Back in the Hood

On the Road Again

I left the little island of Spetses mid-morning, riding aboard the old 2-euro ferry that plies the short crossing to the mainland of the eastern Peloponnese, where my rental car was hidden under the shade of a canopy.

The terrain, heading from Porto Heli through the Argolid, changes quickly. By memory, I navigated the imcomprehensibly confusing collection of signs (“Argos: 43 kilometers” is followed twenty mintues later by the confidence-building “Argos: 52 kilometers) heading due west toward the “new” (circa 2004 ff.) highway, a mostly German engineering marvel that puts to shame America’s finest highway system—if such a creature exists. A series of tunnels, some several kilometers long, cut through impenetrable (+4000 feet) mountain ranges—through the province of Arcadia and then into northern Messinia, across wide canyons on suspension bridges that appear to float in the nothingness of open space.

From Kalamata I followed the back roads, single tracks over the mountains, a lightly populated region of rural Peloponnese. I emerged with my little VW onto the main Koroni-Methoni road, just as my friend Yiota passed. I yelled from my window and she pulled over; from the other direction her brother Panayioti passed. Again I yelled from my window and he too pulled over. As one of those souls who believes there are no  coincidences in life, we embraced on the edge of the roadway and promised to meet later.

Home Sweet Home—To Spitaki Mou (My Little House)

There is a surreal quality to locking up a house on the other side of the planet only to return eleven month later, put a key in the door, and find that everything is the same as it was left.

That is no small consequence owing to my British friends, P. and D., who have kept a wary eye on our little house tucked away in the olive orchard, amid the folds of irrespresible agriculture: we are surrounded by tens of thousand of olive trees, citrus groves, and vineyards. The cocktail of aromas is utterly dizzying, punctuated as it is by a rising chorus of cicadas, the distant calls of donkeys, and the low hum of tractors. Tractors serve as primary sources of transportation for many farmers—and this is a agriculture region first and foremost--with mother, father, grandparents, and young children often hanging on for dear life as they ply the impossibly narrow networks of roads at high speeds.

First Observations

Nothing has changed in eleven months—and yet everything has changed. The little saplings—olives, oranges, lemons, pomegranate, avocado, figs, apricot, and aromatic herbs—that were planted in 2014 have doubled in size. Every tree is already heavily laden with fruit or olives; only the apricot, an otherwise healthy specimen, lacks fruit. (I’m told that next year it will be full of this delightful fruit.)

The first order of business, after opening every door and window and installing screens, was to search the house for creepy crawlys…happily not one was found. In the context of bugs and whatnot, I located my anti-venom kit, which I have placed front and center by the bathroom shelf. (I imagine, were I to be bit by a snake or a scorpion, I would have to take out the kit, find the German-language dictionary, and do a quick translation as the venom coursed through my blood. Better to tread with the greatest care, keep the door shut, and always flip rocks with gloved hands.

Rocks Around the Clock

Several tractor tillings by Yioryio, my farmer-neighbor, have brought up a multitude of rocks—some of them enormous (happily nothing larger than a Mini Cooper) and most of them of the large boulder variety. I knew well in advance that clearing the pasture would be an incremental task.

Properly dressed for the task despite the heat—leather gloves, leather boots—I begin the practiced routine: flip a rock, jump back quickly, and watch the creepy crawlys scatter, mostly large worms and a nasty little forty-legged creature with pinchers, but also scorpions under every third rock. The sarantapothousa (said 40-legged thing) are dispatched recklessly and without a tear. The truth be told, I have yet to see a snake, although it is a “bad year for snakes,” according to Yiota. A day earlier she yelled to P. when one of the most poisonous in all of Greece slithered across her stone patio. Quickly dispatched with an olive wood club, she carried it around the village in a pickle jar, rather ceremoniously, one evening seeking a positive identification. The resident herpatologist identified it as a very rare and quite poisonous snake that is generally known to northern Greece. It was thin, a meter long, and brown with black chevrons. No one can understand how it could have found itself in the southern Peloponnese.

While I am an ardent fan of all of God’s creatures, scorpions, snakes, and best kept at bay.

Tornado

Last week there was a ferocious tornado visible from the beach, about a mile offshore. (Strictly speaking, a tornado over the ocean is known as a water spout—a sifounas, according to the pocket dictionary, although the locals have a different name that I cannot recall. A friend sent me several mobile phone photos of this massive twister. The narrow column was at least a mile high and the photo reveals a churning of the water as it progressed out to sea (thankfully). These are not unusual. Old Panayoti R. told me that there was a similar phenomena in 1939, which lifted a ton of fish and dropped them in the plateia in the village of Kamaria, about two kilometers inland. He recounted the villagers all prostrating themselves in the village square, thanking God for a month’s worth of free fish.

Tourism

Now eight years into “the crisis” (i.e., brink of default, unsustainable debt, vast unemployment) the village remains dead for mid-June, a bad sign for people whose yearly incomes are largely gleaned in a ninety-day period. The many cafeneions and tavernas are half-full at best—this despite the prediction that Greece would exerience a banner year in tourism. Given the security concerns in other popular places in the Mediterranean (Tunisia, Turkey, Egypt) the lack of tourists is surprising and unfortunate. It will likely begin to change in the weeks to come.

Weather or Not

In the first days in Finikounda, a steady gale blew from North Africa and the result was a sandblasting for the few people who are on the two-kilometer-long beach called Anemomilos. (In truth, there are several other beaches oriented differently—so one’s beach choice is often dependent on wind direction.) The extreme heat of summer is building. The prediction for the weekend is highs of 40 degrees Centigrade (that’s about 105 degrees F.) and rising even higher by Sunday. The saving grace is there is no humidity.

Extreme caution (water, shade, SPA 40) is the mandate for those wishing to avoid utter annihilation through dessication.

You Can’t Get There From Here

Back in Maine, we often laugh at the geographical illiteracy of our neighbors. As far as they know Greece lies somewhere between France and China (technically not far off). This is problematic when the pro-military among by fellow citizens, most never having served in combat and totally ignorant about the consequences of such carnage, urge the good fight in Iraq or Afghanistan  or some other Godforsaken place--but don’t have a clue as to where those places are even located. Is Paris a small country in southern Spain? Maybe the warmongers should be forced to take a basic geography quiz: if you fail, you serve on the front.

Well, it blows both ways, as they say. Here is the essence of a village conversation from yesterday evening:

“Where are you from?”

“We are from the state of Maine, which is in northern New England.”

“Where is New England?”

For no better explanation: “Is it north of Boston.”

“Oh, you live near Chicago.”

“No, near Canada, on the Atlantic Ocean.”

“Oh, yes, near San Francisco.”

Right.

Welcome to My Village

I met my American friends T. and K. in the village at 10 p.m. on the first night. No one goes out much before 10 p.m., the tavernas aren’t really humming until midnight, and don’t close until 3 a.m.

A mere eleven months have passed since my last visit. Our rendezvous point, just 200 feet through the main street, takes 45 minutes to reach. Old friends jump up from café tables and greet me with kisses on both checks. Men kiss men, women kiss women, men kiss women. It replaces the handshake and is part and parcel of the essence of community in Hellas. Everyone is vying to buy me a drink, to sit and make parea (company), waiting for me to tell my story.

“Is this Trump idiot going to become your next president?” The question is asked a dozen times in the first few minutes.” It is loaded question, to say the least. We have devolved to such a degree as a democracy that an utter moron who has never worked an honest day in his life, served in the military, understood poverty, geopolitics, or basic decent human discourse could the leader of the so-called free world?

“No, I think the Clinton idiot will become president.” There is a sigh relief, one that I don’t share but understand in the most relative sense. This is what our democracy has been reduced to: a choice between two evils.

Clinton is “more experienced” they say. And therein lies the problem.

How to Become Greek

Although I first visited Greece as a young adolescent, nearly 45 years ago during the low days of the fascist junta, it wasn’t until 1981 as a student of the classics in Athens that I began learning Greek in earnest and thinking about the prospect of dual citizenship. The advent of the European Union and the notion of being able to live/travel/work without restriction was attractive—and, too, the idea that our kids could study in a European institution free of charge, whether it be Cambridge or Oxford, the University of Milan, or in Athens.

At the time mandatory military service (valid until age 50) was a kind of show-stopper for me. But the years passed and this peculiar aspiration never entirely vanished--citizenship, that is, not military service. In 2009 our family—me, Ann, and our kids—first came to Finikounda for what was intended as a one-year sabbatical. The girls attended the local village school and we mulled over the prospect of renovating an old house—something I had dreamed about in 1981 when I was a young editor for a British press in Athens. The dream was consummated in 2013 with the purchase of an old agricultural building, a few kilometers outside of Finikounda. The renovations now largely complete (but sans electricity or phone—by design), we are now “in the hood” as it were.

The dual citizenship took on greater urgency, and so I began the saga—and there is no better word to describe contending with the Greek bureacracy—of achieving this goal.

It required multiple trips to the Boston consulate, a desperate search for documentation (grandparents’ birth certificates, proof of marriage, FBI criminal background checks, on and on ad infinitum).

The happy result was announced by the Ministry of Exterior just 12 weeks ago. I took my oath of citizenship in Boston and was told the final step (obtaining an identity card and passport) would be effortlessly completed at the local police precinct in Pylos.

Of course, nothing—absolutely nothing—is simple in Greece.

I have joked with my American friends who live in Finikounda:

“The final test is simple. One needs to prove that one can drive a motorcycle with a wife and three children onboard (perhaps a chicken or two as well) while speaking on a mobile phone and rolling a cigarette—simulataneously." This could be the new litmus test of Greekness.

But if it were only so easy....

The local officials (perhaps like local officials everywhere?) balk at doing any work beyond their level of training and pay grade.

“This can’t be done,” the good police lady announced while gesturing that I ought to just leave. (Wild donkeys couldn’t drag me away…) I’ve been here before and refuse to be defeated by a lowly bureacrat as I approach the final corner of my personal marathon. I refused to leave her office and had the audacity to suggest that she didn’t know what she was talking about—no commentary could be more insulting or counterproductive to a functionary.

So I took another tack, admiring the photographs of her grandchildren. “Na zisoune,” may they live long lives, I offered. In a moment she softened and relented and offered to help.

When all else fails, platitudes are the road to bureacratic resolution.

And so, the beat goes on. I am told to expect a call from the police in a few days, so I can make a third trip there for photographing, fingerprinting, and other form of hoop-jumping. Then apply for a European passport.

What’s in a Word

Every language has its idiosyncracies, irregularities, peculiarities, and obstacles for the uninitiated. Greek, perhaps, moreso than others.

Take the word (feminine form) for “gym teacher”—gymnastria—and the word (feminine form) for “nudist”—gymnistria. Whenever I am asked what my middle daughter is studying at university, I now pause and ponder a bit of grammar and syntax before answering.

Last summer while sitting at a table populated by a dozen or so villagers, the question was asked. “What will she study, what does she want to become?”

My answer, lacking the required reflection, yielded a chorus of belly-laughs.

“What did I say?”