LandOMiracles.com

In the beginning

Greece was always a "Land of Miracles."  From the day it was created an independent country by the Great Powers that defeated the occupying Ottomans, Greece operated more as a confused aggregation of conflicting interest groups than an organized state with coherent rules and established behaviors. Its original foreign administration, comprising advisers of a Bavarian prince elevated “King of the Hellenes” by the Great Powers, acted in what they knew best organizationally and administratively without, however, any clue as to what the locals desired or, indeed, were capable of achieving. Thus, it was all, so to speak, left to the grace of the good God of Greece and the rest, as they say, is history.

European Union Greece carries the impacts of such a forced birth whole and strong. These founding influences are compounded by crippling instabilities that developed along the way. Nearly two centuries after the Bavarians went to work putting together "modern Greece," their handiwork has sunk to the depths of political impasse, economic woes, and social pressures that would tax even the toughest, most single-minded leader. Under crushing budget deficits generated by headlong borrowing, waste, fraud, and mismanagement, with a political “elite” populated by dilettantes, the intellectually challenged, and the deeply corrupt, and surrounded by growing threats of an increasingly unstable immediate and more distant international environment, Greece is adrift without anchors and without a rudder that works.

LandOMiracles.com takes a harsh look at current Greek realities. One of the Greek condition's more salient characteristics is denial. LandOMiracles.com does not suffer from that.

Born and raised in this country, I have been watching "modern Greece" for more than thirty years. Work in academia and government has provided me with insights, some of which I wish I had not gained. I am not optimistic about Greece's tomorrow. I pay no attention to the current political road show, neither do I have any illusions about the ability of Greeks to thoroughly mess up even the simplest and most obvious of situations. One look, for example, at how they treat this country's foreign relations -- and how they misinterpret global-altering trends -- will help you to also become a pessimist about the Greek "future."

Read on.

Demosthenes of Athens

Winding down

All good things come to a quick end. The weather has changed, unfortunately, to its usual summer Aegean self. The meltemi (strong northerly) has returned with a passion. The low weather system that sat over Italy for weeks, preventing the meltemi pressure systems from forming over south central Europe and the Balkans, has moved on -- and these dastardly winds are blowing with a passion again. Temperatures have dropped to autumn-like 70s and 80s and the sea, whipped up by the northerly crazies, has returned to its sub-polar qualities. In short, it’s time to pull out the windbreaker and retreat from the balcony lest you’re blown over by the blasts.

In recent days, Turkish warplanes have been again dancing their deadly dance over nearby islands. We are supposedly in the middle of the so-called “summer moratorium” first agreed upon back in 1988 (no military exercises in the Aegean in July and August). Yesterday, enemy fighters were tumbling over nearby Fournoi, clearly visible from my perch. Our Aegean patrol was out in force too. This is one dangerous, dangerous play designed by the Turks to remind the world Greece won’t really defend its sovereignty as she should.

It all started around 11 a.m. The announcement unfailingly comes with the ear-piercing whine of jet engines going to afterburner. Sounds like this over the open sea literally fill the great void with this eerie reverberation. When the flying grows nearer, the house begins to vibrate. This is hardly welcome as part of summer vacation. The enemy came in waves, flying straight out of the Eski Sehir air base in the heart of Asia Minor as he always does. I later heard that our Mrs. Bakoyannis, this paragon of a foreign minister, won’t be visiting Ankara after all as she was originally planning to do next month. 

I’m now on countdown as my return ticket is for this coming Sunday. Yesterday, I got the first you’ll-be-back-soon call from the office. They wanted to schedule appointments for next week. Agggrrrrr !!!  I shouldn’t complain though. Late July and August in Athens is always slow, although this year, with so many not in a position to pay for vacations, our great Big Tomb capital may be busier than usual.

Do I feel rested? Yes ... and no! I have had enough extra sleep to last me for a while and I’m still dizzy from breathing clean air. I did some interesting reading. I lounged about. I rose from bed after (!!) seven in the morning! I even registered a couple of days when I was still snoozing well past 8:30 a.m. These are memorable records. Now, I must reset the system quickly to 0530 for business days and 0630 for weekends.

American friends, who are yachting around in the Cyclades, called yesterday to say they’re all rather seasick and looking for ways to return to Athens by bigger boat or plane. That’s a shame. They had planned this trip as a much needed R & R break and the minute they stepped on deck the meltemi rose. Seasickness is one of the most debilitating conditions in the book -- and if you haven’t experienced it, you don’t really know how miserable and helpless you feel. Medication and various homeopathic remedies rarely work, so, really, you’re on your own. 

Patmos is still empty of tourists. The occasional cruise ship does bring groups of people from time to time, but these are visits for just a few hours. Despite this complete disaster, local hoteliers won’t lower their prices. Paying €140-170 for a double is not a sound proposition these days, but the Greek “business” spirit is deaf and dumb despite the dire circumstances.

Compare and contrast with neighboring Turkey. A five-star hotel on the Aegean coast, offering breakfast and full buffet dinner, will charge you anywhere from €70 to €85 for the night, double occupancy. Service is impeccable. The food is delicious. Relatives, who are currently visiting the neo-Ottoman land, report cleanliness, quality, and the customer being always right. They have extensively used buses to get from one town to the next. Buses are all sparkling new, air conditioned, with WC, and complementary refreshments and toiletries. The driver and conductor wear well pressed uniforms and are invariably polite and helpful. The driver will even take short detours for foreign tourists who are trying to get to specific locations. Have you ever traveled by bus in Greece? (Drakula-like screams).

Guess which country is brimming with tourists in this year of the Grim Ripper.

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Mopeds

Mopeds constitute the bane of Patmos. In fact, they constitute the bane of many an island. Mopeds first arrived in the late seventies. Suddenly, donkeys were out of fashion and small, two-stroke, petrol-and-motor-oil burning motored, vile to the hearing and the environment, two-wheeled vehicles were in. Early efforts to ban them (as it happened on Hydra, where the town council, in a move that should be unprecedented in Greece, prohibited their use) failed.

Mopeds proliferated in proportion to “tourist development.” Today, there are several shops renting these vicious little machines to all comers, without such considerations as a permit to operate one, while many locals ride their own, mostly with cutout exhausts to add to the auditory assault closely associated with these mechanical abominations.

It is a miracle, no doubt attributable to Saint Christodoulos, founder of the holy monastery of Patmos, that there are no oodles of fatalities considering the number of these vile-fume belching beasts on the island. The few paved roads on Patmos are twisty and difficult. The pavement is really nothing to write home about. Anyone on two wheels assumes disproportionate risks in such an environment -- especially if he or she is totally unfamiliar with motorcycle riding as the overwhelming number of tourists is. The renters have been forced by law to also provide helmets to their customers, although this is little consolation. Few know how to actually wear a helmet, which should be additionally of a certain level of quality (which means cost that the renters, I doubt, are willing to shoulder).

I have ridden large-displacement motorcycles on Patmos and I can attest to the treacherous nature of the road “system.” Even with a larger real machine, which is inherently safer than a flimsy moped because of far better breaks and tires that grip the road, leaning into a U-shaped turn on Patmos is a bet against the Laws of Nature. And because Nature will win every time, any misadventure is guaranteed to produce disaster.

No wonder then you see all these sweaty riders, most of whom actually carry a pillion passenger, trying desperately to balance a 50 cubic centimeter-motored contraption into entering one of the many dangerous twists without of course the ability to accelerate comfortably under the double weight and the absence of any meaningful engine power. These riders are extremely dangerous to themselves and to car drivers as well because, at any moment, they may end up sprawled in the path of an oncoming or following automobile.

It is difficult to defend against these moped pests. They’re everywhere, ridden by inept idiots, who may instantly cause a deadly accident. I have repeatedly spotted local riders, especially female, riding up or down the main road -- snake-like and very demanding -- while attempting to speak on a cell phone. What better way to commit suicide and, in the process, perhaps bring other innocent drivers into a world of harm as the cell phone operators become a splotch on the tarmac?

When you drive on Patmos, keep your eye fixed on the road and  the sign of the Cross.

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Of roots and fruits

I have a lifelong love affair with tomatoes and onions.

Once in ancient times, Greece had an abundance of both, locally grown and of exquisite taste (yes, there’s taste to onions; some are sweeter than others, some are sharper on the tongue but still sweet enough to use with relative abandon without fearing any adverse affects on the final dish, and still some are ‘neutral’ but ‘onion-enough’ to add when the recipe calls for it in larger than usual amounts).  As for tomatoes (the fruit) what can I say? I can’t find a more satisfying, fresh taste in anything added raw to a salad than the taste of a ripe but firm real tomato (i.e. one grown in the open without the use of pesticides, hormones, fertilizers, or any other such chemical crutch).

I have been lucky to have access to locally grown onions and tomatoes every time I’ve been here. I say “lucky” because the Patmos islanders, like most other rural Greeks, have completely given up on growing things in their gardens and/or plots of land as they used to in the era before super markets, plastic bags, satellite TV, 4 by 4s, and the EU quietly encouraging agricultural imports from trash economies. They are rather occupied with the “tourist trade” and chatting aimlessly on their cell phones. The very few holdouts though do put their backs to it and the result is one last sweet reminiscence of days past.

Some days ago I was in Lefkes, a location that hosts one of the largest private lots of land on the island. This is known as To Ktima tou Valvi (Valvis’s farm) after the original owner, Valvis, a wealthy Greek merchant from Egypt, who way back then brought builders and masons from the land of the Nile to build him a mansion in the middle of the farm (see photo).

The farm has recently passed into the hands of a private buyer, who has done a clearing and renovation job throughout the property. The mansion, known as O Pyrgos tou Valvi (Valvis’s tower) is indeed a rare spectacle on this whole island. Build to a distinct early 20th century mix of English countryside manor and northern Italian palazzo style, the mansion overlooks a healthy spread half of which is planted with tomato plants. The farm is a stone’s throw from the beach, but the subsoil is strangely dry, perhaps because of intervening stratifications impervious to salt water seepage, a rare phenomenon in such locations. This is the kind of soil that gives ideal tomatoes. I haven’t tasted any from this particular farm, but samples from neighboring plots tell a wonderful story.

Now, I have to work on finding the cash to make an offer on the Ktima tou Valvi (here’s my guess: this must have cost the latest buyer a minimum €3.5 million).

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My two-headed spud

 

 

This is my two-headed spud. It was delivered in a bag of locally grown potatoes the other day. These are real organically grown Patmos potatoes. The old man who grows them uses no fertilizers but manure. The plot is perfect for this type of cultivation. The earth is unusually rich for a little island that’s mostly rock. Temperatures are just right. There’s no market pressure to pull the spuds before full term.

This year, my “share” (a gift from the old man) weighs in at just below 50 kilos. I will haul the two sacks back to Athens and hide them in the cool darkness of the garage. Placed on racks, these potatoes will easily last until Christmas. They taste ... well... like real potatoes... When deep fried in extra virgin olive oil, they turn out golden and crispy and tasty to boot. Baked, topped with a healthy soup spoonful of Philadelphia cream cheese, are the palate’s ultimate delight. Boiled, they make the potato salad you never forget. My Patmos organically grown potato salad recipe includes both mayo and full cream and is not for the faint-hearted or the cholesterol-monitoring!!

I don’t want to eat my two-headed spud. I will dry it and keep it as a memento.

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Early morning musing

It’s a brilliant morning today. Weather has turned southerly, which means warm, humid breezes. The immediate result is getting a glimpse of Patmos shrouded in fog, especially at sunset. Not a phenomenon you often meet. This is perfect weather for swimming. The sea is somewhat warmer, especially in the chosen shallow spots you eventually discover, if you are a returning visitor who prefers “tub water,” as the snorkeling toughies call it. I am myself a tub water swimmer. My good friend Philo, who dives regularly to spear the now rarer and rarer fat fish, describes Patmos waters as “freezer waters” once you go below five meters in depth. He always wears a diving suit because, when the water is cold, you can quickly become numb and dangerously exposed to the risk of hypothermia and then to falling “asleep,” losing your sense of space, and peacefully sinking to the bottom -- forever.

My routine remains unchanged. Early morning (eight-ish) breakfast, a couple of hours of lounging about reading books, then off for a swim (unless an afternoon-early evening trip to the beach is planned), lunch, siesta, a late afternoon walk or drive, dinner around 2100, and back to bed around 2300.

This is really forcing the RPMs way down to the bare minimum and it’s obvious that my system needs it. This is my second week on the island and I’m still a bit “drunk” in the morning. I believe this is directly connected to the body trying to adjust to clean air and a higher intake of oxygen after months and months of literally keeping one’s snout lodged in car exhaust pipes and breathing in the most unbelievable poisons and small airborne particles. Environmental pollution in Athens is not a factor in the overall problem of this massive concrete tomb, it is the problem about which none in “policy making” positions seem to have any particular concerns.

An old acquaintance calls these periods of slow motion “flushing the bilges.” Flushing the bilges is one of the less cherished jobs on a ship and it is usually done way away from harbor in order to clean the ship’s lower bowels. Our bilges, I guess, reside in the brain. They become slowly filled with all the junk we ordinarily collect in the course of work, family life, and trying to exist in an increasingly “modern” world. I’ve discovered that my bilges fill up much faster now than, say, 20 years ago. Just before I go on a break, I am always agitated and in a generally sour mood. It is the effect of the control panel becoming alight with blinking red lights and a display that reads: “System overload.”

My favorite cat on the island has just arrived. I call her Stripy. Stripy is a remarkable feline with amazing instincts. She senses my arrival and quickly and miraculously appears at the doorstep. Stripy’s welcome call has been happening for years. She quickly assumes her usual routine in the house. There’s a pillow for her in the living room and she uses it until the very late hours of the night to doze off, until I reposition her right outside the living room door on the porch -- she’s always there the next morning, waiting for her breakfast. I have often thought of taking her back to Athens with me... but then I pause because it would be the cruelest and most unusual punishment for this lovely kitty, whose life is attached to the narrow passageways of this ancient settlement, to be sent to the massive concrete tomb.

I try to keep myself minimally informed, i.e. I’ve cut off newspapers entirely and don’t touch Google News, save quick glimpses. I did notice the death of that bizarre sorry excuse of a creature, Michael Jackson, who was already decomposing while still nominally alive, as well as the passing of Robert McNamara, whose 7-year tenure at the US Department of Defense did shape a whole era. As far as our domestic situation is concerned, there’s so little to say other than Hellas really falling apart much faster than even the pessimists thought possible. Never before have I witnessed such corruption and distress. Mr. Karamanlis should be credited as the prime minister who actually pulled the final plug and let the waters rush in to bring the already rickety bucket of this country to the restful bottom.

But Hellas Never Dies, right?

Don’t be so sure...

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A ban on smoking? Think again!

On July 1st, Greece supposedly came under a complete ban on smoking in all public places. I say “supposedly” because there are already strong protests from smokers concerning their “right” to exercise their addiction in ways that poison others, including their own families. In view of these inevitable reactions, the original law has been diluted to include exceptions, something that, right then and there, defeats the purpose of the exercise. Still, stopping the large mass of smokers in this country from polluting the air and exposing non-smokers to the critical health hazards of secondary smoking must remain the target.

At an early age, I saw my father die of smoking. He was the 3-pack a day guy. He lit up first thing in the morning while drinking his first tiny cup of dynamite-strength Greek coffee (of course, he had no breakfast like all Greeks in those days; he started his day with an empty stomach and lungs full of smoke) and he did not give up until late at night, just before he went to bed. My childhood all smelled of smoke. Our clothes smelled. Our home smelled. Our hair smelled. There was no escape. I used to sleep in a bedroom that was adjacent to a sitting room where Dad sat in front of the fire and chain smoked. I kept my window open throughout the year in an effort to defeat the clouds of bluish smoke hanging right above our heads.

Dad died with the pack of Papastratos cigarettes and the lighter sitting right next to him on the night table. He coughed and coughed and coughed as he was mercilessly reduced by the addiction. We watched him, helplessly, wither and expire. Several in our immediate family succumbed to smoking as well. Prominent among them was Uncle Elias, whose emphysema tortured him for years as he kept the cigarette lit and the doctor’s advice unobserved.

Against the statistics that say the apple falls right under the apple tree, I have never touched tobacco, save a few puffs right after high school when trying to impress the girls. Most of my friends did smoke. Once in the US, peer pressure increased. Those were the days of the Marlboro Man (who, by the way, was photographed in the surroundings of a cattle ranch owned by Greeks in Colorado!) and 25-cent a pack cigarettes. My roommate in college did not smoke (thankfully) but the rest of the Greek student bunch did -- cigarettes, cigarillos, even those dastardly cigars that stunk the whole building with one puff. One of them, who still smokes like a chimney, gave me as Christmas present a nicely carved, German-made pipe along with a tin of prime pipe tobacco in an effort to introduce me to the “pleasure of pleasures” (he always thought I was the kind of ‘worldly monk’ I should have never been; I never succeeded in changing his mind on this count).

I always found Greece, the land of the addicted to smoking, a land of extreme bother when it comes to public places because of both men and women puffing away in complete abandon and provocative ignoring of the non-smoker in the next table. I cannot begin to count the occasions of being subjected to choking gas warfare while sitting at the most exclusive of restaurants. With the exception of some luxury hotels that instituted their own in-house bans on smoking, you are on your own if you do not smoke in Hellas. The situation is even worse at the place of work. I am lucky in that I work for a company that enforces a complete ban inside the building, but these examples are rare in this country and include some private banks, foreign companies, and the occasional Greek employer who has a personal negative view on smoking.

To say that I take a dim view of smokers and their addiction would be an understatement. I consciously avoid them and never invite them into my home. Some of my best colleagues are smokers. I tolerate the occasional smoking lunch with them, but they all know quite well how I feel about their lighting habits -- which have resulted in their exclusion  from certain activities that could have been excellent career enhancers. I have directly discriminated in their cases and I feel not one iota of guilt over the fact. There’s a price to pay for everything and especially for things you practice without second thought, knowing full well that they damage others.

I am not very optimistic about the ban. But it’s better than nothing. This is the land where all laws are in place in order to be either broken or ignored or both. In the end, our collective behavior on issues like smoking does define who we are. And on this particular count -- smoking -- the picture is disappointing, to put it mildly.

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Thoughts on the Acropolis museum

Now that the PR dust has settled, I thought I’d jot down some thoughts on the new Acropolis museum. I’ve been told repeatedly in recent days by foreign friends that I should feel “proud to be a Greek” because the museum has opened.

Well, I hate to disappoint but the new museum is, primarily, a reminder of how we do things in this country; it took years of bickering and backstabbing for this Kaaba of a building to rise where it rose, while all the while the various factions of the archaeological “community” remained locked in a life-and-death struggle over control and jurisdiction. Finally, the established order prevailed. Professor Pandermalis, the equivalent of president-for-life, beamed like a peacock on the evening of the official opening. The younger generation in Greece is invisible.

Architecturally the Kaaba leaves me stone cold. Its shape is alien to its surroundings, not to mention the tradition it is dedicated to. The Kaaba would have been perfect as home for a large, faceless organization: I can see it hosting, say, the International Labor Office or the World Health Organization. Its angularities and enormous expanse of glass reminds of a style mixing hybrid Albert Speer Third Reich and the best out of the “avant garde” architecture that has destroyed many a skyline in our present day.  

Move on to museum content. Taking a stroll through the museum halls, you are constantly reminded that all this fascinating art was created by people who have absolutely no effective connection to “modern” Greece save modified language and the insistence of the natives to invoke the ancient past. Erecting the Parthenon was an outstanding example of a body of philosophy that occurred like a single unique flash of blinding light in an otherwise darker process of world history. And as you would know if you’ve done your Ancient Greece 101 reading, these very Greeks, who engendered this fabulous thinking and the art that sprung from it, did not escape the pitfalls of their “Greekness” either. By the time of the Romans arriving to dominate Hellas, the Greek city states had deteriorated into a bunch of bickering, petty minded entities asking the Roman conqueror to allow them to continue with their conflicts and recurring warfare as the most important “privilege” the new conquerors would be willing to grand. This was the epitome of  Greek “fraternal” co-existence.

The modern equivalent of building an Acropolis is simply “outside the envelope” of PASOKian - Karamanlian - Papandreist Hellas. Ditto about the thinking, reasoning, creating, rationalizing, shaping, articulating that came out of ancient Greece. Only yesterday, one lonely inspector of government services issued yet another depressing report on all-pervading corruption that dictates how this country operates. One medical doctor, working for the national health service, was found with an offshore company whose bank account received all the under-the-table payments from patients. The good doctor declared an average €33,000 a year. His offshore account was found to contain over two million euro.

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It’s a cat’s life!

Cats on Patmos are generally well fed and look very happy. Check the specimen in the photo!

I took the picture in the early evening after Mr. Tomcat had obviously had his dinner of scarps and other goodies that is augmented by the occasional catch of a field mouse, I would guess. He was surrounded by other comrades, equally at blissful rest. They all roam the nearby hillsides, carefree and loose. Mr. Tomcat lives in the backyard of a small cafe owned by a very nice, animal-loving lady.

The weather has been very agreeable, warm during the day, cool at night. I am taking long walks during which I rarely see a soul. The island is empty, save the permanent residents and very few, mainly northern European, tourists. I have never seen it like that. As I’ve already said, I really prefer it this way. Suddenly, we have reclaimed Patmos for the Greeks!

At 3 a.m. today I was jolted out of bed by a sudden peeling of bells from the monastery. I had forgotten that on Sunday (very early) morning there is a first liturgy before the crack of dawn. I stood out on the balcony breathing in the cool, fragrant air until the bells fell silent again. Back to bed, I read for a little while and then fell asleep like a baby. On the island, it’s a happy cat’s life!

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Blue skies above, quiet on the floor

I know that tourism is the hard cash earner for Greece, but this year I am grateful it has collapsed the way it did. My reasons are of course egotistical in the extreme. I have just returned from (literally) dipping my foot in the sea, whose temperature is still not recommended to anyone below penguin status; the beach was quiet and empty, save a couple of hardy Aussies patrolling in their flip flops. I am thankful, though, they were around because, stupidly, I drove straight into some mudflats and got the old Jap relic of mine stuck beyond salvation.

My favorite beach lies right at the edge of a salt “lake” that is formed in the winter by the waves sweeping over the narrow sliver of pebble-covered ground to inundate a large area of sand separating the water from hard-packed land. The salt “lake” dries up fast under the summer sun -- but its surface is not crusted enough to support vehicles before mid-July, perhaps. So, today, I discovered another tricky fact about Patmos terrain.

Thanks to the two Aussies, who did have a 4-wheel drive parked further out, I’m back on time for a lunch of potatoes baked in olive oil and lemon juice, with pepper and oregano to add some spunk, accompanied by tomato and cucumber salad, all made with local ingredients (the potatoes do not disintegrate into pulp, the tomatoes taste like... tomatoes, and the cucumbers are hard and not watery).

Early this morning, around 0730, I drove into Skala (the harbor) to discover an empty town. In years past, 0730 was like noon. This morning though the place was populated by just a few early riser locals, some cops, and the inevitable taxi drivers. Shops were closed. It was quiet. I expected to buy newspapers and my morning cheese pie but I was defeated. I took pictures and walked around and waited until, at least, the kiosk would open. I talked to the early risers and they said business is down 100 pct !! Even allowing for the usual exaggeration, it is obvious the tourist trade is going though a major lull.

The other significant sign of this very slow season is that there are no cruise ships. None. Usually, the entrance to the harbor was populated by several large ships riding at anchor and running their dinghies busily back and forth, ferrying people to and from Skala. This morning the harbor was empty and the more distant water undisturbed, save one or two little fishing boats. Very romantic, no doubt, but, economically, ruinous for the island.

PS: My dial-up connection refuses to cooperate with large photo posts (not unexpected). Yesterday’s took nearly 20 minutes to publish! So, fewer photos until I return to HQ.

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Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale…!

I’ve touched down on Patmos! My lungs are already hurting from breathing clean air. My headache? Gone! My feeling of feeling like a withered lemon? Gone! My appetite? (Unfortunately) back!

The journey was a breeze. Between the economic crisis and  starting early for summer break (June instead of August), I’ve beat the crowds! The ship left Piraeus at 7 p.m. on 06/24. Sea was calm to slightly bumpy. The cabin was clean and comfortable. The sunset was dramatic. Only the throngs of smoking Greeks in the lounge reminded me that I was still in the Land o’ Miracles. I had a hearty meal in the restaurant with the great big windows overlooking (what else?) the water. Rather romantic. One stop in Syros at around 10:30 p.m. and then on to Patmos, doing at least 19-22 knots, dropping anchor at 2:30.

Arriving at such time is invigorating. The place is silent. The air is cool. The sky is dark-dark-dark, dotted with the trillions of gleaming little silver lights. And then, in the middle of all this deafening silence, there’s the hollow sound of the simantron from the monastery (the simantron is a section of a wood beam that’s hit with a mallet by a monk who’s in charge of keeping Byzantine time for the monastery –- quite different from our modern time).

It’s 10 p.m. as I type this. I did take a long nap but I really need sleep! This is the only time of the year (traveling to the islands) when I can get an uninterrupted 8-9 hours of night sleep and feel like a human being in the morning! No dark dreams, no tossing and turning, no whirring of the air conditioning, no diesel fumes from the street, no vrooming cars giving you a jolt just when your system is trying to lower RPMs. In all, a different place.

This morning it was cool and cloudy. I am never here when it’s cloudy. The colors are beautiful. Later, it cleared up. I did take the camera and went for a quick drive this morning. In late afternoon, I was again out for dinner and shot some more pictures. This is going to be fun! Enjoy the photos!

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