More from Spetes

More from Spetses

The ride down the eastern coast of the Peloponnese toward Spetses is a visual treat, with sudden steep climbs and equally sudden descents on roads without guardrails, speed limits, or police. It is a kind of perpetual automotive anarchy. I must admit to getting carried away behind the wheel of a stick-shifting late model VW, approaching curves too quickly, passing lorries laden with fruit and vegetables, avoiding motorcyclists who drive with a certain death wish.

The New and (Un)improved Greece

To say that Greece has suffered the indignities of impoverishment in eight short years is a slight understatement. Greece, which by all appearances was thriving during the 2004 Athens Olympics, is now holding on for dear life—a single hand on the cliff wall. While the usual existential questions surrounding Greek summer remain—Where will we swim? and Where will we eat?—the latter question with slight modification (“will we, in fact, eat?”) has special resonance for many ordinary Greeks who have endured eight years of austerity, severe unemployment (now pegged at an astonishingly desperate 27 percent), and a bold-faced sense of woe for the many. The situation harkens back to the war years, still a living memory in this land. The resilience of an entire nation, as hard as it might be for an American or European to fathom, now approaches a breaking point.

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In short order, I received my marching orders from my two hotelier uncles, first cousins of our dear mother: what I will eat and when; who to visit for coffee/sweets and in what order; and, of course, a concise catalog of people who might be best avoided

For all its trendy sophistication, the old village lies just under the surface. The age-old traditions have a curious way of resurfacing, even if the “old Greece” that I knew in the 70s is gone forever. So while everything has changed, in fact in some ways nothing has really changed since my first visit to Spetses back in 1979, the prodigal American son in the business of finding his proverbial roots.

For the attentive, it is a sort of hospitality on steroids—a competition among the relatives. Or perhaps that's my imagination at work. Who can feed him the most, fawn over him, and engage him in controversial conversation (consisting of family and politics). As I am related, even distantly, to a large portion of the island’s residents, this results in an endless feat of culinary excess and kotsoboia (gossip).

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Could not sleep last night: the motorcyles, the partygoers, the European football fans. The noise and revelry does not cease until 4 a.m. This make the afternoon siesta imperative, a kind of life-and-death struggle for cognition under the Hellenic sun.

So with two hours of solid sleep under my belt, I set off on a morning run, following the coastal road away from "civilization" (at least technically speaking) and into the hinterlands for an eight-mile jaunt. But running even at 9:30 a.m. is far too late—the sun rises quickly, the shade vanishes, and by noon the heat builds with an intensity that few Mainers could comprehend.

While running on the road’s edge (a matter of self-preservation on an island oversubscribed by moped-crazed foreigners), one hears a lot of rustling in the dry underbrush. And sometimes the source of that rustling dashes across hot tar---very large, very ugly snakes. Fast moving, intimidating, but—I am told—totally harmless. Or so say the locals. After a couple of miles of leaping in the air, I chose the middle of the road. A pathological fear of large snakes being far worse than a flock of mopeds.

At the halfway point, I found my favorite nearby isolated cove for a splendid swim-sans-suit, and then jogged back into town, stopping in for a visit with Aunt Sophia, a remarkably sweet and loving person, the mother of our Nia’s godmother. (The act of baptism creates an inseparable bond among families, and the endless hospitality that goes with it.)

Sofia was a small child when Spetses was occupied, on and off, by the German, Austrian, and Italian Axis forces. Most of the  memories are of the Germans, and those memories are uniformly hostile. Food was stolen regularly in order to feed the Wehrmacht. Meanwhile the locals were starved for five long years, as the occupiers wanted for nothing except, perhaps, basic human decency.

The wounds are deep for many—and while today  the locals treat the few German visitors with the utmost respect and generosity (which in and of itself is rather remarkable considering the suffering endured) the wounds remain palpable and unyielding. In all fairness, today's Germans could hardly be held accountable for the actions of their fathers/grandfathers--no more than your average American bears responsibility for, say, the fire-bombing of Dresden or the annihilation of Hiroshima.

“But God sent us fish, more than enough, and we traded fish for potatoes with folks on the mainland, my father sailing at night to avoid German patrol boats. Everyone saved one cup of uncooked rice in the cupboard, should a family member become sick and need additional nutrition.”

“And flour?” I asked. “Did you have some flour for bread?” She rolled her eyes and laughed bitterly: “The Germans took it all. Every last spoonful. We lived on fish, potatoes, and olive oil. And wild greens collected from the mountainside. Nothing else. For five long years.”

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Hospitality expresses itself in unusual ways. Thirty years ago when one weekend I left Athens for a some solace on magical Spetses, I arrived stealthily at night and intended to leave a few days later in the same manner. (Being fed five times a day and remaining cheerful in the interim is its own special burden.)  Another of my mother’s uncles spotted me on the street one night and pronounced the following, which I will never forget: “If you come here again and don’t visit us, we will smash your head on the cement. This is how much we love you.”

To quote a jazz great: What is this thing called love?

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The super yachts anchored in the main harbor (the Old Harbor) would make the best that Miami, Fort Lauderdale, or Bar Harbor has to offer pale by comparison. A million-dollar yacht is rather ho-hum on Spetses—perhaps they are considered “lower-class vessels” in the eyes of the one percenters that make this pine-clad island their summer home. If the vessel lacks a helicopter and/or a sports car on deck, it is just another boat. Or at least that's the feeling.

Were she alive today, my dear Yiayia would not recognize the island of her youth. In a mere 60 years this small island (7 miles by 4 miles) has been transformed from a place of poverty and destitude to a kind of Monaco or Riviera in the Aegean.

 My long-sought day on the beach was reduced to a forty-minute swim because the order came to meet for lunch at Uncle K’s house. The meal consisted of the legendary fish of the region, called barbounia, known in English as red mullet---served alongside various salads, cheeses, fresh fruit (melons, apricots, cherries—all in season).

The logical sequence--swim, eat, nap, eat, swim, eat, stay out until 4 a.m.—has commenced.

It could be worse.