Living4TheSun

Two houses for sale

2011-01-21T13:11:00.000+02:00

If you're thinking of living in Greece or having a luxury holiday home, then I have something you might be interested in!!

On the main pages of our site we have not ONE, but TWO luxury homes being advertised for sale direct from the owners!

One is close to the sea, just outside the village of Riglia (click here to see details), the other is on the outskirts of the village of Neochorie (click here to see details).

There's lot's of pictures and information about each, so please have a look.

Cicadas in Stoupa, Greece

2010-12-10T13:03:00.000+02:00

Please, someone in the USA answer this question for me. If you have arrived here because you were searching for "cicadas in stoupa greece", please tell me why you are searching for that phrase?

I have to ask this because this is the third time this has happened. About 2 months ago, and then several months before that I saw people visit these pages while searching for that phrase. What's so strange? Well, every time it happens the visitors are from the USA and within a couple of hours there will be several people with the same or similar searches from various states in the USA.

What sparks off this strange desire to know about cicadas in Stoupa? Please, please, please someone who is doing this either post a comment or email me direct to let me know.

It's a dump. It's like an abandoned gravel pit infested with cats.

2010-10-10T09:27:00.000+02:00

Here's a recent article that you may find interesting. As if Greece hasn't had enough problems recently, in this it takes a further plunge. Can't believe they have described Greece as "an abandoned gravel pit infested with cats".

Historians admit to inventing ancient greeks,

On the back of a giant tortoise?

2010-10-09T12:37:00.000+02:00

Well, this little fellow is going to have to grow a lot before he could have the world on his back.

This year we have seen more tortoises in the garden then ever before, but this is the first time that we've seen a baby one.

A sign of the times

2010-09-13T10:32:00.000+03:00

The economic problems in Greece and Europe are now having a visible impact in the "high street".

For over a year there had been the promise of an Aldi store opening in Kalamata. We saw the building being erected, but it never reached the point where any of the interior was even started. A couple of months ago we then read that Aldi had decided to pull out of Greece, leaving yet another half completed building in the area.

Last week we were shopping in Kalamata and noticed while in the Dia Discount store that the shelves were almost empty in some sections. When Lainie asked one of the staff why there was a lack of items on the shelves we were told that the store we were in would be a Carrefour store later in September. Also, by the end of the year all other Dia Discount stores in Greece would also be closed.

They've stopped again!

2010-08-17T14:46:00.001+02:00

I had to look back to my post 2 years ago to see if history is repeating itself.

Yes it is!!

Well, almost.

Sitting on our balcony just after lunch today I suddenly realised that my tinnitus was bothering me. The noise from the cicadas in the olive trees around us usually overpowers and masks my tinnitus. Someone has just switched them off!

Two years ago I noticed that they had stopped, and now, only 2 days later in the year they have stopped again.

Again, there's no appreciable reason in the weather as to why they have stopped. So again I will appeal to all of the experts out there, why do they suddenly stop?

Lets twist again

2009-09-08T12:23:00.000+02:00

When we were first here in the winter of 2003-04 there were some storms where small whirlwinds or water spouts were seen off the coast of Stoupa. We didn't see those, but yesterday as a storm came up the coast from the south, directly in front of us a water spout formed twice in the course of about 15 minutes.

The first one was the best, but we didn't notice it until some friends phoned us, so we were too slow with the camera. When the second one formed we did managed to get some shots, but as you can see they are a little faint.

Our friends did however get a photo of the first one, and that's the final picture here.

Déjà view?

2009-08-27T10:24:00.003+02:00

So, August 2 years on from the fires that devastated many areas of Greece, and what have we just experienced?

Fires again, but thankfully for most of us, only in the Athens area this time. Watching the news on Greek TV channels has been a re-run of the news two years ago, basically chaos in the way that the authorities have been prepared for, and dealt with the fires.

Although many are saying that the lack of money was a factor in the lack of preparation for an event like this, I'm inclined to think back to my post at the end of August two years ago and the phrase "attention deficit".

A new web site

2009-03-15T11:51:00.002+02:00

It's a while since anything appeared here! The winter is a busy time, you can work outside without dying in the heat, so lots of jobs have been completed. Olives have been picked, but what a poor harvest last year! Lots of digging around the garden to improve the soil by removing more cement that was left after the house was built. Fences erected on walls to allow plants to climb and give us some privacy.

Also, I've been involved locally to help produce a new web site for some holiday apartments. The content was simple enough, but the challenge was to produce a layout that pleased everyone and was reasonably good HTML and CSS code. As anyone who has produced web pages knows, the basic code is not too difficult, it's trying to get everything to work with all the different browsers that people will use. You get it working and looking how you want with Firefox, have a look with IE7 and discover that several thing don't work. Fixing those takes a while to ensure that the HTML and CSS is still good. Now you have a look with IE6 and wonder if you are still looking at the same page. Back into the cycle again, fixing the IE6 may break the Firefox or IE7, which in turn.....

Ah well, it's just about finished now, so if anyone wants to have a look and give me any comments, please do so here. The URL for the site is http://www.lighthouse-apartments.gr . Please be gentle, the thought of fighting with all those different IE versions is not a pleasant thought.

Where have all the cicadas gone, long time passing...

2008-08-17T08:35:00.003+03:00

Apologies to Pete Seeger for the misquote.

Two days ago suddenly almost all of the cicadas in the trees near us have either vanished or just ceased to "sing" to one another. There's just one or two that occasionally chirrup, but it's now quiet all day. The weather hasn't changed appreciably, it's still very warm, in the low/mid 30's, so that doesn't seem to be the reason. A search through internet articles about cicadas hasn't given me any clues about their "singing" season. Do they know something about the season that we don't?

Cheap phone calls FROM Greece

2008-08-17T08:33:00.000+03:00

Here's something new we learned a few days ago (thanks to CM), you can make "cheap" calls to international land lines FROM Greece without having to buy a pre-paid card.

The cost of a call to a UK land line for example is quoted as " 0,0364 € / minute pay-per-second (including VAT)", the cost being charged as a call to the land line from which you make the call.

OTE is currently (as of 17/08/2008) quoting a price of 0,004155 € per second to phone a fixed land line in the UK. That's 0,2493 € per minute!!!! So it's certainly cheaper than OTE, but possibly not as cheap as some pre-paid cards you can buy. It does however have the convenience of being available without needing to buy a card.

To use the service you must first obtain a PIN code, there are two ways to do this. Either dial 210 6007920, this call is a standard long distance call within Greece, or visit their web page www.ifree.gr. The web page is only in Greek so be prepared! The page seems to just give you this code: , which after it expires (100 hours usage); you must call 210 6007920 to obtain a new one.

Once you have the PIN, you make calls by dialling 801 2000 802. You will be asked for the PIN code, and this is valid for 100 hours. When you need more hours you simply call 210 6007920 to obtain a new PIN code.

This is my understanding from reading the web page, and the costs I've quoted are what I have seen today. Please be aware these may change so you need to read their pages to be certain of the service.

Hot summer

2008-08-12T08:47:00.003+03:00

Firstly and update on the telephone line. Last week OTE returned with a more cable and replaced the knot holding our connection together. Almost sad to have it repaired, how many people can boast that their telephone connection has a cable with a knot in it?

After weeks of constant sun with temperatures in the low 30's, the weather yesterday was quite cloudy and the temperature dropped to the high 20's. Just as it was getting dark we also had a quick shower of rain, the first for over 2 months. Our olive trees are suffering from the lack of rain, the olives are quite small and some are turning purple and falling from the trees. Sorry to any tourists, but we need a few more showers very soon to help the trees and garden.

Of sealing wax and string

2008-07-22T08:36:00.002+03:00

Yes, we're back online, so you can guess that everything's repaired.

Monday morning, our neighbour called over to tell us that they had spoken to OTE this morning and the cut line had not been reported. Perhaps the guys from the truck were worried they would be charged for the repair? Anyway, our neighbour explained the problem to OTE, so we wait. We were due to go out at 2pm and guess what, the OTE truck turns up at 1.20pm. We wrote down the names and phone numbers of the three houses for the guy to work from and Lainie went over to give him the information. We had to leave after a few minutes, so all we could do was hope. The last thing we saw was the engineer climbing the pole with the long end of the broken cable tide to a rope on his waist. Apparently he had no cable with him to replace the broken section, so he was just going to put a knot in it.

So, here's the picture to prove that you can make a joint anywhere you want. The good thing is that everything works, ISDN, ADSL and we can communicate again. Hats off to OTE, or the engineer we have in this area, he'll get it working no matter what the problem is!

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind

2008-07-22T08:20:00.001+03:00

On Saturday morning we were chatting with friends using Skype over the internet when suddenly we couldn't hear them. My first reaction was that the laptop we were using had lost connection with our wireless network within the house. The wireless hub we have is supposed to have quite a good range, but all the concrete and reinforcing iron in the walls and floors in the house almost mean that have to be able to physically see it. We found that the laptop works on a table on our balcony where we often sit, but if you move it 20cm to the right on the table you loose the signal.

So I started moving the laptop towards the door and checking the internet browser for web pages; nothing from those. Then I tried browsing the local network to see my other machine where email is received and found that was working, so we were in range of the wireless router. Ah, it must be a problem with the internet connection in some way, so I went to look at the physical connections to see what was happening. The first thing I noticed was that the lights on our ISDN box were out, so we didn't have any connection with the exchange.

A small flash in my head, I had just noticed a truck coming up the road passed us. Quickly looking out of the window, there he was stopped in the road. It was one of the trucks that have their own hydraulic arm for loading and unloading materials from the back. He'd just made a delivery somewhere down the road and the driven up with this arm sticking high up in the air. Of course he'd then driven into where the telephone cable crosses the road and, twannnnnggggggg. It's not only our telephone line, but also the one to our two neighbours.
Lainie called over to the two guys (in Greek) from the truck who were looking at the cables, and was told, “Yes, we'll call the office and report it”.

That was just after midday on Saturday, so now I'm sitting writing this off-line on Sunday morning.
Maybe on Monday morning OTE will arrive to repair the cable?? We are due to go out for lunch with some friends on Monday. Now I'm starting to worry that they will do it while we are out and unable to test that everything is working properly. From my experience in I.T. I know that ISDN lines have strange habits when they've been disconnected for a couple of days, in fact it's already happened with our line here.

Let's wait and see what Monday brings.

Am I critical of Greece?

2008-06-25T16:21:00.001+03:00

Following my last post about getting factual information from the blog written by Kat, I received the following “comment”. Whoever wrote this failed to leave their name, just posted as “Anonymous”. As it did not seem relevant to that thread, I have separated it here:

“If Greece is such a backwards country according to your writings, and you find things so unorganised here, then why don't you go back to where you came from? “

I write about what happens to us since we moved to Greece, my name and email address is clearly visible to everyone. Yes, I have opinions like everyone else, and when I express some of them I try not to be upsetting or offensive to others. I would hope that others wishing to express their views through my blog would also have the guts or decency to reveal themselves. So, as a result I have now turned off the option for people to post comments anonymously; I know there ways around everything, but....

After reading the comment I looked at what had been written over last few years trying to understand why someone thought I found Greece “a backward country” and things were so “unorganised”. I hoped I hadn't described it in either way. I don't think I have, I only recorded events that had happened to show progress with our home and incidents that we found amusing.

I apologise if those events have made it sound that Greece is the way you describe it “Anonymous” and offended you. Yes of course there are bad things and good things about the country and also the people, but that's exactly the same wherever in the world you are.

We both love Greece the way it is, we don't want to change it; we have chosen to live here.

Factual information

2008-06-20T17:09:00.004+03:00

Over the last few years we have tried to answer questions from people about various topics relating to living here in Greece. Facts about businesses and government bodies are difficult to gather and then be sure that you are accurate, particularly with the problems of language. Just when you are sure that you have grasped something, it's a fair certainty that within a month or so laws or circumstances will change and your information is no longer valid.

Even something as simple as bus timetables can be nightmare. The main national bus company KTEL removed bus timetables from their web site some time ago and now have a pay-for-info telephone service. There are still some web resources that give information and a local paper also includes timetables. The problem? None of them show the same timetables! Some are probably last years timetables, some are probably even older as people fail to update their information.

So that's why today I must tell you about a wonderful lady in Athens. I discovered her web pages by accident, pure serendipity. I won't try to tell her story here, you must read her pages yourself, but what you will find is a refreshing honesty and a wealth of factual information. Best of all, Kat periodically checks the validity of her posts and provides updates. Like the rest of us she loves Greece, but is still willing to criticise and point of the pitfalls of living here. Also, the comments by others on her articles add to the excellent insights of the Greeks and Greece.

Hats off to Kat, you'll find the link to her pages in the column on the right.

Yet again, earthquakes!

2008-06-20T16:56:00.004+03:00

Here are two maps of the Southern Peloponnese, one showing a rectangle defining the area where most of the “local” earthquakes have occurred , and the other, with the help of the web site www.emsc-csem.org, you can see some of the activity in the last 7 days.

Since 14^th February the number of seismic events is now 266 !! Almost every day we still have something recorded for the area, but thankfully as they are mostly under magnitude 4, we don't feel anything.

On the map showing activity you can see the mass of events in the Northern Peloponnese, between Patras and Pylos that have occurred in the last couple of weeks. These started with a couple of quite serious quakes measuring over 6, and these caused considerable damage and the deaths of at least 2 people.

Also on that map you will see a large orange circle to the east of the Peloponnese, between Nafplio and Nemea. This occurred a couple of mornings ago, about 5am our time. I happened to have just been woken by our cat, Tara, who wanted to go out. After letting her out I had just laid down in bed when I heard the wood in our roof making popping and cracking noises and could feel a very gentle movement of the bed. No, no jokes please!!! So, 100km away, a magnitude 5 quake could just be felt.

I hope this is the last entry about earthquakes for some time!!

Earthquakes, a daily event

2008-03-06T14:00:00.002+02:00

Since the first earthquakes we felt on February 14th, there have been at least two or three every day. The total events in the area to the south west of us in the sea is now 125.

Fortunately, there have been only three quakes of magnitude greater than 6; ones that we could feel. The remainder have all been less than 5, mostly in the range 3-4.

A few days ago I thought they were dying out, but still they continue. How many more can there be?

Shake, rattle and roll

2008-02-22T07:56:00.004+02:00

It's now a week since the first earthquake that we felt here. That one occurred on the 14th February just after midday at 12:09. Later the same afternoon we felt another, the feeling being very similar, the ground seeming to move from side to side, very little vertical movement, similar to being on a boat in harbour when another passes by. Yesterday we felt yet another, this time it lasted a little longer that the previous two, maybe around 40-45 seconds.

Checking on the activity in the area I discovered that there have now been 52 "incidents" since the 14th. These include 3 earthquakes over 6 on the Richter scale, the rest being mostly in the range 3-4. They are in an area directly out to sea from us, about 30-35 miles away. You can have look at these using the "European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre" web site at http://www.emsc-csem.org.

What is happening in this area? Are we about to see a volcano or new island rise up out of the sea as Surtsey did back in 1963? I very much doubt that, hopefully the activity will just die down in the next few days.

Neatly pressed

2007-11-10T08:30:00.000+02:00

Well, finally after promises from different people about opening we ended up back with Dimitris and pressed the olives. As we picked early this year, the yield per kilo of olives was down a bit, but we were still pleased with the result. Only 57kg of oil this year, but that was plenty for ourselves and the rest was taken by the people leaving for Germany, so everything was finally completed successfully.

Now we have a little more pruning and clearing to be done over the next few weeks.

All picked

2007-11-05T07:57:00.000+02:00

After a full day on Saturday, we had completed 26 trees. That's very quick and gives an indication of how bad the harvest is this year.

Saturday evening Lainie phoned our friends who had volunteered to help us on Sunday to check they would still come. "We've found it very difficult this year, only managed to pick 2 trees yesterday and 2 more today!". I think they almost believed her as they arrived just after 8am on Sunday morning to help us finish.

With their help, we had everything finished by just after midday. Jim wanted some tape and filler for a job he’s doing in his house, so we went to the village to get them from Dimitris. Dimitris not only is a builders merchant, but also runs one of the local olive presses, the one we have used for the last 3 years. When we had seen Dimitris earlier in the week he had told us the press would be running by the weekend. So, while we were there I checked if the press would be open on Monday. “No, not until Wednesday or Thursday.” When Jim and I looked inside the press building we could see why, a piece of the plant was dismantled and lying on the floor. Wednesday or Thursday could easily turn into next weekend!

Luckily last night while we were out for a meal we saw another man who runs one of the olive presses just outside the village who we had used the first year we were here. He said he would not be open on Monday, but should be running on Tuesday. So, hopefully our problem may be solved.

Picking

2007-11-03T05:03:00.000+02:00

Well, after a bad start with a small shower, the rest of the day was mainly sunny and very warm. Sad to say the olive harvest this year is not as good.

By the time Lainie arrived back from language classes I had picked 6 trees. These were the poorest trees, the olives were small and not many on any of the trees. There were still some of the branches that I had cut from the trees to be stripped of their olives, but that's the job that Lainie prefers. By the end of the day we had finished 12 trees, but still had less than 2 sacks of olives. Last year we had just over 4 sacks for the same trees.

The weather forecast for today is warm and sunny, but Sunday and Monday are now showing possible rain.

Instant sucess

2007-11-02T09:21:00.000+02:00

Well, how was that? Managed to get everything out ready to start and it's rained! Only a shower, but enough to be inside for 15-20 minutes to let it dry out again.

Oh well! Another of my great decisions.....

Olive picking dilemmas

2007-11-02T08:53:00.000+02:00

It’s time for olive picking again! This year we’re faced with a new set of problems.

The olives are quite small due to the long, hot, dry summer.
They’re mostly turned dark blue and are starting to fall from the trees.
Some people who will leave for home in about 10 days want to take some of our oil.
If we leave the olives for another month or two the oil content will improve.
As our total harvest is quite small for a batch to be processed at the olive press, we like to pick everything in one go.
If you leave picked sackfulls for more than 4-5 days the olives deteriorate quite rapidly.
The weather is fine at the moment, but the forecast shows showers for today.
Tomorrow is sunny, but then we have two days with rain.

Should I start picking? Lainie is at language classes this morning, so it’s up to me. What to do?

Let’s go for it!

Clearer skies

2007-08-29T08:05:00.000+03:00

This morning the skies are much clearer, still a grey blanket to the north over Kalamata, but it looks as though the horror of the past few days may be nearing its end. There have been many arrests made so hopefully the number of people engaged in starting these fires is now reduced and with the winds being a little calmer the fire fighters may be able to bring it all under control.

We have seen the phrase "attention deficit" used in the press here, written by Greeks about Greeks. Having dealt with the problem the Greeks normally forget about it within days and all ideas about being prepared for a similar event are totally lost. We can only hope that this time some of the horror will stick in enough minds to ensure a safer future.

Fire update

2007-08-27T07:56:00.000+03:00

Since yesterday afternoon the problems with electricity supply seem to have subsided. Even my UPS was beginning to struggle as it was not getting chance to recharge between the power cuts.

Yesterday afternoon and evening Greek TV was distressing to watch. They were taking call after call from residents of the villages where the fires had reached. People were telling the presenters that the fire was outside their house, they had no water, often no power, they were trapped and begged for someone to come to help them. Sometimes TV cameras were in villages being consumed by the flames. Residents were sobbing as they watched houses burn and start to collapse, often being dragged back by friends and relatives. One old man was sitting on a bench and told the reporter, “This plastic shopping bag now contains everything I own”. Very sad, but with the death toll still climbing, he’s luckier than some.

We can only hope that the governments offer of big rewards to help catch the arsonists who set some of these fires will bring results, already a few arrests have been made.

So far the fires nearest to us do not seem to have made any significant progress in our direction. We had a heavy covering of smoke yesterday morning that cleared in the afternoon. The wind changed again around 6pm and the sun disappeared behind the smoke that is moving at high altitudes. Again this morning we have reasonably clear skies, but still able to see the blanket of smoke to the north in the Kalamata area.

For the last few days, today, Monday was getting a forecast of possible thunder showers for this area on the internet weather forecasts. Of course yesterday this changed to yet another day of sun with temperatures in the 30’s. The long range forecast is for this to be the same all of the coming week, but for next Sunday and Monday the possibility of scattered thunder storms has reappeared.

Fire update

2007-08-26T06:32:00.000+03:00

Back online at last, yesterday was one power cut after another. Late afternoon we had power for a couple of hours, but even then every few minutes was a "brown out". When I tried the internet during that time my ADSL was working but I couldn't connect to the ISP's server. We heard that Athens also had a couple of big fires, so possibly they were effecting the data centre in some way, although I can't find information about that.

The fire to the south of us is quite extensive, but a previous fire last month has made a fire break that should prevent it moving towards us. The fires to the north are much further away than we first thought. At the moment they don't seem to be a big threat, but you can never be sure.

Since a power cut that lasted about an hour last night at 9pm the power supply seems to be much more stable.

We are at the same time suffering a really hot spell. The temperature while I’m writing this at 6am is 86 degrees. Daytime temperatures have been in the mid to high 90’s, possible higher as I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the thermometers that we have.

Fire update

2007-08-24T22:02:00.000+03:00

Today we have seen very little of the sun, it's been obscured by the smoke from the fires. The wind has changed blowing smoke towards us, everything getting covered now with black soot. Because the smoke has made visibility something like a dense fog it's impossible to see where it's coming from or how close it is.

TV reports tonight have been quite extensive, most channels giving extra news time to show the fires and discuss the fire fighting. Even the Prime Minister, Costas Karamanlis was shown visiting the area and taking an interest in the work. Within 70 km of us they showed 9 separate main fires, one to the south of us at Areopoli, three to the north, within 30km of us in the area between us, Kalamata and Sparta. The rest are either further north or on the other finger near Finikounda and Pylos. The smoke we first saw was probably further away than we first thought.

Many promises were made on the TV reports about extra resources being brought in to help in the area, so we hope tomorrow things will improve

More fires

2007-08-24T07:59:00.000+03:00

Yet again we have a fire in this area. We first noticed the smoke yesterday morning to the north of us. It appears to be coming from somewhere between Tseria and Saidona, as it's over the hillsides it's difficult to work out exactly where it is, but probably about 5 miles away from us.

The first picture shows the smoke where it is rising over the hillside, the second taken down on the beach at about 7pm.

This morning the wind has changed, blowing towards us from the fire so we have the smell of the fire and everywhere is getting covered in a light grey ash.

We hope that the fire fighting helicopters and planes are brought in today!

Rituals

2007-08-19T11:05:00.000+03:00

Yesterday, just about sunset, in and secluded courtyard outside of an old church a group of about 60 people gathered together. They brought with them tables and what looked like a metal urn on a tripod together with buckets of water.

A couple handed their baby girl over to another couple, who, with the parents help, stripped her, rubbed oil all over her body, then handed her to an old man who put her in urn filled with water and proceeded to wash her.....

If it wasn't a baptism, then we would all have been in jail...

Long hot summer

2007-08-18T13:26:00.000+03:00

OK, it was my fault for saying it, it was late starting, but now we have summer.

We had a short visit to the UK at the end of June for a wedding, and as we left the summer kicked in. Temperatures at Kalamata airport at the weekend after we left were reported to be in the high 40's. Since then we've hardly seen a cloud, every day has been at least 33 degrees, with a few just topping 40.

The downside of the sun is of course that everything in the area, and the whole of Greece, has become tinder dry. Since July we have seen 4 fires in our area, one of which burnt for just over a week before it was finally put out. That fire came closest to us, we were able to watch the flames on the mountainsides for two nights. Fire fighting planes and helicopters pass by on a regular basis, seeing the planes scooping water from the sea is spectacular even if it is worrying. Since the beginning of the year, Greece has had over 3,000 fires reported according to one newspaper report. It’s not only Greece that’s having the problem, we see reports from other Mediterranean countries experiencing the same problems. Unfortunately the resources are being stretched, at least one plane has crashed killing the crew.

A cold wind from Kalamata.

2007-05-29T08:05:00.000+03:00

Today is the 29^th of May. In just over 3 weeks it will be the longest day and then we will be on the way to winter again. Where is summer??? Although it turned warm a couple of weeks ago, so far we have not had any really hot days. If you have ever been on holiday to Greece, you will know the feeling of the wall of heat that hits you as you step out of the plane. This year I think the best day could have rated as a warm day in Eastbourne.

Last week I sat for a while late in the morning on a balcony in the shade reading. There was a slight wind blowing down the coast from Kalamata direction and after half an hour I started to feel really cold just sitting in a T-shirt and shorts. I put on a fleece to warm up and even after the sun came round I still needed to keep it on.

Every evening when the sun goes down almost everyone is still putting on something warm as the evenings are chilly. It’s either being wrapped up to sit outside or, sit indoors where it’s warmer.

Global warming? I don’t think that’s the right term for what’s happening at all. “Global climate change” should be the phrase that we should all get used to. Everywhere seems experience weather patterns that are different from normal.

What does it mean for the tourist industry in this area? I understand that some of the holiday companies have not renewed their accommodation contracts in the area this year, but are still showing that accommodation in their brochures. On booking, people will be disappointed when they arrive to find they are staying elsewhere. The overall number of flights into Kalamata from England has been reduced. Cool weather together with thunderstorms for the last week. Unless you are a dedicated “Greece lover” I think the disappointment might mean that you would think twice about returning.

It's definitely a cold wind blowing!!

Water restored

2007-04-28T11:32:00.000+03:00

Well, good to their word, at about 8:30 last night the water did come back again. Lots of air in the pipes for a while as it clears from our long run of pipe, but the backlog of washing can now be cleared.

It's a great lesson in how much we take for granted in life today. If you've never been without water in your home, just try not using any for 24 hours. How many time do you need to wash your hands? What do you do if you can't flush the toilet? Do you need to wash some food before you can eat? How do you clean your teeth? We take tap water for granted all the time. If you have a power cut for a few hours or even a day, it's inconvenient, but not a big problem. Water is!!!

Try it and you will realise what it means to have a water supply to people in African villages for example. A quick search on the internet will reveal organisations that for a small donation will help provide people around the world with water supplies. Perhaps you will also feel inspired to do so?

Locally there are quite a few houses (and several being built) that have swimming pools. During the cut there was a moan that someone had only been able to partially fill their pool and that the supply pressure had been low before the cut. Not a thought of what their drain on the supply was doing to other peoples supply! Never mind that they should be having their water delivered by tanker (and having it removed the same way).

No water

2007-04-27T10:21:00.000+03:00

On Sunday evening we had a phone call from a lady in our village (Riglia) to tell us she had just spoken to a workman from the Dhimos (equivalent to the local council) who had told her that they were going to work on the water tanks that supply our village. The water would be off from Monday until Wednesday, maybe Thursday.

We passed the message on to a couple of neighbours but as we have never had a problem with our water supply, didn’t think too much about it.

Water supply here is a big problem. There’s plenty of water in the mountains behind us and Kalogria beach which is next to Stoupa (a fairly well known tourist resort 3 km away from us) is famous for it’s fresh water springs. If you swim at Kalogria the water is always cold and if you get near one of the springs you freeze! The big problem is how to channel this water as a source for domestic use. At present there are several bore holes from which water is pumped for the domestic supply. Some are close to the coast, and when the water table gets a bit low the water starts to taste salty. There are proposals to tap into the springs but this would involve drilling down about 200 metres, a very expensive operation. I think the Dhimos is trying to get funding for this at present, but until then…

All of this means that from time to time everyone has a day or two where they loose their water supply. Some people we know have lost it for up to eight days at a time. Some villages, especially in the tourist season, seem to loose water for several hours every day. Houses in those areas have installed a reserve water tank. When the water supply fails they can switch to this for their supply, but it means they have to close and open a couple of valves and activate a pump. We’ve been VERY lucky so far. As we are about 20-30 metres lower than the main village we’re the last to be cut off. Over three years we’ve had low pressure but never lost water altogether. Consequently, we have never felt the need to install a reserve tank of our own.

So, on Monday we were stupidly blasé about the water, and failed to fill any bowls or buckets. We worked in the garden in the morning and early afternoon, planting a new orange tree and a lemon tree. The vegetable patch was watered and then as we were checking another watering system we have just set up we were ‘amazed’ to find we had no water. Now we were dirty, sweaty and had no way of washing. A phone call to our friends who live in another village solved the problem, a quick ride over and a welcome shower.

All the bottles we could find were also filled with water so we could at least wash at home when we needed to. Toilets are the biggest problem with the amount of water used every time you flush. At least we can remove the cistern cover and keep refilling them.

The estimate for completion of the work is today, Friday. Of course, rumours are now circulating that the work will continue through until Sunday.

Panorama 2007

2007-04-08T07:51:00.000+02:00

Now our camera is back and working well (fingers crossed it doesn’t break for a third time) here our panoramic view again. It’s now a year since the original picture and hopefully you can see the new building that is happening around us.

The building of more houses is inevitable, no matter where you live in this area at the moment there always seems to be another house suddenly sprouting from the ground. There are new laws every year changing what can and can’t be built, fees and taxes are increased, prices of land and material costs soar, but still people can find the money.

It's now wrapped

2007-03-28T20:12:00.000+02:00

Following my idea the other day, you are now viewing this blog in a php wrapper. There's absolutley no change to the page and its layout, but now in the heading (I changed my mind about where to add this) you will see the number of site visits fed from my normal page counter.

Viewing the blog via the Blogger links will still display the page via the php wrapper, so visits will still be counted as hits on the site.

Wrapping up the blog

2007-03-26T10:40:00.000+02:00

I want to add my page counter to the bottom of the blog, but it's a php script. Blogger publishes the pages as html files so you can't add the code to the templates. I've not seen anyone else with an answer to this, so.... As my blog is now part of my main site, I can write a wrapper for the pages in php. This wrapper will take the published pages, and based on any comments inserted in the Blogger template, add in php code.

Next, I will need to add a javascript so visitors comming from Blogger will also redirect through this wrapper.

If anyone is interested, please let me know. ??

Panorama

2007-03-26T10:31:00.000+02:00

Here's my test for this morning, using Picasa I decided to upload my panoramic view towards the sea from our house. Now I know how this works and our camera should be back sometime next week, there should be a few more pictures appearing here soon.

Rain

2007-03-24T15:05:00.000+02:00

At last we have have had two days of rain! Does that sound strange? Well, the villages here take their water from the mountain range behind us, there's plenty there if you can tap in at the right places. That's the problem though, they sunk bore holes too close to the sea and now with the demands of more tourists and more houses being built they can't cope with the demand. Because it has been a VERY dry winter the water table is down and the bore holes are sucking sea water back, the tap water has become salty. We hear that there are big discussions about getting funding from Athens/Europe to tap into the big springs some of which rise up in the sea around Stoupa and Kalogria which would solve the problem. So, for now the rain is very welcome, having just planted out some vegetables they can get a good start without watering them. Drinking water? We take large plastic bottles down to the village where there are taps that are supposed to be fed from springs higher up in the mountains. We're not sure about the source for them as everyone has a different story about where they are fed from, but at least that water always tastes good, and doesn't have the 'scum' on top in the same way as the tap water when you boil it.

2006-12-22T20:41:00.000+02:00

Well, this is a great way to start! Have just decided to try using blogging using Google. In the morning we're off to Athens for 3 or 4 days over Christmas. No new entries for a few days, but then I hope I will have something interesting to write about.

One big problem for these few days is our camera. It's still back in England after being repaired for the second time. Faulty components have failed twice, both repairs under warranty thank heavens, but a huge wait getting it back again! So, no pictures. :-{

Thieves

2006-08-26T16:07:00.000+03:00

Earlier in the year we finally constructed a shower in the garden. Somewhere to have a quick rinse either after working in the garden or when returning from the beach still covered in sand. It's built against the garden wall and we leave some shampoo and soap on top of the wall. Yesterday as I went to use the shower I realised that the soap was not on the wall where we had left it the day before. Searching everywhere around the shower we still haven't found anything.

Two days earlier when I went out to water some shrubs at first light I discovered to pine martins scampering and playing just in front of the house. Of course, as soon as they saw me they quickly vanished. With no other explanation for the disappearance of the soap we have laid the blame on these two visitors. So, if anyone sees either a pair of very clean pine martins or any frothing at the mouth, you now know why.

The fire is out

2006-08-25T16:17:00.000+03:00

The fire at Areopoli which started either late on Monday evening or early Tuesday morning now seems to be extinguished.

Late on Tuesday afternoon, we went down to the beach for a swim, with temperatures in the mid 90's now for about a week you need to cool down a bit! Without any wind, the sea was very calm. About the first 10 meters of water from the beach was coated with black soot from the fire, small pieces of grasses, and leaves still recognisable by their shape. It was obviously more than just smoke that we had seen in the morning.

For three days, planes and helicopters have been flying past us on the way to the fire, but today we have only seen the small 'spotter planes' that regularly fly up and down the coast checking for fires. The reports on the news indicate that 'hundreds of houses have been destroyed', about 5,000 hectares (almost 20 square miles) of land burnt and extensive damage to services such as electricity.

Fires

2006-08-22T16:18:00.000+03:00

On both the local and satellite news today there have been stories about fires raging across Halkadiki in Northern Greece. There, tourists have been evacuated from their hotels and many have spent the night on the beach.

This morning at about 6am we were woken by the smell of smoke. Looking out in the dusk before dawn we couldn't see much, but as the sun started to rise it became obvious that there was indeed a fire somewhere in our area. Most of the mountains behind us were shrouded in a haze of smoke and without any breeze early in the morning it didn't clear very quickly.

Being up early, we decided to walk to the village to check for any post before it got too hot. After talking to a couple of people we found out that there was a big fire to the south of us near Areopoli. Both tanker planes and helicopters that scoop water from the sea have flown past us down to the effected area.

Satellite TV

2006-02-02T08:57:00.000+02:00

Back in September the Lidl supermarket in Kalamata had amongst their special offers complete satellite systems. All the components for the system, the dish, receiver, LNB, an arm for the dish, a cable set and a tool to help locate satellites only came to €117, that’s about £82. It seemed like a bargain not to miss!

We happened to be going into Kalamata on the day that this system was due in the store and knowing that anything like this sells out very quickly, we made Lidl our first stop and bought a system. Once home, we then worked out the best place for the dish. It’s only 80cm, and it’s a buff colour that almost blends in with the stonework of the house so it’s not too obtrusive. Then it was a few minutes of fiddling to track down our first satellite. Yes, we found one, but what was it and what channels could we get? Next stop was the internet to get a list of satellites and the channels we could get.

Most satellites have many ‘free to air’ channels, but we quickly found that these are mostly shopping channels. Having seen the latest exercise machine or a piece of jewellery that looks just like something I had from a Christmas cracker for the tenth time in an hour just made me read the satellite receiver manual to find how to exclude these channels. With a larger dish than our 80cm purchase it should be just about possible to get the satellite that provides most of the ‘free to air’ channels to the UK. Larger? Well yes, at least 3 metres!

Not being that bothered about being able to get UK programs we settled for a satellite that gives us Sky News, CNN and a couple of channels that have a few interesting programs. We can also get BBC Radio 2 and Radio 4, but we almost never listen to these.

The satellite receiver has a couple of ‘CAM slots’ that seem to offer the ability to get more content than the ‘free to air’ channels. Being quite new to the use of satellite receivers I’m not sure what capability these will offer, so if you’re knowledgeable about these, please let me know.

At least now we can catch up on world news without having to try to translate stories on Greek TV news.

Olive picking

2006-01-21T08:58:00.000+02:00

At the beginning of November we decided to pick our olives. Most of them had turned a lovely plum colour and some were starting to fall off the trees if there was a high wind.

We know that there were very few olives on the trees this year so we decided on a different strategy for picking them. Previously we had pruned the trees as we picked, but if we did that this year we might only have two sacks picked after three or four days. Not wanting them to lie around too long before being pressed, we just stripped the trees of the olives.

The weather was good for picking, dry and warm enough to work in t-shirts. In just two days we picked all of the trees, but this year we only had four and a half sacks of olives. Not too bad, and as we still had quite a lot of oil left from last year we didn’t want or need too much. That gave us about 41 litres of oil after the olive press had taken their percentage.

Then we spent a pleasant few days going back round the trees pruning them. This time there was no rush to get them finished so we could just enjoy being out in the sun. Now we must wait to see if next year proves to be a good year.

Shaken, but not stirred

2006-01-09T15:20:00.000+02:00

Yesterday we experienced another earthquake. It was, apparently deep in the seabed to the southeast of us, off the island of Kithira. It was quite severe, with a reported magnitude of 6.8, but being about 125km away and with the Taygetos Mountains between us most of the force was absorbed when it reached us.

We were just getting ready to go out for a walk when we felt it. There was a slight rumbling noise, then we felt the house wobble slightly and loose objects in the room started vibrating. It lasted about 30 seconds and thankfully felt quite gentle. From the TV reports it looks like the old buildings on the island of Kithira, which was closest to the quake, took quite a bit of damage.

Last night I think it was the reporter from TV station Alter, on the scene in Kithira, who nearly had us screaming. His live report involved scrambling round a church that had sustained a lot of damage to its twin towers. Both were cracked wide open and huge chunks of masonry lay on the ground. He kept running over these and standing under the towers. Hadn't he ever heard of aftershocks?

The church is high on a hill, one side of the square around it was on a cliff edge and a huge part of that had broken away and fallen. So what does he do? He charges over to this in the dark with the cameraman and lighting trying to follow to show us this broken edge and the sheer drop. Not content with just showing the damage he stands right on this broken edge and starts kicking bits that look as though they are loose. I was sure it was going to turn into one of those clips shown on disaster programs!

Anyway, for us here it was 'shaken, but not stirred'.

Loss of web site

2006-01-05T08:56:00.000+02:00

If you have seen our site before, but under the name www.living4thesun.com then you may understand my frustration. I had registered the name for 2 years, but the person who did this for me failed to send me proof of ownership. My fault as well, I totally forgot about this until the last moment when the 2 years were about to finish. I was unable to contact the person who registered the domain for me, so, when the domain name expired at the beginning of October 2004 I could not renew it straight away. Without proof of ownership you have to wait about 75 days for the name to fully expire and then purchase the domain again. It finally expired over Christmas while we took a break in Kalamata, and guess what, someone took the name within seconds of it becoming available!

When you look at the site www.living4thesun.com you now see an 'information' page, sometimes with a link asking if you are interested in the domain. You can make an offer to buy the domain, but the minimum bid is $90. Well, as you can guess I was very happy to do so!

That's why we are now www.living4thesun.net. Hopefully, there will be no mistakes at the end of this year!

Garden update

2005-08-25T08:56:00.000+03:00

After the cow invaded the garden (see 22/07/05 entry) we feared that many vegetables were lost (eaten or trampled). Now, a month on I’m pleased to report that many have recovered and started producing more food for us.

Most of the tomatoes that were knocked over were tied up to posts and continued to grow. Although the main growth is dying off, they are producing side shoots that I would normally pick off. These have flowered and starting to bear fruit.

Pepper plants that were eaten back to the stem leaving a 6 or 10 inch stick have produced new leaves and several have small peppers growing again. The cabbage plants are the only things that have failed to recover (so far).

The melons are still growing, but quite small and green so far. I noticed one this morning that suddenly was turning yellow as if it were ripening, although it was very small. I touched it to see if it was becoming soft and it just rolled away! The insects eat their way through leaves and just now and again they eat through the stem of a plant. The melon had been neatly severed and left lying amongst the leaves.

I’m pleased to be able to say that it was very sweet and juicy. Looking forward to picking many more now!

End of summer?

2005-08-05T08:55:00.000+03:00

Each morning when I get up, one of the first jobs is to water the garden. I usually try to do this before 8am, sometimes as early as 6 if I’m awake. I’m not sure if being awake this early is the penalty of years of work when I would have to be up that early or it’s just one of those things that happens as you get old!

We have been putting off going shopping in Kalamata for several days as it’s been very hot, just hopeful for a cooler day. The forecast for today (Friday) was about 5-6 degrees below temperatures for the last week and maybe a strong breeze that might make it feel more comfortable.

So, this morning I woke just before 7 and went outside as usual. Instead of the warm feel to the air that has that certainty of another hot, humid day on the way, I realised that the air felt distinctly fresher. It suddenly reminded me of being young, and waking to this day each year where you felt the change in the atmosphere; you knew then that the days of summer are now numbered. You know that the days ahead will still be very hot, but heat of summer is slowly ebbing away.

Why is this so significant to me this year? I realised that over the years while I was working I had ceased to notice these ‘events’, probably because of the ‘pressure’ of working. Now life is simple again (well, almost) I can notice the simple things around me again. Moving here has worked!

Cattle roundup

2005-07-22T08:54:00.000+03:00

This afternoon, Lainie had booked a haircut at the hairdresser in Stoupa.
The tour operators’ offices, travel agents and some hotels have bookshelves where you can swap books, so I decided to go along and change some of the paperbacks we have read.

As we drove out of our gates we decided that as Lainie would only be about 10 minutes and I would be about the same changing books, we would be lazy and leave the gates open.

I dropped Lainie off near the hairdressers and I parked a little further into the village. We arranged to meet at the car, so I went off and changed most of the books in a couple of the offices. Back at the car I piled them into the back and as I looked up the road I saw Lainie already walking down. Wonderful when a plan works? Here’s where we came undone.

There were still 3 or 4 books that I had not changed so we agreed that a quick stroll through the other side of the village to a couple of other offices would finish the job and allow Lainie to choose books she might prefer. We paused in one hotel as they had a television tuned to Sky news and we listened in horror to the reports about the bombings in London. As we left there we thought that we would call in the ice cream parlour to see our friends and have a frappé.

The afternoon was warm and in the shade at the ice cream parlour it was comfortable so we chatted, and time slipped by. Finally, after about an hour and a half we made our way back home, drove into our drive, Lainie jumped out and closed the gates, I parked the car and we went inside. It was late so we started to prepare some food, then Lainie said, “That cow bellowing sounds a bit close, it’s not in the garden is it?”

We looked out towards the vegetable plot and saw a couple of the tomato plants laying flat, a clear sign that, yes, it had been in the garden. As I walked over to see the damage I saw that the cow was still in the garden, now making a noise as it had discovered the gates were closed and it was trapped. Most cows are hobbled so that they can’t raise their heads to eat the olive trees; this one had also a long rope trailing, which probably should have been tied to a tree somewhere. I ran over, grabbed the rope and dragged the animal out of the gates.

Yes, it had been up and down the vegetables eating some and just bulldozing down a lot more. Apart from the tomato plants, it had eaten winter cabbage plants (these were not looking too good anyway), all the tops off the beetroot, green bell peppers, sweet peppers and a cucumber plant. The dwarf green beans had been knocked over and lots of the remaining plants had been trampled.

Most plants have been stood up again with the help of some sticks and string, so although we did loose some plants we are still getting food from the plot.

Well, that serves us right for being lazy!!!

Taverna

2005-05-27T08:52:00.000+03:00

A couple of months ago Laine went into Stoupa to get a haircut. While she was 'in the chair' and talking to the hairdresser, Poppy, another young woman joined in the conversation. They all ended up having a good laugh and the other woman, Suela (pronounced Sue-ella) told her that she also lived in Ag Nikolaos. She was going to call her husband to collect her, so Laine offered to give her a lift back to Ag Nik. They hit it off and Suela wanted someone she could talk to sometimes, so that's how the friendship started. Suela and her husband Freddi are Albanian, so as far as most Greeks are concerned they are the bottom of the labour market

Suela has been running a gift shop in the village for a couple of years, it's very modern and successful, Laine had met her in the shop before on previous visits and she had recognised her. Freddi had been working as a builder in the area for about 10 years, but a about a year ago took the lease on an old building in the village, renovated it and opened it as a taverna at the beginning of May. Because they are Albanian it's very difficult for them to get Greeks to work for them. Albanians are mostly building workers who speak some Greek, but rarely English, and if their wives are here the same rule applies. Their first cook turned out to be a disaster so Suela got rid of her and did the cooking herself for a while, but because Freddi speaks no English she was also trying to wait on tables. This was preventing her from opening her shop so she was frustrated, angry and tired out.

She asked if Laine would work for her and I said that I didn't want to get into the Greek tax system, and anyway I didn't want to commit to working everyday, that would have defeated the object. But I/we, offered to help them, so I was waiting on tables and Ashley was serving drinks, clearing tables and washing glasses. In the meantime they had managed to find a chef, a Greek called Kostas who seems to be absolutely brilliant. It was actually quite fun, but it went on for weeks and I'm sure we would have tired of it, thankfully they have found other staff the week before Simon came. The young girl only lasted 3 nights, I don't really think they gave her a fair chance and Suela asked me again how much I wanted to work there and I had to insist that I didn't want to be tied to a job, also I think she could be a pretty tough boss and it might eventually spoil our friendship, so although I feel bad I/we have left them to struggle on.

Although most customers where finished by midnight we were often not home for another hour or two. Suela insisted that we then sit and eat with them (this was her way of thanking us), Kostas always insisted Ashley tried different dishes and Freddi was always topping up the wine. One night at about 11:30pm our accountant from Kalamata walked through the door, it turned out that he does that accounts for Suela as well. He speaks very little English but this doesn't stop him from talking to us. My Greek is getting quite good so I tried my best to translate, Ashley understands quite a bit of what's said even if he can't think of the words to reply. It was 2:45am before we left that night and Ashley has been booked for September to go with our accountant and several others to visit a monastery somewhere in northern Greece, no women allowed. If it's where I think it is he won't be able to go as foreigners require letters of introduction from a consulate in Athens and all sorts of other paperwork. I don't think it will materialise but we will see.

Driveway

2005-05-27T08:51:00.000+03:00

Towards the end of last year we realised that our driveway from the gates to the house would be a problem for us in the winter. Once it rained the earth here turns quite sticky and car wheels very quickly turn double their normal size as they gather up a coat of mud. We needed to put down a hard surface to stop everything turning into a complete mess.

Laying concrete or paving might have been a problem as there could be some settlement where lots of digging had taken place during the house building. So to get us through the winter we bought a lorry load of gravel to spread over the drive and also as a path around the house. Around the house was also important as water running off the roof (no, we don’t have guttering) causes the red earth to splash up the house walls anything up to a metre high. Vaggelis looked at the pile of gravel when the lorry delivered it and thought it would take a day to move it and level it out. We rolled up our sleeves and in about 2 hours had the whole thing done.

That has worked very well, the car only collected mud from the track outside our gates and house didn’t get its red gaiter.

As the rains came to an end we started planning what we wanted to do with the drive, what shape we wanted and most important what materials to use. First we considered the flat stone that has been used for the steps and areas out side out door. This cream and orange coloured stone complements the stonework for the house. It’s quite an expensive stone, almost twice the cost of the grey/green stone, and because of the way it breaks you have a wastage factor of about 20%.

Next we saw some roadways and drives made from concrete that is patterned with a stamp as it is laid. At first we thought that would be a lot cheaper and looked quite attractive, then we saw a driveway from which most of the colouring had leached out.

After a chat with one of the local ‘builders merchants’ who gave us a direct price for materials and recommended someone to lay the flat stone at a fixed price per square metre we found that this was almost the same price as the concrete stamp. So we have made the decision and the work on the driveway is now in progress. In a few days all should be finished, that’s if the spell of unsettled weather that we now have gives them the chance to do so.

Gardening

2005-05-06T08:50:00.000+03:00

Since mid March we have started a vegetable garden. As soon as the winter rain came to an end we started digging a plot between the trees that run in the odd piece of land to one side of our garden. After the winter rains the land was soft but not too sticky to dig and after a few hours we had a plot ready for the seeds.

Some friends from Riglia kindly gave us some young lettuce plants they had spare to help us. We were also given some seeds from a taverna owner in Agios Nikolaos together with some leek roots. Now I have never seen this done before, but we have been assured that they will grow, they are the bottom half inch from a leek with the roots still attached. We planted them in a trench and as they start to grow we will earth them up to get the long stalk. If this works can we dig them up, cut the bottom off and start again? Are these ‘perpetual leeks’? We’ll keep you updated on their progress.

We’ve planted:
Lettuce, aubergine, melon, tomato, onion, garlic, cucumber, cabbage, broccoli, dwarf beans, red peppers, zucchini, chilli peppers, beetroot, parsley, coriander.

So far the weather has been kind, not too much heat so with a little watering everything is doing well, just a couple of things that have been slow to germinate.

Life in general

2005-05-01T08:49:00.000+03:00

It’s been a while since we have posted anything here. The main reason is that we don’t now have many exciting events to tell you about. So I apologise now, the next few posts may become a bit boring as we tell you a bit about the more mundane things that we do.

Over the last couple of months WE decided that I should try my hand at making some ‘furniture’. This came about when one day we were looking for a table of some sort for the television to sit on. It was a problem finding something suitable, either too small, too big, too fussy, just plain melamine, etc. One we did see was certainly in the ‘looks just like melamine’ bracket, the tabletop was hollow, but the design was simple. Lainie looked and said, ‘I bet you could make one like this’. Now there’s a challenge!

We sat down with paper and pencil and worked out the measurements for what we wanted, and then next time in Kalamata went to a timber merchant with our shopping list. They offered to make the pieces from a melamine covered MDF, but the thickness was only going to be about 12mm. We both thought that this was going to look too thin and make the whole unit look strange. Then he showed us some oak planks that were 4cm thick, now we knew we were looking at what we needed. These were cut down to the sizes for the base, top and sides in a few minutes, loaded in the car with the off cuts and home we went.

A couple of days of careful routing to get the pieces to fit together, then some light stain and a few coats of varnish and in the end we had exactly what we wanted. I don’t think MFI, IKEA and anyone else has much to worry about but we are pleased with the result.

Off cuts, what could we do with them? They were slightly odd sizes and shapes, but we worked out that there might be just enough to make a couple of small side tables. We took the off cuts back to the timber merchant and asked if they could cut them to size for us. No problem and no extra charge for doing so. When I asked if the had machinery to joint some of the pieces together we were told that they couldn’t help us with that.

As we were about to leave Lainie was asking them to recommend a strong glue so we could try joining the pieces. ‘You want them joined? We can do that for you.’ Trying not to look confused we showed them what we wanted and three days later and for the sum of 15 euros they had made two tabletops for us. Another session of routing, gluing, staining and varnishing and we have two tables. Slightly different in sizes as they came from the off cuts, not exactly the design we might have had if we started from scratch, but two workable tables.

The next woodwork project was to make frames for mirrors. We needed some mirrors for the bedrooms, so from our local builders merchant we bought some lengths of tongue and grove. He also cut the actual mirrors for us and I have now put together three mirrors for the total cost of 21,50 euros. At the moment the wood has a light stain with varnish, but who knows perhaps at some time in the future these may change colour, a much darker stain or paint to give them another lease of life.

What’s next, who knows? Well, I have and idea……. If it works out I will tell you about it, if not, well maybe I’ll tell you anyway.

Cat update

2005-04-28T08:49:00.000+02:00

Just realised that we haven’t mentioned our feline friends for some time, so I thought we should give an update about Tara and Dolly’s antics.

When we moved to the house back in May 2004 we brought them with us and tried to keep them inside for a few days. This was very difficult as there was still so much work going on in and around the house, so during the day we tried taking them outside, away from the house, in a cat box. Unfortunately, one of them relieved themselves in the box, so we tried to get them out on their collar and leads to clean up the box. I held on to them while Lainie went to the house to get a bucket of water to wash the box out. Somewhere back in the house one of the workmen started shouting, his naturally deep booming voiced amplified by the bare walls inside. Tara, freaked and literally went berserk, she tried to run away, reached the end of the lead and then turned into the cat you may have seen on TV in a video clip. She was yowling, leaping into the air and spinning round on the lead. She only stopped leaping about when I allowed enough lead so she could climb into an olive tree where she cowered glaring and growling at everything around her. Dolly meanwhile did what she always does, she tried to copy her sister, but without the same fervour, thank goodness.

We managed to calm them down and kept them in for another day before letting them loose. That was a big worry, would they return? Yes, we were very relieved next day when two little faces appeared at the door. Naturally, as soon as there was any noise around the house Tara would cry and run full pelt to get away. As soon as she came indoors, she would cry to be fed and then if the doors were closed would set the most pitiful yowls that always sound as if she is saying “OOOOUUUT”.

We have had a few scares, once Tara went missing for 6 days and then returned as if nothing had happened looking well and not even hungry. After that amount of time we had given up hope of ever seeing her again, then anther time she went off again for 2 or3 days, but she seems to have settled now.

In mid December with the cooler evenings she began to hang around in the evenings after being fed. We put an old blanket over one of the chairs on the balcony and both began to sleep there. Then as the winter set in they decided that they would come in and sit with us in the evenings, finally deciding that it was even better if they stayed in all night.

Both slept in the bedroom with us, then in the morning after being fed they would go out into the garden. Tara would not reappear until then next evening but Dolly would be back after about an hour, have another quick snack and then dash back upstairs and bury herself under the bedclothes. She slept there until early evening when she would have another snack, a quick stroll in the garden, and then back to sleep on our laps until it was time for bed. Not bad being a cat is it?

Now the weather is getting hotter they have changed roles again, Dolly goes out for the day, sometime we only see her for her food in the evening, Tara sleeps with us and hangs around the house during the day. Both are much calmer now, they only get worried when we have visitors in the house.

One thing that still does worry them is a doorbell. If anyone rings our bell they both get very scared and either run out of the house or rush upstairs to hide in the bedroom. There are adverts on television and radio that both use the same bell chime as ours, when they hear this they react in the same way. One morning we had the front door open and Dolly was sitting in the doorway. The advert came on the radio, Dolly sat bolt upright and spun her head round looking inside and out. She was so confused, she knew the bell had something to do with the door but couldn’t work out why she was the only one at the door. After a minute of head spinning she finally decided that it was all too scary and ran off.

Christmas holiday

2004-12-28T08:48:00.000+02:00

For Christmas this year we decided to splash out and have a nice break somewhere in a hotel. Further south along the coast are a couple of small villages that have some very nice hotels, so we drove down to have a look a month or so back. One hotel looked very good, right on the coast with beautifully decorated rooms, although quite small but the prices were quite high and the staff not over friendly. We gave it some thought and decided that if the weather turned out to be bad we would have very little choice in how to spend our time in that area. We then looked closer to home, at the hotels in Kalamata, and found that they offered a very reasonable deals, compared to the UK and one hotel had two packages on offer for the Christmas period, one of 3days/2 nights and another of 4days/3nights. The rooms where of a high modern standard, it had an excellent restaurant, a bar and a nice reception/lounge area, so that was that. Some friends who are staying in a nearby village also booked to stay there with us.

We arrived at the hotel just before lunchtime on Christmas Eve, dropped our cases in our room and strolled along the seafront towards Kalamata centre. The weather was wonderful, strong, warm sunshine. We stopped for lunch at one of the tavernas along the seafront, sitting at one of the tables that line the beach with a wonderful view of the sea and the mountains. The food and wine was very good and again proved that eating in Kalamata costs about 2/3 of the price of similar meals in the Stoupa area.

After a long leisurely lunch, we strolled further along the seafront before turning back towards the hotel. Another stop for coffee at a bar allowed us to watch the mountains surrounding Kalamata turn the most wonderful shades of pink and red as the sun sank low in the sky.

We had been told about a house in Kalamata that is decorated with lights at Christmas and has been featured on Greek television in previous years. We asked the hotel receptionist and she explained how to find the house and as dinner was not until 10pm we decided to go and take a peek. Once we were close there was no chance of missing it! It was a mass of light and colour. We stopped the car and got out to take some pictures when the owner saw us and invited us into the garden for a better look. Only then did we realise that it was also a wonderful cactus garden as well. Finally, back at the hotel we washed, dressed and had a drink before dinner.

Christmas Eve is celebrated more than Christmas Day in Greece, so along with the evening meal there was live music in the restaurant. It turned out that as far as we could tell we were the only foreigners in the restaurant. The meal was excellent, although at one point when plate of turkey, stuffing, one small roast potato, a small piece of carrot and a single brussel sprout was served, we worried that our appetites would not be satisfied. No problem, the courses just kept coming and by the time we were finished we were all totally stuffed!

Christmas Day turned out to be another wonderful day for weather. Not a cloud in the sky and no wind, so we decided to have a sightseeing tour of the peninsula that we look at every day from home. Although we had been round this area three years ago, our friends had never been there before.

After a large breakfast we first drove across to Pylos on the west coast. As you approach Pylos the road gives you a wonderful view of Navarino Bay, a wonderful natural harbour that is enclosed by the island of Sfaktiria.

Down the coast we stopped again at Methoni and strolled along the beach by the walls of a castle, the main parts of which date from the 13th century. A Greek fisherman was sitting on the rocks near a small anchorage and as we passed, he wished us “Kronia Polla”. We stopped and chatted for a few minutes, although it was quite limited as he spoke no English. After a few more exchanges of “Kronia Polla” we moved on again as it was now past lunch time and believe it or not we were getting quite hungry!

Not seeing many places to eat in Methoni we carried on to Finikunda, a small village that has developed as a tourist resort in recent years. Seeing a small taverna with a few people in we asked if they were open. Yes, “no problem”, please come in the said, so we sat down to eat. Turkey or pork were cooked and ready so we made our choice and enjoyed another excellent meal. Although we ordered a half-kilo of wine with the meal, a second quickly arrived compliments of the owners – “Happy Christmas”.

Further round the coast we again stopped in Koroni, a small port that we see every day as we look out from our verandas. By now it late in the afternoon and the sun was getting low behind the mountains putting Koroni in deep shade, but changing the view across to the Mani. Our coastline was now turning changing colour to the pinks and reds with the setting sun with a backdrop of the Taygetos Mountains showing their snowy peaks.

Finally we made our way back to Kalamata as it got dark to get ready for yet another meal. More food, but somehow we managed to eat it! Again, we had live music in the restaurant while we ate.

Next morning, another leisurely breakfast and then we packed and left for home. The ‘holiday’ was over and so was the good weather. The rain started as we left the hotel, and has continued for several days with more thunderstorms.

Fizzzzz….Electrical fun.

2004-12-23T08:48:00.000+02:00

This entry was to have been posted just before Christmas, but we had yet another twist to the story. It started back in November when we had one of the first thunderstorms of the winter. I should have had ample warning as last year one person lost their fax machine, satellite disc, satellite box, control panel on their cooker and computer modem all in one storm. Since then we tried to be careful, unplugging everything whenever a storm approached.

One morning I woke early just as it was getting light. The sky was overcast and I could see some lightning away in the distance towards Kalamata. Lainie was still sleeping, so as the storm seemed so far away I thought I would just have a quick look at the teletext pages on one of the TV channels where there are some news pages in English. Yes, you can guess what happened next! Although the storm still seemed a long way of, suddenly there was a strike very close to the house and it caused a surge in the power supply. The TV went with a loud bang and a terrible smell of burning, I couldn’t wait for Lainie to wake up so I could tell her! Later in the morning we also realised that we had lost our telephone, the strike had taken out the base station for the DECT phone we use. So, no TV and no telephone, guess how popular I was.

We replaced the TV with a new set from one of the supermarkets in Kalamata, a 21-inch screen with teletext for 109€, around £75, not too bad. We still had a phone in the house, but the problem was that it came from England. We could ring out ok but it didn’t ring when we had an incoming call, anyway, recently we managed to find a DECT phone from another supermarket for only 30€.

At the beginning of the week before Christmas we had another few days of thunderstorms. Now being very careful we unplugged everything to prevent any damage, well almost. We have an ISDN telephone line, so there is a box to convert the connection for ordinary telephones and a computer interface. A lightning strike must have sent a pulse through the telephone line blowing the computer interface but leaving the telephones working. So we called the OTE fault reporting number and tried to explain the problem.

The people in the support centre speak English making it a bit easier but when you try to explain something technical it gets more difficult. An engineer returned our call, but unfortunately the engineers don’t often speak any English, and he tried to tell us there could be no problem with our phone as he was speaking on our line. Lainie understood enough Greek to follow most of what he was saying but trying to make him understand the problem was with the box was far more difficult.

Finally, after missing an engineer who called while we were out, another called on the morning of Christmas Eve and brought a replacement box that solved the problem.

Since all this has happened we have bought several surge-protection adaptors to try to prevent this from happening again. If anyone has any suggestions for how to deal with lightning strikes and protect the whole house we would be pleased to hear from you!

Bad weather

2004-12-21T08:47:00.000+02:00

Yesterday we had some heavy rain and thunderstorms so spent all day indoors catching up on a bit of computer work.

Last night we watched the news on TV, thank goodness that we don't live in Athens! They really had problems with the rain. It showed an underpass that had filled with water/snow and frozen overnight, filling it to a depth of about 18 inches. The morning traffic was ploughing through looking like a fleet of icebreakers. Some poor guy on a motorbike had the worst deal, he almost got through, and then ended up on the central reservation where his wheels fell into some ruts and got totally stuck. We watched him waving at each car that past him as their bow-waves of icy water washed over his legs. Somewhere else in Athens they had a flash flood that had been about 4-5 feet deep. Houses and cars looked totally wrecked by the muddy water.

As a result of the rain we now have a swimming pool, well just a small muddy one. We have had a spot in the garden where we had been accumulating rubbish, bricks, bits of concrete, iron and any other bits and pieces left over from building work. A few days ago Vagelis arrived with his lorry and digger and scooped this all up to clear it for us. Where he used the digger to remove the rubbish we ended up with a patch that is 5-6 inches lower that the surrounding area, so this has filled with water. During breaks in the rain we are now trying to level this out, but the ground has become like heavy clay in England. It sticks to your boots and shovels so that everything weighs about 10 times what it should. Ah well, its good exercise.

Where did the summer go?

2004-12-20T08:45:00.000+02:00

Very sorry, can’t believe that it’s been so long since we last updated the diary! Instead of one single entry trying to cover everything we will add little bits over the next few days.

The summer drew to an end with several visits by friends and family, so several weeks went by with a very pleasant social calendar. Then we had a couple of weeks working on the house and garden followed by our olive picking. During that time nothing really happened that we felt was worth writing about here in the diary. We could fill it each day with a very mundane commentary about each bit of work we do or each visit to Kalamata, but we’re not sure who would become bored first!

Anyway, lets give you a report on our olive picking. There are still several trees that are suffering very badly from damage inflicted during build work. Out of the 52 trees we originally had we were left with 39 after the house was built. However, one has now been reduced to a 3inch high stump, one that looked very poor has died and another 4 had very few olives, because of damage. That means we had 32 trees that cropped this year. From these we had 18 sacks of olives, picked in three batches, which gave us 141 litres of oil! After the olive press had taken their percentage to pay for the pressing and a few litres we shared with some friends we now have 115 litres of oil. More than plenty for us this year, but after we give away a little during the year and retain some in case next years harvest is poor, it’s probably about right for us.

The weather has now turned wet this week and the evenings are getting cooler. On a good day it’s still pleasant to work in the garden in a t-shirt and if there’s only a little wind then it does feel quite warm.

September

2004-09-19T07:38:00.000+03:00

After three and a half weeks we have got our new computer monitor and are able to update the diary. Lets hope you don’t find it boring as it all seems to be about work at the moment.

Another month has gone by and still we battle on. If you’re thinking of buying a house abroad and think you will have a “Life of Old Riley”, then forget it. We, especially Ashley, have never worked do hard. He has been very busy with all of the little tiding up jobs, which sometimes don’t turn out to be quite so little. Of course we have to point out that this is not usual, it’s just that we moved into the house, by choice, before it was finished and have therefore given ourselves a great deal of extra work. Here are just a few of those jobs.

While the house was being constructed Vagelis made a hole through the sidewall of the house 10.5 cm round for the cooker hood outlet. Very good of him to remember, alas, when the hood was fitted the outlet pipe was 12.5cm. Another job for Ashley as there was no way I was going to let workmen crawl all over our new kitchen units. The position of the hole coincided with one of the main reinforced concrete beams, so not only was there concrete to tunnel through, but also the iron rods had to be cut. So, up the ladder he went, armed with a piece of iron off the site, a keyhole saw and a power drill to enlarge the hole. Two weeks later, sore knees from the ladder and aching hands, it was finished. Not two whole weeks, but a little every day. First only with the iron, then a friend offered us a longer, stronger piece of iron, which Vagelis sharpened for us. Finally we found a proper chisel made for the job, not really long enough, but made the job a little bit easier. It was very difficult, especially nearing the end as you can imagine, working in such a confined space, but he eventually did it.

The shower is now fully operational with the silicon all done and dusted, can’t tell you how pleased we were to get that job finished.

All of the paintwork has been touched up and everything looks clean for the first time; and now, with the addition of our newly acquired rug, our house is at last beginning to look like home.

Another lengthy project was our TV aerial. We dismissed erecting it on the side of the house because of the high winds and after a bit of thought came up with the idea of putting it on a tall pole. A friend offered us a pole, which had been hanging around for some time and Ashley painted it with dark green of course, to match the aluminium. He then strapped the aerial to the post and hoisted it into place after having dug a hole almost a meter deep, very easy to do in our beautifully soft ground. Three wires, two of which were bolted to our wall, supported the pole. Lets hope that it doesn’t fall down.

Today, while I have been working in the garden, Ashley has worked in the storage area under the stairs which lead up to the kitchen veranda; he has been busily laying stone on the concrete floor. Hopefully this should make it easier to keep clean, not that I intend hoovering down there, and keep the rain out.

The house itself inside is now completely finished, one of the last jobs, the fireplace was completed about a week ago. We offered to finish the job, rather than have more mess and Ashley filled and rubbed down the chimneybreast. He worked on it a couple of hours a day for about five days before painting it and now it looks perfect.

Vagelis has once again used his digger to drag the land around, trying as best he can to leave it as flat as possible for us. Now we are able to start clearing and levelling and have been doing a bit each morning as soon as we get up before it gets too hot. We are moving the larger stones and stacking them up against the walls for future use, raking and removing as much builders debris as we can before we start with any definite plans for the garden. This will not be a two-minute job; we will put a few pictures in the gallery so that you can appreciate how much work there is to be done. We have also put up fencing around our odd piece of land the sticks out from the rest, which I call my donkey paddock. It took us two whole days with the help of a friend to erect 75 meters of fencing, not bad! Properly done mind, three strands of tensioning wire, posts every two and a half meters, supports on the corners, the “full nine yards”. We might even go into business. Well, we should be able to take it easy soon, but no, come November we will have to start thinking about picking our olives again. That will be full circle, our first year of our early retirement, relaxing and enjoying doing nothing!!

August in the Mani

2004-08-21T07:37:00.000+03:00

It’s now August and everything has slowed down, but little by little our house is nearing the point where we can say it is finished.

Today after a long battle the men, who laid the marble for our stairs, finally returned to correct one of the steps. When they initially laid the marble they asked us what we thought, they not speaking any English and Lainie still battling to learn the language. We were impressed with the appearance of the marble and agreed that everything was fine.

Only after walking up and down them over the next couple of days did we realise that one of the stairs wasn’t quite right. A couple of times we nearly lost our footing going down the stairs, and some people working on the house had similar problems. We asked Vagelis to get them back to put it right, but they argued with him that we had agreed that everything was OK on the day they completed the job.

Finally they agreed to come and have at last sorted out the problem, although I must say they didn’t look too happy about it. Another lesson for us, when someone does a job, make sure you check the work thoroughly before they leave!

The heat here in August makes any heavy work almost impossible, unless you relish the idea of a sauna. We have found that unless you work outside before 9am or after 7pm you just run with sweat.

Most Greek people take their holidays at this time, mainly because of the heat, and many businesses close for a couple of weeks. We found this out when the monitor for our main computer suddenly failed and we tried to buy a new one in Kalamata. They don’t carry much stock and most items come from Athens, so we may have 2-3 weeks to wait for the new one to arrive.

August brings many celebrations and events in the villages. Our own village of Riglia put on an excellent evening of Greek music and dancing that must have drawn a crowd of 3-400 people. The church grounds were laid out with tables and chairs, enough to seat most of the people, with the remainder seated on the boundary walls. There were stalls where you could buy delicious, spit roast pork, bread and salads. The meat was chopped from whole sides of pork and sold to you wrapped in a heavy greaseproof type paper.

They had a live group performing on stage that played many of the ‘pop’ songs that we hear on Greek radio every day. This was followed later in the evening by more traditional music all of which was of a very high standard

We had a leaflet that gave us the dates and locations of several events in the area, but of course only written in Greek. So after a bout of translation and a little help from Greek friends we were armed with an itinerary to keep us busy. One of the events was a market held in the village of Tseria and it was advertised as running for two days. Although the village is high in mountains and is a dead end as the road stops there, we felt that if the market lasted for two days it must be worth a visit. We drove to the village in the morning and parked on the outskirts continuing on foot through the village to find the market. Outside the church we found three or four trestle tables set up with some local honey, wine, ornaments and a few bits and bobs. Sure that there would be more we continued past the church and walked out to the far side of the village where the road turns into a track leading down a steep gorge. No market in sight, we turned back, this time on the higher road continuing our search for the market. After walking from one end of the village and back we finally had to admit the markets here in Greece are not on the same scale as back in the UK. That was it! Just those few stalls, but in the life of Tseria it was an important event and deemed a market.

A stolen hour

2004-07-16T07:37:00.000+03:00

My friends have offered to get our bread so I have an hour spare and thought I would put it to good use and update the diary. I should really help Ashley who as usual is busy this time varnishing doors, but he says he will manage. We are varnishing because after watching our painter, who incidentally made a very good job of painting the walls and is an extremely nice guy, we realised best we do it ourselves. Enough said.

We set off for Kalamata one morning and turning out at the top of our track we noticed there were three men and a neighbour of ours digging in the road. Nothing strange with that here in Greece, probably a new water main or similar being connected. One man raised his pickaxe and struck……………… a water main, water spurting everywhere. Never mind, off to Kalamata we continued. On our return, you guessed it - we had no water! We checked with some friends who live close by to see if they had water, yes they were fine and suggested that we check our mains tap to see if it had been turned off. It had! We turned it back on and hay presto it was our pipe that had been broken and the men had obviously done no more than turn off our water supply and leave. To cut a long story short, after two days of walking the length of the track, turning water off and on when needed Vagelis finally fixed it for us by putting in a joint.

The telephone was finally connected yesterday 15th, five weeks after it was promised, even though we paid our 1,010 euros connection charge. (It cost this much because we are further than the free 250 meters apparently). Of course the first thing we wanted to do was download emails, it seems an age since we have been on line. I must admit even I was having signs of withdrawal and couldn’t wait to get back in touch with the world.

There seem to be numerous jobs left to be finished on the house, the biggest, or maybe the worst, is the fireplace, which still has to be built. I think that even Vagelis is a little concerned about the mess and how I will cope with this one as he has suggested that maybe I should go away for a week. Fat chance, he will just have to be a man and face the wrath of Lainie.

We are getting used to living on a building site now and have almost become impervious to the dust, which we now accept as being an integral part of our lives. However, what I still am finding hard to get to grips with are men coming in and out of my HOME carrying cement. We have a slight conflict of opinion here, we consider this to be our home and as such should be respected, the men however seem to still regard this as a building site. Isn’t life grand!

The cats have settled in nicely, after a few initial hiccups, which are still apparent on Ashley hands and arms, and seem very happy in their new environment. So much so we hardly see them except for meal times, they eat and then disappear again. We wouldn’t mind this so much if the amount they eat these days hadn’t at least trebled.

Sorry everyone, back to life

2004-06-23T07:36:00.000+03:00

Sorry for the huge gap in then diary! A poor excuse, but since we last posted we have been too busy, and adding this entry to the diary will mean that our telephone line has at last been connected. Now we can get online whenever we need to update the web site and read and answer email.

Shortly after the last diary entry we had to start shuffling around in the apartments in Stoupa where we were staying. These were now being prepared for tourists who were about to arrive, so a lot of painting, tiling of bathrooms and sprucing up of kitchen areas was needed. Then finally, on 25th May, to make way for the tourists’ arrival we had to move to the house itself.

As you can guess the house was not complete (and still not at this time – more later), but we had to move regardless. We were very glad to be in at last, but little did we know how many ‘problems’ we would encounter. Every day seemed like a battle trying to keep the rooms we were using clean from all the dust and cement. If we weren’t working on the house we were rushing into Kalamata trying to find fittings and the necessary furniture. The list of things we needed seemed endless, but with a little help from a friend we finally found all the essential items just in the nick of time. Now we plan taking our time to choose the remaining bits and pieces needed over the coming months.

Lainies granddaughter Rhiana, her son Simon and his girlfriend Jak were coming to see us and stay with us just two weeks after we moved in. For the first few days we had no electricity, but we did have water. The solar panels did not arrive for a few days, so it was cold showers every day. When the solar panel did arrive the plumber took another 4 days to connect them, it then took a few hours for us to realise that the water was not actually getting hot. On the day before the family was due we finally got hot water and some internal doors were fitted, at least the ‘crucial’ ones for the bathroom and a bedroom. The beds we ordered did not turn up in time, but thankfully the sofas did two days before. At least our decision to have sofa beds turned out to be a good one. There were many other difficulties leading up to their visit but most are now forgotten thank goodness!

The week they were here we just relaxed and simply enjoyed having them; it was good to see them and good for us to have the break. We spent most days relaxing on Kalogria beach and Rhiana enjoying hours swimming and floating around on the calm water on her lilo. It also gave us a chance to eat out and sample a few more of the local tavernas, which we enjoyed. Sadly the week went very quickly, Lainie was dreading them leaving and before we knew it we were back at the airport saying our goodbyes. Yes, just as expected, there were floods of tears, but with the promise of more visits to come she almost managed a smile.

We have to mention briefly, as it very sad, that unfortunately we were unable to find anyone willing to take Sebastian and therefore the decision was taken to have him put to sleep. At least he is no longer suffering.

High Seas

2004-05-07T07:35:00.000+03:00

At the time of writing we still have Seb and a member of KAWS has been in touch and is doing his best to find someone who will adopt him. Both English and German members have been emailed but so far no luck, now all we can do is wait and hope.

Without experiencing any storms or high winds on Wednesday the sea suddenly became incredibly rough. We were working at the house, still painting, and could hear the roar from the waves breaking along the seafront between Agios Nikolaos and Pantazi beach. When we finished painting we drove down to watch the sea, intending to drive back to our apartment through the village, but when we reached Pantazi the height of the waves amazed us. Around the beach area the waves seemed to come from both sides causing them to meet in the middle and produce huge breakers, which roared up the beach and across the coastal road. As the waves receded they left behind large rocks and sand which meant there was devastation all the way along the road into Agios Nikolaos. So much so that after about 100 metres we decided it was best to turn round and make our way back inland.

Everyone we have talked to has said that even the older residents can’t remember a sea causing as much damage as this. As well as local damage we were told that in Kalamata two boats were sunk in the harbour, and driving through two days later we noticed that a section of the harbour wall had been swept away.

The bathroom has been fitted downstairs. We have been to the DEH and OTE offices, the electricity company and the telephone company in Kalamata, so we feel we are on the homeward stretch. I am finding the painting increasingly more frustrating, with contractors in and out we are going over the same work again and again, and I think maybe I am losing the will to live.

We have finally made a decision on some furniture and have ordered the settees. My son is due with his girlfriend and daughter early June so the pressure is on us to find furniture we like, especially beds. We were lucky that Atlantic were able to find us the table and chairs we wanted so if all else fails we can improvise for awhile.

Another needy animal

2004-04-29T07:35:00.000+02:00

The closer we get to the house being completed, the busier we are and it becomes a race against time. Marble is now laid throughout the house, on windowsills and doorsteps and Ashley and I have filled, rubbed, primed, aqua sealed and started to paint the lower floor walls.

We have been back and forth to Kalamata many times and have chosen the style and colour for the electrical sockets and switches and the light fittings for almost the whole of the house. One particular day whilst there we collected the toilet, sink, shower with all fittings for downstairs and loaded the lot into the back of our Terios. Just room left for a few groceries!

Change of plan, in the car park of the supermarket we bumped into a couple of friends and got talking. They mentioned they were looking for a table and chairs for their terrace and we had seen a very good, reasonable set in Atlantic, one of the big supermarkets here. We had already recommended a couple of other friends but hadn’t made up our minds yet to get one for ourselves. As they weren’t sure where Atlantic was we all went together and low and behold they had sold out. All they had was one table that was reserved; awaiting delivery, for some other people we had recommend. The staff are brilliant and very helpful they let our friends have the reserved one, which they said they would replace and also try and get us a table and six chairs from another branch. Their car was already almost full and they only just managed to get the table in. Problem, there was only room for the driver! So one of our friends’ had to travel squashed in the back of our car with the bathroom fittings, holding onto our toilet and hoping not to be caught short.

Before the season started we had promised ourselves a trip to Monemvasia, on the east side of the Peloponnese. From Stoupa we drove down to Gythio from where the road is excellent to Monemvasia, the journey of about 150km took us only two and a half hours.

Monemvasia is a small, walled town set at the foot of a 300m high rock which projects out into the sea. At one time it was a stronghold but became deserted when the inhabitants moved to the new village on the mainland. In recent years people have moved back to the old town and it has now been developed into a small tourist centre. There are many very attractive small hotels, plenty of places to eat and small tourist shops along the narrow cobbled streets. Malmsey wine was originally produced here and exported in large quantities. The remains of the old wall run round the lower part and if you can manage the steep climb to the summit you will see the remains of the fortress and enjoy the stunning views.

Some of you may remember Bob the dog, now renamed Seb (Sebastian). He is the dog with the limp we mentioned on the website around February time. A few days ago he deposited himself on our doorstep and was absolutely covered in tics, Ashley started to pull them off with pliers then realised there were far too many. We got him some ‘Spot On’ at the pharmacy, which worked wonders, and I am sure he felt much better for it. We could no longer ignore his problem and see him suffer so arranged through KAWS to visit a vet in Kalamata to get him checked over. We thought Seb has probably never been in a car and decided to take him to our house a few times before making the long journey to the vet to try and get him used to the car. This journey to our house is no more than seven minutes and he was sick at least once, sometimes more on each journey.

The night before we were due to take him to Kalamata we starved him, a precautionary step to help with the travel sickness, and set off with forty minutes to spare. Poor thing was ill seven times and we only just arrived in time.

The vet was extremely good with him, he took some blood and ran tests immediately. He told us that Seb was suffering from an illness transmitted by sand flies. Apparently this is a big problem for dogs and the vet told us that 70% of dogs in Greece are infected, in the future it will become 100%. Many dogs are just carriers and don’t develop the symptoms, never the less all dogs should be tested twice a year. The disease is not infectious to humans or other dogs.

We had intended, once his paw was better, to ask the KAWS to find him a loving home, as we are not in a position to accept responsibility for a dog at the moment, although a better, more loving dog would be hard to find and we are very fond of him. It seems now there is little hope, as he requires medication every day for a year, and then more tests. If after the first year the tests show he is responding, he then has to take medication for one week, every month, for the rest of his life.

We have taken some photographs of Sebastian which we have emailed to a member of KAWS which will be published in an issue of their magazine. We can only hope someone will adopt him, if not we’re not sure what will happen to him.

Almost Tourist Season

2004-04-19T07:34:00.000+02:00

At our house, the roof has been completed for some time now and work is once again surging ahead. The lower floor is all but finished with the tiling completed and the marble laid for the windowsills. This now means that the exact measurements can be taken for the windows and doors and the aluminium units prepared for delivery.
The men are working on the front verandas at the moment; these together with the stairs to the garden will be the last external stonework to be done on the house. After that the rest of the work is inside except for the finishing touches such as cleaning the outside, stones and porrie (corner stones). Vagelis is a bit of a stickler for having things aesthetically right.

We had decided right from the start that we would paint the ground floor ourselves to try and save a bit on costs. We ventured back to our friendly local builders merchants, as we thought we owed him some trade after the saga with the wood stain, and stocked up on primer, rollers, sandpaper etc. No one told us the ceiling and walls had to be rubbed down and primed before they could be painted and we have already spent three very long tiring days rubbing with sandpaper trying to achieve a professional finish.

Many Greeks returned to the area for the Easter holidays and many of the tavernas opened giving everywhere a good feel. On the Friday of Easter weekend we walked down to the church late in the evening as Mass was finishing. Everyone held candles and after the Mass formed a procession through the village and back to the church where they were blessed and given a flower from the epitaph. Since Easter we have seen many tourists in the area and the place has come to life. Work is being done on tavernas and shops and the whole area has been tidied in readiness for the main tourist season. The holiday reps have also returned this week and are getting ready for their first tourists to fly into Kalamata in May.

On the 17th April we saw a helicopter carrying a large ‘bucket’, which it had filled from the sea. There was obviously a fire somewhere as about half an hour later two seaplanes made several journeys down to the sea to fill up. A bad omen perhaps as the fire hazard is considered to start from May. At that time a fire crew is stationed at a viewpoint on the Kalamata road from which they can see for miles over Kardamyli, Stoupa, Agios Nikolaos and right down to Trachila. A friend has since told us that what we saw may have been a practice run as they had one last year at about the same time.

For anyone not bored hearing about our two cats, they have both had their stitches out and have recovered from their operations and enjoying their freedom once more.

All cats at the moment

2004-03-31T07:34:00.000+02:00

After many telephone calls back and forth we eventually were given the name of a vet who was prepared to sterilise our cats at a reasonable rate. So yesterday in we went to Kalamata, two cats safely in the cat carrier, howling, first time in a carrier, first time in a car. Our appointment was at ten o’clock, and after a phone call from the vet to say they were ‘done’; we collected them at four fifteen. The vet gave us two lots of antibiotics, we think, and two of those nasty plastic ‘cones’ to stop them from licking the wound. We left with two very sorrowful and frightened little pussies and 150 euros worse off. Tara cried all the way back to Stoupa, a journey of about forty minutes and was definitely glad to be home, that is until we tried to put their ‘cones’ on. Poor little things not only were they disorientated because of the anaesthetic but now they had the ‘cones’ to contend with. They howled, walked backwards, bumped into everything and were thoroughly miserable. I found this all very upsetting. Each time we took the ‘cones’ off they would try and get to the wound so we had no choice after sitting cuddling them for hours but to put the ‘cones’ back on and go to bed. Not to sleep I might add, we spent half the night listening to them dragging their ‘cones’ up and down the doors and walls and making pathetic yowling noises. Anyway this morning they looked much brighter. The vet had no cat collars to hold the ‘cones’ in place so this morning, leaving Ashley pussy sitting, I went off in search of some. Having exhausted my search in Stoupa I set off for Agios Nikolaos to see if I could get them there, I actually found them in the builders merchants.

Just sidetracking here for a moment; not difficult for me as my friends know only too well. A few days ago we went into this particular builders merchants, armed with a piece of wood, as we wanted to try various colours of stain for our wood ceilings upstairs. The owner is a very nice man and without hesitation took five cans of different coloured stain from the shelf, opened them and painted a section of our wood with each colour. Unfortunately whilst trying to replace one of the lids he must have applied just a bit too much pressure. The lid vanished inside the tin and the varnish went everywhere, all over the bench and it contents, all over his hands and down his trousers. He was actually on his mobile at the time and carried on talking as if nothing had happened. When he finished the call, far from being upset, he simply mentioned this had never happened before. Ashley and I felt responsible said a few quick appropriate words and left hastily. Still, I expect the response would be the same in the UK.

Back to the cats. It was becoming nigh on impossible hanging onto both cats every time we wanted to open a door or window. I thought, in my infinite wisdom, it would be a good idea to make leads for them; this was supposed to make it easier for us. WRONG. It turned out to be one of my ‘not so good ideas’. Have you ever seen two frantic cats fighting for their freedom as if their lives depended on it, trying to make their escape over the veranda never to be seen again? I’ll leave it there but will add that it is getting better, both for them and us. Anyone who saw the Jasper Carrot sketch about the cat will have some idea what I’m talking about.

Just another day

2004-03-27T07:32:00.000+02:00

Early this morning, about 6am, Dolly, one of our cats, decided to check everything was in the right place in our apartment, problem was she forgot to take off her size 12 boots. I decided what she really wanted to do was take an early morning walk and gently sent her outside onto the veranda. Back to bed, great, another two hours of sleep ahead of me.

About twenty minutes later my hopes began to fade. Have you ever heard large stones or rubble being tipped from a lorry? If so, you have some idea what I’m talking about. I was puzzled and wide-awake, no chance of going back to sleep, I got up and went onto the veranda to see what was going on. As I looked over Stoupa in the pre-dawn light it only took me a few seconds to realise what the noise was. Just down the road some chickens are kept in a fenced area and their shed has a wonderful corrugated tin roof. A week ago about 5 or 6 goats arrived and were put in with the chickens and these clever little goats had obviously decided it was time they learnt to tap dance and the best place to do this? You guessed it, the corrugated tin roof.

After a whole week of very pleasant weather, today seemed a little disappointing. The sun disappeared behind a haze and there it remained, although it still felt warm. The sea was quite rough and as the waves broke on the seashore they threw up lots of spray. At first we thought the spray was the cause of the haze but as the day went on it became heavier and heavier. Then a little sprinkle of rain revealed the real cause, it was a present from North Africa, the remains of a sandstorm. As the rain dried everywhere was coated with a fine red dust, including our car.

We went to Olympia on Thursday, to the ancient Olympic stadium to watch the lighting of the Olympic flame. It was Independence Day and a public holiday so we expected the worst but the roads were clear. It took only about three and a quarter hours and that was after following a Greek bus driver who, we thought wrongly as it turned out, should know the way. But obviously like us it was his first trip and he took a wrong turn and had to ask for directions. Anyway it was a brilliant day, very exciting, not much chance of us witnessing this historic event again and we were really looking forward to it. The place was buzzing, press and TV cameras everywhere, the cafes were full and all the shops were open, the atmosphere was great. A cameraman stuck a microphone in Ashley’s face and asked “And where have you come from?” “From here” says Ashley “I live here in Greece” the reporters face showed it all, I bet he thought clever dick. I hope it didn’t go out live!

They tried to make the ceremony atmospheric by asking for quiet, but trying to keep a Greek crowd quiet is nigh on impossible. Nevertheless it was good to have experienced the event and we were glad we went. There are some pictures in the gallery.

Ancient Greece

2004-03-23T07:31:00.000+02:00

Setting off early, after calling for our friends, we headed for Mystras to explore the ruins of the medieval town. The weather has been absolutely perfect for the last week and we did wonder whether or not it would break today, but we were lucky. Just throw in a bit of history here: Guillaume II de Villehardouin built the castle of Mystras in 1249 high on a hill. Below the Frankish castle lie the old upper and lower town.

The sun shone on us as we walked among the ruins, exploring the monastery and churches, up and down many steps, taking in the history.

After the liberation of Greece in 1834 the population of Mystras moved to the newly formed town of Sparta. We left the “City of Ruins” at 3pm, when the site closed, and headed for Sparta. The city of Sparta is just 7 kilometres from Mystras and has a very spacious feel to it with wide streets and palms planted in the centre. The thing that was most noticeable for me was the fact that everywhere was so clean. To save backtracking we decided to do a round trip and drive down to Gythio. We broke the journey at Areopolis where we stretched our legs and explored the market town. From there it was a relatively short journey from the south of the Mani to home where we arrived tired but happy after our lovely day.

Popular Cats

2004-03-16T07:30:00.001+02:00

The two cats have become extremely popular and have had a lot of interest FROM THE LOCAL TOMS. We have spent many nights shooing away the wailing tomcats all of them waiting for a turn to woo our innocent little girls. Well we don’t think they are quiet as innocent as they were. We inquired at a vet in Kalamata how much it would be to have them spayed and were told it would be 100 euros each, we thought this was outrageous. Wouldn’t you think with the cat population, as it is here the charge would be a lower so as to encourage people to have their pets neutered? However, we were walking the other day when we met a lady with a donkey. She told us the donkey had very over grown front hooves and she had contacted The Kalamata Animal Welfare Society known as KAWS, who were able to help. They arranged for someone to come and cut back the poor little donkeys’ feet. They also found it a new home, however the donkey has now wandered off. Anyway the point is she thought they might be able to help us. We got in touch and have spoken to a very nice English gentleman who is doing his best to find us a vet who will perform the operations for a lower price. We hope he hurries or he might have to help find homes for lots of kittens.

The roof has finally been started, we were so excited, the roof is such a big step and totally changes everything; the building will now become a house. Wednesday, last week the roofers came and made the timber construction. Thursday they were nowhere to be seen. We have been told they will be back next week to finish it. The plasterers are still off and on site. When we were first told the plasterers were coming to plaster the house we thought great, a few days and it will be finished. No chance! Don’t forget this is not England and what we didn’t realise was that plastering isn’t the same out here and takes a lot longer. Now, several weeks on and they are still off and on site. Same with the plumbers they come do a bit and then just when you think things are running smoothly they disappear. Contractors may show up maybe they wont. Other jobs, the weather, holidays are some of the reasons not everything goes to plan. Well, We have decided we must be Greek! As we seem un-fazed by it all and take it in our stride. It will all come together in the end and we are sure we will be very happy with the result.

Earlier last week we had a lovely walk from Agios Nikolaos up to Pigi. Nearly this entire walk was on a kaldrimi, the steps of which were carpeted with wild flowers. We went on a little higher to Platsa, where we sat and had some lunch, then walked back through Kotroni and finally Agios Dimitris. The views were quite stunning looking down across to Agios Nikolaos and we took the opportunity of taking a few pictures of our house from high up.

This is a very good time to visit the area! Spring is very beautiful and as you walk the number of different birds you see makes it even more so. One bird in particular was extremely striking. It sat about ten or so metres in front of us for some time and at first we thought it might be a woodpecker because of its size. When we looked through the binoculars and saw it in more detail it obviously wasn’t. It stood about seven inches high, was a pinkie beige colour with black lines on its head and on the back of its wings and a long, slender beak about two inches in length.

Ashley’s toes were hurting by the time we got back and my calf muscle were a bit tight we suspect it was from all the steps up as it was quite steep in places.

Little Earthquakes (Sorry Tori)

2004-03-06T07:29:00.000+02:00

Once again we have driven to Kalamata to pick up two friends who were here for a week to see how their house was coming along and to go over some points with their builder. They found the apartment they were staying in so cold that we lit our fire and they came to our apartment every night to keep warm. Before they came they emailed to ask if we wanted anything bringing from the UK. We mentioned a couple of bits, although you can get most things here if you look hard enough, and I jokingly added, “don’t forget to bring plenty of chocolate biscuits”. Anyway, to our amusement, they turned up with a carrier bag full, but by the time they left, Wednesday, they had managed to eat more than their fair share. The first evening they arrived at our apartment we could not believe how cold they looked decked out in coat, scarf and gloves. The temperatures here are still usually in the 60’s, except at night when it can drop dramatically.

On Monday the first of March we were awoken, between about 3am and 4am, by a rumbling followed by the room shaking for a few seconds. It was an earthquake! The epicentre was around Kalamata and our friends there told us it was short but very strong, measuring about 5.4. After the initial shake many people in Kalamata left their homes and headed for safety in the main square. There were no casualties except for one man; he panicked, jumped from his balcony and broke his legs. The next day they had an after shock, which apparently is when most damage is caused, but this time all was well. Just a few cracked buildings and a balcony fell on a car. Surprisingly enough the last big earthquake in the eighties also followed a very cold spell when they had snow.

Today, Saturday, while we were walking back from the house along the coastal path I almost stood on a snake. Luckily I had taken my sunglasses off and was looking down. I saw what looked at first like a length of rope across the path. We took a step backwards and while we were looking and discussing it the snake slithered away. It was about a meter long and was a pinky, red colour. Of course now we will have to be more careful with spring upon us as the snakes will be coming out of hibernation.

House update. We now have stairs to the bedrooms, the electrician has finished the entire first fix and the plasterers are all but finished. The plumbers are now on site, the roofers were due last week but obviously they had other roofs to finish before they could start ours, lets hope they come next week. And we have chosen the front door, which is a traditional Greek design.

Radio, television (not that we have one), and papers are dominated by the election. The place is buzzing and the bars are full. More bars and restaurants are open than we have seen in over four months. This is because tomorrow, Sunday, is voting day for the elections. Greek people registered to vote in this area have to return from their winter homes to the place of registration in order to vote. Basically it’s the same as in the UK, you can only vote where you are registered. The difference in Greece is that most people seem to have two or three homes and often are registered in their village but live in a city.

Clean Monday

2004-02-22T07:28:00.000+02:00

Yet another week has flown by, does time really pass this quickly or just as one gets older?

We were in Agios Nikolaos standing around talking to some friends and a small Albanian boy came along on his bike. He knows our friends, his name is Remmy and he is 10 years old, we had seen him many times before. He is very proud of his bike, which he got for Christmas and is as least three sizes too big. I remembered I had my phrase book in our bag and I showed him a picture of a bike and a car with the parts identified in both Greek and English. We had several minutes discussing the various parts, him telling me in Greek me telling him the English. He was very interested and asked if he could have the book. I told him I needed the book but Ashley would scan it into the computer and print out the two pages for him. That night Ashley spent nearly three hours and the next day we drove into Agios Nikolaos to find Remmy. As we pulled up we could see Remmy walking towards us waving happily. I gave him the print out for which he thanked us and he folded it very carefully and put it safely in his pocket. While we were with Remmy some friends joined us, they had walked down from the nearby village where they live. We offered them a lift back and we spent an enjoyable afternoon chatting and admiring their beautiful village home.

The cement has now been pumped into the iron for the roof support, which means in a few days the roof can be started. The electrician has been back and only the top floor is left to be finished and we now have stairs that lead up to the bedrooms. The plasterers have started putting the first coat on the inside of the house this is dark grey and looks like cement which makes everything look dull; they should finish it Tuesday as Monday is a Greek holiday, Clean Monday!

Before Lent, here in Greece, it’s carnival time for three weeks when children dress up in fancy dress and there are parties and dancing. The Monday following the last Sunday of the carnival is Clean Monday, the first day of Lent. Clean Monday is so called as in olden times it was the day when housewives cleaned their kitchen utensils to rid them of any trace of carnival food. Traditionally at this time families and friends go to the mountains and seaside resorts and the children fly kites.

On holiday Monday we had to go into Kalamata unexpectedly. We received a text message from a friend who wanted us to pick her up in Kalamata, as she had been in the UK for two weeks, and had just returned. It was a beautiful day and we went in as soon as we were ready. We walked along the sea front watching families enjoying themselves flying their kites, or trying to is more like it. There was quite a swell on the sea and several people were caught out by the waves while they were concentrating on their kite flying, and got a little wet around the ankles.

Snow

2004-02-16T07:27:00.000+02:00

How quickly the weather changes here. We had about three days last week when it would have been possible to sunbathe on the beach, in fact some friends of ours did. The next day when it rained continuously, then on the next we had snow. Many of the plants here have been lost to the frost as we had two or three very cold nights. Apparently the last time this part of Greece experienced such low temperatures was about thirty-two years ago.

The house is making good progress with all outside walls built to roof level. This morning I walked alone along the coastal path to Ag. Nik. as Ashley was feeling a bit under the weather. The men were fixing the iron around the inside of the uppermost stonework this will be filled with cement and support the roof. Upstairs the dividing walls are almost complete, this makes the space look totally different. Now is the time to think about where would be best for the bed and the wardrobes. I spent some time standing in the rooms trying to decide but I couldn’t. There is so much to think about, we keep thinking we have the switches and plug points right, then we remember something else. Where will the outside light be switched from? Where are the radiators going? Probably over the plug points! There are bound to be mistakes.

Renewed Interest

2004-02-07T07:26:00.000+02:00

Wow! What happened? Something we certainly never intended, it appears we have picked up a new set of followers. This is due to the web site being published, thanks to a dear friend, on a very popular chat board. As a result we have received many positive emails encouraging us to keep the diary going. The thing is now, how much of lives do we share, what attention to detail do we include?

Should we tell of our frequent walks up the Neochori road where our little four-legged friend waits patiently for us, and probably every other person who passes, to join us on our jaunts? ‘Bob’, we named him after our friend Bob who is also mad keen on walking, is a young, brown, crossbred dog. (We will take a photo of him for the gallery). He has a problem with one of his front paws and since we have known him has always limped. Perhaps I’ll mention the time when I was waving frantically at a very persistent large fly who was finding my hair very attractive, which turned out to be a bee and I got a nasty sting. Or maybe even the nasty shock I got this morning when I put on a pair of shorts that I hadn’t worn for three months and found they were far too tight to wear. I wouldn’t have minded so much but previously this particular pair had been much too big. I told Ashley that it couldn’t possibly be the cake and chocolate I have everyday, or the olive oil that we consume by the gallon (sorry, litre). I think I must be swelling in the heat!

Anyway on we go. If it gets too mundane please let us know.

The weather has been excellent and wanting to take advantage of the good weather
‘o kalos kairos’ we have been out walking and site seeing. The Greeks say these are the Halcyon Days when the birds mate and lay their eggs. These beautifully warm days usually come in January but this year a bit later. Today the 7th February the temperature has been in the 70’s, as were the previous two days, but alas, we have been told that tomorrow it will change.

One day we walked to Agios Dimitrios and further towards Trachila. At Agios Dimitrios we spent some time on the stony beach taking photos of the sea washing over the pebbles. Not a soul around, the sun was shinning we sat and had our lunch on a make shift bench beside the road to Trachila, gazing out over the sea, enjoying the solitude.

Another day we took the car (photo now in the gallery by popular request) and drove out to explore the area above Kardymili. We had explored this area previously with friends, but decided we would like another look at the ruins of the ‘Yellow Tower’ (photo in gallery) and try to complete the loop to return to Stoupa via Saidona. This was impossible on our previous visit, as the rains had washed part of the road away.

The drive took us through Prastio, past Lakos and Exochori, eventually arriving at the ‘Yellow Tower’. Unfortunately we have been unable to find any information on the Tower. A truck made its way round the gorge to Saidona and we decided the road must now be passable. It was a bit rough and you could see where the landslides had been. We managed to complete the loop, although I was a little nervous. Once there, we strolled around Saidona in the sunshine taking in the beautiful views and nodding our Kalimeras’ to all we met.

Yet another day we drove south to Gythio with friends, having only visited Limeni on the west coast previously we were keen to see the east coast. We travelled through Langada and Itilo to Limeni where we stopped for a short time. Limeni is quite a popular spot in the summer months because of its large beautiful bay where the sea shelves very gently. As the shallow water gets very warm this makes it ideal for swimming, other than this there isn’t much else there.

Continuing south we drove through Areopolis, a small town on this coastline and well worth another trip to explore at a later date. Here we turned inland for Kotronas, which is on the eastern coast of the peninsular. At Kotronas we strolled up and down the beautiful sandy beach and spent some time in the old church with frescos dating back to1892. After lunch we journeyed on, northbound now, through Skoutari and finally to our destination of Gythio, the doorway to the Inner Mani. The landscape had been noticeably different as we journeyed south, less olive trees and the mountains more barren. Gythio, with its’ very attractive, tall, three-story pastel coloured houses along the long coast road, at first glance looked rather Venetian. From here at the port you can catch the ferry to places like Crete, Rhodes and the Island of Kythera.

We explored the town and found the ancient Roman theatre that is situated of all places next to the army barracks. Needless to say, we didn’t dare take any pictures.

Before we started our journey home we found a small café for coffee and cake. Yet another example of the Greek hospitality, for the cake they said, “ no charge” as it was another customer’s Name Day. Now I’ll attempt to explain Name Days, Greek names usually coincide with those of saints. Every Saint has at least one Saints Day a year and on that day if your name is the same as the Saint you celebrate in a similar way to how birthdays are celebrated in the UK. The difference is here in Greece Name Days are more important than birthdays. Your friends buy you gifts, you buy cakes for them and everyone celebrates. I’ll just point out here my Name Day is 21st May.

We had a lovely chat with a Greek gentleman who enquired if we were American. He spoke perfect English, which he said he had learnt in just one year in New York. He told us he had been in the navy and had no choice but to learn quickly as the language was needed for his work. Definitely no chance of us learning Greek in just one year!

A village beyond

2004-01-19T07:26:00.000+02:00

Sunday afternoon and the weather was beautiful again. We took a drive south along the coast to a village called Trachila. There is only one road in and out of this place; it’s a dead end! Trachila is a small fishing village with a harbour that seems bigger than the local Agios Nikolaos.

The road from Agios Nikolaos to Trachila is less than 5 miles and runs by the sea with some magnificent cliffs inland. There are several caves in the cliffs that can be seen from the road, some of which have brickwork at the front, as the lower caves are often used as pens for livestock. One cave about a third of the way up even has a marble lintel above the opening, story has it this cave was the home of a hermitic monk who had food and drink lowered down to him on a rope.

We walked around the village then on through to the cove that some people call the ‘Blue Lagoon’. The rock face that forms one side is quite spectacular and as you clamber down the side of it you realise that the path high above actually overhangs the rocks below. Years of erosion have cut back into the rocks for many meters underneath the path. When we climbed and walked back along the path, we walked a little further from the edge than when we went down!

Walking back into the village we realised that it seemed deserted, all the houses had their shutters closed. Later we learned that at this time of year only about 5 houses are occupied, many people returning to Kalamata or Athens for the winter. Near the harbour there were so many cats sitting either side of the road, some on window ledges, doorsteps, boats and on the harbour wall. We counted at least 28 cats, and they all looked quite well fed. With the lack of people and this mass of cats we suddenly started to try to think of horror films that it reminded us of.

Behind the church an old lady who runs a caféneon greeted us. She called to us and we went to get a coffee. She was sitting shelling walnuts at a table outside and immediately gave each of us a handful. We sat and had a drink with this lovely old lady and learned that she was now 70 years old and ran the caféneon by herself.

It was evening when we left, and the drive back from Trachila was made even more enjoyable by another beautiful, colourful sunset.

We are still here

2004-01-18T07:25:00.000+02:00

The concrete columns are now in place for the top floor of the house and the ground floor now has the inside walls erected. We have an entrance to the front door, which is not yet there, with steps leading up. The electrician has been and the lines for the electric are now in place downstairs. Plasterers here are like gold dust, and with all the building that is going on in the area they can afford to call the shots. Vaggelis plan is to move us into downstairs while the rest of the house is being finished. The plasterer however, is not keen to came and do one floor and wants to wait until the house is finished. This could cause a problem; even if he agrees we might have to wait about six weeks depending on how quickly we fix a date.

We have had the kitchen designed, chosen the units we like and are extremely pleased. Finally we made a decision on the central heating; this was a difficult as I had set my heart on under floor heating. This would have been an ideal opportunity for us, while the house was being built, to have this type of heating installed. However, after much advice from various sources, we have decided to go for oil fired heating using radiators. The under floor heating is apparently very good but would appear to be more appropriate for colder climates as it is best left running continuously on very a low setting as it take several hours to heat up.

We have visited the factory where the aluminium windows and doors are made and have tried to decide on the ‘right’ units. We have looked at many houses in the area with double-glazing units trying to see which is the best colour, design and type of shutters for our house. It is very important where to position the unit in the window-opening, front, middle or back, as this can affect so many things. Not being able to reach the shutters, or when the window is open, the frame taking up to much room inside the house and so on. This is particularly difficult in a stone house. With more conventional types of buildings the patio doors and mosquito nets can slide into the walls and there is no problem with space.

An accountant is now preparing our tax return for us. If you think the UK tax return is difficult the Greek version makes it look like childs’ play, not just because of the language difficulty, even the Greeks have great trouble. Here in Greece if you buy a car/house or have a house built you have to prove where you obtained the money that was used to buy them. At any time in the future if you want to sell your house and can not show the source of the payment you will be taxed on the assumption that it was undeclared income. Therefore, for each foreign transfer made to a Greek bank a record is kept in the form a ‘pink slip’ with the relevant information on it. It is important that you ask for this to give to your accountant as evidence that the money was brought legally into the country.

Mountain Rescue

2003-12-27T07:24:00.000+02:00

Having eaten so much rich food over Christmas we decided that a good walk this morning would help to blow away any cobwebs. We set off through Lefktro up to the shepherd’s hut that’s set on a ridge high above Stoupa. Once we reached this we decided to extend our walk and head for Neochori, before returning home.

The morning was absolutely perfect for walking, warm sun and little breeze. Birds were everywhere in the olive groves and after the rains of the previous days it felt nice and fresh. We reached a path that would lead us down to Neochori then noticed one that led straight on, this we took thinking it was another way to Neochori which might be a better, longer walk. Little did we know how long.

Following the path for about half an hour through more olive groves gradually heading a little more inland and upwards, the path then seemed to turn and climb quiet steeply. A steep section of path led us to a gate that was chained and padlocked. On either side of the gate was barbed wire fencing and through the trees we could just make out a large house further up the track. It's unusual to find any gates or fences on these tracks so we decided it was probably better not to continue and retraced our steps.

On the previous bend in the road we could see across the hillside and it looked as if there was a track some way off that headed downwards. Would this be wise? Ahead of us the hillside was scattered with huge boulders and shrubs, some of which are covered in large thorns and are very vicious if you happen to brush against them. Despite this we decided to push our luck and try to get to the track rather than retrace our steps once again. Having scrambled slowly across the hillside we saw that there was a ravine between us and the track we hoped to reach. Our options were again to backtrack or now head uphill and try to get around the ravine.

Not wanting to be beaten we headed uphill. Not a wise choice! There were no tracks or paths anywhere and had this not been winter the possibility of snakes in the undergrowth would have made this a no go area.

After about an hour of climbing rocks and the occasional wall we finally reached the top of the ravine. Tired by now, we found ourselves amongst olive trees again, the land was divided into small terraces with high stonewalls. Seeing a track that led between these we followed it still further upwards. Finally it turned into one of the narrow tracks that have stone walls about 3-4 feet apart and we headed in the direction we originally intended. What a relief! Another 15 minutes and the track joined a dirt road, hopefully now we would be able to get to where we wanted.

As we walked along this road we could see Stoupa way below us in the distance and we realised just how far we had come. A track turned off to the right heading back towards the coast so we started down again, but after about 5 minutes it turned into a field and abruptly stopped. The terrain in front looked similar to that we had climbed earlier, so wearily, we again retraced our steps back up the hill. Our only option was to continue along the path heading still further up the mountain.

This track finally lead us into the village of Kastania, here we seriously considered texting our friends to come and pick us up but decided we were made of stronger stuff. We were about 8km by road from Stoupa and it had so far taken us about four hours. Rather than chance our luck, of which we appeared to have none, we decided not to risk a short cut but stick to the main road and headed straight for Pirgos, onto Neochori and back to Stoupa. Round trip of over five hours and well over 16km.

Tired, hungry, sore feet and probably none the wiser.

Christmas

2003-12-26T07:24:00.000+02:00

Christmas morning arrived with better weather the sun was shining it felt warm again so we decided that we would have a walk to Agios Nikolaos as we had plenty of time before Christmas dinner which was at 5pm at a friends’ house. We were only a few minutes into our walk when our builder, Vaggelis, drove along the road and stopped to speak. He invited us to go for a coffee. It was Christmas morning, where would be open?

We jumped in his car and he turned round and drove back into Stoupa. Along the sea front we stopped at one of the bars and were surprised to find several people sitting there. Yes, they were open and Vaggelis assured us that by about 2pm it would be packed with people, mostly the local Greeks. He was right, we sat in the sun enjoying our coffee and chatting, a Christmas morning unlike any other.

Christmas evening we enjoyed a traditional English Christmas dinner with four friends. A good time was had by all.

Christmas Eve

2003-12-24T07:23:00.000+02:00

The last few days the weather has turned to rain again. For two nights and three days we have had continuous rain that has kept us indoors most of the time, so not a lot to write about.

On Monday we drove into Kalamata to get some shopping and look to floor tiles. Kalamata has a few Christmas decorations and more people seem to be about shopping, but nothing like the frenzy that we remember from England. It’s far more relaxed and allows you to enjoy the sights and sounds.

We now have found another excellent place to eat cheaply in Kalamata if you just want a snack. Anyone who has been to Greece will have come across the ‘gyro’, Greek fast food at its best. It’s a few slices of grilled pork, onion, tomato, tzatziki and chips wrapped in thick, warm pitta bread, delicious. At this particular cafe these cost just one euro each, that’s about 70 pence, BARGAIN!!

As for Christmas Day, well we’ve been invited for dinner with some friends. Yes, we’ll be eating roast turkey, a traditional English Christmas dinner, right down to Christmas pudding and cake. There were suggestions that some people may go for a swim in the sea, but the weather is now too cool for all but the eccentric few.

We wish all our friends, family, and anyone else following our diary a Very Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year.

All systems go

2003-12-17T07:22:00.000+02:00

After about two weeks with no progress on the house everything is now going great guns again. In the last few days we have our waste tank in place, the iron has been laid and the cement pumped for the second floor; and the bricks are on site for the inside walls, which will be built while the concrete is allowed to dry.

Ashley noticed snow on a few of the mountain peaks that we can see behind Stoupa this morning. The weather today has turned very cold, as the wind is a north, north, easterly, although it is nice and bright. This afternoon we saw a few snow flakes falling, we have been told this weather is unusual for this area of Greece.

It’s decision time for us; the electrician has been booked for the 5th January so we have to decide where we want the light switches and the plug points. We also need to decide on air conditioning, as each unit needs to have an electrical point near by and an umbilical to an outside compressor unit. Even though we are not sure whether we will have air conditioning it is still best to have vents and the plug points put in place before the walls are plastered. That way if we decide at a later date to have units fitted it won’t be a problem.

On Monday we were in Kalamata to visit the bank, the vet and to do some other shopping. If you live in Greece you have to learn to be patient at times. In the bank a relatively straightforward transaction took over an hour. This is nothing to do with us being foreigners; it’s the way of life for Greek people every day. As we left the bank it started to rain and we headed for the vet to get some antibiotics for Dolly, as she still has a nasty rasping on her chest, plus some worming tablets for them both.

Having bought some tablets we crossed the road and found a restaurant frequented by many locals. We had an excellent lunch of roast chicken with vegetables, potatoes and fresh warm bread at a cost of only €7.00 for us both.

We chanced upon a tile shop and found some floor tiles that we like. The problem is now deciding on which floor level to have them laid. If we have them in the bedrooms chances are we won’t find any we prefer and wish we had them in the living area. If we have them laid in the living area we most definitely will see some we prefer. Such a dilemma! Unfortunately this is not the only one; we also need to make decisions on aluminium windows, shutters, mosquito nets, kitchen units, bathroom fittings and numerous other things.

With the rain now pouring down we headed towards a shop selling fitted kitchens and bedrooms that had been recommend to us. We were absolutely soaked through by the time we got there and unfortunately the owner who we needed to see was in England. However, we bumped into a very good friend who insisted that we return with him to his home, as we hadn’t seen them since last May. He and his wife dried us out and then insisted on feeding us again.

We asked their advice on how to prepare eating olives as we have heard of so many different ways. They brought out several jars they had prepared, some of which were this years and some from last year, with various flavourings to let us taste the difference. Anyone who has spoken to Lainie about olives will know that she can’t stand the taste of them. Surprise, surprise, she actually found that she liked some of them! My batch of olives I was looking forward to eating has suddenly halved in quantity.

Although we didn’t visit half of the places we intended, the chance meeting turned this very wet afternoon into a thoroughly enjoyable time.

The build is at a standstill

2003-12-13T07:22:00.000+02:00

It has been a pretty uneventful week with work on the house at a standstill. Everything is dictated by the weather which unfortunately has turned and we are experiencing the sort of weather that the UK gets only once every few years, when its causes mayhem. Winds so strong that trees are uprooted, tiles are lifted off roofs and garden fences are damaged. The wind roars around the house pulling at the shutters, windows and doors finding every crack, causing terrible draughts, which makes it feel very cold. However outside it remains quite mild, as the winds are not coming from the North, that’s if you dare to venture out. Unbelievably the worst damage these terrible winds appear to do here is break a few flowerpots, that is apart from the noise keeping you awake at night.

Lula the older cat has given up on us completely and we haven’t seen her for some time now. Dolly and Tara, as you have probably noticed from the recent pictures, have come on leaps and bounds and are delightful. They now look well-fed and loved pussycats and from their behaviour it is obvious they are feeling happier and healthier. We picked up some acorns while out walking recently which they absolutely love. They chase them round the apartment pushing them under anything they can find, cupboards, slippers, chairs and have great fun. It is their favourite game and they have acquired great dribbling skills. Quite often they have mad moments when they stalk each other and play fight, something they simply never had the energy for in the past, most of this playing and fighting, you might guess, takes place after we have gone to bed.

All our worldly goods arrive

2003-12-06T07:20:00.000+02:00

At the end of last week we had a couple of unsettled nights, on Sunday it rained continuously, but when we awoke on Monday once again the sun was shining.

We had arranged to meet with our engineer and builder at our house around lunchtime, to discuss the progress with our house. We wanted to make the most of the weather so took a packed lunch and decided to walk via Neochori. We passed right by a friend’s house, we hadn’t seen them since we were last here in May, so we stopped to say hello. We then walked from Neochori down towards Ag Nik. Part way down this track we came across a snake basking in the sun. Actually, he was only about 12 inches long!

Later in the week whilst on one of our jaunts we came across a tortoise busily munching away, he was about 10 inches long and had a damaged shell. We stopped to take a photo and I picked him up to place him for Ashley to get a good shot. He was clearly unhappy at being disturbed as he kept hissing at me.

Have a look in the picture gallery.

We arrived at our house just in time for our meeting. It went extremely well, everyone was pleased with the results and our engineer was very pleased with progress and the look of the house. Later we walked home along the coastal path between Ag Nik and Stoupa, the sun was still shinning so we decided to take some photographs to publish on our site to show you how we are missing the UK. Ashley set the camera to automatic, balanced it on a rock and ran like a lunatic to get in the picture.

Wednesday our belongings arrived, unbelievably right on time. They said 8am, which I said to Ashley would not happen. I was wrong, at 8am on the dot our mobile rang; it was the carriers to say they were in Stoupa and to ask directions. They worked extremely hard and off loaded everything in 30 minutes; they were excellent. No problems, all boxes accounted for, nothing appears to be broken, Ashley’s happy his computer’s here and I’m happy our bikes are here. We spent the rest of the day out cycling; its difficult here to go anywhere and not have to go up hills and cycling is much harder work than walking.

During the evenings Ashley sometimes works on the computer while listening to the radio, the stations of course are always in Greek. He found a station that played music from the early seventies, not pop, but album music that he enjoys. This was followed by another program on which the disc jockey had obviously come across Bob Harris somewhere on his travels. He was providing a very good Greek imitation of the beloved “Whispering Bob”.

More olives

2003-11-28T07:20:00.000+02:00

We are still busy picking olives! We spent Wednesday picking by ourselves, the day was disappointing, only just over one sack, but it was from five trees that had been damaged when the footings for the house were dug. The weather was absolutely beautiful, warm sunshine with a pleasant breeze. (It’s so hard to have to spend a day picking olives)! In the evening we heard that the seven sacks, we had sent to be pressed, had given us almost three large tins, we calculated this to be about 27 litres of oil.

Thursday, the weather has changed; we wake up to see rain coming towards us over the sea. By lunch time the rain has cleared and a little sun allows us to go for a walk to visit some friends.

Friday, although the rain has not entirely gone it’s fine for us to continue picking today with the help of some friends. We manage to pick seven trees and fill just three sacks. We take them, together with the one picked on Wednesday, to a different olive press near to Agios Nikolaos. Our olives, once weighed 178 kilos, are put through the press immediately so we stand and wait just inside the building. After a few minutes the owner motions us to follow him through the building to his workroom at the back, he pulls out some chairs at a table and invites us to sit and wait.

As we sit I look at the tins we have for the oil and realise that we have made a mistake with the amount of oil we received from the earlier batches. The smaller tin definitely holds 5 litres, the larger tin that we assumed held double must hold more. Maybe 15 litres, probably 20 litres, therefore our olive pressing on Wednesday must have given us at least 40 litres or maybe a bit more. We suddenly feel that we are achieving something!

The owner of the press now comes back to the room where we are sitting and invites us to have a glass of wine; very pleasant. A few minutes later he rummages in a fridge and takes out a plate with a lump of feta cheese on it, places it on the table and adds a generous helping of olive oil. From a large wooden box at the end of the table he finds a loaf of bread, slices it and invites us to share this simple meal. Perfect! Again he searches the fridge, finds a tomato which is washed, sliced and added to the plate together with more oil. More wine is poured and he tells us how when the olive crop is heavy he will work all day and night. By this time there are many other people in the building waiting for their olives to be pressed. There are young, old, husbands and wives, they have brought bread with them and they come and dip it in the oil, it’s quite a social event.

Finally our oil has been processed and he fills our tins. Another surprise, he has to find another tin for us as we have more oil than we expected. This time we have a small tin and two large tins, one of which isn’t quite full; he has taken 8% of our oil in payment and it has cost us just 2 euros for the extra tin.

The Test Drive

2003-11-25T07:19:00.000+02:00

Again we have been busy picking olives. Now we understand how to pick like the locals and not worry about all the leaves we have made some progress. We picked nine of our trees on Sunday with the help of our friends. The first five of these trees were reasonably heavily laden giving us four sacks. On Monday we only managed five trees by ourselves, giving a slightly disappointing one and a half sacks. We now have, including our friends, a total of seven sacks that will be pressed on Wednesday.

Today, Tuesday we went to Kalamata to test-drive a car. On the way we stopped at Kardamyli, as we now have the forms for customs relating to our personal effects that should arrive next week. The letter from the shipping agent asked us to take these forms to the police station to have our signature witnessed. We hoped that we would find the police officer in a good mood again!

What had gone wrong this morning? He was most unhelpful and wouldn’t even explain what we were required to fill in on the form, let alone witness our signature and sent us packing.

The test drive was quite an experience; Pano, took us out of town throwing the car first one way then the other. He threw the car round in a complete circle two or three times demonstrating the turning circle, then decided to do an emergency stop, a warning might have been nice. All the time speaking very loudly and enthusiastically in Greek whilst gesturing with his hands, of course ninety percent of this was totally incomprehensible to us, but that didn’t deter him! Not finished yet and I am already feeling queasy, Pano drives us to some wasteland which adjoins a small unused beach. Here he becomes world champion rally cross driver! We literally fly round and round the wasteland, in and out of the water, up and down the sand dunes, four-wheel drive off, now on, Ashley and I holding on for dear life. When we return to the dealership Panos’ helpful wife Paula laughs and apologises for not warning us. Pano had asked her to tell us the nature of the test drive but she got side tracked by a telephone call. We are impressed and decide to buy the car; it will be delivered 20 December.

When we had finished our business Paula offered to take us to offices in Kalamata were we could get our custom forms witnessed and signed. She kindly drove us back into town, first making a detour to the bank to withdraw the deposit, and we had the paper work completed in just a couple of minutes. How nice most people are!

Olive Picking

2003-11-22T07:18:00.000+02:00

The gap in our diary is because we have been hard at work olive picking; at last we were able to try our hand. A friend has seven trees that she was ready to pick; and we have offered our help, it was a gentle start.

With a little guidance from the builder of our friends’ house, we started work on the trees. A Greek neighbour was picking just over the fence next to us so we all felt a little self-conscious if were doing the job correctly. There was much discussion between the husband and wife team, many smiles and a few words of help, concerning the number of leaves that we could leave in the sacks with the picked olives. It turned out that out of the seven trees only four of them had olives, so by mid afternoon we had finished and felt we had achieved something. Then we realised that five of us had managed to pick four trees, while next door the husband and wife team must have cleared at least a dozen trees. We hoped that with a bit more experience our picking rate would improve.

The next day we started on another friends, they have a dozen trees, so more experience to come. At least working in the warm sunshine is far better than being behind a desk from 9-5. Sorry to all of those we left behind, just couldn’t resist that!!

At the end of two days we have a total of two and a half sacks, not a lot for two days work for five people. We all decide we should get them pressed while fresh, really meaning we would like a break. About 5.30 whilst returning home we passed an olive press, we stopped and asked if they were open, there were two men working there moving sacks of olives. They didn't know if they were open??!!, but if we went back at 10.30 in the morning they might be (this particular press takes 10% in payment). We drove a bit further down and noticed another press, we stop as there is a light on, our friend knocks and asks if they are open. We have never seen any activity at this press, and there is no sign of any bags of olives waiting to be pressed. There are three or four Albanian guys sitting round a table eating a plateful of potatoes whilst watching television, there's a couple of beds. Come back in half an hour they say, now we are worried, will they start up the works just for our two and a half bags, will they charge us a high percentage for a small quantity maybe 50% or even 75%? We have a good laugh about it and decide not to risk two hard days work, we'll see what tomorrow brings. Later a friend passed and said that the whole place was lit up, we hoped they hadn’t fired up the machinery in anticipation of our return.

Friday, all five of us go to the press, it’s a big day and we are all excited. Immediately we arrive we feel a little self-conscious, most of the pallets are holding upwards of eight bags. We put our two and a half bags to the side and wait and wait and wait. Whilst we were waiting we had a look around the press and laughed our heads off when we saw the contents of the hopper. There were half as many leaves as olives! We had painstakingly removed almost every leaf from our olives, which had added hours and was the most difficult part of the picking.

Eventually our bags were taken and weighed, 95 kilos, not bad, then they were tipped into a hopper and the process of extracting the oil begins. This process took longer than we imagined as the extraction machinery is more sophisticated than we thought. Each of the four sections of the process can be isolated and each able to hold a separate batch, so we had to wait while other batches completed. Finally our oil trickled out, we had 10 litres. Not a lot for all the efforts, but we all went home to sample it for lunch. “Itan poli nostimo” That was delicious!

Today, Saturday, we steamed ahead, having learned an important lesson. Now we are experts, we finished the remaining six trees before lunch. Tomorrow we start picking our own olives, only about 40 trees to go!

Walking

2003-11-17T07:18:00.000+02:00

We have had two more glorious days. Yesterday we went to our friends’ house, the electrics have just been installed and it is getting close to completion a very exciting time for them with so much to do at this late stage. Having picked their kitchen, bathroom, tiles and light fittings they have now to choose their appliances, cooker, fridge, washing machine etc. While we were there we all picked their eating olives from the tree in their garden so that they could prepare them for eating.

Later we walked up from the house and along the kalderimi, donkey track; up towards Kastania, it turned out more of a hike than a walk. The path soon turned into an overgrown track and we struggled up and on, in our shorts and walking sandals, scratching our legs on the vegetation as we climbed. We looked out over Stoupa and the surrounding area admiring the beautiful views and enjoying the clean fresh air and tranquillity. We passed two shepherds tending their sheep; one seated on a wall dreamily watching the sheep the other appearing to be having a sleep on the hillside. What a hard life!

Today we went to Kalamata, mainly to look around the dealerships for a car, but of course we did other things while we were there, like having lunch in one of the many street cafes and watching the world go by. There was music playing in the street and we noticed several flags flying, there were also a lot of youngsters about, maybe today is a Greek holiday. We came home quite tired with plenty of car brochures; tonight we must do our homework and make a decision, made slightly more difficult as of course the brochures are in Greek.

Kitty news

2003-11-15T07:17:00.000+02:00

The two kittens were on the bed when I awoke all snuggled in the bedclothes. As soon as I get up they start wailing like banshees for their breakfast. The little tortoiseshell, Dolly, was quite poorly when we first started feeding them and would only eat very slowly and really could not be bothered, has come on leaps and bounds. When I go anywhere close to the sink or fridge she gets so frantic for food that she jumps up and clings on my leg meowing and making such a fuss. Lula, the mother, has really taken umbrage now that the kittens are so strong and fighting for attention. She hardly bothers to come anymore, when she does she hisses and spits when either of them dares to go near her. The sun is shinning today and I think this is the hottest day since we arrived, I actually felt the sun burning my skin and although I fought against it, I finally gave in and went in for a siesta.

More of the routine

2003-11-14T07:16:00.000+02:00

The day started very windy but by 11am had died down and the rain had started, what do you do when the weather’s like this and you are in an apartment. If our belongings were here we could cook, read our Greek lessons and many other things that we are unable to do present. At least there was hot water this morning I am guessing that Vaggelis turned on the immersion for us. When we read up on this area I remember reading that there were in the region of 360 days of sunshine a year, I think someone must have had their rose coloured glasses on. Oh well at least it’s still mild; we will go for our walk.

Routine

2003-11-13T07:15:00.000+02:00

We seem to being getting into a routine each day now of walking, shopping and checking on our house. Today another windy day we go down to Agios Nikolaos to see how our house is coming along. Vaggelis is there and Ashley discusses with him the positioning of the windows in the sitting area and kitchen. We don’t back till after 3pm as we detoured to check on a friends’ house and the daily stop at the supermarket for fresh rolls for lunch.

Grey Skies

2003-11-12T07:12:00.000+02:00

The day started as the last ended grey and very windy but surprisingly warmer than you would think by just looking out of the windows, I told Ashley it’s warmer out than in, because of the drafts. Vaggelis has some wood that he said we could use so if it continues like this we will consider lighting a fire.

A day mostly indoors sorting out some of our paperwork and for Ashley to do some work with the computer. At least Dolly, our smallest kitten, appreciates the weather she has been able to spend all day indoors carefully watching any movement we make towards the fridge or a cupboard. Once within a couple of feet of the fridge, the animal that was seconds ago fast asleep on the bed is now weaving between your legs making strange croaky noises. Perhaps the cats here also speak a version of Greek?

Kalamata

2003-11-11T07:08:00.000+02:00

With a lift from our friends we were able to visit Kalamata today. The journey is about 40km and takes roughly an hour by car. As we passed through Kardamyli we stopped at the police station to see if the residency permit was now signed. As I walked into the police station I was greeted by a smiling police officer who quickly searched his desk and presented me with my document. Bureaucracy, not a problem!

We continued our journey to Kalamata where we were shown various places that might be of help to us in the coming months. A tile shop, a shop that sells kitchen worktops, another that sells door handles and so on.

As we walked into the bank we saw the under manager, a young lady who we had seen last October and again in May this year, she speaks very good English. We wanted to know if a transfer from England had been received, so many foreign banks having a reputation for ‘loosing’ a transfer for weeks on end. She recognised us immediately and as we sat down to speak to her, she told us that there had been a transfer of funds into our account at the end of last month. This was without reference to any documents, computers or any papers from us. She then proceeded to answer the questions we had and assisted us with the use of the account. If you walked into an English bank for the third time would you be able to see anyone senior without an appointment? Would they recognise you and without reference be able to tell you information about your account?

Next priority for us was to get a Greek SIM card for our mobile phone, now we are able to communicate again. Lunch was in the main square outside one of the many modern restaurants, a quick and very tasty sandwich.

Now a visit to a couple of the large but cheap stores out of the main town, one similar to B&Q, Homebase, Focus but with a more diverse range of goods, the other a low cost supermarket. The majority of people here seem to shop in Kalamata as most things you are able to get at a fraction of the price they are locally.

Arriving home around 5pm and unloading the bags from our friends’ car our builder arrived and joined us for a cup of tea. We intended to go to his house later in the evening, to go over the plans of our house, but just after he left a storm brewed. The electric went off and all we could do was sit tight as the wind played havoc with the outside world.

There is an emergency exit light in the apartment that gives a dim light when the electricity goes off, so Ashley decided to give me the job of entering all our friends’ numbers into the phone to stop me being bored. Having done so, the mobile quickly ran out of credit as I sent text messages to our friends with our new mobile number.

Here the reality kicks in, the house is cold and draughty, even in bed we are cold and I am missing home comforts. How could I forget and of course there is now no hot water, Such Fun!

Bureaucracy.

2003-11-10T07:07:00.000+02:00

Today we had the kind help of some friends who drove us to Kardamyli police station for the forms required for a residency permit. A residency permit is nothing more than a document that says as a foreign national you are living in Greece and have an address where you can be found. As a foreign national you cannot buy a car without this!

Having heard that another person was having problems getting a permit, as the police station no longer had copies of the necessary forms, we were slightly worried. Also, we were told one officer in the station, who speaks good English, could sometimes be more accommodating than others. One person had the problem of needing photocopies of their passport and being told to obtain these. When they pointed out the photocopier on a nearby desk they were told this was not working. They managed to find somewhere in the village to get the copies and returning to the station were bemused to watch the forms they filled in being copied in this machine by the officer. We came prepared having heard this story with our photocopies ready.

The coffee must have been good this morning as the officer had a smile and Ashley spent 15 minutes or so with him filling in the appropriate forms that were then copied 5 times and signed by both of us. What seemed like a simple process now struck a problem, we were then told that a senior officer had to countersign the documents. As he was not due back to the station for two hours we would have to return later to collect the permit.

We strolled up through the old town and back down to Kardamyli beach whiling away the time. Returning after the two hours the senior officer had still not returned and we were told “maybe” he would be available tomorrow.

The drive back to Stoupa allowed our friends to show us two quite beaches, Delphina and Fornea. When summer returns I’m sure we will be visiting these quite often.

Lazy Sunday.

2003-11-09T07:07:00.000+02:00

Sunny skies, lazy relaxing day, just about managed some reading, went to the beach had a paddle followed by a walk to Kalogria beach, through olive groves and around back of Stoupa.

And Another!

2003-11-08T07:06:00.000+02:00

The sky is a beautiful blue and today is going to be the warmest yet. Breakfast on the veranda with our cats, all of which now have names. Lula as you know the mother of the other two, we suspect, Tara the scatty, greedy one and Dolly the runt who is both quieter and almost identical to her mother, but with two good eyes.

Today it’s back to Ag Nik where we spent a couple of hours at the house measuring and checking various things. We walked back through the village enjoying the warm sun and the goodies we bought at the supermarket. It was late afternoon when we arrived back at the apartment where we found a note from our friends to say they would call later and we could go with them to their house, which should be finished by Christmas, all being well.

“Sosta” Another day gone.

Another beautiful day!

2003-11-07T07:05:00.000+02:00

On waking this morning and looking out the door we saw Lula, the eldest of the three cats, asleep on the balcony and beside her a present for us. A small mouse she had managed to catch, no small feat for a one eyed cat carrying kittens. The sacrifice of a meal to show that we are now ‘family’ has not gone un-noticed.

We walked later up past the Frigano Restaurant complex to see how a friends’ house is progressing. We took a detour to say hello to some other friends, their house and garden now looks wonderful as it is now almost finished, but they still have one or two small outstanding jobs to be done. After a coffee and chat we continued our walk and took a few pictures to email so our friends’ in the UK can see for themselves how their house is coming along.

Evening detour to see if we can arrange an Internet connection, if you see this on Friday evening or Saturday morning then we were successful!

Well, yes we were able to connect to the net, but…..

We talked to Stephan at Zorbas Travel Agency about using his Internet connection and phone line from the office. It’s like the old days in the UK to get on the Internet, you have to buy time from an internet provider as well as pay for the phone call. A quick trip to the supermarket bought us an Internet card which gives 8 hours connection time. I managed to break the pictures in the gallery section, sorry, should be fixed when you see this. Also my attempt to send email fell at the first as I was forgetting that I was trying to send using my old Freeserve account. Can’t do that without dialling up using Freeserve, but of course the international call would be rather expensive. A few emails got out using Hotmail.

At last a beautiful day!

2003-11-06T07:04:00.000+02:00

We got up to a beautiful blue sky, might as well enjoy it and take a hike! All the way to Kardamyli, it took approx one hour and twenty minutes to cover the 4 miles or 10 kilometres at a leisurely pace; no buses passed us. Kardamyli is a lovely village that has retained its charm and has a nice atmosphere, especially at this time of year after the tourists have all gone.

It turned out that the offices we were told about were the Mayors Offices. They were very helpful, phoning the police station to enquire about the forms that we need as non-Greek nationals to be able to buy a car. We now need to return on Monday morning after 9am with stacks of photocopies of passports and passport style photos. At least we had been warned and came pre-armed with many copies

We strolled around the village in no hurry to start the long walk back and checked out the local bakery for spinach pies. Delicious.

On our arrival back in Stoupa we decided to go and visit some friends who moved house yesterday. They called twice last night but said they were unable to get us to hear them despite shouting up at the windows. In the end they had pushed a map under our door.

What a busy life we lead!

Where did the day go?

2003-11-05T07:03:00.000+02:00

Up late again! Today we walked to Agios Nikolaos to see our house; it took us approximately 45 minuets walking along the main road. The weather was overcast but warm enough to walk out in a tee shirt. We arrived to find Vaggelis and four others working the house looked wonderful and has coming on a treat. We are having a meeting with our engineer in the next few days to discuss the verandas and a few others things, most importantly we are thinking of swapping the kitchen and living rooms around. We walked back through the olive groove and met one of our neighbours who was picking his olives.

We have been told today there are offices in Kardamyli where they will help you with various problems that may occur. Tax forms, residency permits etc this could well solve a problem for us. I think tomorrow we will get the bus there, or maybe another good walk.

Must just mention here we now have three cats screaming and yowling and two of these we think are pregnant.

8:15pm and we have our first power cut. Looking out, the whole area is without power, not just Stoupa. Well that’s an early night for us, unable to read and my laptop battery is still in a terrible state, likely to last 10 minutes at best.

Yet another day goes by.

Leaving catches up with us

2003-11-04T07:02:00.000+02:00

After the last few weeks, if not months, of planning, packing, panicking, letter writing, phone calls, more packing everything has caught up with us. Being able to relax for the first time meant that we did not wake up until 10:30am. We had some breakfast and then spent quite a long time sorting our belongings and organising the apartment to make it more like home than a holiday apartment.

After some lunch, it was very dull and kept spitting with rain we took a pleasant walk through the village, so different now without holidaymakers and with so many tavernas closed. We made our way to a new supermarket that had opened the day before to stock up on a few more essential items.

The uncertain nature of the weather stopped us from going to see for ourselves the progress that has been made on our house. As compensation, the weather provided us with one of the finest rainbows either of us had ever seen, but the nature of a rainbow prevented us from being able to take a good picture of it.

When the weather allows we will go to Kalamata on the bus to buy a Greek sim card for our mobile. We are unable to send text messages although we can receive them. So please keep sending, we will reply as soon as we can.

We are desperate to get a car, but we seem to be dependant on the police at Kardamyli were they issue the residency permit. Without a permit car purchase is impossible, and have been told they have no forms at present.

Our apartment must be a home because we already have a cat. According to a note on the wall her name could be Lula and she has the strangest husky miaow you have ever heard.

Here begins the first day of our new life.

2003-11-03T07:00:00.000+02:00

We arrived at Athens airport, feeling the worse for wear, a little ahead of schedule, at about 4:10am local time, a flight of about 3 hours 15 minutes. It was pleasantly warm. We asked a young Greek girl, who turned out to be Cypriot, the way to Athens main bus station. She invited us follow her and share her trolley as she also intended taking a bus from the airport into the city to the main bus station. It was only after we purchased our bus tickets that we found the next bus would be over an hour. This meant we would miss our 6am connection to Kalamata. Our young friend suggested that we all share a taxi and asked for a refund on our bus tickets; fat chance! First of many nice surprises, "no problem" with the refund. We quickly found a taxi and the three of us continued our journey together; it took about 35-40 minutes and cost us 20 euros.

Athens bus station was very busy even at this early hour; we parted company with our friend and went to buy our tickets at the kiosk. Again the tickets were very reasonable costing €15.10 each for a journey, which took about 4 hours 40 minutes, including a "comfort" stop as the Americans say.

We arrived at Kalamata bus station at 10:40am and were a little disappointed to learn that the next bus to Stoupa would be a 1:15pm, by now we were very, very tired. Always ready to turn a disappointment to our advantage we crossed the road and had coffee and a snack, enjoying the world of Greece passing us by. While we sat drinking our coffee two passing dogs spotted us and decided we looked like potential dog owners. One a Diefenbaker look-alike - the dog who 'starred' in Due North - almost a Husky with cold piecing icy blue eyes, the other with an ancestry connected to a brand of beans. Two of the friendliest, smelliest canines you could meet curled up at our feet in an effort to be adopted.

There was a tremendous bang, the sky grew dark and the rain began to fall. When you have a thunderstorm in Greece the rain is heavier, the lightning more frequent, and the thunder louder than any you experience in England. We then thought we had found a car paintwork-testing site! Someone had parked his or her car just outside the bus station shelter where the enormous tin roof dipped in a 'v'. The result was water from many square meters of roof being funnelled into a waterfall that fell directly on the roof of the car. When the rain finally stopped and we crossed the road back to the bus station, the car roof looked as though it had been beaten in places with a hammer!

Laine managed using her limited knowledge of the Greek language to get the bus station staff to agree which bus would take us to Stoupa. The last leg of our journey took just over an hour and cost us only €2.30 each. It continued raining throughout our journey, which made it impossible to take in the magnificent views as the windows of the bus were covered in condensation.

On reaching Stoupa we alighted from the bus and struggled, tired and weary with our over weight luggage up the lane to our new home. Until May next year we have the use of a holiday apartment, the door was already open, as were the rooms within the house, linen on beds all cleaned and ready for our use. We threw down our bags grabbed our waterproofs and set off to find Vaggelis to thank him for all the help he had given us. We continued on to our friends to catch up on local news before setting off to the supermarket, to grab something to fill our empty stomachs, before retiring for the night.

Finally, the end of the first day of the rest of our lives
OR
How to get from England to Stoupa for just £40.50 each.