This Old Σπίτι

Before--somewhere in the thicket

Almost "after"--a work in progress

Owning a house in Greece—even a renovated half-liter-size old house like ours—requires enormous quantities of grit, perseverance, and fortitude. And, yes, money. Let it be known that all countries fleece their citizenry. How else do you keep the welfare state (Greece) and the military-industrial complex (United States) nominally solvent, the politicians (over)paid, and the debt burden managed? Living within our means as individuals and as national economies has devolved into the quaintest of notions.

In Greece, the target of the national robber barons are hapless homeowners, foreign and domestic, who are taxed, fined, and otherwise abused at heroic levels. Our 30-meter-square house is tiny even by the humblest of standards, especially compared to the mega-villas being constructed by Germans, Swiss, and the Dutch, but no one is immune to similar financial burdens, that keep popping up.

In just twenty days I have paid fines in order (re)legalize the house, paid a handful of day laborers, and purchased building supplies of every stripe. In doing so, I could say that I’ve been nickled-and-dimed to near extinction, but it’s the wrong currency for the right metaphor. But it has been worth every last euro—even though more lies ahead. 

Yesterday Fotis the electrican installed two very bright, solar-powered flood lights—one outside, for security and to keep the jackals away, the other inside to keep me from falling off the loft stairs or walking into a wall at night. The idea of a completely photovoltaic house, sufficient for a few lights, a few outlets, and running a small refrigerator, gets kicked a bit further down the road.

Instead I paid a 1,900 euro “fine” for the construction of an unpermitted porch roof—which cost, in fact, about 1,900 euros. But now I can rest assured that I have done my part to pay down Greece’s gargantuan debt with the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which helped prevent the nation from enduring a catastrophic default in 2011 and all the nasty things that goes with it. Extreme poverty first among them. The debt was a result of profligate spending, which began when Greece joined the common European currency. Greece’s debt, owing to austerity (and fleecing homeowners) will be paid by the year 2060. While that end date sounds rather alarming, one needs to consider the end date for the United States paying down its $30 trillion in national debt—maybe in the year 2525, if the planet is still here?

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Fotis's son, an electrician in training, who is a quiet but well spoken lad, is the spitting image of Frank Zappa circa 1967, and for that fact alone he has won my affection. Father and son are working seven days a week, for very demanding and well-heeled Germans, who wanted their villas wired…yesterday. But a few kind words in Greek and a shared political orientation, on my part, kicked me to the front of the queue. Let there be light(s)!

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A sabbatical in southern Greece--2009. Navarino Bay, Pylos

 Una ratsa, una fatsa—We are family!

 In a few short days our entire family, with the big kids' partners, will be in residence in this village, as the five of us first were back in 2009. That was our sabbatical year, a chance for our children to learn some rudimentary Greek.

This time, we share the Mediterranean summer in celebration of our 30th wedding anniversary: first here, in Messenia, and then in early July on the Saronic island of Spetses, my other patrida (i.e., "homeland"—the other patrida is the island of Crete.). We were married there in 1992, in the same 400-year-old church in which my dear maternal grandmother was baptized in 1899. 

Dancing in our Maine pasture, after our retun in 1992

The lovliest of brides...in my humble opinion

Let the bells ring! Spetses island, July 5, 1992

 My Sicilian American bride, the love of my life and one of life’s greatest gifts—along with the children she bore—will soon endure the “hard sell” of my retirement dream. Painlessly, I think. 

Whenever local people inquire about her heritage—“Is she a nice Greek girl?” they ask, furtively—and I respond, “No, she’s Sicilian,” the answer is uniformly the same: Una ratsa, una fatsa! It is usually shouted and it means, roughly, “One race, one face.” It is an approving affirmation, as Greeks and southern Italians are, indeed, one race. Her patrida was colonized by Spartans, Corinthians, and Athenian (my patrida) beginning in about the 7th century BCE. In fact, to this day, a Greek dialect is still spoken in the more remote villages of eastern Sicily and in the “heel” of Italy itself.

We are family—in more ways than one.

Hold on tight!

Forever and a day...