Loutraki beach (Λουτράκι Ακρωτηρίου)

The Akrotiri peninsula ('akrotiri' actually means 'peninsula') was once considered one of the most inhospitable places to live on the island. It was made famous by the setting of the film "Zorba the Greek" (1964), which captured well the desolate look of the area at the time: scrubby thorny plants covered most of the very rocky land, and virtually nothing more grew there, due to a lack of water source. As soon as the area received a regular water supply (40 or so years ago), it slowly underwent transformation. For a start, the shrubby land became covered in grapevines and olive groves. The value of the land increased in a very short space of time, and  - poor villagers - became rich landowners practically overnight. The US maintains an army base in the area, many parts are now forested, giving it a lush green look, and the present landowners, often rich local business people, have built villas there (originally as εξοχικά, country retreats), giving the area a luxurious look.

Typical Akrotiri landscape today

Akrotiri is now treated as a suburb of Hania and is closely linked to the town via main arterial routes. It is well known in Hania as the best place to grow watermelon - something to do with the soil and microclimate. Most residents of the area are well off - there are very few old or badly maintained houses in Akrotiri - and everything looks big, new and luxurious. The beaches surrounding the rocky high peninsula offer some of the best swimming opportunities in Hania.

My kids' sports teams had organised an outing at a beach in the Akrotiri area as a fundraising event. The beach they chose - Loutraki, a lesser known beach compared to its neighbour, the tough and mighty Marathi - I had last visited only once before, about 12 years ago, and didn't like it very much. It was a little untidy and scraggly, with cramped seating space, located in a small protected bay flanked by a rocky coastline. It didn't have much more appeal than my local beach, although the sea looked cleaner. Loutraki used to be a very laidback family beach, with a sole canteen on the sand, which served souvlaki skewers, fried potatoes, packaged snacks and drinks.

The rocky area has now been relandscaped on one side, housing a beach bar with a DJ, a casual restaurant, a formal restaurant, umbrellas and deck chairs (free to use by ordering something to eat/drink), all laid out on a grassy lawn. The scenery is quite stunning; it looks out onto an island situated in Souda harbour, and yachts can be seen sailing past every now and then. The colour of the very clean sea is a dazzling light blue, contrasting nicely with the lush green foliage of the area; edible wild greens *(notably rock samphire) can be seen growing abundantly among the very sharp rocks, and natural sea salt (the kind you pay a small fortune for to use in your cooking) collects in the littler craters. Sea urchins line the sea bed by the rocks. I even saw a sprig of a fig tree that had sprouted among the rocks with a fig on it!

Loutraki beach is now divided up into two areas - the 'family' beach on the sand, which is still very cramped, but it has a lifeguard and first-aid station; and the upmarket tropical-looking beach bar area elevated above the rocks, with sun loungers all over the artificial lawn. Steps have been built to assist people in accessing the rock where they can go freefall swimming. The area is overrun by glamorous-looking people, mainly couples, slim tanned bodies and the latest fashion bikinis. Good-looking young uniformed waiters come to serve you. It is mainly frequented by Greek locals and Greek tourists (ie from the mainland), but there are also foreign tourists. You don't have to be rich to come here - using the deckchairs costs as much as a soda or coffee (something like 2-3 euro). Even if it is overpriced, you would still pay this price for a deckchair at other beaches, and if you add a coffee to those prices, it may end up costing you more. Hania has no pay-to-use beaches - this is as much as you will pay. Going to Loutraki is more of a class thing. There was a Jaguar sitting in the parking space near the restaurant area. I parked my tinny Hyundai next to it.

Since it was a Saturday, most of the sun loungers had been taken, but I was very lucky to find a set of two for me and my son, right by the waterfront, while my daughter sat with her friends from the basketball team (although yoyu could pick one up from the spares lying around the bar and plonk yourself anywhere in the general area). I felt a little awkward being here, but it was a nice experience. It gave me the chance to see how the other half lived.

Clockwise from top left: rock samphire, sea salt, tiny fig tree, purslane. 

The distance between one set of sun loungers and the next was quite close - Greeks are mindful of their personal space around them, despite the close proximity they may find themselves in with their beighbours. But everything said is within earshot of other people. On my left was a very-much-in-love couple (a sexy blonde Russian woman and a tall dark Greek); on my right was a middle-aged foreign couple (they didn't talk much). I don't know who was sitting behind me, but they were definitely Greek, according to the conversation I overheard (remember, I wasn't eavesdropping - Greeks talk in public without considering who may be listening, as it is generally the case that people are talking all at the same time, so they have their own conversations to listen to and maintain):

First man: Hey, long time, no see! Where have you been hiding?

Second man: Oh, I'm at the tailend of a week of leave from the clinic. I'm due back on Monday. 

First man: Have you been busy there?

Second man: Yeah, it's been really busy these days, mainly due to the tourist season. But I'm hoping to be seconded [what is known in Greek as απόσπαση] to a smaller clinic, somewhere on the islands [as the biggest island in Greece, we locals never feel like we are living on a typical 'glossy brochure'-type Greek island], hopefully Kastellorizo [population ~500]. There's a serious shortage of doctors on the smaller islands, most of the community clinics are under-staffed, and I'm really hoping I get a placement on one for September.

First man: Kastellorizo? That's a bit of a hole, isn't it? There isn't much to do there now, let alone the winter.

Second man: Oh, I'm not asking for a placement there in the winter, I just want to ride out the tourist season in a smaller place. I may get a position in Symi [population ~2500] instead of Kastellorizo.

First man: Symi's better in many respects. It's bigger, so there's more to do. Wouldn't you prefer to be there?

Second man: Oh, no, not at all! Kastellorizo has a proper medical centre, so you just take up your position there, there are other staff to cover you, so you don't feel under pressure. But in Symi, there's nothing organised to step into. You're on call the whole time, you may work throughout the whole day and get no sleep at night because you're on your own, and effectually on call 24/7. I really hope I get the Kastellorizo placement. It's like being on holiday down there. In Symi, you end up working the whole time. 

I really hope this doctor gets given the Symi placement. The tax payer likes to know that they're getting value for money, especially these days when the state is unable to afford to pay most of its employees, let alone give them paid holidays. Don't ask me why the larger Symi is under-staffed while the smaller Kastellorizo is overstaffed - I'm just telling you what I heard. (Symi probably has to maintain a number of medical centres located in different areas, whereas Kastellorizo has only one.)

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Coffee, beach and work

After a blotchy start, with rain, clouds and high winds, it feels like summer has finally set in.

IGUANA BEACH, Ayious Apostolous, my local beach, located near forested area, which is still free for all to use.

Frappe, beach and a good book to read. Today, I took along my work-related material. As I have mentioned on many occassions on my blog, much of my work is based on reading material that contains interesting information, which I often share with readers. 

Today's reading was very pertinent to my surroundings: PES (payments for environmental services). What is PES? It's basically a way to make money to protect forests and natural environment. What we take for granted is often spoiled by overuse or misuse. What may have been freely accessed in our grandparents' times when there were less than 3 billion people in the world now needs protection in the era of 7 billion people, where these places are used not just for self-sufficiency and survival, but also for recreation and entertainment, accepting visitors not just from the locality, but from all over the world.

A friend asked me if I could concentrate well enough to read a non-fiction book at the noisy busy beach on a Sunday afternoon. You can egotistically switch off at a Greek beach, because everyone who is there is doing their own thing. You may feel hunched up together with strangers vying for space, and there may seem to be a lack of privacy in Greece in general, but eventually, you realise that the personal space you create around you in a public space - be it a cafe, a beach, a taverna - is where you can be yourself, and in this day and age, as long as you are not bothering anyone or breaking rules, no one will object.

If you can multi-task effectively (I guess I am good at this, as reasearch suggests that most women are), you can do your own thing, while making sure that you don't miss out on anything extraordinary. This afternoon, the only thing that casued a great commotion was a bride in a cabrio which was beeping loudly and incessantly until it took her to the church on the little hill where the wedding was taking place. But if you know this Greek tradition, you will only look up momentarily to catch sight of the spectacle, before you get back to your own little world. 

My local and highly popular little beach is still free for all to enjoy - but for how long, I don't know. For now, it sounds luxuriousto have the freedom to combine coffee, beach and work: maybe it is a luxury...

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We don't bite (Δεν δαγκώνουμε)

The economic crisis turned into an identity crisis for everyone affected by it around the world. So this applies not just to Greece - it's a Europe-wide thing at the moment.

In the crisis-ridden world, we are searching for our true identity, the one we may have kept latent for fear of revealing a side to us that did not fit into the modern globalised market-driven profit-steered world we thought we were living in.

Similar signs have cropped up all along the Venetian harbour; is it a sub-conscious reminder that we're not all crooks or cheats? 

Within this framework, over the past two years, I noticed the chalk board signs sprouting up slowly in the cafes and restaurants of the Venetian harbour, all bearing a similar message, which could be summarised as something like 'we don't bite.' Why this message is being conveyed must have something less to do with its gimmick attraction, and more to do with how these waterfront restaurant owners are feeling as of late. The crisis has created feelings of edginess, wariness and suspicion among both tourists and locals alike. The locals are reacting to this negativity with the creation of their own 'Keep calm and carry on' logo.

The people that I really hope will see these signs are the three different couples of grumpy frustrated European/Russian tourists that I came across in the last two days of being a tourist in my town as I showed my friends around Hania. Maybe the long cold winter of their homelands has made them so bitter, as they experience the simple wealth of the people whose homeland they have chosen to holiday in for 1-2 weeks: good weather, great beaches, farm-to-table meals. They have come to Crete on holiday behaving as if they were occupying it.

I hope it won't be too much for them to try to understand the meaning of these signs. Perhaps Cretans are one step ahead of them in the crisis: it 'started' here, we've lived through it, we've learnt how to live with it, and now we're coping with it.

Greeks had always had a laid-back and relaxed attitude to life, which the crisis has spoiled. I'm glad to see some of us are slowly reminding ourselves about what we actually liked about ourselves in the past. Perhaps this is the image we should be selling to the world around us. 

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Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes

I now have the chance to watch UK TV shows which are normally not available to us when we try to view them from Greece, through a website which allows you to view a range of channels from all over the world without paying a subscription fee. Watching UK TV channels from my own home computer is, I must admit, quite an eye-opener. For instance, female chat shows hosts (on BBC and ITV) don't wear slutty dresses or dye their hair peroxide blonde like ours do, and there are no παραθυράκια on the news programmes. I've also got a whiff of "Wanted Down Under Revisited" which deals, somewhat unsurprisingly, with Brits' desire to live in a 'better' place in the world (it should better be called "Moaners and Groaners"). Such shows give you an idea of British identity (they generally love their family, friends and the local pub, but they hate their weather and they wish they could afford to live in bigger houses).  It's also amusing to watch those 'antique' shows where junk is auctioned off for ridiculous prices.

Even though I generally don't watch TV cookery shows, I must admit that I have fallen in love with Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes. The best food shows in my opinion are those that present the food of different regions, like Rick's show. It's interesting to see what people eat in different homes. I'm not so interested in restaurant menus - they require ingredients that are not necessarily cheap or easy to source, and the techniques sometimes require specialised equipment that I most likely don't have in my house. But ordinary home cooking with local ingredients always intrigues me and TV shows of this nature give me a chance to see how other people combine many of the same ingredients that I use in my own home to make a fantastic, interesting, tasty and complete meal for a family.

When I caught Rick on the program, he was in Puglia, Italy, eating mainly vegetarian food. He noted how everything was cooked simply and that most food looked as though it came from only 2-3 miles away. He was eating at a local restaurant which didn't deal with many tourists because it was off the beaten track, despite being by the sea. In fact, he commented that the Mediterranean landscape where he was at the time was kind of unimpressive, not at all what a tourist would expect to see when they visit a restaurant that is supposed to be famed for its magnificent food. But that was it really - people do not make demands on the landscape when they go there to eat - they go there because of the food, which they pay great respect to, because they have a relationship with it. He was surprised to see both young and old people enjoying timeless dishes that, in his own admission, a young Brit would not dream of eating - it was a world far away from chips, burgers and curries.

Rick doesn't make an effort to show you just beautiful food - he accentuates the relationship Mediterranean people have with their food. While an Italian woman cooked up a plate of mashed broad beans served with boiled broccoli rabe greens, he asked her where she first learnt to cook this food. The woman answered that she cooks these dishes because she remembers her mother in her kitchen cooking these dishes when she was a young girl, and she knows that her grnadmother cooked these dishes too, so she feels compelled to cook these dishes because she doesn't want to break the chain. She said that it was an integral part of her life to do this, and even though her children grimace when they see what's on the table, they eat it, possibly moaning and groaning at the same time. But I bet they will remember this food in the same way when they are older, or living away from home, when they have children - they will remember their mother, and the memories associated with the extended family that such dishes arouses.

It was also interesting to see the Puglians pouring olive oil into their pots, as if the stuff came from a free-flowing tap, which of course, in places like this, it does, if I compare it to my own situation. There is no scrimping anywhere in cooking of this sort: whole heads of crushed garlic are thrown into the pan, sea urchins are poured into the oil, and in five minutes, a very al dente pasta is cooked for this sauce. In another pasta sauce, truffles are shaved in such quantities as to suggest that they are commonplace - yes, you may need to be a truffle hunter to enjoy such a dish, but it is a habit of such people that goes back centuries. They cook like their mothers did, as their grandmothers did for their mothers, and the chain is not broken.

Truffles and olive oil may sound like luxury items to the Brits, but they are not treated as such by the Puglians. In fact, most Mediterranean cooking involves sparse use of fresh - and few - ingredients. And most of the best dishes started out as poor people's food; parmesan for example was unknown in the Puglia region until it was mass produced: before that, the parmesan of the poor was fried breadcrumbs.

When Rick leaves Puglia, he goes to the Greek island of Kerkira, otherwise known to Brits as Corfu, popularised in the novel "My Family and other Animals" by Gerald Durrell who lived there as a child when his mother took him along with his brothers and sisters to the island for a change in lifestyle back in the 1930s. I was all excited when Rick said he was going to Greece, but I did feel a little disappointed when he said he couldn't wait to sip ouzo and eat stuffed tomateos with rice - oh my God, I thought, is he still there?

But I shouldn't be too hasty in jusging him. I think I know where he is coming from. Ask the average British tourist in Kerkira (where's that? you ask - sorry, it's Corfu to you) what s/he thinks of the food in the popular Mediterranean resorts, and they will tell you about the best fish and chip shops and where they had a good burger. As a restaurant owner on the island told Rick, as he was dining on artichokes and peas in dill and lemon sauce cooked by the man's mother, tourists don't like this kind of food, they don't know what it is, they can't imagine what they may get when they ask for it, even if it is written in English, so they just order a pizza or a steak. They can't appreciate this kind of food because they are unwilling to try it. The restaurant was located in a tourist area but the customers were mainly Greek. Brits don't generally go to the Mediterranean for the food - they go for the sun, the sea and the cold beer. It's moments like these when we have to admit that the food is simply not that important, and the Greek tourism sector is going to have to get to grips with this if it wants to secure a good market share. Making the food the centrepiece is simply not going to work at times. As an example, take the Greek hotel breakfast. That's a global concept, and for that reason, globally recognisable breakfast food is served there - bring out a rusk with grated tomato and freshly crumbled goat's cheese, and you've lost the package tourist...

Rick made a very wise observation about Greek vegetarian food: he said that the dishes weren't really made for vegetarians - they were simply delicious dishes that don't contain any meat. That sums up my vegetarian cooking. The dishes I cook are usually vegetarian, and often vegan at that, but not on purpose: meat and other forms of protein, notably cheese, accompanies my dishes in small quantities. The protein is a supplement rather the main part of the meal. Take today's meal of chickpeas and rice: the kids practically fell into the pot when they saw what was for lunch. They didn't even ask for any cheese! They just wanted to savour a dish that they associate with "good food". They didn't notice it didn't contain protein. And if it did, they would have complained: "That's not revithia, mum! Next time, make it in the real way."

*** *** ***

I keep UK TV on in the background as I work on my computer. My family are amused as I shout out to them: "Quick! get a look at this!" each time I find something worth sharing with them. On another note, I was also quite shocked to find out that Britain has many beneficiary claimants who are defrauding the system: as the host of  "Saints and Scroungers" points out, wherever money is being given away, there are always corrupt people, cheats, liars, "single" parents, families with more children than they can afford to raise, and a host of other lazy sods trying to cheat the system to get their hands on it. (It makes Greeks look tame when you see benefit fraudsters loading up their garden shed with caskets of wine and champagne, and building summer homes in Spain, all on UK taxpayers' money.)

The order of the news items give you a clue as to what is important to Brits: the Pistorius case is getting a lot of (ie too much) attention at the moment, seconding the Birmingham terrorists' story (men with Asian origins who were born and brought up in the UK but hated the country and went to Pakistan to train to be suicide bombers). There's also lot of ado about Adele's success in the US (another sign of British identity - always wanting to please their cross-Atlantic neighbours). The economic crisis seems to have caught up quite quickly with the UK with the crash of the 4G sale (implying that 3G seems good enough for the time being). And did you know that railway tracks fetch high prices in the UK? (Just like they do here - it ain't much different).

Watching other countries' television programs makes me feel a little smug about where I find myself. But I know how the BBC feels about non-UK residents seeing their programs without paying the exorbitant subscription fees demanded for cable TV (personally, I think €15-20 per month is far too much). It's been only a few days since I discovered this little gem of a website. Before anyone blows the whistle on filmon, and the BBC blocks my access to its vertitable little empire, I will continue to savour Rick's Mediterranean escapes and maybe chuckle a little as I hear the weather forecast announcer when he s/he tells us how frosty, cold and rather miserable the weather is at the moment; it's 16 degreees Celsius here in the middle of the Mediterranean, and for the last three nights, we haven't lit a fire (OK, maybe I am getting a little too smug).

Thanks to my potentially short glimpse into UK life, I had a chance to enjoy Rick's down-to-earth honest approach to the food he tries in the Meditrerraenan. He is not pretentious. And above all, he treats my Mediterranean food with respect. And if Rick chances to read this, I invite him to my Mediterranean table too.

(BTW, the Brits really do have a weight problem, judging from the many overweight people that fare quite prominently on the various shows I am watching; it's definitely got something to do with the food...)

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Beach (Παραλία)

Women baring their boobs these days is often viewed as a sign of the equality that the sexes enjoy in modern societies (as long as they stay topless and not bottomless, it's kind of OK), and Greece is no exception. Generally speaking, unlike ancient Greek statues, Greek women don't actually bare their breasts. They often have big boobs, and they wear low-cut clothes, but anything below the 2cm-nipple standard is considered unacceptable ("they may as well be wearing nothing," you might hear people saying). But as a modern European open-minded country (which is what Greece is, if one cares to take a closer look), we know how perfectly normal the idea of baring one's tits is in other countries, which one can witness in common places like grassy London parks, as soon as the sun appears. This is not necessarily done here, but I'd say we don't judge people negatively when they do this kind of thing outside of our country's borders

Showers and changing rooms (separate from toilets) clearly signposte

On the beach, we (the locals) have come to accept it in foreign women. It is not thought of as overly provocative if it stays on the beach. But sometimes, it doesn't stay there - it goes as far as the little canteen selling ice-cream, toasted sandwiches and drinks. Swaying boobs, open to all the senses, make their way to the canteen, forcing the shop assistant (it makes no difference is the assistant is male or female) to make a choice about where to look: at the boobs, or the boob owner's face. If they choose the boobs, they will be regarded as sexually deviant, perverted in some way, or maybe even prudish; if they choose to ignore the boobs, they are clearly pretending to ignore a basic premise - that sort of thing happens among 'others', and not their own kind.

Summer lovers

There's also a similar problem with the madly-in-love couples who we are required to tolerate while they're making out in the water and we're just relaxing on the beach with our kids (usually after work). There must be something about that warm Mediterranean sun, the crystal blue sea and a cloudless sky that raises people's levels of horniness, and makes them forget that people are watching them, including children; my own are now completely immune to any such scenes, because, I guess, they've seen it take place often enough. They were especially intrigued by the two girls they saw kissing (repeatedly, for at least half an hour continuously, without a break, in the water). My daughter pointed it out to my son (but not to me): "Did you see that?" she asked him. "Yeah, they're lesbians. Do you know what that is?" he offered to explain. I'm kind of glad this happened - no doubt, discussions about sexuality crop up among their classmates, so they can just add this episode to their experiences, which will hopefully eventually teach them what is and what isn't acceptable behaviour, depending on the place and circumstances.

Iguana Beach - the ladies' loo.
A Barbie doll sits on the handle.

Although I've come to accept certain kinds of behaviour in our tourists, in the same way that they accept certain aspects of the Greek identity, I can't help feeling a tinge of annoyance when people take it for granted that they can do whatever they feel like doing when they're here. Just yesterday, while sitting on a deckchair in the late afternoon, as my kids were enjoying that damned good family-friendly beach we are lucky to live close to, a slim middle-aged red-head had just come out of the sea and returned to her deckchair (on my left; on my right was a woman wearing a triangular piece of fabric over her front bottom, with a few strings round the back). She scrubbed herself down with a towel, then rolled her one-piece off her shoulders right down to her (similarly coloured) pubic hair, and slipped on a bikini top. I wouldn't have noticed any of this if I had stuck to reading my book the whole time, but as a mother with young children in the sea, I don't have the luxury to do that. I was required to see this take place because I was looking up and down from my book to the sea after each paragraph that I read. At any rate, I would not have been able to avoid seeing her after she wrapped a skimpy little towel round her butt because she left the deckchair area and went close to the sea, where she slipped the remaining part of the one-piece off, in full view of other sun-loungers. When she returned, she put on the bottom part, packed her bag and left. If she had wanted to be discreet about it, she could have just gone to the changing rooms that were provided on the beach.

Iguana Beach at Agious Apostolous

Big deal, I suppose you would all say. She didn't show the bits we generally don't expect to see except at a nudist colony. To me, it felt like watching someone who was changing her underwear - something we rarely expect people to do in public. Since she was thinking about leaving the beach at that point, she really should have gone to the changing sheds. Iguana Beach at Agious Apostolous is fully equipped with changing rooms, super-clean and tastefully decorated toilets, a first-aid room, reading material, a children's toy box, a lifeguard working until the start of the Greek siesta, a cafe, beach gear for rent and souvenirs for sale, all found in a landscaped shady cove; a live iguana often frequents the area, and there are facilities for beach volley, tennis and football, close to where you can also go jogging, walking, do yoga and tai chi.

To date, we can still enjoy this beach free of charge - it is not compulsory to rent out deckchairs and you can sit anywhere you want.

This incident reminds me of our next-door neighbours in New Zealand. From our kitchen window, while we were cooking or having a meal, suddenly we would be looking out to see, not the garden, or the sunny sky, but a group of naked people (they were flatters, meaning they rented the property and filled extra spaces in the house as people chose to leave), sunning themselves in their birthday suits at the most unexpected moment. At that point, my mother would get up and draw the curtains. There was no law against being naked in your back yard, but there was no law against not wanting to view other people's nakedness, either. Coincidentally, if I saw the nudists before my parents did, I would draw the curtains out of respect for their feelings, so they didn't have to see them first. That doesn't mean I'm a prude; it just means I was showing them some respect. As an inter-generational Greek-NZ immigrant, I knew that my parents were sometimes overwhelmed by the very different levels of acceptability that they were often forced to accept in their adopted homeland, but never really could.

Kudos to those liberated neighbours for having no inhibitions. After all, we were born naked, and there should be nothing to hide or feel ashamed of: beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and if others don't want to see a naked body, they should simply not look that way. Tough luck for us Greeks whose cultural leanings made us believe that baring one's body in this way was not for public viewing, carrying the same taboo as walking around in our underwear in front of strangers, wearing swimsuits while shopping, and entering a public space barefoot. Obviously, the problem with these kinds of behaviour lies with the person who doesn't want to accept them - but if I don't really want to be around nudists, then surely I shouldn't have to be, and the laws of most countries do actually protect us against this. It's all about that democratic right not to have to feel bothered by other people's lifestyle choices. 

If those former neighbours (the problem was eventually solved when someone else bought the property) had ever given some consideration as to how their Greek neighbours felt, they would probably have scoffed at us for being so prudish and old-fashioned - but I believe that they never needed to worry about how we felt because they never bothered to ask us about our feelings on this issue. Similar to the case of the lady changing her bathing suit on the beach, if these people had thought about respecting other people's point of view, perhaps they might have acted differently. The general instinct is to keep our eyes open and look at the world around us, not to look away and pretend to ignore the obvious.

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The beach (Η παραλία)

Primary schools in Greece are closing this week for summer break (three whole months), in time for the elections. It will be time to hit the beach once again. Greek beaches are rated very highly: the Blue Flag organisation, which rates beaches on 32 criteria (upon application), has judged 394 Greek beaches as worthy of a Blue Flag award, giving Greece second place in the world for the 2012 international awards (the most Blue Flag beaches are in Spain). Of those 394 beaches, 97 are located in Crete, of which 25 are in Hania. I live close to a number of those Blue Flag beaches.

My favorite beaches are on the west coast of Crete, like Falasarna - but these days, it's an expense to get to them.

The beaches of Crete are still generally accessible to all of us democratically, whether you are rich or poor. For a small fee, you can hire a deckchair and sit under an umbrella for as long as you like. If you prefer to be more frugal, you can take your own furniture with you and set it up in the same general area. If you go early enough, you will even find a tree to sit under in the shade all day long, if you have the time. There are usually inexpensive canteens on the beach where you can buy something to eat and drink. Again, you can bring your own food and drink, whether you rent deckchairs or not. Most people do this these days, but it's not easy to keep your drinks cold the whole day, and it's difficult to bring ice-cream with you, so you will inevitably need their services.

Agious Apostolous beach, last Saturday

The beach is a refreshing place to relax. Thankfully, we live close to a good beach, and we prefer it to driving too far away, to keep our costs down, as petrol is expensive now. So we like to hang out at our local beaches. The area is quite busy because both tourists and locals use these beaches, which causes a bit of undesirable people congestion, but you can't have everything the way you want. I don't mind people congestion so much, to be honest. Generally speaking, the large number of people at the beach doesn't match the noise level - we are all there for relaxing and enjoying a refreshing dip, so most people are quiet, and very few play loud music, or any music at all. A good number carry their reading material with them, both tourists and locals alike.

 

Chrysi Akti is one of a string of beaches leading from the town to the west coast of Crete.

My local beaches are situated close to the town. We don't live very far from an urban centre, but the difference between urban and rural life is quite sharply contrasted in the environment, despite the proximity. So it's quite easy for peddlers to walk from the town to the beach, searching for potential customers sell their bric-a-brac, to peddle their wares. The beach is a good place to do this because it's usually frequented by tourists and other people with disposable income. There's little police presence during the day, since there is little trouble here. The peddler's wares are enticing: colourful accessories, gadgets, all sorts of knick-knacks, pirated CDs and DVDs, even clothing and massage services. It's almost like an open-air shopping centre - the mall by the seaside! Such services are not limited to Crete - they are available all over the country at nearly all the beaches. (And it doesn't need to be said that this kind of business isn't limited to Greece: While in Berlin, we were surprised to see immigrants selling all sorts of ex-commie paraphernalia on street corners, making a mockery of the EU tax and migration laws.)

 

The beach mall at Chrysi Akti - clockwise, starting from top left:  Chinese masseur, Roma lace tablecloth seller, Pakistani clothes merchant, African bag specialist, Pakistani sunglasses expert and African faux bijoux entrepreneur. All photos taken in early September 2011 at midday on a Sunday.

Most of the beach peddlers are illegal immigrants, while most of the items are fake brand products. Naturally, the sellers aren't registered with the tax department (and for all intents and purposes, most of them don't exist in Greece because they are here illegally). While legal businesses close down due to mounting costs and reduced clientele, the illegal businesses keep on mushrooming, selling untaxed bootleg junk with no overhead costs.

The canteen at Chrysi Akti was closed for a few days last year during the season because - as the owner mentions in his protest letter, he was dobbed in for having seating at his canteen. He vowed to return, with or without seats (and he did), lamenting that he was a law-abiding tax-paying business owner that wasn't allowed to conduct his services due to a minor trespass.

Some people think that Greek beaches are over-commercialised, with too many food and drink places, as well as souvenir shops. Well, if we don't develop the beach areas commercially to some extent, we may as well become an ouzo republic. It is generally recognised through studies and research (including those conducted through my own workplace) that tourists to Greece want high standards at cheap prices, so some commercialisation is inevitable. The areas that get commercialised need to be the places where people with disposable income congregate, and in Crete, those are our beaches and archaeological sites which are easily accessible. This also helps keep prices down through the competition. Rules need to be in place to keep the environment clean and sustainable, but legal seaside businesses need to be developed, otherwise we'll just have illegal ones.

The seaside resort of Loutro is located on the south coast of Hania. It is not accessible by road - you need a boat to get to it; and naturally, it is a car-free zone.

For a quieter off-the-beaten-track summer holiday, Crete in particular still offers myriads of choices, especially given that the island is formed around a mountain range peaking at nearly 2,500 metres.  Even though I've travelled around most of the island, I still find much joy in discovering places that people don't know very well, because they are not so easily accessible. There are still places to hide in Crete if you want.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Fish taverna (Ψαροταβέρνα)

From: Angela
To: George
Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2010 8:00 AM

Dear George,
I can't get though to your cellphone.
Please get back to me urgently.
Yours, Angela
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Angela
To: George
Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2010 8:30 AM

George,
When you get my message, please get back to me asap.
Angela
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Angela
To: George
Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2010 9:00 AM

George, are you there???
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: George
To: Angela
Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2010 4:00 PM

Dear Angela,
I just got your message. My apologies for answering back so late, but it is Sunday after all, and most people do sleep in on this day in our country, after a tiring working week. I don't know if the weather has something to do with it: today, it was overly warm for spring, with a dull cloud hanging over the sky, so the climate was a little damp and muggy, one of those days when you don't know what clothes to wear, if you get my gist. I even contemplated taking an umbrella when we left the house.

We didn't have a Sunday roast today. My wife asked me if I didn't mind going out for lunch, because she had had a busy week at work and home. She had been cooking fresh meals for all of us every day on top of that, and even though I had offered to cook the meal myself today, she still insisted that we go out. "Just for a change," she said.

"And where shall we go today?" I asked her, and she replied that it isn't mother's day yet, so I could choose the location myself.

"No," I replied, as I have been down that track before - you know what women are like! - and told her to choose herself, which she duly did, so we packed the kids into the car and went to Kalives.

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I've been to Kalives on business many times, but I've never stopped in at the eateries there, so I thought I'd phone up my friend Dimitri who's from the area; insider information always gets you the best deals. Have I mentioned Dimitris to you before? I can't remember. Anyway, he's a millionaire, but he lives a very simple life out in the country in his πατρικό*. He's still a working man (don't ask me what he does; clearly he's doing it well), but never on a Sunday, and on a more relaxed pace. And because he lives by the sea, he always goes for a swim every day - yes, even in the winter - and has a midday snooze before going back to work in the afternoon.

Well, enough about Dimitris. Thankfully, he answered the phone - unlike naughty me, Angela! - and told me of a few places where we could have a nice lunch. So off we went to Koumandros, a fish taverna by the beach at Kalives. As we drove out there, the sun became brighter, and the day warmer; we needn't have taken our jackets after all. Spring and summer sometimes get confused here in Crete!

Koumandros taverna, Kalives, Hania, Crete

Koumandros has a very traditional feel to it. The family-owned restaurant was the first in the area, and the father of the father of the father of the owner (I am not sure about the accuracy of the number of generations that I just mentioned) started the business in 1867.

An old family photo adorns the wall of the taverna.

When we arrived, we were the only customers. I was a bit worried, because, you know what I mean, what with the economic crisis and all that, but I needn't have worried. While we were having our meal, more and more and more people came in, and it was really good to see some tourists too (they were German).

We sat by an open window to enjoy the sea breeze, and watched the tourists sunbathing by the hotel pool, which we thought was funny because the sea was right behind them! Each to his own, though, Angela; it's a free country, as the saying goes.

The waiter came over very promptly (well, we were the first there), and told us what was on the menu today: "Well, today we've got pretty much everything," he began, "oktapodi on the grill, soupies in wine sauce, fried kalamari (fresh or frozen), fried maritha and atherina, gavros in the oven, grilled fangri or tsipoures, galeos with skordalia, fresh fried garida, frozen lemon garida, baby koutsomoura fried, filleted sardeles with lemon sauce, fried bakaliaro, saganaki midia, er...." he pondered there for a moment, trying to remember what he'd missed, "oh, yeah, and ahinous."

It's amazing how much the Mediterranean sea offers us in the way of food, especially when you hear a line-up like that. The kids wanted some fried squid, I chose the shark (I absolutely adore the garlic dip it comes with - I'll warn you if we're at a meeting together and I've just had some!) and my wife chose the cuttlefish in the wine sauce. We also ordered two plates of those chunky freshly cut fried potatoes, and for our salad, we chose beetroot, because it's traditional with seafood, and greenhouse tomatoes and cucumbers don't quite do it for me at the moment (better to wait until they are being picked in the open; they have more taste then, you see, something like a mixture of sun and sea mist, which brings out their flavour), and to wash it all down, we ordered some local white wine and let the kids have a fizzy sodas - just for a change, again.

Click on the link to see the slideshow of what we ate at the taverna.

While we were having our meal, Dimitris popped into the restaurant, and sat down with us. He had told his wife to put his meal on hold, because he wanted to go out and see his friend George, which I thought was really nice of him, don't you think, Angela, a millionaire dining with the hoi polloi, like us?! Anyway, we were in the middle of our meal, and I felt a bit embarrassed because we had practically wolfed down most of it - it was just SOOOOOooooo good. He hadn't told me he would be coming, and I didn't think of asking him on the phone if he would like to join us. But Dimitris didn't seem to mind at all. In fact, he knew the staff at Koumandros very well, and he called them over, as if they were his own children, and ordered his meal: bream on the BBQ, stuffed vine leaves, fresh sea urchins, beetroot salad (great minds think alike, don't they, Angela) and a small bottle of ouzo. It may seem like Dimitris ordered too much all for himself, but he works it off in the sea every day, don't forget, and he looks really good for his age too.

Time passes quickly, and the children were getting scratchy bum syndrome, if you get what I mean, Angela. They had been quite good at the table during the meal, but now they had started throwing the bread out of the window into the river below, where a few ducks were wading. I pretended to go to the bathroom so that I could pay our bill (which came to 42 euro for the four of us), because I knew Dimitris would want to pick up the tab for all of us himself. For a millionaire, he's really generous; he kept offering us some of his meal, but we were too stuffed to eat any more than we had already eaten, so out of politeness, I got the kids to try sea urchins, but they weren't too impressed (it's kind of an acquired taste), and we all had some dolmadakia because they taste really good now that the vine leaves are very tender - the wife's made them a few times this year already.

When Dimitris finished his meal, he asked for the bill (his alone came to 40 euro - can you imagine how annoyed he got when he realised that I had already paid my share!), and the waiter brought us the customary on-the-house dessert and some ice-cold tsikoudia. The children, being the fussy modern Greek kids that they are, having not quite developed a taste for the true Cretan cuisine of their roots, didn't try any of the yoghurt or pergamon spoon sweet that we were offered, so Dimitris bought them an ice-cream at the kiosk by the sea, just down the road from the taverna.

Dimitris invited us over to his house for coffee, but I thought it best that we let him relax at home, because the kids were now tired and becoming all the more of a nuisance as the afternoon wore on. So we thanked him for his παρέα and φιλοξένια. "What hospitality?" he glared at me, with an angry tone in his voice, "μου την έκανες!" he said, reminding me that I shouldn't have paid the bill in secret.

I just came back home, and thought I'd have a little siesta myself on this lazy Sunday, when I noticed your urgent emails. I am available and at your service - phone me whenever you like. I am not sure if you take a siesta yourself, and as I do not  want to disturb you (in case you are indeed in the middle of taking a forty-winks break), I await your call.

Greetings from a warm and sunny spring day in Hania,
George

*** *** ***

I personally don't know any millionaires (this is a story, remember), but I don't need to be a millionaire to be able to afford to eat a cheap meal at an outdoor eaterie in my country. You can eat your choice of fish and any other Greek delicacy at a simple cheap taverna by the sea, where you won't know if the people at the table sitting next to you are package holidaymakers, or locals or millionaires; they will have come to the same place that you did for the same reasons, and chosen their meal from the same menu card that you did. And even if you are not a millionaire, you will feel like one even if you chose the cheaper cuts, as you sit by the sea, enjoying your meal without anyone hurrying you away, with the waves lapping the shore close to your feet, under the warmth of the Mediterranean summer sky.

This photo was taken at the tail-end of last summer, at a cheap seaside taverna near my house.

And no one can take that away from us, economic crisis or not, unless they can harness the sun and keep her up in the north, and dry up all our sea to transport it up to their country to flood their canals and build cafes and bistros on their river banks, just to get a feel of that lazy lifestyle that they think we live in Greece.

And if anyone thinks I sent the kids off to school this morning, and spent my time writing silly stories on my day off from work, you can see how else I spent my morning: getting two days' worth of freshly cooked home-made meals ready for my family. Lick that.

* πατρικο: the house of one's forefathers

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Periyiali (Περιγιάλι)

Eating out in Hania can be a bit of a bore. Once the tourist season is over, half the eateries in the province close down, and there is virtually nothing available around the coastal areas. Hania in the winter reminds me of the great New Zealand closedown, just after Christmas Eve, when all the shops, museums, galleries, restaurants, TAB’s, libraries, and anything else public simply shut down, assuming that all people go away for their summer holidays, without a thought given for those who didn’t go on holiday, and had to stay in a dead city during the summer. (Now, nothing is closed after Christmas; in fact, it’s almost become a 24-hour culture). But once the tourist season hits the town of Hania (end of March till end of October), all the restaurants in the province open up for their share of the foreign tourists' cash, tourism being our main export 'crop' in Hania.

But there’s another reason why sometimes I personally dislike going out for a meal in Hania, whether it’s winter or summer; all the restaurants in the province have the same menu. They serve exactly the same food, as I'm sure most tourists will attest to when asked what they thought of the food in Hania. There is no taste sensation going on here; it's the same food being served up, with only the slightest of variations, depending on the cook, and maybe the quality of the ingredients used. And that’s not all; the same food is served up that any Haniotissa wife and mother would cook on a regular basis for her family; yemista, stifado, horta, kalitsounia, gigandes, you name it. Or maybe I lie; to date, I have never seen fasolada on the menu, and once when I did see fakes on the menu, it wasn’t actually available. We do have one or two Chinese restaurants in the town, but the menu tends to be very pricey, if the set takeaway menu price is anything to go by (30 euro for two people). But that’s about it.



Of course, there are places that serve well-cooked meals; maybe not so interesting, but at least they are very tasty. You just have to know where to go. One of the places you shouldn't go for that kins of meal is a taverna in a tourist area. Beachside tavernas are always a risky choice. You simply never know what you're up against: a restaurant that takes great pride in the food it serves to the here-today-gone-tomorrows, or one that sees this as a good reason not to go to too much bother in the first place. In the shoes of the customer, how do you choose a good place to eat on a sweltering hot day by the beach in an area slightly off the beaten track on a Greek island? After a swim under the brillliant yellow sun in the diamond-encrusted Mediterranean sea, you will probably be hungry, or will get hungry very quickly when the smells of lunchtime grills working in over-drive waft past your nose, whether you're a tourist or a local.


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My family's once-a-month outings landed us at Periyiali in Tavronitis with some friends from Athens who were visiting relatives in the area; we decided to go out and meet them in their territory. Living mainly in the big Greek smog, they were pretty much tourists themselves, so it didn't surprise us that they chose the closest, flashiest eaterie near the beach, the one with an impressive round beach bar featuring an array of alcoholic beverages, the one with loud pop music blaring from the speakers, the one where the menu was dictated by the clientele: everyone had just come off the beach, and was bound to head straight back onto a deckchair once they had had their meals. The Northern Europeans were already looking like boiled shrimps. In the summer, there is an endless choice of places to go, but dining by the beach means you have to put up with tourist menus. Even the best diners in the whole town suffer under the pressure of serving well-cooked meals as quickly as the seats are vacated. If you want a high-quality meal in the middle of the summer in Greece, find a friend's house. Don't expect to find a gourmet meal in a summer resort town where package tourists have been flying in at the rate of 40-50 direct flights a day from Northern Europe.



"We come here all the time," they told us, "the owner's a friend of the family." Another thing to avoid when you go to a taverna; no matter how bad the service or the food is, the owner will still be a friend of the family.

"Let's order," said our friends, without even looking at the menu card. This is not unusual; Greeks usually ask to be told the menu by the waiter, which also hints at an aspect of the Greek psyche that may need some explanation: the Greek people have an oratory culture - they are better listeners rather than good readers. Mobile phones have helped advance their talents in this respect; emails simply never caught on. This is why I've lost touch with most of my Greek friends; most of them give me their landline or mobile phone number. They have no idea about computer telecommunication, or what Skype is. Even if they own a computer, they aren't usually connected to the internet. Go ahead, google it: only a third of the Greek population uses the internet; to shock your pants off, here's another interesting bit of trivia: Greek internet users form just over 1% of the users of the internet in the whole of Europe. Of the 27 countries in the EU, Greece ranks in the 14th place for internet usage, well below Romania, who only just entered the EU recently. This angers me, but maybe I should just leave behind some of my New Zealand baggage; paying a shrink to find out why I feel like this is a waste of money, as I already know why. Ηas one not heard of the phrase 'γνώση σε αυτόν' (gnosi se auton)?

I suggested we see the menu cards anyway. There was a wide variety of meals of available, everything that one would expect to see on a Greek menu, organised in the typical way that Greeks organise their menus: appetisers, salad, grills, pizzas, pasta, and traditional Creto-Greco food, which consisted of all the meals we normally cook in our own home in the summer - boureki, moussaka, pastitsio, yemista, fasolakia. There was nothing unexpected or out of the ordinary. I wonder how they would approach a slight menu change: instead of pizza, they could add a vegetarian ladenia; instead of saganaki cheese, how about bouyiourdi?

We sat at a table close to the road next to the beach. The view was wonderfully peaceful, beautiful. It's a pity the tavern had half the windows closed; the outdoor space surrounded the bar which had a lot of business from the foreign tourists filling their beer guts. As soon as we took our seats, along comes a very polite waitress with the bottled water (which we didn't ask for). Why they didn't bring us tap water is a mystery to me - were they really thinking about the money they would make from selling a bottle of water? Bread is only to be bought to the table when it's asked for (new governmental rules since last year), but that came too. I could see that our taverna meal was going to end up costing us more than the most expensive restaurant in the province.

Both families had children with them. Choosing restaurant meals for the children gets easier as they get older. They have their standard favorites: fried squid (kalamari), pizza, chips and salad (or salad oil for dunking for those not keen on greens). We also have our own set favorites when eating at beach tavernas and other suspect eateries: bifteki burgers. You really can't go wrong here, since the plate usually contains some salad and fries on the side. Our friends had completely different ideas about what to order:



"What are you having, Maria?" asked my holidaying friend.
"Oh, I'll have the leftovers from my kids' choices?"
"You're not having a main meal?!?" she exclaims.
"No, they've ordered more than enough for all of us." My husband had also ordered a serving of stuffed bifteki, and with the hors d'oeuvres that were bound to be ordered with our Athenian tourist visitors, we would be feeling stuffed before the mains even come.
"Calamari, chips and pizza? They're just appetisers! What are they having for mains?"
"That's their main meal."
"Well, you order a main then." Sometimes, Greeks are 'too much'.
"They won't eat everything."
"Oh, why not? My kids can eat two plates each." And they certain ly looked as though they could: as primary-school children with their pregnant stomachs and tree stumps for legs, they walked around on their flattened hobbit-like feet like teletubbies.
I stayed firm. "I'm not having a main."

She shrugged and left it at that. Along comes the waiter. "Ready to order?" My friend asked me to give my family's order first. My son called out 'calamari' while my daughter called out 'pizza'. I asked for a serving of stuffed bifteki and a separate order of fries.

"Hey, how many servings of fries d'you want? I can't listen to everyone's order separately," boomed the pot-bellied waiter, who might have been having a hard day, but that was not my problem. I let the others do the talking; they were expert at taverna ordering:

"Let's have three fries, make that four, one with staka, three tzatziki - is that too many? OK, make it two tzatziki - one large combination salad with some dakos, another stuffed bifteki for you, one shrimp saganaki for me, one paeedakia (lamb chops) for my daughter and one grilled octopus in wine sauce for my son (?!?), and let's see, is that enough?" Speak to Greek taverna owners and they will tell you that there are no better customers than Greeks, because they order a lot of food, whether they eat it or not; they leave money for the time they spend at the table, not like the tourists who order two plates and a salad to be shared among four people over a period of two hours.



"May I suggest the mixed fried vegetables (courgettes, aubergines and mushrooms) to go with the tzatziki?" asked the now happy smiling friendly waiter, who could see we were over-ordering, especially since he didn't bother telling us that the biftekia, octopus and paeedakia each came with their own serving of fries.

"Great," my cheery friend agreed. "And a couple of cold beers with that, thanks. Could you just make sure that the paeedakia have a bone, you know, I want them to look like little pork chops with the bone, you know?" She brought her hands up to her face, joined together the thumbs and forefingers, and pulled her hands across in the shape of a rib-bone smile. "It's for a child," she added, with a knowing look on her smiling face. Her daughter must be a very fussy eater.

"Could we have a couple of Cokes, too?" I added.

"Aren't you having any beer, Maria? Why don't you order one bottle of Coke at a time so they bring it to you cold?"

"They're for the children." I never drink alcohol when we go out, because I always end up doing the driving, as if I'm being punished for demanding a no-cooking day. And the children never have fizzy drinks at home. Today is treat day; anything is permissible.

"Your children drink Coke? Oh, wow, our children never drink soda or pop drinks. They only drink water."

There's a time and a place for everything. I had kept my mouth shut long enough. That was enough to get me started. "Why are they so fat then?" I asked innocently with a bewildered look on my face. "And how on earth did they require 1000 euro worth of dental treatment each?" The conversation topic took a 180-degree turn after that: the price of petrol is crippling their use of the SUV in Athens, air-conditioning is a way of life if you live in an apartment, you need more than 100 euro in your pocket each time you go to the supermarket, all topics of unknown quantity to us rural dwellers living off a garden surrounding a detached house all within short distance of our local big smoke, Hania.

Some of the plates we ordered started drifting onto our table. Some dishes came on time (chips and kalamari), others needed a little longer (paeedakia and biftekia), while some never came at all (pizza). The salad had far too much dill, and the salad ingredients did not blend well. We were treated to sugary watermelon and tasteless cherries at the end of the meal. Total cost: 102 euro, for what was basically grilled and fast food (pizza not included).



At least the beach at Tavronitis did not fail to disappoint: it was perfect for swimming - crystal clear water in the shade of the blue in the Greek flag, a pebbly beach with little sand and plenty of shade. Mind you, it isn't shallow: after about two metres in from the shore, the water becomes too deep for children who are used to wading around Kalamaki Beach for a good twenty metres. Next time we're in the Tavronitis area, we'll stick to Anemomilos, just down the road from Periyiali, the no-nonsense place which makes no pretentious claims to what it offers: fast food at decent prices.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Sunny side up (Αυγά μάτια)

Pinpricks lost in a vast territory

Newly emerged from virgin ground
Mounds as flat as pancakes and sunny side ups
Hiding inside frills and stripes and polka dots
Rockets rigid ready for lift off
Lipstick tips with a rotten apple point

Vanilla ice-cream balls with a cherry on the top, bathing in a sea of chocolate sauce
Soft serve waves with a chocolate M&M
Jumping jigglers playing tennis on the beach
Juicy watermelons ready to be picked
Freckly faced like spotted dick
Avocado pears split open lengthwise
Over-ripe, sagging, waiting to drop off
Spilling forth from undersized cups
As red as beets with the root nipped in the bud
Upside down mountains with dusty peaks
Excess sponge flab on a hairy chest

Young and old
Touched untouched
All worshiping the same yellow god
Exposed for all to see.

For a different aspect on a similar topic, click here, and you might like to check out the recipe, too.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.