DWI, Names, & Monks

 

Use em or lose em

Morning paddle to Marathi

I am on an agricultural mission of sorts. No, it's not planting more lemon trees (which I've done) or a non-fruit-bearing mulberry (later today, when it's cooled off)...it's eating oranges. The mission is simple: juice five oranges every morning and again every afternoon, following siesta. We are awash in oranges, so the old adage ("use em or lose em") applies...generously.

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Driving while under the influence (of alcohol, not politics) is no laughing matter—not back home, not in Greece, nowhere. But the consequences in rural Greece can be pathetically laughable. 

The little red roof at 3:00

With its narrow, winding roadways—populated by insane Greek drivers and foreign apprentice drivers, tractors galore, cement mixers, oblivious cyclists, old ladies in black, and goats, sheep, and really big snakes—the hazards are manifest. Add a little booze and driving becomes an act of extreme recklessness.

But here’s an example of the dismay I feel concerning an DWI offense. My English friend C. was driving back from Kalamata, after enjoying a nice lunch with her husband, including a shared half kilo of wine on the waterfront. She found herself caught up in a breathalizer stop at the Messini roundabout. Everyone is stopped—there is nothing like “suspicion,” based on poor driving.

She felt like she was sober, but she failed the test. The cop re-tested her and she failed again. So she was ordered by the police to pay a small fine on the spot…and then she was free to drive home.

Go figure.

 

My little notebook

For years while traveling in Greece, I’ve carried a little notebook and pen wherever I go. Since I am the quintessential visual learner, new Greek words and the names of people are entered in longhand. These bits are entered into the master list on the laptop, to one file called “Greek vocabulary” the other called “Greek Name Directory.”

Admittedly, it is a bit retentive and the activity garners some looks from locals. (“Is this guy taking notes on us?”). But the process serves me well.

The problem with names, is that in this village of 300 or so (winter souls), so very many people have the same name. For example, I know at least eight people who are named Dimitri Tsonis, so a bit of fine-tuning is necessary, usually in the following manner: “Dimitri plumber,” “Dimitri mason,” “Dimitri fish taverna,” “Dimitri son of Panos,” “Dimitri the one-handed gardener.”

Bouganvillia

Another reality complicates (or simplifies, depending on your perspective) the matter of name recall. Nearly 90 percent of men in this part of the Peloponnese are named—in order of commonality—Panayiotis, Dimitris, Nikos, and Kosta. So, if you forget a name, you enjoy a 25 percent chance of being correct by guessing. It could be “Panayiotis butcher,” “Dimitri goats,” or “Kosta lisp.”

 

Twenty-first-century monks

A few days ago, while out for a run, I came upon three old monks: long-bearded, with pony tails, and wearing full, black vestments in the building heat of summer. I saw them from the back, with their arms around each other in a pose of lovely brotherhood. The monk in the middle was taking a selfie of all three.

Running path to Grizokampos

It would have made for a wonderful photo from behind, but instead of reaching for my phone, I offered to take the picture for them.

“Thank you, son! Maybe next time.” They are clearly twenty-first century monastics.

Nirvana exemplar

The Scirocco and the Old Farmer

 

The Scirocco

The Scirocco, a phenomenon that can afflict the southern Mediterranean during the summer months, consists of a powerful, hurricane force wind that blows from North Africa and brings with it suffocating heat and Saharan Desert sand.

The southern parts of Greece—Crete and the Southern Peloponnese, in particular—see the worst effects, but the sandstorm can reach as far north as Athens in mainland Attica. The Scirocco, which blows from the South, is contrasted with the Meltemi, an equally powerful and storied wind known since antiquity (but without the sand) that blows from the North and is the nemesis of sailors and beachgoers alike.

Last night five Turkish sailing ships were anchored in Finikounda’s outer harbor, presumably to escape the dangerous winds and enormous seas generated by this phenomenon.

Given the long history of relations with the Turks, including four hundred dreadful years of domination by the Ottomans, the presence of a small Turkish fleet garners some attention among the locals.

In the 1820s, as the Greek Revolution began, a fierce Turkish-Egyptian commander named Ibrahim Pasha raped and plundered his way through the Peloponnese, bringing legendary brutality that has become the stuff of poetry, song, and modern historical recreation.

Each fall, a wooden replica of an Ottoman man-of-war is summarily bombed and burned in Navarino Bay in Pylos. There are thousands of Greeks—along with representatives of the French, British, and Russian navies, who assisted in the great naval battle that expelled the Ottomans—who watch the recreation of events from the town square, with a highly amplified theatrical rendering that is positively deafening.

 

But today, Greeks and Turks—the people, not the governments—are more alike than ever, sharing a similar culture, music, foodways, etc. that joins adversaries in a curious way. Greeks visit Istanbul (Constantinople), once a storied Greek city—with the world’s greatest urban population during the early Middle Ages, and the seat of the Byzantine empire, which lasted more than 1,000 years, from 332 ce until the great city’s fall in 1452. Still the Greeks, more than 600 years later, refer to Istanbul by its original name—Constantinople, the city of the Roman emperor Constantine. It is known simply as “The City.”

And now our Turkish neighbors can visit the easternmost islands with a special tourist visa. This is a heartening development that tempers the years of acrimony and distrust among peoples.

Last year the Greek government assisted Turkey during a terrible period of wildfires, providing fixed-wing aircraft and materiel.

Still, even with such old rivalries largely set aside, the presence of Turkish vessels near the Peloponnese is cause for concern if not some alarm. One person at the sweet shop had a cheeky comment: “Are they here to take our women into the harem and our children into slavery, like the old days?”

 

An Old Farmer with a Gift

The sandstorm did not deter me from a late-day run, but rather than running down the mountain to the ocean, I chose to run on the endless dirt roads that pass through thousands of acres of olive groves behind our house. It can be a lonely place, populated by wild jackals and boar, and one rarely sees another human, except perhaps the occasional farmer.

 

About four kilometers in, I heard the sound of a battery-powered chainsaw and noticed an old man halfway up a tree, carefully balanced and pruning the branches.

One of my greatest pleasures in being here is in striking up conservations with total strangers, in my serviceable but often flawed Greek. The man in the tree was more than obliging. 

We introduced ourselves. His name is Niko, he is 81 years old, and he is from my village, Akritohori.

I admired the artistry of his pruning and asked how many trees he owned—the measure of one’s wealth in the rural Peloponnese.

Niko said that he had 500 trees and pointed down the valley to a brilliantly tended olive grove.

“I do a little bit each day,” he told me.

Our conversation took wide turns. Eventually he told me about his wife, whom he married at age 21. She was 16.

“We’re still in love,” he offered. “And we have a dozen grandchildren and even more great-grandchildren.”

He appreciated my running, and I appreciated his hard labors.

I was deeply moved by one vignette in particular.

“Last year I became very ill.” He pointed to his belly and mentioned something about his liver.

“The doctor told me that I needed to stay in bed and wait for surgery. I was very sad and uncertain about the future. Then, one night, my trees spoke to me through God in a dream. They said, ‘Niko, we need you, we miss your love. We will heal you.’ So I dragged myself out of bed and back to the olive grove that I have known for more than sixty years. And the trees were right: They have healed me.” 

His piercing blue eyes twinkled with a serene satisfaction. We promised to meet for a coffee at the cafeneion someday.

I realized as I ran back through the maze of roads that I was getting a bit weepy while running and had to stop to catch my breath. There was something about the simple beauty of his story.

And it was first time that I have cried since my sister Dyan died in 2018—but these were tears of the joyful variety.

Settling In

 

Settling in

After just a few days here in Messenia, living in a small stone house tucked into an olive grove, I have settled into something of a “routine”: running in the mornings before the heat builds, engaging in some house cleaning/organizing, gardening, reading, and of course seeing old friends and meeting new ones. Also, swimming at every opportunity.

A few days ago I traveled the 15 kilometers to Pylos, the largest regional town, to do some banking. Greece’s bloated bureaucracy requires so much from so many. It is an exasperating process that joins people, Greek and foreign alike, in a common form of misery. Everyone hates the government. Perhaps this a universal concept.

For a foreign resident there is a required annual tax return that certifies I don’t work here (untrue), that I bring in hard currency (minimal or largely untrue) from abroad, and that I have no assets other than the house (true). Transfers of dollars to euros are documented with the “pink copies”—which stopped being pink more than twenty years ago—that serve as official verification of such transfers. These are needed in order to complete the mandatory tax return. But now you can no longer walk into the bank and ask for the pink-now-white receipts. Instead, you need to schedule a “rendezvous” and mine is next Monday at the worst possible--arguably criminal--time: noon should be beach time! 

Camp Yianni

 

I neglected to bring an alarm clock and can’t yet navigate my new running watch, which is capable of doing more than the most astute personal assistant. But I am clueless, so my alarm clock is a combination of factors: the crowing rooster across the road (at 4 a.m.), the incessant squawking of birds nesting in the ceramic roof tiles, and the sun rising lazily over the mountain and into my face.

Unlike far eastern Maine, located on the eastern edge of the time zone, southern Greece is located on the far western end of the time zone. So, by the time the sun rises over the mountain it is already 8:30 in the morning and I’ve missed the best hours of the fledgling day.

 

Warning, warning

Our house checker Dimitri called yesterday to warn me about the ochia that he has dispatched in our garden. The ochia are snakes, diminuitive in size but the most venomous snakes in Greece. Unlike its larger cousins—some more than two meters long, who are welcome consumers of rodents and which slither away at the approach of humans—the ochia lies in wait, ready to strike quickly and repeatedly. With its black upper body covered with grey diamond patterns, it is nicely camoflauged and easily mistaken for a stick or a piece of dry grass.

Never, ever, pick up a rock barehanded or put on pair of sandals without shaking them out first. Scorpions love the shade.

When we installed the perimeter fence (to keep out the wild boar, the Gypsies, and the old ladies collecting wild greens), the installer asked me to trim the oleanders along the perimeter. That was my first encounter with an ochia, curled up in the base of an oleander. I called over the fence installer, who cried out “ochia!” to his young son/helper. His cry was more one of happiness than dread. He took the pruners from my hand, reached fearlessly into the mass of overgrowth, and gently grasped the snake, just below the head, between the blade: then he gleefully demonstrated a decapitation. It was good for a week’s worth of nightmares for this snake-a-phobe.

“Yianni, if the ochia strikes you, it is important to drive quickly to the Pylos clinic for an injection before you begin convulsing and become paralyzed.”

There is nothing like helpful local information.

I showed him the snake-bite kit that I had obtained from a departing German resident years earlier. It’s lengthy instructions are in German. He scoffed and suggested I purchase a German-English dictionary and study it in advance. Or ditch the kit and head directly to Pylos.

 

Kandouni, accessible by cliffside

Every stick looks a snake

Cretans in our midst

My paternal grandfather and grandmother hailed from the southernmost island of Crete, so it was with some surprise that I learned, during our six-month sabbatical here in 2009, that many of the local residents have Cretan heritage. Like my surname, theirs also end in “-akis,” which is a marker of that island’s people.

Occupied by the Ottoman Turks for nearly 400 years, the persistent victims of brutality, genocide, and frequent shake-downs, waves of Cretans departed by caique (wood fishing vessels) for the southern Peloponnese under cover of darkness beginning in the mid-1850s. Crete was liberated in 1898, after a series of bloody insurgencies, and became a sort of nation within a nation a few years later, and then a full-fledged part of Greece around 1909.

It is an understatement to say that the people of Crete are “different”—many Greeks consider them total mental cases, knife-wielding people who are feared, respected, and sometimes even venerated for their bravery, both during the Ottoman period and especially during the Second World War. Thus is my heritage.

The Cretan resistance to the German invaders was nothing short of epic. A dozen members of our family were executed, against the village church, for their resistance activities in 1943. To die defending Crete was the utmost honor and the rallying cry, “Freedom or Death,” isn’t just a boney phrase of endearment.

One of the best descriptions comes from the military historian Antony Beevor, whose magisterial study, The Battle of Crete and the Resistance, offers one of the finest descriptions anywhere of the modern Cretan:

“The Cretan character—warlike, proud, compulsively generous to a friend or stranger in need, ferociously unforgiving to an enemy or a traitor, frugal day-by-day but prodigal in celebration…” (1998; repr. 2014, p. 65). These people can drink, dance, and kill—often simultaneously. It is a wonderful patrimony of which I am immensely proud.

 

On Crete's coastal plain (as here on the mainland), wealth is measured by the number of olive trees one can call their own. But in the mountains, from where our family hails, wealth is measured by the number of sheep and sons. Both sheep rustling and vendetta are part and parcel of mountain life.

That essential character remains unblemished, both in my family and in those Cretan-Messenians in my midst. It joins in a curious way. We are ready to kill or to dance, depending on our mood. Both can be useful these days.

 

Olives from our trees

An African gale

Our village is called Akritohori. My sloppy translation is based on the two parts of the name: akri (edge) and hora (village). So I offer the following: “village on the edge,” for which there is some topographical validity. We are unapologetically “edgy” folks.

The village also goes by its old Turkish name: Grizi (“grey,” which describes the rocky mountains that surround it), and someone from Grizi is called a Grizaios (female: Grizaia). My dear poet friend Niko, the unoffical culture keeper in Finikounda, announces my presence in the cafeneion: “Look, here comes the Grizaios!”

Last night I left our traditional mountain village after sunset and traveled the three kilometers down to Finikounda, the nearest main village on the ocean. My plan was to watch the Final Four in the European basketball championship.

Against all odds, Greece (a poor nation of just 10 million) had two teams in the final four. Although I am not a huge fan, the entertainment, I was certain, would be in watching those watching the game. I was hardly disappointed by the anarchy at the sweet shop, where the locals squealed at every basket gained, and then threw wads of napkins at the TV for every basket missed. It was a premier entertainment—although both of the Greek teams lost to their powerhouse northern European rivals.

 

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Last night an enormous gale blow in from North Africa, bringing supercharged heat, dust, and enormous waves. The entire house shook through the night and when I woke I expected a downpour but instead was greeted by a clear blue sky but even stronger winds and heat.

I chased my clothes line through the pasture, made a coffee, and then sat down to write.

After siesta hour, when the air temperature has cooled, I will plant another lemon tree and spread the ellathion, an organic snake repellent--suphur powder--around the perimeter of the house. 

Organic snake repellent (sulphur)

Another lemon tree to plant

Home Sweet Home Messenia

 

Back in Messenia

 

A few days ago I bid my family goodbye on Spetses and took the puddle-jumper across the narrowest section of the Saronic Gulf to the village of Kosta, where my rental car (a Citroen C3) had rested in the shade of a secure parking lot.

This area is crawling with Roma (or, if you prefer, Gypsies) who regularly pilfer from the parked cars of unsuspecting tourists. So it was well worth the 6 euro-per-day fee for security’s sake. I don’t need a smashed window on day three of my stay here.

For some reason, the ascent toward Mount Didyma, leaving the coasta village of Kosta, is always easier than the descent—and safer, too. It is so much easier to pass a cement truck while going uphill around hairpin turns than downhill, because gravity favors the cement truck in that direction.

I motored west to Nauplion, Greece’s first but short-lived capital in 1832, then through the maze of streets in Argos, a dusty market city surrounded by orange and lemon groves, and onto the “new” national highway.

In a country with 3,500 years of recorded history, “new” is relative. The highway was built in the years leading up the 2004 Olympics. It is a work of engineering genius. Every time I drive south through the Peloponnese, I am astounded by the quality of the road and, in particular, the series of tunnels that pass through 6,000-foot peaks.

 

When we first came for our family's sabbatical year in 2009, the road was only half finished. The journey to Messenia on the old road was just a wee bit terrifying, with plenty of hairpin turns on unguarded corners with 300-meter vertical drops. Falling asleep at the wheel, even at 5 mph, could easily prove fatal. Driving at night on the old road, even by local standards, which are decidedly fatalistic, was consisered risky. The burned out wrecks of cars, trucks, and buses in the steep valleys below are testament to an unpleasant fact: Greece has more highway deaths, per capita, than almost any country in Europe.

Gradually, glimpses of the Gulf of Messinia appeared and soon enough I had reached Kalamata, the capital city of this region and the home to about fifty thousand people... and 3 million olive trees—an actual number, not an exaggeration.

Everyone in this region has some stake in the olive industry and one’s “wealth,” as it were, is measure by the number of trees one can call their own. My dear friend Niko once had more than 3,000 trees. By comparison, we have six—along with a dozen or so citrus, pomegranate, avocado, and apricot. Still these olive trees are our babies and produce sufficient oil and table olives for the year. 

I stopped at the Lidl supermarket, part of a Belgian chain, and navigated my way past the Roma who circle the store, inside and out, stealing what they can and begging for loose change. It is an extraordinary act of cat and mouse inside the store itself, with beleaguered security guards following the women and girls around the aisles. Whenever the guards fall off, a chicken or two goes down a dress, a cheese or two up the sleeve. After shopping, I returned the rented cart to the arcade and my 1 euro coin popped out. I placed it in the shaking can of an old Gypsy woman who lay seemingly broken on the ground.

 

Leaving Kalamata behind, the excitement and anticipation grew while traveling along the narrow, twisting coastal road on the eastern side of the peninsula that forms the province. Of the three peninsulas that form the southern Peloponnese, this is the one nearest to Italy. The view across to Laconia, the next peninsula to the east, where Sparta is located, provides yet another visual feast. For one, snow-capped Mount Taygetos, rising up from the sea to 9,000 feet elevation, contrasts so beautifully with the ocean.

The is the mountain from which the ancient Spartans tossed their weakling children in the good old days.

 

Home Sweet Home

It is utterly surreal to place a key in the lock of a house that was last occupied eleven months earlier. I opened the door warily, expecting a den of vipers, scorpions, and other assorted creatures—but was instead relieved to see the house just as I had left it. My house-checker, Dimitri, did a splendid job of keeping the place creature free, the fruit trees watered and pruned.

The law now calls for certifying that your land is clear of brush, prunings, etc., by 30 April or your liable to be fined heavily. Dimitri completed this work--cutting the lot four times since last September--so I was able to submit my data to the state, avoid a $10,000 fine and--in the event of a wild fire--time in the Kalamata lockup. The fire season in Greece promises to be severe, with no appreciable rain in this southern region since late February. Hence all the precautions.

The χαλιδόνια/halidonia (swallows) are attempting to build a nest on the side of the house. Since antiquity, having swallows nest on your house has been a sign of good fortune. So I’ll accept all that racket and dive-bombing for a bit of luck.

The same cannot be said of the garden, which is teeming with life. An hour later I heard some squaking and saw two large seagulls fighting over a two-meter-long snake. These are the “good” snakes, not the vipers. These large sea birds took turns grabbing the snake in their talons, flying above the road and dropping the wriggling creature several times until it was very dead. I feared that it might land it on the rental car.

After settling in, I laced up my running shoes and ran down the mountain to the big beach in Finikounda, called Anemomilos on one end and Mavrovouni (“black mountain”) on the other. For me running is a mental exercise with a physical component.

Victory or de...feet?

Camp Yianni on a deserted beach

The big beach is a 3000-meter ribbon of pristine sand, part of a European Union nature preserve—protecting the endangered loggerhead turtles, who will begin laying there eggs in a few weeks, and a variety of birds migrating from North Africa. It is one of my go-to swimming holes. A four-mile run, 1/2 mile swim, then the run back up the mountain. I was ready for another swim by the time I got home.

Last month the beach hosted Matt Daimon and the cast of Odysseus, which was filmed on site in nearby Pylos. There was (and still is) a call for extras. I am well-suited to be a slave oarsmen on an ancient trireme--the girls say I have the hair for it--so I might have to visit the casting agent. Or maybe not.

 

Village people

I snuck into the village after sunset, entering through the “back door,” a warren of alleyways, in order to avoid…everyone on the first day. The common refrain is: Τι να σου κεράσω (te na sou keraso), or “what can I treat you to?” The generosity, hospitality, and overall kindness is overwhelming. Had I entered through the main street, I would never have reached my destination: To Steki, a small, traditional taverna tucked into a quiet alleyway.

The proprietor, Niko, who like many others in the village (including me) has Cretan heritage dating the time of their refuge here in the 1850s, kissed me on both cheeks and brought a half liter of local red wine without any prompting. “This one is on me, Yianni. Welcome home.”

The next night, my determination to spend no money was undermined by a desire to eat! So after enjoying a Greek coffee at our village cafeneion, I drove down to Finikounda for dinner at Ploes. I try to patronize all but one (name withheld) of the local tavernas or restaurants, spreading about whatever little wealth I have. Ilias and Maria had several prepared items—lamb cooked in lemon sauce, papoudakia (“little shoes"), that is, baked eggplant stuffed with beef and cream sauce, and several other meat offerings—but I decided on simpler fare: a village salad and green beans cooked with carrots and potatoes, some bread, and a carafe of wine. Still, it wasn’t cheap. Nothing is “cheap” in Greece anymore, it is so unlike the “Greece on $10 a day” of  the 1970s and 1980s. I suppose this change is not particular to Greece alone. But a dozen eggs are cheaper here than in Maine. And the price of bread is regulated by the government--a large loaf coast about 1.50 euros (or $1.75).

The Greek government, now led by a former hedge fund manager and IMF official, is focusing on the Northern European chi-chi crowd, a relatively new type of tourist. I used to pitch a tent on the beach and thought about doing so at the Kardamyli International Jazz Festival, but my English friends tell me I could end up in handcuffs for doing so. Whle the law protects scenic places, it also ensures revenue for hotel and bungalow owners.

Before heading back up the mountain, I met up with a few foreign resident friends, a young couple from the Czech Republic who, like me, can work remotely. Over the years we’ve met so many nice people here, in addition to locals: English, German, Dutch, French, and Italian.

Niko calls this "the United Nations of Finikounda." And he's right.

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Temenos 2025

 

 

Why temenos?

Temenos (Greek τέμενος) refers to a piece of land set aside or cut off from everyday use and assigned as a special domain for the veneration of a temporal ruler or a god.

This obscure explanation notwithstanding, what did the psychologist Carl Jung believe by temenos?

Jung described temenos as, “a means of protecting the center of the personality from being drawn out and from being influenced from outside.” He believed that the human need to establish and preserve temenos is indicated by dream images, drawings and mandalas.

 

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My present journey across the Atlantic, passing through several time zones and across a dozen or more countries, is nothing new for me. I first came to Greece in 1973, as a young American in a summer program run by the North American Archdiocese of the Orthodox Church—a program for Greek-American children to discover their heritage: religion, culture, and history. Thankfully the religous part was light-weight and far short of indoctrination.

That first experience was followed by a second—in 1974—in which the young campers lived through the cataclysmic Turkish invasion of Cyprus, a near conscription of the tallest boys into the Greek army, and the subsequent overthrow of the junta. It was an exciting experience during a dangerous time, but I only recognized the former, basking in the “experience” and largely avoiding the danger.

A half dozen years would pass before I returned, as a junior year abroad college student, to study archaeology and classics in Athens. That year, in particular, lit a flame that grew into a passion, one that has never really waned. It was also the year (1979) that I began learning modern Greek in earnest, met my family on Spetses island (maternal) and Crete (paternal). Most of all, it was the year I began enduring friendships with Thanasi (and, later, his wife Koula) and Akis (and, later, his wife, Mania). The four of them and a handful of others attended our wedding on Spetses in 1992.

 

And so the passion, the obsession, the fixation—it took its present form.

 

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Back in the hood

Sixteen or seventeen hours of travel time, hardly a consideration for a twenty year old, becomes an epic struggle for one in the second half of their sixties. But the indignities of modern air travel on an aging body hardly proves an impediment to being here.

I spent two nights in Athens, staying with my friends in the neighborhood called Kaisariani, a cool and leafy area on the foothills of Mount Hymettos, which I ran up the following morning. It is a sort of Shangri-La above the concrete madness that is Athens.

My destination was the eleventh-century monastery  tucked between the seemingly infinite network of paths that pass through the pine and eucalyptus forests, which are famous from antiquity and infamous from the Second World War—the site of unthinkable brutalities: first at the hands of the occupying Germans, then followed by the fratricidal horrors of the Greek Civil War, as the Wehrmach withdrew in 1944, after four years of brutal occupation.

But today it is a place of serenity, populated by a rich and diverse bird life in a profound ecological setting. Groups of school children, runners, mountain cyclists, and nature-goers come and go, but the place is so vast that solitude is easily obtained. On a clear day, you can spy the Acropolis several kilometers away, rising conspicuously above the city center, and beyond the thin ribbon of the vast expanse of wine-blue Mediterranean (to borrow a phrase from Homer).

 

On my second night, we enjoyed a fantastic meal at an outdoor taverna in Kaisariani. And the following morning, I picked up my “buggy,” a small, economical rental car, seemingly powered by lame donkeys. Thankfully, I suffer from hubris, an ancient Greek word, at least in the realm of urban driving, a skill derived from living in Brooklyn, New York. Get out of my way, you!

Leaving the utter anarchy of urban Athens behind, I headed west toward Corinth, then into the eastern Peloponnese, and through the region known as the Argolid, with it namesake city, Argos, centrally located on a plain marked with citrus plantations. Lemon and orange groves extend into the horizon.

 

Spetses

 

My maternal grandmother, the eldest of twelve children, was born on the island of Spetses, in the Saronic Gulf, in 1899. I have visited this pine-clad island more than fifty times since 1979, where I am welcomed by a rich stock of memories, much loved family, and a place that is both quaint and modern, traditional and now techno-sheik.

Here I am the guest of my Uncle Kyriakos, a recent widower of eighty-eight years, a former ship’s captain whom I met as a ten-year-old, when he would visit my grandmother (his aunt) while his freighter was docked in Philadelphia or New York. Kyriakos traveled the world as a first mate then, at age twenty-nine, became one of the youngest masters in the Greek merchant marine. Tall, handsome, multi-lingual, he cut an amazingly romantic figure for a youth with early pretensions of traveling the world. Just like my uncle.

In 1992, Ann and I were married in the monastery basilica of St. Nicholas, the same church where my grandmother was baptized in 1899, a three-hundred-year-old compound perched over the entrance to the Old Harbor. The fact that I was able to tell my γιαγιά about our plans before her death at age 93 was a source of prideful pleasure.

Since that time, we have returned multiple times, traveled this incredible country far and wide, met family, cultivated relationships, and—eventually—consummated a life-long dream of restoring an old house in the rural countryside (2013) of Messenia, in the southwest Peloponnese. In the interim I have become conversant or maybe even carelessly fluent (more or less) in modern Greek, able to get myself into and out of a world trouble with ease.

 

Journey to the Argolid

Leaving Athens behind, I headed along the narrow coastal strip to Corinth, then down the eastern shore of the Peloponnese, on a winding road bereft of guardrails, considered a rally course by those behind the wheels of BMWs, Mercedes, and Porsches. No match for my Citroen C3, a glorified and laconic toaster on wheels.

 

Both Spetses and nearby Hydra (the 1960s home of Leonard Cohen) attract a well-heeled clientele. It is no longer the poor, dry island of my grandmother’s chidhood, about which she spoke often when I was growing up. Many people own conspicuously grand homes on this small island, with their own heliports for ease of access from Athens and Pireaus (the port of Athens). The local Spetsiotes are losing their heritage to a smattering of super-wealthy Athenians with little regard for local sensibilities.

 

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Further along, continuing past the turn toward Ancient Epidauros, the approaching Saronic Gulf lightens the spirit. The signs of late Spring are everywhere: fields of poppies, olive groves in bloom, newborn lambs and goats on the craggy hillsides.

This region of Greece endured the Dorian invasion more than 3,500 years ago, the advance of a mysterious peoples who (a point much debated by historians) brought the Bronze age kingdoms to their knees: ancient Mycenae, Tiryns, Argos, and some lesser states fell in short order. The locals are still pissed off about it…o.k. that’s just a bad joke.

The demise of these great civilizations is the subject of legend, song, poetry, and a rich archaeological history. As a student of archaeology in the late 1970s, the attraction was then  and still is today undeniable, and my own curiosity about these events still runs hot.

Before reaching Corinth and taking a sharp turn south, I passed two important sites from the ancient world: Elefsina (ancient Eleusis, home of the Mysteries) and Megara, an ancient city-state whose fate was never pretty.

Megara, exposed from both land and sea, was caught between a rock (Sparta) and a hard place (Athens) during the Peloponnesian war of the mid-fifth century bce: periodically savaged by both warring superpowers, depending on the Megarans’ then-current shifting loyalties. The result, regardless of the perpetrator, was always the same: wholesale destruction of the city, the burning of the crop fields, enslavement of the women and children, and execution of all the able-bodied males.

In short, the Megarans rarely had a good day.

 

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An hour or so along the eastern coast of the Peloponnese, you pass through a verdant valley village called Traxeia, with its Doric name and fifty or so residents, and—count them—seven bakeries. It should come as no surprise that this place is famous for growing wheat. And, apparently, baking bread.

The road then winds up through a series of hairpin turns onto a plateau festooned with dozens of those “evil windmills” and solar arrays, sufficient to power a half dozen nearby villages that were once entirely dependent on fossil fuel for electricity. Obviously part of Greece’s “New Green Deal ‘scam’” to borrow from the current parlance.

Descending toward the coast, I passed the turn for the Frankthi Cave, one of the oldest Neolithic sites in Europe. As a young, prospective archaeologist I visited this place with a professor and a half dozen students back in 1979, crawling on all fours with headlamps, bats overhead, dripping stalactites.

And still I wonder: were my ancestors living deep inside this cave 25,000 years ago, picking lice off of one another while fashioning stone implements during their spare time on weekends?

 

The girl from Adami

Traveling through the village of Adami in 1980, I met a girl at the local bakery. Over the years (before meeting Ann) I was fixated on this lovely blue-eyed maiden, stopping for bread whenever I passed. I remember once commenting to her about  how beautiful her village was and how nice it must be to live there.

She sighed. “There is nothing here. No people, nothing to do, no future. Lots of goats and old people.”

Today Katerina is a slightly plump, widowed grandmother dressed in black, still behind the counter of her parents’ bakery. She still has beautiful eyes.

Time waits for no one.

 

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I parked the rental car and hoofed it to the ferry landing in the mainland village of Kosta. I waited and waited as the sea built up, crashing foam on the rocks. It seemed as though the ferry would never come. So I had a beer. Still no ferry. Then another beer and a grilled cheese sandwich. I could see the Spetses ferry landing just across the channel, five kilometers distant. I ordered yet another beer—and then the ferry arrived, listing slightly to port and pitching violently fore and aft, bouncing off the rubber mats of the quay. The man collecting fare on the open top level nearly flew overboard in a surge of sea. I grabbed his belt from behind and held him steady. He said thank you.

 

It was only a twenty minute ride on the vomit comet and I was at my destination.

 

Spetses

 

This lovely Saronic Gulf island, the subject of John Fowles Magus—a brilliant read in magical realism--is a place of mystery, beauty, and now…sadly, over-tourism. This weekend the island is hosting a triathalon, so the population of about 2,000 souls has tripled.

 

Occupied since the Neolithic period, the island has had several names over the past 3,000 years: Pittiousa (ancient Greek, “pine clad”), Spezziota (the Italian name during the Middle Ages), and now Spetses—birthplace of my grandmother (b. 1899).

 

Over a mere thirty-six hours I have endured a phenomenal amount of Greek soul food, fed continuously by eager family. 

 

Tomorrow I set off to my final destination—the village of Akritohori in the southwesternmost corner of the Peloponnese, where I closed up a little pint-sized house for the year last July. There is a surreal to closing the door one day and the opening it again a year later. I pinch myself again and again.

Job one: sweep out the scorpions and search everywhere for snakes and other creepy-crawling creatures that appreciate the cool ceramic tile floor.

 

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