer, but function.

The old-fashioned airport was offset by glitzy decorations adorning old buildings reminiscent of a bygone era - glamorous plaster casts representing past grandeur; despite their greyness, the actual buildings themselves remained functional in nature. As we took the S-Bahn to our hotel, we passed forests covered in monoculture species, quiet streets, quiet-looking dormitory suburbs with files of apartment blocks and stark buildings. It's difficult to imagine that just over two decades ago, Berlin was a divided city, with half her citizens living in an urban island surrounded by barbed wire. And seven decades ago, it was a bombsite. During many points in our brief visit, Berlin reminded me of Athens before the fires and demonstrataions. Athens and Berlin share a similar grandeur amidst the drabness - they have similar histories of destruction. 

During our very brief visit, we decided to concentrate on the Mauer - seeing the remnants of the former wall that once enclosed part of the city. Our first introduction to it was the bits that had been salvaged and displayed near Potsdamn Platz. As we neared them, the smell of bubble gum was overpowering. Blobs of gum in pastel colours had been placed artistically over the slabs by passersby: like Mussolini, their historical importance was shamed by being subjected to ridicule.



By following the specially marked-off path on the ground wherever possible, we were able to trace the location of the wall. This trail provided us with a sense of what it might have been like to live on one side and not be able to see the other side, which was an integral part of the side that your feet were treading on.

Making our way to the Brandenburger Tor, we passed what looked like a permanent open-air art installation of grey boxes on the ground. There were very few signs denoting what exactly this was, but there were security guards in the area. I asked one of them what we were looking at: it turned out to be one of the newest Holocaust memorials (referred to as the memorial for Murdered Jews - no mention of a Holocaust). Wherever you look in the centre of Berlin, you cannot escape the fact that a bloody war of propanganda had once raged through the city and sitll haunted its citizens. Interestingly, when I looked up this site on the google maps, I couldn't actually find it listed, even though I was directed striaght to the area just by writing the words Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden - it's not marked this way on the online map. As the reality of what we were looking at sunk in, we immediately felt the need to maintain a level of quietness (which happened often in Berlin, as we passed other similar reminders of the horrors of the past). My children had no idea what they were looking at; it was also difficult to explain this to them. They walked through the aisles made by the boxes, trying to crash into each other by accident. Although the boxes were lined up regimentally, they clearly gave the impression of a maze, and I felt I would lose sight of the children. Their orderly line-up did not hint at the chaos they could ensue if you allowed yourself to get lost in it.

 

The boxes get taller from one side of the monument to the other, representing  the chaos that Jewish people lived through. There is also an information centre on the side where the boxes are taller. The whole set-up felt a little strange: Berliners are constantly being made aware of the terrible price of the crimes against humanity committed by former occupants of the city .

€2 per snapshot with the 'soldier',
€1 extra if you want to wear a hat.

Continuing on to the former Checkpoint Charlie, we came across the Topographie des Terrors exhibition, which is free to enter. It's not a 'nice' place to visit, but that's the thing about Berlin: it cannot escape from its dark past. There were interesting explanations of how and why the power of Nazism was so complete and managed to brainwash even the most sensible people by infiltrating into every aspect of Berlin life. What I thought would be a quick walk through of an open-air commemoration site of the horrors committed by the Gestapo ended up taking a significant chunk of our time as we delved through countless images and stories of Berliners' lives, before coming to the end of the exhibition where we were reminded that not all the villains were caught; many escaped, either by changing their name or residence. All this time, I had on my mind the Greek politicians that have done the greatest harm to Greece: they have escaped punishment, either by being exhonorated from blame by the state, or hiding their mistakes so well that they cannot be caught. Take Akis Tzohatzopoulos - he is in prison while his money and assets, which could easily pay back a huge chunk of Greek debt, have still not passed into the hands of the Greek state.

It used to be the rule to remove the remains of what pains us so that in this way, we forget about it. 

We prefer to forget heinous crimes against ordinary people, because this actually helps us to continue to survive. Some crimes are too great to bear; they overwhlem us, because we know we are helpelss to do anything about them, even if we knew they were happening, which in many cases we did not.

It was difficult to explain the Topographie des Terrors to the children, so we didn't dwell on it for too long. They also found it difficult to understand why their parents were so interested in a wall that no longer exists or why it was there in the first place. Their father tried to explain it to them with a story about the Americans and the Russians. "But what does America and Russia have to do with Germany?" they kept asking him.

Having got rather tired after the exhibition (most of the time, you are standing and reading terrifying reports or looking at horrifying photographs), we needed some quick sustenance. On the other side of the block, across from the Topographie des Terrors exhibition, I noticed what looked like a nice place to stop at for some typical German nosh and beer. We were not disappointed - the food was great, the beer fantastic, the atmosphere perfect (it was a nice small quiet place), and the lady serving us was very pleasant to chat to, as we learnt about German customs:

Delicious German favorites - sausages, cabbage and potatoes, served with Turkish-style bread. The beer was cold and frothy. We tried both white and black beer. The whole meal - 1 main meal per eater, beers, sodas and water - cost less than €40. Although the meal does not resemble a typical Greek €40 taverna meal, it was filling and tasty - you can eat cheaply in Berlin.

- Oh, that's for non-customers (when I enquired about the 0.50cents sign outside the toilet, common in Northern European countries - you pay to pee).
- Um, we don't serve water just like that (when we asked for some water - you have to pay for it, even by the glass, and it never comes out of a tap, free of charge like it does in Greece, just from a bottle).
- You're lucky to have such good weather (when she found out that it was our first day in Berlin - it was the first non-rainy sunny day of the year).
- Er, I don't know... I don't often take the metro (when we asked her if it's a common habit for Berliners to drink beer straight from the bottle while riding on the underground, which seemed to happen quite often - not that they bothered others while doing it, but we were simply curious...).

An eerie sky, from Hohenzollerndamm overlooking Alexanderplatz.

Berlin doesn't fail to leave an indelible impression on your mind. Despite the horrors of the past and the grimness of the present, it is a majestic city that has been torn down and re-built many times, steeped in history in its own right, having lost and regained its grandeur as of late. It makes a hopeful statement: what falls or crumbles paves the way for a clean slate on which to build new dreams and hopes.

The balcony of the hotel was quite roomy, if somewhat glum-looking. Although we were overlooking a main road, the area was relatively quiet - Berliners don't honk their horns so often, and I guess they don't speed or drag race in the middle of town.

We stayed at the AVS Hostel in a huge room with bunk beds, with a private kitchen and bathroom, as well as a balcony, all for €56 a night (pre-booked, no breakfast). The hostel was actually an apartment block, some of whose one-roomed apartments were being run like a hotel. This gave us a chance to get a peek into permanent residents' private lives (the Hohenzollerndamm area was a preferred neighbourhood for Eastern Europeans). The actual building was rather boring - many parts of the concrete were not painted. But the room was very functional and clean. Although it was located quite a way from the city centre, Berlin is well connected by underground (U-Bahn) and overground (S-Bahn). After many hours of walking and standing around at the many points of interest in the city, it was a relief to come back to a clean spacious room to relax in.

The hotel was located in a building next door to a very good bakery which provided very cheap breakfast. A filled sandwich, sweet bun and hot drink for each of us cost less than €20 in total on each of the two mornings we took breakfast there. While in Berlin, we also visited the Mauer Museum - perhaps the most child-friendly place, since we also stayed to watch a screening of Night Crossing, which helped bridge the gaps in the children's understanding of what once went on in this extraordinary city.

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Cheap 'n' Greek 'n' frugal: Greek-inspired waffles (Βάφλες)

Prices are in euro (valid in Hania). All ingredients are Greek or locally sourced; those marked with * are considered frugal here because they are cheap and/or people have their own supplies.

While we travelled through Northern Europe last month, we tasted our first waffle. I've never made waffles before because, like poffertjes, waffles need special equipment, which is only used to make that specific dish. I'm still not convinced that it's a good idea to buy single-use equipment, but since I invested in a special Dutch pancake tin while I was there, I decided that a waffle maker is something I had to have after all, especially if you have children. Apparently you can make waffle batter into pancakes - but they wouldn't be waffles, woud they? And like poffertjes, waffles are fun to make and easily enjoyed by everyone and they provide happy memories.

I bought a cheap waffle maker in Hania, made in China. It cost €25 with a one-year guarantee. (That's expensive for a cheap import, isn't it? Prices in Hania are always much more expensive than elsewhere in Greece.) The waffle maker doubles up as a toasted sandwich maker too (the irons come out), but since we already have a toasted sandwich maker, it's unlikely that I'll use my new gadget other than as a waffle maker. Such equipment make me feel materialistic, so I look for ways to get the best use out of them.

I've been given a good recipe by my friend Uta for waffles. Uta's original recipe is especially clever in that grated apple is added to it to make the waffles stay moist and juicy until the next day, so you can have them as a dinner treat and then enjoy the remaining for breakfast the next day. By replacing various ingredients in the batter with local ingredients, notably olive oil instead of butter, I've come up with a Greek-inspired waffle recipe.

You need:
125g olive oil* (instead of butter)
70ml orange juice* (instead of milk - or you can use a mixture)
125g flour (I used a mix of white and brown flour - ~25 cents)
1 small teaspoon baking powder*
1 apple, grated (~25 cents), OR: 1 small zucchini, grated (it basically does the same job - it keeps the batter moist - in the autumn, I also use pear)
2 eggs*
2 tablespoons sugar*
vanilla flavouring (I omitted this, since I was using fresh orange juice - you can add orange zest for more flavour)
 
Mix ingredients together to make a thick batter. Heat the waffle iron and bake the waffles until golden brown. The mixture is enough for 6 waffles (or 8 smaller ones, with missing corners).

Waffle batter containing grated apple

Waffle batter can be flavoured or kept moist in many different ways. To avoid buying apples (something we don't grow ourselves), I used fresh zucchini (we cut the first one from the garden on the 15th of May). Grated zucchini is used in sweet treats like zucchini bread and zucchini-chocolate cake. This is a very clever way to keep children eating healthy food.

 

A teddy bear's picnic with Greek toppings - the cream, the organic strawberries and the chocolate topping are all products of Greece.

The first time I cook something new, it's to get the hang of it. The second time I make the same thing is never like the first time I made it. This time, I divided the batter and added grated zucchini in one lot, and grated zucchini with cocoa powder in the second lot. The plain zucchini waffles tasted good with cheese - great for people who aren't too keen on sweet snacks. Savoury waffles make a great meal.

Waffle batter containing grated zucchini and cocoa powder - I added just enough cocoa to give the waffle a rich chocolate colour.

Waffles have very little to do with Greek cuisine, but when made in a healthy way with Greek ingredients, they can be enjoyed as a Greek-inspired twist.

All the different waffles I've made so far have been very successful. The same recipe can be adapted in many ways to ensure that you're not just eating a fatty hi-carb sweet treat.

The waffle batter can be made at night, ready to pour the next day into the waffle maker, so you can start the day off with home-made fruit and veg waffles: before you leave the house, you'll have had a good dose of olive oil, eggs, orange juice and zucchini, topped with some home-made jam and organic fruits from the garden. (I usually halve the recipe when I keep the mixture overnight in the fridge.)


Cost of 8 waffles: about €1, eaten once as an evening snack and the next day for breakfast, among four people. Together with the toppings, each serving costs about 50 cents.

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Breakfast cereal - Koliva (Δημητριακά - Κόλυβα)

Have you ever been served this for dessert in a Greek restaurant?

"Are you trying to be funny, Yianni?" I asked the chef at MAICh when he presented koliva for dessert recently. 

"Yes," he replied.

Most likely, you won't have had it in such an environment. Koliva are associated with death. In the Greek version of this dish, boiled wheat and nuts are shaped into a firm 'cake' which is covered in icing sugar, decorated in almonds and dragees (silver sugar balls) and 'cut' (more like smashed up) at the end of a memorial service for a dearly departed, as dictated by tradition in the Greek Orthodox (and other Christian Orthodox) church. It's very rare to see koliva served elsewhere aside from outside churches and at memorial services, hence my confused horror. While I was trying to enjoy my serving of koliva - it's also very hard to use the two words 'enjoy' and 'koliva' in collocation - it suddenly occurred to me that I had never made koliva myself, even though both my parents have died, which means that I have had a number of opportunities to eat koliva made for my very own dearly departed. These days, businesses specialising in the making of koliva deliver them to the church for you, which is how the koliva part of my parents' memorial services had been handled.

Nowadays, no-soaking-required, quick-boiling wheat is readily available, simplifying the work of the cook. Once the wheat is boiled till soft enough to chew easily (I let it cook for 45 minutes), it is strained and allowed to dry between two towels overnight. I placed the towels in the fridge to insure against spoilage.

I have always felt quite daunted at the thought of making koliva myself. Wheat is vulnerable to fermentation processes once it comes in contact with moisture. Boiled wheat needs to be dried and kept in cool conditions, otherwise it can easily turn toxic and cause food poisoning; although this was more common in the past when food safety measures were less stringent, every now and then we still hear about cases of food poisoning breaking out after a memorial service during the hot weather in the summertime. This is what has stopped me from making koliva in the past: it felt a little like mushroom-hunting.

Although koliva have been known to Greek people since antiquity, and are made right throughout the year by confectioners specialised in the job, koliva recipes use three ingredients that generally don't get used much in the Greek kitchen: hulled whole wheat grain, toasted crushed sesame seeds and toasted chickpeas ground to a flour.

Cooking Greek food most of my life, using more or less the same recipes handed down from one generation to the next, I believe that koliva are one of those dishes which represent an important culinary experience in every Greek person's life. I felt that I had to make koliva one day, simply to fulfil my own beliefs concerning my Greek heritage. But since there is no death in the family to commemorate, how could I do this without traumatising my family? 

Although not generally eaten as a sweet outside the demands of tradition, Greek koliva make a delicious dessert. I've even heard of them being served with ice-cream! They are just sweet enough to be enjoyed as a snack any time of the day, and their composition make them the perfect breakfast cereal. Koliva contain everything that regular boxed breakfast cereal contains: whole grains (in this case wheat), and fruit in the form of dried nuts and raisins. But unlike koliva, breakfast cereals have an unacceptable sodium content. It's common knowledge that boxed cereals aimed at children contain both sugar and salt in plentiful supplies, something that even breakfast cereal companies admit themselves. Although koliva are initially made without any sugar added, they are always served with sugar, since the icing sugar that coats them is mixed into the koliva when the 'cake' is shared out after the memorial service. Sugar content can be regulated, as the amount of sugar added to koliva depends on the maker. They taste just as good without any added sugar, since there is a high composition of dried fruit in koliva. When sugar (which creates moisture) is added too soon to koliva, they turn out sludgy. Some people prefer them this way, while others prefer them drier. The drier they are, the slower the fermentation process.

The pomegranate seeds and the blanched almonds were still moist when I mixed the other ingredients, so I let them dry in the fridge overnight before I added them the next day to the nuts-and-flour mixture.

Fresh pomegranate seeds are usually added to koliva when they are in season. Pomegranate forms an important part of koliva due to its connections with the underworld: Dimitra's daughter Persephone was abducted by Hades to become his wife, and the story goes that she refused to eat anything he gave her until her hunger got the better of her. She ate six pomegranate seeds before Hades released her to the world above. Those six seeds represent the darker colder months of the year (Autumn and Winter) when Dimitra is grieving for the loss of her daughter's company, time Persephone spends with her husband, the King of the underworld.

Koliva are always eaten sweetened after a church service since they are always covered in fine icing sugar. At home, I had the chance to have mine without any sugar at all, but it was hard to convince the kids to do the same!

One 500g packet of wheat makes quite a lot of koliva. I was a little worried that I would be making too much and we wouldn't eat them quickly enough before they went off. But I needn't have worried. The supermarket assistant who I asked to direct me to the shelf where hulled wheat was kept (a product I've never used in our daily cooking) gave me a bit of advice about how to keep koliva in perfect condition so that you can enjoy them all week, and even longer. She told me that if I want to make koliva to be enjoyed for personal use rather than for a memorial service (she was obviously an expert in doing this herself), I should keep the boiled (and dried) wheat in a separate bowl in the fridge from the remaining ingredients (which can be mixed up in another bowl). In this way, she said, the wheat can be used (and more importantly, won't go off) for anything up to a fortnight. Sugar should only be added when serving.  

Given that there is no real reason to make koliva in our house, I had to think of a way to get my family to consume them once I made them. I called them 'breakfast cereal', and added chocolate drops to make them more palatable, just like Yianni did at MAICh. They turned out to be very successful. I gave myself the chance to have a go at preparing koliva, at the same time as overcoming my fear of making this special dish which invokes feelings of ethnicity for all Greeks. This cereal dish constituted our daily breakfasts for the first week of this year, a time when grains were traditionally cooked in Crete in the past as a way of welcoming prosperity in the household. 

It is customary, when making koliva for loved ones departed to add a few drops or a pinch of an ingredient that the deceased was paticularly partial to, something like their favorite food, eg olive oil, coffee grounds, etc, to personalise the koliva. This was the only part of the ritual that I did not perform, for obvious reasons.

Here are the three recipes that I based my own version on: a koliva recipe by 3A company, one of the firms that packages wheat grains; the breakfast of our ancestors by Peftasteri; and food for the dead by Mariana Kavroulaki (only this one is in English). They all generally use the same technique and ingredients to make koliva.

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The traveller's breakfast (Πρωϊνό για τους ταξιδιώτες)

This post forms part of the series of our culinary adventures from our recent trip to Paris and London.

After searching the various online hotel booking sites and reading the reviews of the super-cheap hotels that I intended to book my family into, I did not expect much from the budget accommodation that we eventually checked into. What lured me to both my Paris and London hotels was the price on both counts, with the added bonus that breakfast was included in the price of the room. When travelling in cold countries with young children, it's really important for them to find a warm meal to start the day off. We stayed in one four-bedded room in each city for four nights. I'm running on Greek euro: it looks the same as the rest of Europe's euros, but Greeks are supposed to have some of the lowest salaries in the EU. I couldn't afford to spend much more than the cheapest hotels I found in each city: 100 euro per night (breakfast included) in Paris, and 68 pounds (approx. 76 euro) per night (breakfast included) in London.

I came prepared...

I had read that the rooms were small, so we took only two suitcases. I had also read that the breakfast was 'only tea/coffee and bread/butter' so I packed some paximadia and a few clementine oranges in our bags in case we got peckish. I had nightmares about the 'filthy' bathrooms and 'dirty' floors and bedding. One of the hotels had even managed to make it into the 'top most dirtiest' in the UK. I had been warned, so I came prepared. I couldn't afford to be fussy - I only wanted a warm bed for the night, a place to keep myself clean, and a bite to munch on in the morning, and we all know the saying that 'beggars can't be choosers'.

If I had to choose which one was better between the two, I'd say that in my breakfasts in Paris (above) were of higher quality with more atmosphere than those of London (below).

To our pleasant surprise, the rooms in both hotels were always warm, the bathrooms were spacious (in contrast to the previous London hotel I stayed in), there was no mould or bed bugs as promised by other reviewers of the same hotels, and I would gladly stay again in either of them. The staff were also very polite, and responded to all our requests. The breakfasts were basically the same in both of them: juice, tea/coffee/milk, cornflakes, butter and jam to spread on your bread. The only difference was in the quality of the bread - in London, hotel bread is always a thin square sponge that is palatable when toasted, while in Paris, it's a crusty petit pain and/or a buttery croissant.

Hotel breakfasts are a part of the international cuisine: you know what to expect of them. Funnily enough, the French don't actually butter their baguettes, preferring them plain. We saw many people munching on them in Paris as they walked along the street in the afternoons, without any filling; far more healthy than the McDonalds packed meals people often seemed to be buying in London just as soon as they stepped on or off the tube. The weight difference between Parisians and Londoners was highly evident.

Bacon and eggs, fresh fruit, a muesli bar, bread rolls with butter 'n jam, and a hot drink: Aegean Airlines' answer to the traditional English breakfast.

And since we had an early morning start on the first day of our travel, we also got a chance to experience the flying world's answer to breakfast - more international fare.

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Breakfast at Makrinitsa (Πρωϊνό στη Μακρινίτσα)

We spent less than 24 hours in the Pelion region, a place that deserves at least a week of exploration and mainly on foot, but each moment there was special. After sleeping in the most peaceful surroundings we have ever encountered (our neighbourhood is very noisy in the summer), we left the hotel and decided to have breakfast at Makrinitsa, a non-vehicle village to which access is gained by a narrow footpath from the neighbouring village of Portaria. The village is centred around a large square with panoramic views of the coastal town of Volos.

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All cars are left at a large carpark just before the footpath. Due to the volume of tourists and visitors, this narrow road is lined with roadside sellers of fresh produce and souvenir shops. The one that impressed me most was the stall with the dried herbs and teas. Mountain tea similar to the Cretan malotira was being sold, as well as all sorts of dried herbs and grasses that apparently cure you of kidney stones, cholesterol, headaches, influenza, tonsilitis, colitis, constipation, arthritis, haemarrhoids, diarrhea, stomachache, insomnia, nervousness, stomach ulcers, asthma, pharryngitis, rheumatism, bronchitis or laryngitis, as well as alleviating memory loss, insomnia, period pains, ageing, controlling blood pressure, aiding blood cleansing and regulating breathing - and they even do mail deliveries all over the country!

A claim was made about each of these teas as a cure for a host of different ailments. I ended up buying some Betonica (a heart tonic, soothes coughs), Tsai tou Vounou (mountain tea - a nerve soother) and green tea (cures insomnia)...

We sat at the Pantheon (= all the gods) cafe at the very edge of the square overlooking the city of Volos below. My children bought me a menu card - we never need to wait for the waiter to do that these days! There was only one breakfast listing, at 6 euro a head, served with your choice of coffee (we ordered cappuccinos and hot chocolates).

Breakfast with a view

We were not disappointed. The bread was freshly baked and toasted, the butter was creamy yellow, and there were eight pots of honey to share among us! We only used half of them, so we packed the others away in our pockets to recreate this precious meal in our own home on our return.

Presenting breakfast in our house in this way has helped to wean the children off boxed cereals. Keeping the novelty as long as possible is not as simple as it sounds. This kind of breakfast preparation takes time. School starts at 8:10am in Greece, so you have to get up quite early to prepare the cutlery and crockery, cook the toast, warm the milk and soften the butter (margarine just doesn't look or taste as good!) if you want to be out the door promptly to drop the children off to school on time. I have the honey pots filled, the bread sliced (remember we don't use 'square' pre-sliced bread in Greece unless it's for ham and cheese toasted sandwiches) and the table laid after the last meal of the previous evening to save time - and it's still working: my kids go to school with a tummy full of good solid breakfast food!

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Cretan breakfast (Κρητικό πρωινό)

Greece has never really had a breakfast culture. Most people will have a (usually) warm drink in the morning, or nothing at all. The kind of work people did in the past, coupled with the high rate of daily sunshine, must have contributed to this situation - working on a full stomach in a hot environment is never recommended. In recent times, street food has overtaken that sector of the food market.

If I have shopping to do before going to work, I pick up a koulouri to munch on at the office. Coffee is a personal affair for most people - I only like the one I make at home.

Greece was until only relatively recently an agriculturally based country. People got up early in the morning to get their chores done: tending fields and gardens, orchards and olive groves, and finally animals. It was important to get these daily chores done early in the morning, because once the sun rises, so does the temperature. After a late evening meal (common in Greece) and a good night's sleep, a hot cup of milky coffee or sweetened malotira (mountain tea) would suffice in the morning (with maybe a dry rusk or koulouraki for dunking) before starting out on those dusty, dirty, tiring chores. In the summer the day might start off at just after 6am and finish by 11am, as the sun would make it too hot to continue working. The farmer would then come home and have an early lunch (the main meal) around midday, rest and sleep off the siesta, and go back to the fields in the afternoon when the weather was cooler, if there remained any unfinished tasks. It may not sound like a lot of hours of work daily; just remember to calculate the weekly number on a daily basis, with no days off.

My family's breakfast choices; variety for everyone. Sometimes I get the feeling that my kids are the only ones who eat breakfast, judging by what I've seen other kids bring with them to school. I overheard a mother complaining that her children are going off their morning milk. My helpful nature suggested combining it with some cornflakes. A horrified look came over her face. "You give your children CORNFLAKES for BREAKFAST?" Since then, I've learnt to behave like a fly on the wall more often.

The urban population of Greece has always been used to split-day working hours. Most shop owners in Greece, for instance, still insist on morning-afternoon operating hours, breaking the day at midday: five hours in the morning (9-2), closed during the hottest times of the day (2-6), and another 3 hours in the afternoon (6-9), although there is no afternoon shift on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Doctors' surgeries, lawyers' offices, and all manner of businesses run along these lines, despite a recent change in the law that allows all commercial enterprises the right to operate all day, between 8am-9pm. Greeks are very resistant to change (which probably explains why they continue to smoke in public places, despite the recent law banning it, and still talk on their mobile phones while driving without wearing seatbelts). With the economic crisis, there was a furore over Sunday trading hours during the Christmas period. Many shop owners defied the Sunday trading ban, and the public supported them, even in the driving rain. A few politically-associated protestors tried to close their shops; they are usually supporters of the communist or rainbow party ('nuff said).

Life has changed here in recent times, just as in any western country. People who have managed to survive the worldwide crisis facing the agricultural sector and are primarily still involved in agriculture will continue to get up early, but the changes in farming policies have caught up with Greece, and brought with them the commonly associated problems of the demise of the agricultural society. People are now more likely to work in the service sector, as clerks and other recognised professions, all associated with a specific workplace. There is also an increasing tendency for a more Western-style 9-5 working schedule in many internationally-styled offices and even in the public sector (offices are now open there till 4pm, instead of 2.30pm as in former times), but this isn't easy to apply for shop hours. Only supermarkets and multi-national companies are open all day without a break.

Although all societies have their own way to 'break the fast' every morning, it's most likely the case that breakfast in most traditional societies does not take place before one sets off to work, but most likely after some work has been done. The western fashion of eating a healthy breakfast before setting off to work is an idea that has developed in accordance with the idealised eight consecutive hours in a working day. Greece does not fit into the image of an ideal society, similarly with most traditional cultures steeped in ancient traditions. This won't be changing too quickly either. Breakfast at home still tends to be skipped by most people in such cultures. With the rapid rate of introduction of westernised work routines in such socieites, fast food centres do a roaring trade in coffees and snack food. The pace of life may have changed, but an appropriate change in dietary habits has not followed.

*** *** ***

I usually have a coffee in the morning and not much else before setting about on my daily tasks. the other day, I had some chores to get done in town, namely to buy a new modem for our computer and to see a notary public (συμβολαιογράφος - simvolaiografos) about getting a contract drawn up (lawyers don't do this, they just get you through the court system). I set off at just before 9am, the usual time most businesses open, in the hope of getting things done quickly and getting back home early. But this happens rarely in Greece. When you have face-to-face contact with the service sector, be prepared for long delays, queuing and partial completion of a task during different shifts in the day. Business life in Greece runs in a similar way to an old underground train system; you never know which part of the process will slow you down.

The shop where I bought the modem from opened at 9am sharp, and I could buy the modem instantly, but due to work overload, the assistant couldn't set it up with my internet provider access codes until after midday. The notary public wasn't in her office at 9.30am when I arrived (nor did she have any sign on her door notifying customers of her office hours), and only her office phone number was listed on her name plate. I knew this was going to be a long day.

I could have gone shopping (and emptied my purse). I could have taken a stroll down to the harbour and had a coffee by the lighthouse, while admiring the mesmerising view (been there, done that). I could have gone home (and returned three hours later). I chose instead to have a leisurely sit-down 'breakfast', the kind that cafes serve to tourists. I have always wanted to do this; what stops me is the embarrassment of not being a tourist (these meals aren't cheap, either).

A Cretan breakfast is based on the Western idea of eating well in the morning, coupled with the desire for tourists to dine al fresco on something 'traditional'.

There is a small oasis of fresh cool air behind the cathedral of Hania where there are a few cafes based around a pedestrian zone. There were potted plants around the seating area and umbrellas providing extra shade. There was even an outdoor fan to cool down the overly humid but very relaxing atmosphere; it felt like being in the midst of cafe culture in Greenwich Village in New York (someone who's been there can verify this for me). The breakfast menu mentioned "full English" (the one with tinned baked beans), "continental" (the simple one with lots of bread and butter) and "Cretan". I was curious to see what would be brought to me in the latter.

The Red Bicycle, behind the Trimartiri Cathedral of Hania

The plate I was served reminded me of my favorite breakfast place in Hania: MAICh, which serves this kind of breakfast every morning (along with the westernised cornflakes and milk) to the foreign students studying there (their next meal is at 1.00pm). Remembering that Cretans do not really eat a breakfast of this kind (just like the English, who don't actually eat huge English breakfasts every morning), it's obvious that it was made up of the best that Crete has to offer at this time of year, using the prototype of a typical farmer's mid-morning snack after working in the fields: cheese, a boiled egg, tomato and cucumber slices, olives, rusks and brown toasted bread, yoghurt with honey and raisins (they skimped on the fresh fruit) with coffee (or tea) and a glass of orange juice (probably based on the idea of an English breakfast; it's not a traditional drinks combination in Greece - you usually have one or the other). And if you look around Hania near the more traditional men's coffee shops (kafeneia), you will see them munching on banana peppers, fresh cucumbers and olives while drinking their mid-morning raki (cucumbers are substituted by broad beans in spring).

Senior citizens enjoying a sunny day in the shade, close to the old Venetian port of Hania. These male meeting points (kafeneia) are dotted all over the town. They serve the cheapest coffees in town, and are also frequented by females and passersby.

After fortifying myself with this sumptuous buffet (I left the rusks and olives - it was too much to eat at one sitting), I went back to the notary public's office, and after waiting for 45 minutes reading all the magazines on her coffee table and hearing all the details she was including in her present customer's contract (in Greek, the word 'privacy' does not exist), I managed to get my job done (my patience greatly extended by this relaxing meal), picked up my modem and got home drenched in sweat. That breakfast made my day after all. I'm definitely doing this again, hopefully with company next time. And for a more traditional approach to a sit-down breakfast in Hania, don't forget to have a bougatsa if you come here.

Cretan breakfast at The Red Bicycle (Το Κόκκινο Ποδήλατο): 7.50 euro per person, with no time limit; try it for brunch.

* privacy - the Google translation tool provides the following translations: ιδιωτική ζωή (personal life), μοναξιά (loneliness), μυστικότητα (secretiveness), ησυχία (peace and quiet), ερημιά (deserted atmosphere). There really is no concept of 'privacy' in Greece in the way that it is understood in the English language.

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