A Dream Comes True for Demetrios

Here's a post I apparently forgot to publish at the time...


Monday, 04 October

We had another 2-hour cruise, past Corfu and toward the mainland, during which Demetrios slept on a padded bench in the salon and I sat outside near the prow and watched everything and imagined what I’d do if the boat should have a wreck. This latter was occasioned by a small traffic jam on the sea. Another ferry was crossing our path from the left and yet another, from the right, and as we all came closer and closer together, it looked very much as if we would all reach the same spot at the same time. I was not the only passenger looking on with some small concern. Each boat honked at the others and nobody seemed inclined to yield. But somehow they sorted it all out and we chugged into port.

Igoumenitsa is a non-charming town of relatively new buildings, meaning relatively drab and ugly, around its crescent harbor. Arriving in late mid-afternoon, we paid 5 Euros for a cab which took us 300 meters to the bus station. We would have walked, had we known. There were no more busses for Thessaloniki today; we bought tickets for tomorrow and went to find a hotel.

We saw exactly 5 hotels in the town and having no reservations anywhere, we chose the 3rd one we came to, the Jolly Hotel. It considers itself a luxury accommodation, boasting in its brochure that each room has its own bathroom, as well as its own television and telephone. My verdict: perfectly acceptable, for one night, provided all you want is a place to sleep. That was all we wanted.

Having parked our stuff, we set out see if we could make Demetrios’ dream come true by finding “the camp.” That is a place where Demetrios, when he was a student, spent a few days, but life-changing days.

At the far edge of town, in the early 1960s, was a United Nations camp, part of UNESCO or something, where English students were constructing a brooder house for chickens. Demetrios was studying English in night school and his teacher mentioned that if anyone wanted to improve his English, going to this camp would be an excellent opportunity. So Demetrios went. And here is where he met, among others, John Coventry. One day John asked Demetrios what he planned to do next in life, and Demetrios said he didn’t know what he’d do after medical school. All he knew was he didn’t want to stay in Greece. So John said, “Why don’t you come to England? My father is a doctor and he can help you find a job.”

So Demetrios did go to England, where John’s father did help him find a job, his very first job, the one in Ormskirk, and you know the rest of that story. That’s where new our English flat is, where we’ve just spent the summer.

John is the one who, at the beginning of every meal at camp, used to raise his fork and say, “Good troughing!” Demetrios asked what that meant, and John said it was like bon appétit. So when Demetrios came to England, and the family were all seated for a formal Sunday dinner, Demetrios remembered, and lifting his fork, cried out, “Good troughing!”

He says you could have cut the silence with a knife.

So this campsite was somewhere just outside of town and Demetrios has long cherished a dream of finding it again. It was on the far side of town, as I've mentioned, meaning about 3 miles from the port. We hiked it. Yes, we did. I said, “You do realize your chances of finding the spot are no better than 50-50.” Yes, he realized that. So we walked and walked and walked along the waterfront, resting on park benches along the way.

And we did find it, too! We came to a spot where Demetrios felt fairly sure the camp had been, although now there was no sign of it left.

But it so happened that acouple about our age was passing by, so Demetrios asked them, and sure enough, they remembered the camp and said it had been just here. And the building where the English lived, the man added, had later become a hostel for poor travelers. It had been torn down in the late Seventies or early Eighties.

So we walked along the beach where Demetrios used to teach John Coventry Greek, and I picked up two stones from there for souvenirs for Demetrios, and he, not seeing me do it, picked up two of his own, so now we have four. If we ever meet any of those campers again, we’ll have a token to give them.

Igoumenitsa is full of bars and coffee bars, but there are only two proper restaurants, and it took us a lot of walking indeed to find one. We finally did and had a nice meal and then, back to the Jolly Hotel. On the way, we passed a place selling loukoumades, Greek doughnut holes. They’re dollops of batter, deep fried and then sprinkled with powdered sugar and cinnamon; and they’re favorites of Demetrios. So we stopped and bought a dozen, of which he ate 7 and regretted he hadn’t bought more.

“Tomorrow,” I said.

Again we were glad to get to sleep earlier than usual.

Home Again

Tuesday, 05 October

Even a town the size of Igoumenitsa (and that is still very small, but bigger than Gaios on Paxoi) has no place that serves breakfast, except hotels, but we had foolishly declined to pay the small extra price for breakfast to be included. We must have crossed the whole town, up and down, three times before we finally gave up. Even the Greek doughnut holes shop was closed.

Somebody suggested we go to a bakery. So we did and there found milk and juice and bougatsa, which is cream-filled pastry. The bougatsa looked small, so we ordered three of them and went to a park bench beside the water to eat.

The bougatsa, when held in the hand, suddenly looked large, and were quite heavy besides. Demetrios, whose appetite shrank the moment we got to England and has remained small ever since, could only eat half of his. (It’s stress reduction, now that he isn’t working.) I ate all of mine, and drank some of the milk, too.

Then, on to a kafeneion for kafe. I had tea instead.

We could and should have bought tickets for the 9:30 am bus, but yesterday Demetrios thought perhaps there would be time to locate another of those English camps, so we bought tickets for the 1:30 instead. Today Demetrios concluded, however, that there wasn’t enough time, so we hung around town.

About a mile short of the camp, he walked back to the campsite to revel in more memories, while I waited for him in the park by the sea.

Then we hiked the two more miles back to the bus terminal. I went to the ladies’ room and when I came back, Demetrios was sitting at a small table conversing in English with a Greek man. “Sit down,” Demetrios invited, pointing to his seat as he stood up. So I did and he disappeared into the men’s room, leaving me with the chatty, unshaven stranger, who immediately began describing his very unhappy life.

By the time Demetrios returned, it was time to board the bus, a relief to me. Demetrios later said the man probably had a mental illness. I left on the table the paper bag containing the third bougatsa and about a cup of milk.

The time for departure came and went. The bus driver seemed more interested in shouting at his friends and co-workers than in driving. “The woman who went to get water, is she back yet?” one of them shouted to the driver.

“Yes, she’s here.”

“I’m here!” said a heavy-set woman, waving.

“And the young lady who went to the bathroom?” the other shouted.

“Not yet,” the driver shouted back. A minute or two later she did come, everyone by now having become aware of her business.

This trip, there was only one brief stop, and only at a gas station, no food in sight. Not counting the two other stops the driver made by the side of the road for his own personal convenience.

The driver played terrible Greek music the whole way on his own radio, a man wailing in minor chords to the accompaniment of guitar and mandolin. Demetrios said it was a dissolute genre called rebetika and “It’s the music of losers. But in these songs, they make that into a virtue.” A little of it isn’t bad to listen to, but after the first hour it definitely grates on the nerves. We moved toward the back of the near-empty bus in order not to hear any more of it.

A man still young enough to have bubblegum in his mouth, three seats ahead of us, was busy seducing the young woman next to him – when she wasn’t seducing him.

In short, the only pleasant thing about the trip, besides being together, and of course the scenery, was that it was over a few minutes before we had expected it to be.

We changed to a regular city bus, which let us off right at the Seraikon, our favorite neighborhood eatery. We had supper there.

We had left our refrigerator empty and defrosting during our absence, so on our way home we stopped and bought some fruit and veggies to put in it, and some bread and butter for breakfast.

We unpacked and watched a little television and I knitted a while, and then, to sleep.

It was an unforgettable holiday, not only fulfilling dreams for each of us, but so much more. We feel relaxed and refreshed and extremely grateful.

Fun on Paxoi

Monday, 04 October

Going to bed so early was fortunate, because although I had my earplugs in and missed the whole episode, Demetrios had an experience he hadn’t known since childhood.

“Four o’clock in the morning,” he told me, “right on the dot, and every rooster in the village began crowing!” So we made up the

Roosters’ Song

E’re morning gilds the sky
Our hearts, awakening, cry
“Well, cock-a-doodle-do!”

And fortunately for you, I forget the rest of the words.

There’s no place to eat breakfast in a village the size of Gaios. Now I know what the kitchenette was for; tourists have to prepare their own breakfasts – or else stay in a real hotel that includes it. We finally had grilled cheese sandwiches and coffee and water.

Then we wandered the streets of this little place, lifted right out of the pages of a fairytale. Around every corner was another delight, a palm tree or a bougainvillea or some charming little cottage or some adorable little shop or all of the above. There were terraces where people could sit in the sun; there were balconies full of geraniums (yes, still blooming, albeit barely); there were cobbled streets and unpaved streets, and everything was very, very clean.

Then we came upon the cats. Big cats, small cats, striped cats, calico cats, tuxedo cats, tabby cats. They were all sitting around an open window, to which their eyes were glued, and their faces all spoke more eloquently than words: “Pleeease Feed Us!” I counted the cats and there were 14 of them, including the ones we had seen last night at the taverna. Excluding kittens, that was probably every feline in the village. We watched a man purchase a packet of something from the man inside the window, but we didn’t know what it was until we came closer. We should have known. Fish.

Demetrios says someone ought to paint that scene. It was priceless, all the village cats gathered around the fishmonger’s.

Gaios, the chief city on the Island of Paxoi, is peaceful, relaxing, romantic, and pretty. It is built in a crescent shape around a very blue harbor, and has a very green mini-island sitting right in front of it, dividing the harbor, so that, as in Corfu, there is an Old Port, full of small craft, and a New Port, presumably deeper, for larger vessels.

I’m not quite sure why, but it took us all morning to decide what we wanted to do. We just wandered here and there, our little carry-on bag in tow. We thought of catching the boat to Antipaxoi, which cruises around that island and comes back after a while, but it departed before we had quite made up our minds. There are also boats that go around this Island and we’re told this is the best way to see it, but the captain said he needed 150 Euros to make any profit, so to make the price reasonable, we would have to find three or four other couples to go with us, and that wouldn’t be easy, as the tourist season is about over.

The water is so clear and so gorgeous and so blue and inviting that Demetrios wanted to rent a boat and pilot it himself, but I said absolutely not. We have no idea how to steer a boat and no map of the water and no knowledge of where rocks are and other dangerous spots. NO.

Finally, emboldened by our experience on Corfu, we decided to rent a car just for the few hours we had left, to see the island. We walked into one of the dozen or so tourist offices, chosen at random, and Demetrios explained what we wanted,

“I’m sorry; I do not speak Greek,” said the woman at the desk, slowly and distinctly. “I only speak English.”

??? !!!

Okay, we spoke English.

Turns out she works for a British company and yes, they do rent cars, but their bookings are all done in advance, from the U.K. In other words, she only caters to Brits. We remembered the British couple last night had told us Paxoi was heavily promoted in the U.K., presumably as affordable. She suggested the shop next door. So we went to the tourist office next door and arranged for a very small car, manual shift, the only kind available on Paxoi.

The final paperwork was being churned out by a slow computer when Demetrios’ eye fell upon a little booklet about a well-known event that happened here at about the time of Christ, either during His life or just after His resurrection, but before Christianity came to Paxoi. It seems that a sea captain, passing this Island, wished to pay tribute to Pan, the god of Paxoi. But as he was doing his prostrations (or whatever) a deep voice boomed forth from out of one of the local caves along the shore: “The great god Pan has died. He is no more on this island.” News of this happening eventually reached the imperial court in Rome, where people debated what it should mean.

Well, this book was a record of the proceedings of some symposium that had been held concerning this event. And Demetrios wanted a copy. So our sightseeing was delayed another half hour or so while he checked the mayor’s office, whence the book had come. The mayor’s office said it was out of print, but they photocopied the whole thing for him.

Meanwhile, another British couple came into the tourist office, where I was waiting. Seeing me, they asked whether we needed accommodation for the night. Somewhat surprised at that question, I said no, and then they explained. They had seen us wandering about, towing our little suitcase, and this was the only explanation they could think of; we must be looking for a hotel. I didn’t tell them the real reason is we are just too idiotic to figure out what else we wanted to do. And too enchanted by this perfect little village.

Demetrios came back and we put the bag in the trunk of the car and the nice young man said he would meet us at three o’clock at the New Harbor where our ferry to the mainland would be docked, and he would pick up the car from us there.

So off we went, fearlessly this time, but still very carefully on account of Demetrios having no driver’s license with him. We never saw any police and even wonder whether there are any on this Island.

There are 8 miles of road on Paxoi, altogether. Well, there are of course side streets as well, but they don’t count because they don’t lead to anywhere public and even if they did, you still would not want to drive on them.

The landscape is like nothing we have ever seen before. It’s very hilly, steep but not quite mountainous, and covered with big, old, shady olive trees – and stones. Stones, stones, stones everywhere, ancient stones, carefully fitted together with no mortar. At first I thought the whole island must be full of ancient ruins, but upon more careful observation it became apparent these low walls were not foundations of buildings, but were mostly terracing. And boundary markers, and retaining walls around the olive trees. Almost every olive tree had its own little retaining wall around it to keep the soil in place. The local stone is white and honey-colored, quite beautiful, and it’s everywhere.

There is a surprising amount of new construction in progress, vacation homes, as you can tell by their isolation, because the locals like to live together in villages. The modern buildings, too, are all of stone and glass, with panoramic views of green hills and the bluer-than-blue sea.

We came to the village of Longos, where we ran out of road at the waterfront. Nuding oujr car past a couple of sidewalk cafes, we found a parking space and set off exploring the village. That took five or six minutes. It’s the very definition of picturesque, with its little harbor, only deep enough for the small boats you need here to get around in. (Whereas in some parts of the world there are as many cars as drivers, here there’s one boat for every person old enough to sail one.)

We had lunch and asked the waiter what that stone building was on the top of the hill. He said it used to be a windmill. I asked what the large thing was that looked like the ruin of a factory and he said it was where the olives used to be pressed and/or otherwise processed. Aha! So that’s what the inhabitants do when it isn’t tourist season. The olives are their other income. The olives are already quite large, although still very hard and green.

From Longos, we went to Lakka, an even tinier village with its even tinier harbor, but equally pretty.

And then it was time to head back to Gaios to meet the car rental man and our ferry to Igoumenitsa, on the mainland.

Adventure in Corfu

Saturday, 02 October

Hints from Helen:

Learn to drive a car with a manual shift before you rent a car in Europe.  And/or practice with one in a large, empty lot to refresh your skill before you come here.  Some places don’t have cars with automatic shifts, and even if they do, manual shifts cost less. 

Rent as small a car as you comfortably can.  You’ll be glad you did.

We were up at 6:30 and in the breakfast room of the hotel by 7:15.  We had planned to leave by 7:40 to find David and Julia’s cruise ship and position ourselves at the end of whatever walkway they would be using, but we didn’t notice the time again until Demetrios’ watch said 7:50.

We hurried out to the parking lot and got into the car and I started it – and then made the awful discovery that it was a manual shift.  I hadn’t driven a manual shift car in over 20 years.  I wasn’t even sure any more which pedal was the brake and which, the clutch. 

Demetrios hadn’t driven a manual shift car in about 30 years.  And he didn’t have his driver’s license with him, either.  But there was no choice; I was thoroughly panicked.  And David had been emphatic:  in their years of cruising, he and Julia had learned that to rely upon public transportation was a big no-no.  Their ship would sail at 4:00, with or without them, and they must be back aboard by 3:30 and at least 10 minutes had to be allotted for them to walk from the waterfront through the terminal building and out the walkway to the ship.

“I can do it,” said Demetrios, climbing in behind the wheel.  We buckled ourselves in and he started the car, which immediately stalled.  He started it again, grated it into reverse, and we rocketed out of the parking spot and stalled again.  He started the car again, and it jumped forward.  He slammed on the brake; the car stalled. 

We had a map, but most of the streets weren’t labeled.  We didn’t know how to get to the port; we only had a general idea:  it’s on the waterfront to our left.  So Demetrios drove in that direction, the first time he had ever driven in Greece (which is to say, amid Greek drivers!); and we moved slowly, jolting along about 100 meters at a time before having to re-start the engine.  Whenever this happened, people behind us would honk impatiently.

 “It’s two minutes until eight,” said Demetrios as we neared the harbor.  “We’re competing with the Queen!”  That’s a standing joke of ours, as Queen Elizabeth is known for her exact punctuality – and Demetrios isn’t.

“We’re losing,” I said as the car leapt to a stop. 

The Star Princess  was perfectly obvious, even from a distance, by far the biggest vessel in port, not a floating hotel but a floating city, population 2,600 passengers plus 1,300 crew.

 “Look, two warships, too,” said Demetrios. 

The car shuddered to a halt in front of the water. Never mind; in a few moments, David would be driving.  David’s own car has a manual shift; he is well used to it.  I climbed out to find him and Julia while Demetrios went in search of a place to park.

Julia and David saw me getting out of the car, and were coming toward me, all smiles, when Demetrios spotted us.  Hasty hugs and kisses and we all climbed back in – with Demetrios still behind the wheel.  I had forgotten that David is used to driving on the other side of the road.  And that his manual shift is operated with the left hand. 

“Never mind,” said Demetrios as the car lurched forward and stalled, “I think I’m getting the hang of it.” 

We decided the first place to go was the Achilleion.  It’s a summer palace built by the Austro-Hungarian Empress, Elizabeth, who for some absurd reason was known as “Sissy.”  (Would you allow yourself to be called that if you were an empress?  No, you wouldn’t!)

Anyway, this Empress admired Achilles, that great Homeric hero, so she named her residence after him, and there are two statues of him there, one of him victorious (over Hector) and the other of him wounded in the heel and dying.  Both are quite good, as are all the other statues about the courtyard, graceful Muses.

The gardens are lovely and go all the way down to the sea. There are azaleas in bloom (!) and laurel, also in bloom, and smelling of (what else?) bay leaves.

Inside, there are various items that belonged to dear Sissy, and some that belonged to Kaiser Wilhelm II, who bought the place after she had been assassinated. 

Sissy, by the way, was succeeded by her nephew, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.  Yes, the one who was assassinated at Sarajevo, sparking World War I. 

(Well, you know, oppress people and you have to expect them to try to assassinate you.  That’s part of the job description.  Call it your occupational hazard.)

After the Achilleion, we decided simply to drive through the southern part of the Island (since we were already south of town) and see what was to be seen. 

What the map calls main roads are back country roads.  Yes, they are paved, and yes, most of them could be construed as having two lanes, although I don’t know what we would have done if we had encountered a tour bus coming the other way.  The roads are narrow, steep, and twisty; and most of them lack guard rails.   Their chief advantage is the lack of other drivers, other people being less, um, less adventurous, shall we say, than we.

So along these roads we went lurching along.  To be fair, Demetrios, although still was driving in a foreign country in an unfamiliar car along unknown roads, really was beginning to get the hang of it by now.  He was greatly assisted, of course, by three backseat drivers.  (I remember at one point, as he was backing up toward I forget what, a lamp post or a steep drop-off or something, saying, “Stop!  STOP!” and finally screaming, “STOP!”

“One of these times, you are going to cause me to have a serious accident,” said Demetrios, jerking the car forward. 

Right.

We drove through shady slopes covered with olive trees, ancient ones.  The Venetians had a policy about planting olive trees; there had to be a certain number planted every year, and that number was in proportion to the population.  They wanted to supply all of Venice’s olive oil and then some. 

Every once in a while David, bracing himself against the dashboard as we bumped along, would say something like, “Well, we’ve all had good lives,” or “This really isn’t a bad way to go.” 

Perhaps because the tens of thousands of olive trees I’ve seen until now were younger and cultivated, I never realized what a wild olive tree’s trunk looks like.  It resembles a dozen ropes thicker than your arm, all twisted together and leaving lots of gaps. 

We got lost once or twice, and were very glad of it, because each time, we found ourselves in a picture postcard village with whitewashed houses, balconies overflowing with bougainvillea, palm trees, a maze of sunny little streets.

We stopped for coffee at a little place on a hill overlooking the sea.  We sat under a canopy of vines and watched the sparkling sea and thoroughly enjoyed just being there, and being together.  And not driving.  David said, and I agree, this spot was so lovely it was worth the whole trip.

Keeping a sharp eye on the clock, we headed back to town.  We found a spot to eat that was literally in sight of the Star Princess and had moussaka and relaxed and talked until time to take Julia and David back to their boat. Well, we relaxed more or less; I’m not sure David really did until he was back aboard the ship.

Too bad, they said, that visitors are no longer allowed aboard.  Yes, indeed.  We would have loved to see that cruise ship from the inside.  But in these post 9/11 times, that can’t be done.

When they had gone, there were still three hours before we had to return our hired car.  So when Demetrios asked what I’d like to do next, I said if he wasn’t too tired of driving, I’d like to see some of the northern part of the island.  That’s where Durrell lived and played as a boy.  Demetrios wanted to see it, too, because he’d heard of its beauty.

The northern part of the island is steeper than the southern.  The other main difference is, it has goats.  In the road.  I was so grateful Julia and especially David didn’t have to experience that!

But we were no longer frightened; Demetrios really was driving well by this time.  We meandered up the coast, admiring various villages and beaches.  The mountains of Albania are visible “in the background,” I think Durrell wrote.  Well, not in the background; at one point, Albania is only a mile away.  I can see now why his mother used to let him go sailing around this coast in his little boat, all alone, exploring the sun-drenched coves and beaches.  It isn’t as if there were any open water or any waves.  Again, it was all as I had imagined it from his description, which shows what a good writer he was, and all just as charming.

We got as far as Kassiopi before we had to turn back.  I had wanted to go a little further, to Lake Antonioti, because Durrell described it as an almost magical place; and today it is still an important wildlife refuge.  But our time ran out, so we picked up two small rocks from the Ionian shore, dabbled our hands in the water so we could say we had, then watched a while before turning back. 

A whole school of fish jumped out of the water as we were watching.  They were little silver fish, and they jumped in about a three-foot arc, their bodies making a shimmering spray in the sunlight.  It was beautiful, and we’ve never seen anything like it before.

Back in Corfu City, we found a parking spot along the Spianada and went back to our hotel for a rest before supper.

Supper was a shared pizza, small but still too much for both of us after our big lunch.  It wasn’t very good, but never mind.  It’s all part of the adventure, we said.  (You know what an “adventure” is, don’t you?  It’s something that while it’s still in progress, you call a nightmare but after it’s over, when you’re retelling the story, it becomes an adventure.  Except that it couldn’t be that much of a nightmare if you’re with David and Julia and/or if you’re in Corfu!)  

We wandered among the tourist shops for a while without buying anything and then, very tired, turned in early – still laughing at the thought of how David would describe this day to his sons.

A Dream Comes True for Me

Friday, 01 October

I have longed to visit Kerkyra (Corfu, to us English speakers) ever since I read the book My Family and Other Strange Animals by Gerald Durrell, the great naturalist. He lived there for five years as a boy, immediately before World War II, and his descriptions of it so charmed and fascinated me that I’ve wanted to see the place for myself ever since, and today, that dream began to come true.

First we took the bus to Igoumenitsa, the small port from which the ferries run to Corfu and other Ionian islands.

Apparently, there’s a law in Greece that bus journeys four hours long or longer must include a stop, so passengers can rest and eat and so forth. (There are no lavatories aboard Greek buses.) So it was a pleasant trip in two 2-hour segments with a 15-minute break between. The first third of the route is through a fertile plain, as far as Berea (Beroia), where the Jews in St. Paul’s day were “nobler” than the Jews in Thessaloniki, because instead of rejecting the Gospel outright, they “searched the Scriptures” to see if the prophetic descriptions of Messiah did indeed describe Jesus of Nazareth. From Berea on, the landscape is mountainous, and the mountains are quite rugged.

We walked a few hundred meters to the port in Igoumenitsa and quickly found a ferry about to sail to Corfu. We bought tickets and hurried aboard.

The Nireas is a huge ferry. Its bottom deck holds 18-wheeler trucks, plural, and about two dozen cars. And it’s smaller than some of the other ferries.

We found seats on the top deck, near the bow, for a great view for the nearly 2-hour cruise.

Land was never out of sight. In fact, you can see the island of Corfu from the beginning, plus several other islets.

Corfu is a sickle-shaped island, or so they say; to me, its shape is more like a seahorse. The main town, also called Corfu, is at about she seahorse’s chest level. To the north, the land rises to a tall mountain named Pantocrator. From our vantage point, the whole island just looked like a long strip (60 kilometers long, 36 miles) with mountains crowning one end.

The city, as it came into view, quite matched the picture in my imagination. The first thing you see is an ancient and enormous stone fortress guarding the harbor, and then, eventually, two of them.

The Venetians occupied this island for over 400 years; hence, the city looks very much like Venice, sans canals. The buildings are tall and narrow with tall, shuttered windows, the shutters being, well, like venetian blinds (fancy that) in wood. There are balconies in fancy wrought-iron. The favorite colors for buildings are shades of pink, peach, and gold.

The harbor has two ports, the Old Port and the New Port, plus a marina where small craft bob in the phleesmos. That’s the Greek word for the soft sound of the water lapping against the shore.

We took a cab to our hotel, the Hotel Arcadion, which turned out to be in the heart of the town, right on the main square, called the Spianada.

The Spianada was kept open, originally, to make a clear firing ground between the two forts. Nowadays it contains a bandstand and a cricket field. Yes, cricket! That’s left over from the days when Corfu was an English protectorate. There was a match in progress, too, the players in long, white trousers, white knitted shirts, and white shoes.

There are many cafes spilling out onto the sidewalks, and there are horse-drawn carriages for tourists, and there are, even now in October, crowds of tourists.

We decided to rest in our room and wait there for our rented car to be delivered. To tell you the truth, I was very nervous about that, because it was immediately AFTER I had made the reservation online that I noticed there was no real contact information online, only a post office box for an address. And I had given them all the credit card information.

However, it all turned out well. A ring from the front desk informed us that our car had arrived, and we went down and did the paperwork in the lobby and the very nice man showed us where he had parked the car, and the price was reasonable.

The eatery forming the ground floor of our hotel was, of all things, a MacDonalds! Yes, I said! Every American needs a hamburger from time to time, and I hadn’t had one since arriving in Greece. So that’s where we had our little supper.

Then we set out to explore our surroundings on foot.

“On foot” is an optimistic thing to say in Corfu. Unless you have good, non-skid shoes, “on arse” might be more appropriate. The streets are paved in polished stone that often looks like marble and probably is. These stones are very slippery, and my shoes had smooth leather soles. Fortunately, I only slipped once and Demetrios caught me so I didn’t fall. But, as when wlking on ice, one needs a lot of caution.

The first thing we did was go to the Church of St. Spyridon, the patron saint of Corfu. He was a shepherd, originally, and later the Bishop of Corfu. He was also one of the Fathers at the Council of Nicaea, who hammered out the Creed. He worked many miracles during his lifetime and has continued to work them ever since. His incorrupt body is sometimes displayed. He is often seen on this island, still doing his holy and sometimes miraculous work. His slippers need replacing every couple of years. (??? Presumably it’s not the corpse that gets up and walks around? Presumably it’s his spirit? Or is it that pilgrims keep kissing those slippers?)

We arrived just in time; vespers was over and the church was about to be locked up. Never mind; we found the casket, a very ornate one in brass, in a chapel to the right of the altar. A couple of dozen brass lampadas are hanging above it, many of them lit. We venerated the Saint and felt lumps in our throats. I don’t know why. We don’t know enough about the great saint for this experience to have been all that moving for us, yet it very much was. In fact, I (very mistakenly) felt that now I had done the main thing in Corfu; now, I thought, I could leave any time and be perfectly content.

So, besides the dozens of sidewalk cafes, there are all the predictable tourist shops with tacky souvenirs, most of the items blue or blue-green. In Corfu, there are a lot of upscale shops as well, selling Italian shoes in amazing designs, and designer handbags and jewelry and embroidered tablecloths and Armani clothing.

Ignore all those! (Unless you came for them.) Just admire the quaint buildings, the stone balustrades, the narrow alleys and the picture-book feeling.

We stepped out into one of those alleyways, unlit, and immediately found ourselves out of the tourist district, although still in the historic heart of the city.

A young bitch, a Black Lab, was trying desperately to open a cardboard carton that sat near a dumpster. I opened it for her. Inside was a plastic bag full of yummy garbage.

“Now she’s going to get it all over the street,” said Demetrios.

“That’s okay. Doggie deserves a meal, too.” Besides, the building in front of which she was going to strew it looked abandoned; there were no lights inside it.

She wolfed down her meal in about five huge bites. But then, no fool, she attached herself to us.

We continued through some unlit streets, admiring the surrealistic, Venetian city, when we heard something that sounded like a trombone. “Kid practicing,” I said, smiling.

Then we heard another horn, higher pitched. Two kids practicing?”

And then we came to the Kapodistria Philoharmonia Academy of Corfu, still accompanied by the little bitch. (Kapodistria, after whom the Academy is named, was the statesman who wrote the Greek Constitution. He once wrote a constitution for Russia, as well, and he’s the one who organized Switzerland into cantons.)

Three young men stood outside the Academy, chatting. The oldest of them (fortyish) came over to us to answer Demetrios’ questions, and a long conversation followed. The Black Lab lay down on the pavement to wait it out. Two pre-adolescent boys began calling to her and petting her.

Eventually Demetrios asked the handsome young man, Ioannis, whether we could see the inside of the building, and Ioannis said certainly, come right in. And he proceeded to show us around. Here are the practice rooms, here is a picture of us playing in Paris, and here we are at the Olympics in Athens, and here is our first and founding maestro. And here are our uniforms (red with white trim) and our helmets (brass). And this is me… Turns out Ioannis is an instructor of Percussion at the Academy. And what they call a “philharmonia” is a marching band.

Corfu, said Ioannis, is very musical. There are 17 marching bands on the Island, each with its own maestro and its own uniforms, but this is the oldest, the original band.

And then, from his desk, he took a small, shield-shaped banner, red with black fringe and a black, printed picture of Kapodistrias. It’s the kind of banner you hang from, say, a trumpet when you’re in a parade. And this he asked us to keep. So now we have a unique souvenir of Corfu! We certainly shall prize this little banner.

We thanked him profusely and went our way. Ioannis said if we wanted to come back at nine o’clock, there would be a rehearsal we might enjoy, but we were tired and ready tor an early bed. We had to get up very early again in the morning, because we were to meet David and Julia down at the port at 8:00.

The Black Lab had disappeared, presumably to attach herself to one of the boys who had been playing with her. Seldom have I ever parted with such regret from a dog. But then if I were to adopt every dog that has broken my heart to leave, I’d have dozens of them, plus unnumbered cats.

Living in Greece, Part 04

We Live Here
Saturday, 04 September

We are not exactly on holiday; we live here. There’s a big difference. Holiday-makers don’t usually have much housework – at least not until their vacation is over — and don’t sit before stacks of paperwork or pay bills or shop for their food, or cook it themselves, or do dishes afterward. Or work on their books or knit or – no, wait, I haven’t had time to knit yet…

Can you tell I’m still in a cranky mood? I think maybe a bit more rest would cure me, but I can’t rest until my house is as it should be; in Demetrios’ word, kanoniko. Thus far, I have only done a hurried job, enough to make it very livable, but I am bothered by the stuff that still needs doing: vacuuming the upholstered furniture, washing the windows and glass doors, and the like. What bothers me worse is that I just can’t do it as quickly and efficiently as I want to, used to. Signs of old age, geramata. Kyrie,eleison!

This afternoon my brother-in-law Christos took us to a super-store at the edge of town called Mega Markt. It’s very like Circuit City, full of appliances and electrical stuff. Christos says, darkly, nobody knows who owns it.

It has a rip-off scheme to keep you shopping there. They don’t give you cash discounts, but if you buy something, they give you a credit against your next purchase at the same store. The amount of the credit varies with how much you spend and the credit never expires.

So…Demetrios bought the television from them a few days ago and was given enough credit to make the new stove we bought today ridiculously cheap. (Our current stove is 35 years old and has only one working burner.)

Once the stove is delivered, the store will give us a credit toward the next purchase. But guess what? Our next “purchase” will be a tiny microwave oven we found there that costs the same amount as the credit.

The idea of getting rid of the old TV was daunting. There are always passing Gypsies calling out for discarded items. The problem was getting it to them, because it’s big and old and very heavy, and Christos says the First Rule of Gypsies is: never, under any circumstances, allow them into your house.

Finally we set the ancient television upon an equally ancient bedsheet and dragged it out of the flat and into the elevator, in which it just fit, together with the two of us. We dragged it thence into the entry hall of our building. Then when we heard the cry of the next Gypsy, we hailed him. Not such a big deal after all.

We still haven’t “done much” to write home about. Give us time to get settled. It takes longer here than in England.